I need more help (employees 101)

[DuckNut]

I realize it’s my company and I can do what I want but that doesn’t give me the right to do the wrong thing.

Oh yes you do. The wrong thing is to allow the cancer to spread.

I have had quite a few businesses over the years. Buy them, build them, sell them. People are all the same.

Take a hard look at your company's employees. If you have built a company of loyal, positive and effective employees you are doing a great job. Negativity is so easy to spread, far easier than positivity. Get rid of the cancer.

In all of my businesses I always hired three people for one job and made them compete for the position and the cream rises to the task. Always be hiring and keep the best people and get rid of those who drag their feet.

I have had many thousands of employees. Human capital is the most time consuming and costly aspect of your business. The harm a disgruntled individual can do is mind boggling and it needs to be dealt with swiftly. You don't need to fire him, encourage him to seek green pastures withing the next 30 day. Fire his azz by lunch time if he starts spewing chit around the company after your conversation, your loyal employees will tell you.

There are effective ways of dealing with this to turn this into a very positive situation for yourself.

 

[AndyG]

Thank all of you-

I will give you guys a detailed update as soon as I can.

 

[DaveC]

Oh yes you do. The wrong thing is to allow the cancer to spread.

I have had quite a few businesses over the years. Buy them, build them, sell them. People are all the same.

Take a hard look at your company's employees. If you have built a company of loyal, positive and effective employees you are doing a great job. Negativity is so easy to spread, far easier than positivity. Get rid of the cancer.

In all of my businesses I always hired three people for one job and made them compete for the position and the cream rises to the task. Always be hiring and keep the best people and get rid of those who drag their feet.

I have had many thousands of employees. Human capital is the most time consuming and costly aspect of your business. The harm a disgruntled individual can do is mind boggling and it needs to be dealt with swiftly. You don't need to fire him, encourage him to seek green pastures withing the next 30 day. Fire his azz by lunch time if he starts spewing chit around the company after your conversation, your loyal employees will tell you.

There are effective ways of dealing with this to turn this into a very positive situation for yourself.

I second everything said here. When you've got someone pissing vinegar on everything and turning it sour, it's amazing how quickly the garbage stops when you cull the lead bull from the herd.

 

[AndyG]

I second everything said here. When you've got someone pissing vinegar on everything and turning it sour, it's amazing how quickly the garbage stops when you cull the lead bull from the herd.

I had a guy tell me one time if you really wanted to get everybody’s attention fire somebody in front of everybody else.

Sort of like the public executions they used to do.

I didn’t ever get into it on here but about five weeks ago I let somebody go and it was extremely quick and decisive.

They were highly paid and we’re hired under the impression that they have a certain amount of experience but it just didn’t seem to be relevant to our sector of the market....And they begin to make some strange statements and stranger decisions on the job -

There’s more to it then I’m going to get into on this post but one of the last conversations they said they didn’t need me for anything but to obtain the permit.....

Well that’s amazing since you used 2x4’s for rafters the last time I left you unattended.

When they made that statement that signaled to me that I didn’t have any value to them. He never knew what hit him.

 

[DuckNut]

Thank all of you-

I will give you guys a detailed update as soon as I can.

One way to turn this to a positive and reinforce your commitment to your employees is to rid him. Then have a company/department meeting and apologize to the crew (assuming we're not talking hundreds) and tell them you made a mistake and didn't recognize the problem and allowed it to fester too long. Then announce you are taking his pay and giving a raise to all the people who will have to carry his load.

You just built yourself more loyalty than you can imagine. Not only that, those who may have been keenly watching are once again back in your corner.

This is predicted on the size and scope of your company of course.

 

[AndyG]

One way to turn this to a positive and reinforce your commitment to your employees is to rid him. Then have a company/department meeting and apologize to the crew (assuming we're not talking hundreds) and tell them you made a mistake and didn't recognize the problem and allowed it to fester too long. Then announce you are taking his pay and giving a raise to all the people who will have to carry his load.

You just built yourself more loyalty than you can imagine. Not only that, those who may have been keenly watching are once again back in your corner.

This is predicted on the size and scope of your company of course.

