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Just Because it's Summer Doesn't Mean You Should Take Shortcuts!
10 May 2023
A busy summer schedule doesn't let you skip what's important.
Summertime is insanely busy for the residential service providers across most of the country… And it's the key time of year that Employee Management issues develop, which you'll spend the rest of the year trying to correct!
Here are some the most common shortcuts employers use to "survive" the craziness of the Summer, which is a little list of what NOT to do.
1. NO VACATIONS AND LONGER HOURS!
Burned out and/or distracted employees make more mistakes. Increased mistakes do not help represent the Brand, and end up taking up more time for both the involved employees and management to correct, further overworking everyone in an endless cycle. Besides the operational challenges, work/life balance is a HUGE motivator for most workers today, especially those with families that are out of school for these upcoming months. Simply put, this is the only time of year that many families can actually get away together. By all means, minimize the number of people off at any given time, and continue looking for opportunities to improve efficiencies and utilize resources (human or otherwise) as they are available, but keep a pulse on the mood of your team. At the end of the day, your company culture and the goodwill of your employees is many times more valuable in the long-run than squeezing in a couple more unit replacements.
2. LETTING ISSUES SLIDE
With crazy busy schedules and the vision of $$$ to fund future slower seasons, it is all too common that "small problems" are willfully unnoticed. Not only does this NOT help represent your Brand, it creates precedent: a legally enforceable yet unofficial policy within your operation. It is extremely difficult to hold anyone accountable if you clearly allow something contrary to documented expectations/policy. Not only does it cause conflict within your team, it could invalidate entire sections of said documentation!
3. CANCELING/SKIPPING SCHEDULED MEETINGS
DO NOT cut out regularly scheduled team meetings. If you do weekly or daily huddles, KEEP DOING THEM. This includes covering those pesky Safety Trainings we send out to clients each month. 😊 Team meetings help everyone involved stay focused on the company mission, on the same operational page, and engaged with the Brand as a whole. If YOU don't show these meetings have value at the busiest time of year, why should THEY value them during the rest of the year? If needed, trim the content a little to keep them on point and focused, and maybe minimize personal crosstalk or unrelated/scheduled topics to improve time efficiency, but do not toss them aside!
4. CUTTING HR/SAFETY CORNERS
Continue to follow your HR & Safety processes & policies! Shortcutting things like onboarding/offboarding paperwork, training, policy updating, or other foundationally critical processes just because you are busy creates gaps in compliance that could cost you A LOT more than any individual job is worth. If you are too frazzled to think about the right solution to something, ASK FOR HELP before you make a misstep that could cost the business big!
As you can imagine, this is only scratching the surface of these concepts, and over the years I have come across a number of long-term challenges brought on by short term Summertime Shortcuts. Please feel free to share your stories or ask questions below. If you want to learn more about this topic, or other in-depth trainings offered to our Strategic and Executive level clients, please reach out at 612.474.9797 to ask how to gain access to our Strategic Management Webinars.
As always, I hope this helps!
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