[Employee Relations] Don't Sweat the Small Stuff — Share It!

Every entrepreneur I’ve ever worked with has the same primary challenge — there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything they want to accomplish. Some people, of course, are micromanagers who really don’t want to give up control of any part of their business. Others would be delighted to share responsibility but don’t know how to make it happen. In either case, creating clear “Guidelines for Action” can empower your staff to make day-to-day decisions that minimize the stress in your life, free up your time — and increase your profitability.

Assuming you’ve already written a clear Mission Statement and have an exciting vision for where your firm is going (see PCT, October 2007), a simple set of guidelines will show your team how to run your business.

We stress “simple” because complicated guidelines can quickly become confusing. Think of them as the Ten Commandments. If God can tell us how to live in 10 succinct commands, we can tell our staff how to run our business in no more than 10 guidelines.

SWEET SIX. At my first company, we had just six guidelines that helped transform a frustrating and consistently undercapitalized staffing firm into a regional powerhouse:

• Make money and have fun
• Have respect for the individual
• Help all members of the organization grow in any way you can
• Always be fair to everyone
• Try things and take total responsibility for your actions and results
• Always do what is right for the client

Like your mission and vision statements, the guidelines can’t be something you spend an afternoon working on, post above the coffee pot and forget. If you want them to be effective, you need to live them. Print them on business cards so every employee has a copy handy at all times.

Start every meeting with an example of how the guidelines were applied — preferably recognizing a team member who successfully used them. Any time you’re asked a question, try to incorporate the guidelines into the answer.

It might sound repetitive, but repetition and reinforcement of company values is one of a leader’s most important jobs. So how does it really work?

Say an employee comes to you with a problem. The first thing you do is pull out the card with the “Guidelines for Action.” One by one, go down the list and discuss how each Guideline might apply to the situation. A couple of things begin to happen:

First, you clearly demonstrate that the guidelines are important to you.

You’re also showing your employees that the guidelines are important business tools that can be used in a wide variety of situations.

Finally — and this is the big one — your employees learn to make decisions using the guidelines without calling you. An empowered team working to address problems within the boundaries you have set means less stress for you, more free time to enjoy work or play and more profits due to faster, better customer response and increased staff satisfaction.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. Using guidelines in this way is particularly effective for companies that have staff at client sites. They’re the ones on the front line when customers have requests or problems and they often need to make battlefield decisions.

Let’s take a service technician as an example. Say he or she has a dissatisfied customer and needs to take corrective action to make that customer happy.
Here’s how the service technician should walk through the aforementioned guidelines:

“Respect for the individual” means empathizing with the customer (whether they are right or wrong) and responding with dignity.

“Always do what is right for the customer” doesn’t mean the customer is always right — it means do the right thing by the customer.

“Always be fair to everyone” obviously means fair to the customer, but it also means being fair to the company. If additional services are required to fix the problem, perhaps doing them at cost would be fair to everyone.

“Make money and have fun.” Using “Guidelines for Action” usually results in a decision that can be made on the spot, so your customer is happy and your technician feels empowered by his or her ability to solve the problem.

Think of your “Guidelines for Action” as the operating manual for your crystallized mission statement and exciting vision statement.

They all need to be living documents that are used daily and discussed repeatedly among your team members. You’ll end up with an empowered staff that quickly and easily makes the right decisions, enhancing morale, improving productivity and increasing profitability.

Sharing the small stuff benefits your bottom line!

The author is a self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” who has built and sold five businesses over the past 30 years. His latest venture is a partnership with his wife, Pam Jordan Wolf, who has more than 30 years experience in the pest control industry. They’ve created www.netopportunity.biz, a Web site for pest control operators who want to sell, buy or grow their business. You can reach Tom Wolf at 813/960-1810.