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Print ArticleWouldn’t it be nice to find an employee who always comes to work on time … almost never makes mistakes… gets along well with everyone … never asks for a raise … and is well organized? Meeting these qualifications would classify an individual as a super employee.
Where on earth can you find such employees? I’ve got a secret. I know where to find them — lots of them. They’re working for you right now! That’s right. Almost any of the employees who are working for you now have super employee potential. Making those employees realize such potential is the challenge we face as managers.
How can we bring out that super employee potential? Really, we need to convince our workers to get onboard with what we are trying to accomplish. We want to instill a work culture that is productive, has an identity and clearly laid out, achievable goals. This sort of atmosphere will bring out all the strengths your employees might have.
STIMULATE PRODUCTIVITY
Let’s start with being productive. So many people hate the start of the work week. You know the Monday morning blues. In reality, most of your workers show up because they need a paycheck; not necessarily because they love their job. If work becomes stale or boring, we run the risk of our employees becoming nonproductive.
What can be done? The first step to making a super employee is to let them know you appreciate their efforts. Let them know what their hard work has accomplished. Give them scenarios of what you see happening if all do their part. Communication plays a huge role in employees being productive. Without communication, each individual would merely be an island isolated from the mainland. In a shop environment this would be disastrous.
You also want to look at their work tasks to see if you can change things up a bit. Many counter shops have both shop and road employees. Why not switch things up? It’s been my experience especially with the young crowd that they love to be on the road. Why not send them once in awhile? You have made them happy and accomplished a little cross training as well. This can also afford you other opportunities.
As your road talent grows, you might think about having your more experienced road crew employees do a little sales work. Why not? They probably know all your customers better than you do. Think about what an advantage that would be for you? You now have an installer that not only can install but also sell. Where I work, some of our most effective sales folks were once very good installers. This will keep your road crew from becoming stale as well.
From helping to build our website to being ambassadors for different events, we’ve used our employees for all kinds of different activities here. Doing this has really shown us that we have super employees. Also, other employees who may just be going through the motions will observe there is some reward when they apply themselves and will want to be part of the team.
