Do You Trust Your People?

#6 on our list of 17 Ways To Increase Your Business Profitability says: Promote Employees To The Level Of Their Competency.  

Some people have a hard time with this because they don’t fully trust their employees to do the right thing.  After all, the definition of Competence is: the ability to do something successfully.

Here’s an example:

First, the retail store that needs to call a manager to override something that the cashier did. The store management does not allow their cashiers to fully help a customer and so they set up special safeguards to prevent the employee from messing up.

Should we assume that the manager is more trustworthy than the employee?  I hope not.  Maybe all that is needed is the cashier needs to be trained to fix the problem on their own, without a manager.  This is one form of empowering employees.

If the cashier is unable to handle that task, then maybe they should not be in that position.  Or they simply need to be trained so they can do it successfully.

Old style management may think that if you give someone more freedom, like I described, you need to promote them and pay them more.  New style management realizes that while earning a decent living is important, being trusted and having a good work environment is just as important.

Trust is a two-way street.  You trust your employees and your employees trust you, right?

This leads us to #7 on the list: Train, Move, or Fire Employees That Are Hurting Your Company. 

Our company goes through a pretty impressive screening process when we are interviewing candidates for employment.  Then, everyone goes through a training process initially to help them understand the culture and the position they were hired for and there is continual training forever.  This week I spent two days at our home office to learn about some of the new digital marketing offerings we can use to help our advertising partners be successful.

Sometimes you hire someone for one job and then discover they are better suited for another.  Move them, if it makes sense.  Other times you have to un-hire someone.  Depending on the circumstances, that can be a relief for both you and them.  As someone I know once said, “we’re going to free ______ up to pursue excellence elsewhere.”

I was talking to a friend recently who needs to hire more staff, but there is a problem with one of the managers.  This manager is hurting the company because they have lousy people skills. It’s hard to bring in new employees when you have the kind of reputation this company has.

This is hurting their business profitability in ways that no marketing or advertising can overcome.

Are you ready to build your company by doing these steps internally?