Q & A Table of Contents
A Stressed Out Boss
From: Christine, Portland, Oregon
Question: I am the owner of a small business with three employees plus myself and my husband. Two of the three employees are my concern. Employee #1 has been with us for 9 years. She has good customer service skills and has acquired a lot of technical skills. As the years have gone by, she's been elevated to office manager and is now earning $40K per year. I'm afraid unfortunately that the she's hit the wall on what she's capable of. Mistakes have been made lately that she should have been equipped to deal with. She's also ill more than anyone in the office.
Employee #2 has been with us for two years. She's very bright, but occasionally is abrupt with customers. She's also a bad fit in the office. The other two employees try most of the time, to get along with her, but she's self-concerned and there have been conflicts between them. She's also a very good employee from an attandance standpoint, she's there early every day, she takes all tasks seriously, does not waste time. In other words, very skilled; not so hot in the personality department.
Back to employee #1: In addition to making some serious errors, she has unloaded on me twice in the past two weeks about employee #2.
If I could combine them, I'd have one good employee.
I should mention that I have provided corrective sessions with each about these problems, in addition to an annual review.
I'd also like to add that I believe in self-empowerment. These employees have their own turf. I don't like having to catch mistakes, I want them to take the ball and run with it.
Any advice?
Response: You need to develop benchmarks for employee performance in each of the areas you named: attendance, customer relations, relations among employees, productivity, and whatever other factors can be measured to determine how satisfactorily the business is working for the owners, the customers, the employees, and any other stakeholders.
Once the first draft of your list has been developed -- in cooperation with your husband and perhaps an outsider like a trusted supplier or customer -- you should circulate copies of the list of company standards to all the employees. Ask each individual to suggest any modifications in the list they think should be made, but make it clear that you, as boss, are the final decision-maker.
With the employee input in hand, you should ask each employee to rank himself/herself on a scale of 1 to 10 against each of the benchmarks or standards on the list. Then each employee (including yourself) should rank everyone else (on separate pages) -- including the boss. These analyses should be totally anonymous. You should even make sure that the responses are not handwritten to protect anonymity.
With this material in hand, you could have private meetings with each employee, allowing them to see a compendium of responses you've received to the anonymous peer reviews. Ask them to set goals for themselves, offering incentives for meeting or exceeding those objectives -- or disincentives for failing to shape up. Thus, for example, if Employee #1 has been promoted past her level of competence, and if there is training or some other means for enhancing her skills, she should be given a reasonable amount of time to shape up.
In the case of Employee #2, it sounds as if you've got some potentially serious problems if she's not always good with customers. Whether she needs sales training, anger management classes, some kind of intervention at home, or perhaps should be looking to change careers all need to be considered as possible choices.
Using this interactive approach to get folks to think about the relationship between their personal priorities and your priorities as the boss will have a more democratic feel to it and be more likely to bring about buy-in on whatever conclusions are reached. It may take time, but unless you want to fire everyone and start from scratch, this process should provide a way to resolve many of the issues you raise.
Unless you get buy-in, the process is a failure. The definition of successful negotiation is that it is a process that yields agreement the parties are committed to fulfill. While this may not sound like a classic negotiation -- a face-to-face bargaining session -- it is a collaborative process aimed at resolving a range of real issues.
Good luck,
Steve
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