It Is Tough To Find Good Help!
Many organizations around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to find good help. As a hiring manager, I have experienced firsthand how difficult it can be to find an employee who is both dedicated and motivated. That being said, finding an employee who demonstrates the below three characteristics on a regular basis is easier said than done. Let’s look at the three main areas employees tend to fall into.
1. How is your employee behavior?
In past blogs, I have already discussed “changing behavior”. Employee behavior can be good and bad. Does your employee make personal phone calls, surf the internet, read the paper or make idle chit chat with co-workers during working hours instead of calling your customers or performing their duties? Are your employees performing the right behaviors on a consistent basis in order to give your organization the best chance for success? I would say from my experience it is very rare when you have an employee who does not need to be held accountable for their utilizations over the course of an eight hour work day. I am not advocating total control or micro-management, but I do believe it is the leader’s role to know during the course of a work day if the employee’s actions were legitimate or not legitimate toward their utilization. Let’s face it, in most cases, not all, our human nature naturally tells us to coast or relax a bit when no one is looking. This very statement leads me onto area number two.
2. How hard is an employee willing to work during those behaviors?
As you can see, points one and two go hand and hand. You see an employee can perform the correct behavior, such as making those calls to the customer etc., but how hard do they work when they make those calls? Did they touch on all the talking points, did they try to up sell one more product or service, and did they go the extra mile to make sure the customer was satisfied. You see getting your employee to perform the correct behavior is only half the battle, but getting them to perform the correct behavior while “working it hard” is the remainder of the battle. As a manager, I know it is much easier for me to reach point number one, and change behavior through reports, evaluations and other accountability measures, however, getting someone to work hard completing the behavior is a much tougher task. It becomes more the character of the employee and less about the leadership and their responsibility to get the employee to work hard at their duties. That is why I have titled this blog “It Is Tough To Find Good Help!”
3. How persistent are your employees and can they communicate?
I have absolutely said this since my first experience leading people…I would rather have an employee go out and complete the task 100% wrong and come back and follow up with me and communicate they had completed the task, then for me to have to remember to follow up with each person on the task that I handed out. See it is a very rare find to have someone take the ball and run to completion AND come back and communicate the results. Many employees take the ball and start to run, but when they hit road blocks or snags along the way they go silent. They go quiet performing the “behavior”. How hard do your employees persist at performing the behavior even during road blocks? Even during road blocks, if the employee was persistent and pushed forward and communicated the road block, then there would still be time to fix the road block and move forward. Many times employees stop when faced with adversity, they don’t communicate and when the lack of behavior finally hits a critical point…it is TOO LATE to intervene and make a change. It is not about the employee having all the answers, it is about them being persistent enough to finish the behavior and communicate road blocks along the way.
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