Managing Employees of All Ages
If you’re like most independent toy-store owners, you’re using this retail transition time to step back and look at your store with new eyes. What needs to be refreshed besides your gift-wrap counter, your window displays and that sopping-wet rug just inside your door? How about your employees’ performance?
With an eye toward making your staff as effective as it can be during this upcoming year, here is some practical advice from leadership and management expert Bruce Tulgan.
Monitor, measure, document
Storeowners or managers who want to be on top of the details must keep a handle on what their employees are working on, always. It means monitoring, measuring and documenting performance every step of the way.
There are five different ways to monitor your employees.
1. Watch them work.
2. Ask them for an account of their performance, “What did you do this morning?” Then listen.
3. Check work in progress or check the end result. If you’ve got someone doing data entry, check a random sample. If someone else is doing telephone sales, listen to some calls.
4. Ask employees to use self-monitoring tools, like a calendar or a checklist.
5. Ask around – vendors, customers, coworkers.
While you can measure performance many ways, Tulgan recommends only one meaningful way: asking yourself how the employee’s performance actually lines up with expectations determined in advance.
Then, says Tulgan, you have to keep track, or document, what you’ve monitored and measured. His advice is to describe performance as being “good,” “bad” and “average.” “I don’t care if you do it in a notebook in your back pocket or if you do it in a database relationship management software package on your computer,” he says. “You’ve got to have notes to refer to about the expectations you spelled out for each person, and the concrete performance that you’re monitoring.”
Bonus recommendations for special cases
Productivity – Do you want one of your employees to work faster? Here’s how to make it happen, says Tulgan. If it’s just one task, say, unpacking boxes, break the task into its component steps. Figure out how long it should take to accomplish each step. Then ask your employee to perform that task so you can watch and see if he is following the same steps you do and accomplishing them in the time you expected them to. If not, help your employee figure it out. If the two of you can find a reason, you can certainly find a solution.
“If the employee is following the same steps in a reasonable amount of time as you watch, you have the information you need to create a time budget for each task,” says Tulgan. “That should give you concrete productivity goals for that task for that person. Follow up routinely to make sure the individual is meeting those goals.”
Behavior – Do you have employees whose professional behavior you’d like to change? Tulgan suggests making a list of them and then next to each name, answering the following questions: What behavior should stop? What one should start? Then, describe the behavior as a best practice if you can. Write the standard operating procedure for that best practice. Now make a checklist that spells out how to follow that standard operating procedure, and figure out how you can your employee use the checklist.
Lack of training – Do you currently have assignments for which you do not have an available well-trained experienced staff member? But, do you also have employees who may be less trained with less experience but have more time? Consider giving one or more of your excess assignments to this person, but be prepared to spend extra time guiding, directing and supporting him every step of the way. “You’ll be building a go-to employee for assignments in the future,” Tulgan predicts.
Tulgan, the author of Not Everyone Get A Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y, and It’s Okay to be The Boss, is an advisor to business leaders from all over the world and a sought-after keynote speaker. Last year, he was honored by Toastmasters International as the single person who represents excellence in the field of communication and leadership.
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