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Thread: Managing your employees. How hard it is for you? What have you done to solve it?

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    Default Managing your employees. How hard it is for you? What have you done to solve it?

    In a recent meeting with other business owners about our employees, many were talking about how unmotivated their staff is or how hard it is to get things done as we want them. I was curious to know about your experiences.

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    Oh so many questions.

    Firstly, employees do not take the same approach to your business as an owner will. It seems lately that they are there to generate a paycheck - making a profit for the company comes secondary. In my experience most who think this way are receiving minimum wage. If you want something done right, you need to show them how to do it right and ensure that they have to proper tools, in good condition, to do the job right.

    Second, have these business owners actually spoken with their employees as to why they lack motivation? You'd be surprised how many owners feel that mind reading figures that out. Do these owners promise the moon yet give some excuse when a raise is due? Do they micromanage? High strung?

    Of course, there's the flip side where some owners can't find good help. I've heard stories about applicants that saw no problem with getting high and going to work. I've even been told that my zero tolerance to alcohol/mind altering drugs during the work day is too extreme. I run a loose shop (flex hours within reason, access to equipment after hours, etc.) but there are some rules that must be followed with no exception.
    Brad Miedema
    Fulcrum Saw & Tool

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    When I first started my manufacturing business employees and productivity were major issues for me. We paid by the hour and since there was a set amount of units to manufacture the longer it took them to build the units the more pay they got. My recruiting was mostly recommendations of my current workers of someone they knew who didn't have a job. Actually it was someone who sat on the bar stool next to them at night. I recall tracking the hours to build one machine at 128 hours. We now build the same unit in 14 man hours.

    Things had to change. I was getting a ton of orders and could not get units out the door. The first step I took was to put a bonus program in effect. Now for every unit they got out the door they got a bonus and increasing production let their pay increase enough to be noticeable. The other change I made at that time was to get more systematic and methodical in my HR practices. I put a testing program with applicants and ran ads and picked from a larger group of workers.

    We still have the bonus program and we have a bonus most every week. The bonus adds $ 3-4.00 an hour to their base pay. Two years ago we also added profit sharing. The idea is that it would give them incentive to make sure things went out right and to care about our profitability. It gives them a nice big extra check at Christmas time. Last year the average worker got a check for 4 grand in profit sharing. The bonus program seems to be the more effective since one check a year delays the gratification but both seem to have helped. I never walk back into my production area and see anyone not hard at work.

    You might want to think about adding some kind of a bonus program.
    Ray Badger, Turbo Technologies, Inc.
    www.TurboTurf.com www.IceControlSprayers.com

  4. #4

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    Thanks for your reply, I'm impressed by how you turned the situation, I have just a small group of employees but I'm doing fine, maybe because they are not too many or I've selected them well. I would consider sharing profits or bonuses only if productivity is low, but I would definitely consider it.
    For the other business owners I know, many are not willing to share any profits and it's normal that in time employees see all that money coming in and no additional for them and they just turn to work at a maintenance mode level (they never know all the risks and payments we have to do as business owners, but that's another story)

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    Let me add a little to what I posted before. On the bonus, we set our base pay a little under the market. If production doesn't hit a certain level there is no bonus. I was very impressed with a video I saw about Lincoln Electric were much of their pay is based on bonus. Workers are highly paid but only because of the bonus
    Their productivity is amazing. I was also influenced by comments my first wife made early in our marriage when she was working for Westinghouse. They had a bonus program and the other workers were always after her to work faster so she didn't cost them bonus. It seemed to me that when coworkers push their others to increase productivity that is a great thing.

    Our profit sharing is tiered. If.we don't have a profit of a good amount there is no profit sharing. Then it steps up from 10 to 20 percent based on the amount of profit we have.
    Ray Badger, Turbo Technologies, Inc.
    www.TurboTurf.com www.IceControlSprayers.com

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    In our company we track employee engagement with time tracking software. And based on our research our productivity improved by 45% in comparison with times without using it. I think it's a great result.

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    I like your approach with the bonus program. I have to depend on other folks for a few of my functions as well. I have the same desire, to get as much out of my payment in terms of productivity as possible. I do it this way. I pay up front. I know the saying says bread consumed is easily forgotten, but there are some cool perks about what I do including travel and such, which I pay for, and I literally have a line of folks vying for the gigs. If we hit a snag and I need to ask something more out of one of my people I always offer a bonus if the snag is over come payable at the end of the job. Of course now my fear is that peeps will manufacture delays lol. I kind of take the same approach as you but mine is more of a ale carte bonus when I need it. I like your take on this issue and as things keep ramping up, I've been pondering how to put things more under control (currently I don't have employees... they are all independent contractors) as things grow... my ability to keep that arrangement up diminishes little by little as we progress.
    Michael Elliott, MBA
    http://gamestartstores.com
    Want to open a video game store? I can help! Check my site for max detail!

  8. #8

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    Actually it depends on the industry. I am running an Internet Marketing firm since 2010, and have 18 full time professionals working with me. Here are the things I did to motivate them and so far it works fine for me

    ==> Whenever they did something good, I rewarded them.
    ==> I didnt act like a boss, I always act like a leader. leading from front gives confidence to both. When I do something infront of them, they believe they can do it. And finally they do even far better than mine.
    ==> I describe their roles in brief. Without proper understanding what they are doing and why, they cant be much productive.
    ==> I work to create leader for various teams, so they can operate the rest.
    ==> Bonus, most of the people works for money. So if they do something great they should get something from your organization. I set up a goal, if they can reach it, they get extra from me. It really works unless some one is super lazy.
    ==> Monthly meeting, I should analyze how is going everything, and should inform that all the positive and negative things happened on last month, and what to do in next.

    Note: If you want to increase productivity, you must need to track your performance in every possible ways. You need have all the data in your hand. When they are coming to office, when they are going, what they did etc etc. By this way you can identify what to do and how.
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