Recently I spent some time with a colleague talking about his service facilities need to GET STABLE. I asked him what he meant by the term, “GET STABLE”. He started telling me that during the last few weeks he was receiving more and more telephone calls from prospective employers wanting references for current employees at his dealership.
We spoke at length about how this will affect his ability to conduct business should he start losing his current talent. I listened in wonderment as he spoke non-stop about having to hire new employees, retrain them and teach the policies and procedures all over again to a new group of people. After ten minutes or so of his ranting, “That this seems to be a common dilemma that his dealership endures about every six months or so”, I was asked what I would do in his situation.
I had to ask the question, “Does this have anything to do with how the employees are compensated or treated”? My friend informed me that most of the non technical employees are all paid exactly minimum wage and during their employment the senior management piles more and more work on them. He indicated to me that most if not all of these people were underpaid and overworked for each of their positions. I asked him what he thought should be done about the situation and his reply was to over pay for each position by a fair amount, he indicated a dollar or two more then minimum wage would make a huge difference in retaining quality people.
Then he went on to say that he wasn’t the only manager in his facility having the same issues of retaining individuals or of feeling the same way. He stated as a manager within this facility it was becoming harder and harder to go into work each day feeling pumped and he indicated that this feeling was infecting most of the management.
He listed the sales department as having a revolving door for the position of receptionist, lot porters and billers. Even the service warranty administrative position was becoming harder to keep someone employed in because there was more than enough work, not enough compensation and the senior management expected whoever had this position to take a meager salary and work ten or more hours per day. Apparently the positions of shuttle driver and swap driver they cannot keep enough resumes to satisfy the demand that is being created internally.
So let’s look at the effect this problem poses on the dealership and its ability to provide service.
1. Each time you hire a new employee, you will spend precious valuable time in the process to pick the right person. There is a certain amount of time that must be invested when hiring and training any new employee, ensuring they meet and exceed your expectations is a top priority. Training is ongoing for an unspecified amount of time until you as a manger feel they are performing at your level of expectations and providing your customers with a WOW experience.
2. There is also a cost factor involved when hiring a new employee and we all know from our own experience what those costs can be.
3. Constantly having employee turnover in any business creates havoc for your customers; the customer will not have the opportunity to establish and build a relationship with your employees and remember that building relationships builds trust. The more trust your customers have in your business the more likely you are to succeed on numerous levels.
4. If your business is a revolving door your customers may lose credibility with your business. Customers may start to wonder WHAT internal problems exist within the business behind closed doors and this is a damaging effect as you may lose customers as you lose credibility.
5. Having a revolving door has a detrimental negative effect on all employees of the business, they become cynical and this opinion may be voiced in private corners of your business. The negative attitudes of some employees crying foul over the constant turnover rate can and will lead to creating negative cancer within your facility. When it comes to cancer we all want it cut out before it infects the rest of the body, therefore we shouldn’t let the cancerous effect even start to permeate into our business. The only way to avoid these detrimental affects is by retaining the quality people you have, this means paying them a proper compensation package for the work they perform.
If you pay your employees what they are worth you can retain them! Retention gives the business the opportunity to effectively and properly train each employee, molding them into the employee you want and need to represent you. Having awesome representation sets the stage to give each customer a WOW experience. If your customers are getting a WOW experience each and every time they come to your facility obviously by the laws of business, word will spread about HOW GREAT YOU ARE! This leads to more business and soon you won’t be thinking of how little you can pay somebody to perform a particular job function, you will be thinking of hiring more individuals to meet the needs of your ever growing customer base.
If you look at negative steps one through five above, you begin to see that this issue is cyclical, each problem compounds the next, this is a vicious cycle of workplace cancer that needs be cut out and eliminated permanently to grow any facility.
David
No comments:
Post a Comment