Trade Secrets

Motor, Sep 2006 by Cerullo, Bob

Your employees deserve to be treated with dignity and respect And you must give them a clear picture of their privileges and responsibilities before you look for loyalty in return.

When you're running your own business, you don't have time to get sick and stay home. You "shake it off' by coming to work, no matter how rotten you feel. You send out for some hot tea or chicken soup. That generally works, and by lunch or the end of the day you're feeling better, and feeling good about not missing a day's work.

That's part of what being the boss means: You take the risks, you work long hours, you come to work even when you really need a sick day. Whatever works for you is fine.

However, you can't expect your employees to have the same dedication as you do. In my dad's time running our shop, the men worked 12 hours a day for 16 days before they had a day off. There were no sick days. If you didn't come to work, you didn't get paid. If you were out more than once in a while, you got fired. My dad worked right along with them; in the first 20 years even he didn't get the one day off after 16 days.

But that was in the 1920s and this is 2006, and times sure have changed. Your employees are entitled to time off, a living wage and lots of other things. If you're not sure of their rights, take a few minutes to read those posters the government requires you to put up in prominent places.

Remember, for your employees it's a job, a means of making a living so they can feed their families and then go home and enjoy them. Some employees will have a strong loyalty to you and your shop. It's wonderful when it happens. But don't assume any employee is going to be as devoted to you as I was to my dad or you might be to yours. The business relationship you have between you and your employees should be just that. There's nothing wrong with having a friend who works for you. But in the final analysis, you're better off making a clear distinction between your friendships and your work relationships.

Don't count on an employee staying with you out of loyalty alone. In a business relationship, you do what's best for the business. You should not keep a personal friend who's not getting the job done. Nor should you expect a top-notch technician to stay with you unless you pay him competitively, provide benefits equal what he or she might make elsewhere and have a plan that takes into consideration the fact that non-shop-owning mere mortals do get sick.

Develop a plan that's fair to the shop and to your employees. You might decide that employees are entitled to a certain number of sick days before they need to prove to you they were sick. And don't be alarmed when an employee takes a day off to go to the beach. Even the best employees need that from time to time. As long as it doesn't become excessive or happen during extremely busy times, learn to live with it..

In my shop, we developed a plan where employees would be allowed seven undocumented sick days with full pay. They're expected to call in by 8 a.m. with no explanation of why they're not coming in if they're taking a sick day. However, after those seven sick days are used up, they're expected to provide an explanation for any other days taken. If time out of the shop runs to several days, they may be expected to bring in a note from their doctor.

To discourage employees from taking sick days when they're not really sick, we offer an incentive in the form of an extra day's pay for every one of the seven allowed sick days they do not take. Several of our guys consistently earn an extra week's pay every year. Some never do.

For a shop owner, the biggest problem with employees taking the maximum (or more) number of sick days is the loss of productivity. I have been, more times than I care to recall, faced with a shop full of work on a Friday morning that was promised for that evening when by 8:30 a.m. I realized I had only half the staff in the shop working. I agonized over it, but I discovered after a while that agonizing over what you can't control is a waste of time and energy.

You need to work on getting your employees fired up with enthusiasm for their work in the hope they won't want to take a Friday off unexpectedly. But you also have to consider they very likely have families and might want to take a long weekend. Your employees need to know that if they broach the subject of taking a Friday off for a long weekend, you won't explode or go into a slow boil.

One shop owner I know goes ballistic every time one of his employees asks for a day off. He gets angry when techs ask for a day off and even when they take an allowed sick day. The result is they don't ask, they just take the time and hope the temper tantrum won't be too bad when they get back. Face it, children graduate, babies are baptized, family members get sick and home closings need to be attended. You have to understand the needs of your employees. You need to earn your employees' loyalty. Money is extremely important, but most employees respond to a boss who understands their needs.