You’re actually already in my head - there’s a little more to how I handled this but it involves exactly this-

I’m already in the middle of a personal energy come back due to burn out from stress, And the company, having been very blessed, has me making some decisions that would be better for our people.....

At the end of the day all things work to the good.

Or another way of saying it is like a friend of mine says (who is not at all religious - or however you spell it ) - “things generally work out for the best”.

All this said we are at a time of extremely high costs, our contracts are already written for 6 months out, and many of our people are earning well over $1,500.00 per week, some as high as 2000.00 plus if they produce.

In other words for the south we were at the very high end of the pay scale so we have to have decent productivity and a few mistakes.

The truth is you can’t make a perfect situation for everybody all the time but it has to be tolerable.

It has been very rewarding to see the change in people when the money starts getting to a certain point- They develop an attitude that the job is valuable and they’re not gonna mess it up.

I wish I could tell you that was true in all the cases but we do have some people that think the more they make the more the company can’t live without them- They get an inflated sense of value.

Realistically the average person doesn’t even have a clue what it takes to run a business and survive construction over the long term-I’m not slamming anybody but I’m telling you it is tough and you guys out here in the trades know exactly what I mean. The failure rate is astronomical.

If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to quit I could afford to.

 

[MikekiM]

...You don't need to fire him, encourage him to seek green pastures withing the next 30 day. Fire his azz by lunch time if he starts spewing chit around the company after your conversation, your loyal employees will tell you.

I like.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I agree, that guy has to go.

We had a kid with not quite the same attitude, extremely ambitious but completely out of whack on how much he was worth.

He was eager to learn and always jumped in there when a lot of other guys were standing around, which won him a lot of fans, early. But the praises he got for that soon went to his head and he started with delusions that he ought to be making 100k instead of the 80k he made that year (he was about 23 with less education and mich less experience but already comparable pay to others on his team). Started being very vocal about it to people nowhere near him on the org chart, talking about other companies wanting to hire him, all that. Ended up getting an offer and quit but we made it work to keep him. What no one told him is you only get to make that move about 1 time at our company, so when he did the same thing not even a year later, they showed him the door.

You'd think it was over at that point but we lost another guy a few months later. I didn't think a whole lot of it until talking to him on his last day and finding out he had become friends with the first guy before he left and they were still in touch and hanging out, then when I heard about his exit interview it was crystal clear what happened. The problem for him was he wasn't good enough for us to try that hard to keep him the first time he tried it, so basically he bluffed and we called it.

 

[AndyG]

Ok I owe you guys this-

After much thought and feedback here is what I did, why and how it has worked-

First- I looked at his pay, his good efforts and personal truck use for the company - he deserved more money (he negated his last raise with a scene 2 months ago)

Secondly- he has had no parenting, good role models or trade training- but tries hard.

Third- He has a positive side, can work with clients well and can orchestrate varied tasks well. These are strengths.


So-

We met the friday of this thread, and I laid it out.

“you are ruining this, guys want you gone, I’ve had enough and I’m gonna tell my mommy”- you know , the deal.

Then I laid it out-

You have 1-4 weeks- one episode and we square up and part ways as friendly as possible.

You get paid this, you are responsible for this (all put in writing).

You see me personally every friday, we review and pay.

You get this for vehicle us ,etc- anything unused helps you buy the next truck.


Then: on all these blow ups- they are counter productive.

I’m glad you care enough to get mad son - i really am.

But when things are too much, etc- you come to me - you are solving problems that arent yours to solve then getting mad you are overworked. We talked very openly.

Results:

So far it has been the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

His level of engagement, attitude, all- is fantastic.

My stress level is so low. I can now work on the business, not be immersed in drama.


The truth is people do not usually change, but they can (I did once) and sometimes it is worth a try.

We will see how it goes.

Thanks again
Andy

 

[LukesfirstJeep]

We will see how it goes.

Fingers crossed. Sometimes people need an honest assessment, and not a participation trophy. You laid out your expectations and challenged him the meet them.

 

[AndyG]

Fingers crossed. Sometimes people need an honest assessment, and not a participation trophy. You laid out your expectations and challenged him the meet them.

My eyes are wide open.

I’m no breeze to work for ....in some cases.

