Many Business owners have been asking me how to deal with the current labor crisis. Everyone is scrambling for help, especially in the construction industry. Clearly it is a current challenge in this thriving economy much like effective marketing and winning jobs is a challenge in a slow economy.
Let me ask you a question: What if there truly was not a single person left to hire and you had no choice but continue to grow your business with the staff you currently have? What would you do differently? Would you continue managing your team the same way hoping for the best or would you make changes? What changes would you make? How would you roll out the changes? How would you sustain the changes over time?
A common problem I see in every economy is business owners will typically throw bodies at problems or challenges in their business. This way of doing business accelerates the busier they get. Without a plan and metrics, this is a classic Band-Aid approach to solving production, much like advertising with no plan or sales process is in a slow economy. Both are wasteful, short lived business strategies.
Perhaps a way to attack a labor crisis is maximizing the resources you already have. Making the most with what you have is done differently than throwing resources at objectives. Three key tools I would recommend to get much more with the same or fewer resources would be: 1. Training, 2. Implementing Measurements, and 3. Managing the results
Training
Rather than throwing people at something and asking them to “figure it out,” or ride along show-and-do training, put together a formal training program that teaches the individual step by step so there is no way they could do that task any other way. This should ideally be done on a video or training a foreman or superintendent to conduct the training so you only need to personally conduct the training once.
Implementing Measurements
The fastest path from babysitting to accountability is creating a numbers driven job description. I touched on this principle in my earlier blog Business by Numbers. Every position should have numbers attached. Open ended expectations to your employees such as “Make more sales,” or “Improve customer service” are a waste of time and money. Instead, put metrics to your expectations, “Make a minimum of 10 daily calls,” or “Improve our Google review score from a 3.5 to a 4.0.” Now everyone is speaking the same language and pulling the same direction, and results will skyrocket.
Managing the Results
Management becomes easy and logical when there are measurable results. Whatever you focus on will expand. Efficiency increases and you eliminate the guesswork and inconsistency from running the team. Best of all, you get more measurable results from your employees when they are clear on a measurable expectation. This way, we know how much to train or course correct from what their numbers show us.
Pinpoint Management has an awesome user-friendly productivity tracking tool which dashboards all of the above management processes. Give us a call and we can bring it by and demo it with your business model.
To making more with less!
Chad Harward – CEO
Pinpoint Management