Your people are there to help you run the business. They aren't there to run it FOR you.
You may have the most competent assistant manager in the company. Does that mean its ok to leave them understaffed in order to free up labor dollars for you? I don't think so.
Your best closer never fails to set you up in the morning. He puts every other closer to shame with his skillful stainless steel polishing. Does that mean you work him six nights a week? Not the best idea.
Everyone has a point where they reach peak productivity. Too few hours or too little responsibility will leave your team members feeling unimportant or bored—which leads to a lack of motivation. Too many hours, shifts that are scheduled poorly (a close, a day off, followed by an open for instance), or too many duties will burn out your team and send them to the want ads. You make the big bucks because you can see when people are hitting their peak, and adjusting your operation for that moment.
It takes extra effort, but for the love of all things good in the world rotate your people. Spread out the workload. Develop your less experienced people so they're able to handle more of the load. It ties into the Always Hiring mentality...just as you constantly need to reseed your labor pool, you have to tend the people who are already there.
As tempting as it might be to lean on a competent or even gifted team, you're hurting yourself and the company in the long run. They'll notice your short hours, your light workload, and it'll breed resentment. Use your team, by all means: no one should work themselves to death when they have the ability to keep a healthy balance.
But balance means staying in the loop, keeping productive, and not taking advantage of your subordinates.
No comments:
Post a Comment