CHOOSING THE RIGHT TEAM

See, if I was going to manage these people – to take responsibility for their performance, their lives, and their family – I needed to have complete authority over them, or I would never earn their respect.

As a retired military officer, I’ve led teams of soldiers through difficult situations. But I can honestly say that leading a shop is even tougher than leading a team in the military. Stripes and ranks make it crystal clear who’s in charge, but no system like that exists in the civilian sector. You’ll never be handed authority with a title — you have to earn it.

As the manager or shop owner, you are responsible for the success of your team and of the shop. You need authority and respect in order to effectively manage employees. Just as important, you need to be able to create a great team of quality employees.

But where do you start?

Screening applicants
Retaining quality employees starts before you even hire them. Everything from the job description to the interview should work to ensure you find the right employee – one that will be the quality employee you want to retain.

When you’re crafting a job posting, think carefully about the type of employee that you want to attract. If your listing sounds like every other job description out there, you’ll dilute your chances of attracting good employees.

From the very beginning, make it clear what you’re looking for in an employee. If you require a specific certification, make this crystal clear – in the job description, phone screening, and interviews.

When you’re looking for someone who is high quality, productive, and loyal, use language that reflects those qualities in the application process. Ask for references and their work history. If they’ve bounced around from job to job, don’t bother calling back – it’s clear that they will not be loyal to you either.

If you’re not screening applicants before an interview, you’re wasting your time. It takes at least 10 applications before I’ll find someone that is good enough to interview. And out of those I do interview, only 1 in 100 actually gets hired and becomes that quality employee that I wanted.

If an applicant doesn’t meet your requirements, don’t waste your time going through the full process.

The Interview

Finding the right new hire is about knowing what you want and not settling for less. Before you even ask the first question, you should have determined the fatal flaws. Know your deal breakers, and don’t waste your time with the wrong people.

For example: do you want somebody who will pencil whip inspections or take shortcuts during customer check-in? Then ask enough questions to make sure that they follow policies and procedures.

Asking the right questions means thinking critically about what you’re looking for before you step into the interview. Use a written set of questions that you’ve thought out ahead of time, but don’t sound scripted over the phone. These questions are your guide to walk through every criteria you’re looking for in an employee, while letting the conversation flow naturally.

When this person sounds like a good fit for your company, it’s time to turn the tables. After you’ve listened and learned everything you can about the interviewee, it’s your chance to teach them about you.

Show them your culture. Set clear expectations for their job, and be as specific as possible. Be clear about pay and benefits. Don’t overpromise, or you’ll lose the trust of your new employee right away.

For any quality employee, it’s not just a job. This is where they’ll spend the majority of their time each day. A good fit is as important to them as it is to you. Be genuine and honest – it’s okay if the fit isn’t there, as long as you don’t waste your time or theirs pretending that it is.

One of our clients once told me, “I cannot find an employee worth a [darn].” So I asked him about his training process for new hires. He laughed out loud. But when he realized I was serious, he said, “Any qualified employee should know how to do their job without me having to show them.”

Then it was my turn to laugh out loud. It wasn’t enough to find a qualified, certified employee… they needed to be psychic too!

Without taking the time to train a new employee, how can you expect them to understand what you want? Quality employees want to succeed, but they still need to know what that means to you, in your business.

The worst thing you can do is send a man onto the field and not teach him your game plan so he can help your team win.

Is that employee ruined?

There’s a big difference between a character problem and a behavioral problem. You can teach the right way to behave through training, but you cannot teach a person to change their character.

Poor employees can only pretend for so long before they show their true colors.

But before you kick a poorly-trained employee to the curb, ask yourself: Is that employee ruined or can they be saved?

Let me ask you a few questions:

When you tell your employees to come to work a specific set of hours, but you don’t enforce the schedule consistently and fairly with every one of them, what are you teaching them?

If you ask them to answer the phones with a consistent and uniform greeting, but you never correct them or hold them accountable when they don’t, what are you teaching them?

When you set up rules in your business but YOU don’t follow them, what are you teaching them?

You need a good set of rules to follow in your business, and you have to enforce them. If you allow people to bend or break them, you’re committing suicide for your business. It lets the poor employees run the culture and prevents good employees from trusting and respecting your authority.

Policies and Procedures

Policies aren’t harmful to good employees. The quality ones will follow all the rules, whether there is one or one hundred and fifty.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need policies or procedures to run a great business. Everyone would automatically do exactly what they were supposed to do, exactly the way you wanted them to do it, every time. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

You need policies and procedures. They improve the work environment, improve employee satisfaction and sense of security, improve customer retention, improve production and process, and reduce chaos.

Imperfect people can operate at near perfection when they follow a perfect process.

Retaining Quality Employees

Keeping your all-star employees is about more than perks, vacation days, bonuses, or Friday pizza parties. It’s about culture.

I said it earlier, but it’s so important that I’ll say it again here. For the best employees, it’s not just a job.

The best cultures are ones that foster learning, serving, and caring. Treat your coworkers and customers like family. Have opportunities to grow and develop on a personal level. Serve your customers and your community.

But you can’t write a set of rules to dictate the culture. Culture must come naturally. Your policies and procedures can support the culture or hinder it, but they cannot force it.

As the owner, you need to do it first. You need to set that example, live the culture, be a part of the family. You have to hold yourself to your own rules. You have to live it, or you’ll be doomed to fail.

When you’re building your team of all-star employees, remember what matters most for your business. Use the application, screening, and interview process to attract quality employees and weed out the ones that won’t fit with your shop. Invest the time to train new hires on your systems, expectations, policies and procedures so they understand how to succeed in your shop. Know that it’s more than a job, it’s the culture. You must lead by example and be a part of the culture you want to foster.

If you do that first, the good people will follow you. Quality customers and quality employees will seek out that culture, commit to it, and thrive in it.

You must do it first, then they will follow.