Transforming a New Hire Into a Productive and Efficient Member of Your Team

Transforming a New Hire Into a Productive and Efficient Member of Your Team

By Jerry Isenhour, Coach and Consultant, CVC Success Group

The challenges of operating a chimney service business in today’s economy are quite numerous, but of all the challenges businesses face, transforming a brand new recruit into a productive and profitable member of your team is likely at the top of the list.

High-performing, productive, and profitable team members do not usually fall into our laps. Having a process in place to build this type of employee is an especially important part of the business system you need to have.

To begin, think for a minute about what kind of skills you want this person to have. Consider the information you have in your own brain that you want this person to know and understand. Lastly, think about how this information will be conveyed to this person.

The first requirement for transforming your new hire is that your recruitment efforts must be ongoing and continuous. Often, we sit in our offices bogged down by the B-Level (or even lower!) players that are consuming our time and resources and simply holding us back. Your business must devote resources to recruit A-Level players to the business and transform B- and C-Level players up to the level we envision them at.

And the business must have systems to make sure we only add assets to our team and never add liabilities to the team. All too often our recruitment efforts halt because we have a full team, and then someone leaves, or you need to terminate them, and you have an open slot. People are not going to work for you forever, and often when someone resigns, we wring our hands in agony due to the thoughts of: What Are We Going To Do Now? Anxiety rears its ugly head and starts to consume and depress us.

We also must have a process of interviewing every candidate to ensure that they meet our company needs, mission and culture. You are going to invest in this new hire, let us make sure we have the right person coming aboard, not simply a warm body, but a person who will be an asset and not a liability.

To realize the success we seek requires systems for the business operations, these systems covering every task, not just spoken systems, but systems that are documented and can be researched to answer and address how the work should be done. I like to call these knowledge bases, and this knowledge base should list every task that the business does, and it is stored in the knowledge base

where it can be assigned to the work force and be consulted any time a question arises. One of the most fulfilling answers that can be given when someone asks a question is: What Does Our SOP Say About That?

Having these documented systems at the reach of each person on your team assists in moving to the direction and dream location you have for each of them no matter what their position or duties in the company.

That is the first step of assembling your process for success in moving these new hires to the position of being efficient, effective, and profitable in their roles, but there are more. Hence the following is the #2 item in the process.

This is to establish a curriculum of the skills they must acquire and conquer for the business operation. I call these proficiency charts, and they cover the skills that are required of them to be a successful member of your team. Just take another moment for thought here. In the world of chimney service there are a vast array of skills required, these will include the hard skills, the ones required to do the actual work.

But in addition to this are the soft skills, the skills of communication with others, the skills of gaining testimonials and reviews, and the skills to provide 5-star service to your customer base in all the areas of their job functions and dealings with you customers. And this does not just mean the technicians in the field, but it is also required for your other team members, those we may consider back office, but likely are both the first and last contact your customer has with the business.

But a word of caution as you build the curriculum for your team members, while certification in the various disciplines is of utmost importance, there is also the need for continuous ongoing training of every person on your team. Don’t assume any industry certification is the end all of training, there is the need to enhance this with the ongoing training every member of your team needs, make sure this is a part of your operating systems and guidelines. Without this can you truly meet your customer promise and their needs?

It is of utmost importance that managers build the system to make what we have discussed reality. Is it a lot of work? You can bet it is, but this is the process, the GPS to make it happen for you and your business. Isn’t it time you dug in and made it happen? By doing this you remove the handcuffs of management that drag you down and exhaust you. You see as you survey the world of business, these are the things that those who have taken their businesses to the highest level have done to provide the right people, with the right culture, the right skills and all the other factors to make each of their team members subject matter experts and provide the customer promise to each customer they interact with. It is how you lessen the agony and pain you will go through in the role of management. And how you will face the prospect of people leaving your team, or you are required to terminate them.

Build your strategic plan to make it happen. Others have, and there is no reason you cannot do the same! ■