Here is the deal.... high performers and low performers do not get along.

In this case we have a high performer... but a maverick.

Now I’m on to the next case.

Thread coming soon.

 

[red02tj]

Glad you’re on the better path with your worker. Saw this about your contracts.

All this said we are at a time of extremely high costs, our contracts are already written for 6 months out

We used to have our annual price increases tired to CPI or CPI + X%. Allowed us to raise prices based on the inflation rate, customers knew it up front and it protected any one person from getting screwed by a materials shortage or price jacking. Can you write in something similar going forward? Lumber goes up 1-5% that’s on you as cost of doing business but if it goes up 5+% they bear some of that burden.

Unless of course they pre paid for the raw materials to lock in a current rate, and you hedged hoping to buy at a market dip, but that’s probably a different conversation.

 

[AndyG]

Glad you’re on the better path with your worker. Saw this about your contracts.



We used to have our annual price increases tired to CPI or CPI + X%. Allowed us to raise prices based on the inflation rate, customers knew it up front and it protected any one person from getting screwed by a materials shortage or price jacking. Can you write in something similar going forward? Lumber goes up 1-5% that’s on you as cost of doing business but if it goes up 5+% they bear some of that burden.

Unless of course they pre paid for the raw materials to lock in a current rate, and you hedged hoping to buy at a market dip, but that’s probably a different conversation.

Thank you.

 

[g.hayduke]

"I’ve got a young man who will work his heart out if ...

I was thinking about giving him a raise anyway... he does preliminary work very well"

You always have the option of firing the guy. You were planning to give the guy a raise and it got "delayed". You've probably invested some OJT into the guy and he's probably learned some stuff while in your employ.

He obviously provides some value to your operation. Why not show some leadership? Talk to the guy. Explain why you are thinking about firing him instead of giving him a raise. Make it a teaching moment. Give him a raise with the stipulation that it's also a 2nd chance. See what happens.

Firing the guy is always available as an option. Hard to undo if the next hire is worse.

 

[AndyG]

You always have the option of firing the guy. You were planning to give the guy a raise and it got "delayed". You've probably invested some OJT into the guy and he's probably learned some stuff while in your employ.

He obviously provides some value to your operation. Why not show some leadership? Talk to the guy. Explain why you are thinking about firing him instead of giving him a raise. Make it a teaching moment. Give him a raise with the stipulation that it's also a 2nd chance. See what happens.

Firing the guy is always available as an option. Hard to undo if the next hire is worse.

I think all of the above has happened sir, with the exception his pay did need to adjusted.

 

[g.hayduke]

I think all of the above has happened sir, with the exception his pay did need to adjusted.

Sorry I didn't read that last update before responding. Sounds like you did what I was suggesting without me suggesting it. Kudos and I'm glad the results so far are positive.

 

[AndyG]

I wanted to report back how this ultimately played out-

Yesterday I let him go.

He was told when we did the raise exactly what had to change.

Last week the old behavior came back and he was on a tirade for two days.

I’m not going to go into the details but one of the killers was the fact that he was given a task and could not perform it....Which is perfectly fine in my company but what you have to do is tell me so that I know we have to come up with another plan. You never abandon something. That was purely just a result of the bad attitude that he would occasionally manifest.

The hardest thing about him was the fact that he was a tremendous worker the majority of the time and occasionally would just “flip the switch”



My biggest concern was the fact that I tolerate behavior from him that I really wouldn’t tolerate from anybody else and that is just a form of unfairness.

Even when I let him go he criticized how I did that.

Well buddy you’re still fired.

I even had to talk to his mother who does painting for us to make sure she understood that she can’t bring him in as a sub contractor for her onto our projects.

I am convinced that you can never have true success without good morale and esprit de corps.

I want to thank you guys for reading and for participating in this thread.

 

[AndyG]

 

[sab]

Andy, you were more forgiving of his behavior than I would have been. I don’t think you’ll regret, for even a minute, letting him go.

 

[AndyG]

Andy, you were more forgiving of his behavior than I would have been. I don’t think you’ll regret, for even a minute, letting him go.

I am sort of like someone who just got paroled I think.

It is just amazing the effect we can have on each other.

I need to remember that every day.