Management strategies: human resources advice for emerging businesses

Black Enterprise, June, 1992 by Iris Randall

Smaller companies in particular feel the effects of high turnover. If you have 10 employees and five of them leave within a year or two, tha'ts 50% of your staff. If you are always "teaching someone the ropes," you lose continuity in a department, and you will have spent a lot of training dollars for no return.

On the other hand, if you are building a business, it is descouraging to find that many of your first hires are poor matches; you begin to doubt your ability to choose good people. Linda Randall, DVM, and owner of Cloverleaf Animal Hospital in Westfield Center, Ohio, says, "It has taken me a year to get a staff that can work as a team. Even though I had hired what I thought were the best people for the job, they just couldn't work together with a common focus. I had to understand that sometimes even the best people don't make it."

If you want to have a long-term, highly motivated, contributing employee, clearly define what you are trying to accomplish. Carefully think throught he qualities and quaifications required to get the job done and interview to finda a match.

If employees are leaving at a high rate, it is important for you to find out why. Exit interviews help to a degree, although most people will not be completely honest. Attitude surveys or focus groups cna tell you what needs to be changed. New companies often have a higher turnover rate, as owners work to define the positions required to produce and market a product. If you begin with the end in mind, provide good training, keep your staff informed and present your company as a team, you should be able to overcome high turnover.

Incentives Really Can Work

Employee of the month, "flex-time", "comp-time," dinner for two, flowers every week, catalog gift choeces, free trips. Banks, offices and retail stores are taking a page from the sales industry, and useing incentives to reward and motivate employees.

Business Digest in Bethel, Conn., rewards its staff by giving extra training. A reward? "Definitely," says Publisher John Rawson. "First of all we have a day together away from the office with a great lunch. I bring in a consultant and we learn how to work better as a team. It is not only a great incentive, but an opportunity for us to grow together, which increases our productivity."

Need to get out a big job? You'll have many more volunteers from the office staff if they know they will have "comp-time" when they need it. Keept them involved and informed.

Borrowing another page from sales, recognize achievers. Although money is always welcome, and your people should be well paid, the reward does not always have to be extravagant or expensive. Plaques, paperweights, "employee of the month" citations and a mention in the newsletter are all welcome motivators.

Look for achievements that may go unnoticed. Most employees are involved in community activities; find out who they are and give awardsa for volunteer work.

Many retail stores are reluctant to talk about it, but they reward employees for new charge-account customers. If you use another credit card, they will often ask you if you would like to open an account with the store. The salesperson who brings in the most accounts receives a choice of gifts.

Other motivators for good performance are the buttons that say, "If I forget to give you your cashier's receipt, you will get a coupon for a free pizza." This is a motivator for the cashier to give receipts because he or she will receive an award for good customer service, and it's easily measurable.

Want to tive awards, but don't know where to begin? Form an incentive team and have them discuss their work. How could they improve it? Give them idea starters and let them tell you what would turn them ln.

Then listen. Give honest accurate feedback. If you are sure their ideas won't work, let them know why. However, don't judge too hastily; give it a try for a period of time. Incentives can be a stimulus to help employees and companies attain goals. And those goals that we are most committed to are usually the ones that we set ourselves.

Good Reviews Start With Great Job Descriptions

A great job description should be more than just a recital of the tasks and responsibilities of the job. If it is well-written, it can be a measurement of the position and the success of a person in that position. Ideally, a job description should be an analysis of the role behavior required to get the job done, a basis for training, a bechmark for hiring.

Job descriptions have to be reevaluated every two years. Outdated, they are meaningless and maybe illegal, especially if you can't prove that the qualifications you are requiring are used on the job. On the other hand, an effective job description not only assures that the right person is in the right position, but becomes a road map during training--an evaluation tool. It almost guarantees successful performance.

To write a good description, start by defining the role of the individual in that position. Develop a list of tasks (a single element/activity of the job). Next, define each task and exactly how it should be performed. Then determine the required qualifications. Make sure that the scope of responsibilities of the position is clearly spelled out. This includes items such as use of independent judgment, number of persons superveised, dollar value of equipment or sales under this person's jurisdiction. Armed with this information, you are now ready to design the job description. Only the most important tasks should be included.