A single employee can make or break your trade business…
In fact, research shows that a single ‘poor performing’ employee can cost your business anywhere between 30% to 150% of their annual salary.
Think about it.
They might:
- Be hard to trust
- Be slow at delivery
- Need micromanagement
- Regularly cause rework
- Be inefficient with materials
- Cause company standards to drop
- Negatively impact company morale
- Provide a poor customer experience.
Every action your employee makes has an impact on YOUR business.
So, it’s critical that you’re regularly reviewing the performance of all your employees.
This process of ‘reviewing’ doesn’t have to be overly complicated, or be a massive drain on your time…
It just needs you to address THREE core areas with each of your employees:
- Recognise success.
- Discuss career goals.
- Highlight areas for improvement.
Recognising success: In today’s fast-paced working environments, it can be difficult to remember to actually notice and notify people when they do good work. A performance review is a great chance to reassure good behaviour and recognise people for their hard work. You’ll be amazed at your employees increased loyalty to you and the business after you show a little recognition!
Discussing career goals: During a performance review, you need to ask your employees about their careers goals and really dig into what it is that they are looking for out of their job. This is especially important for A-grade employees, as they’re likely looking for growth and career progression. So, if you can accommodate that growth within your business, they’ll be sure to stick around!
Highlighting areas for improvement: Lastly, a performance review is a great chance to highlight and address any areas that your employee may be lacking and discuss what can be done to improve that area moving forward. If you’re not informing them of where they’re lacking, then you shouldn’t expect to see any changes in future. Communication and transparency here is critical.
In saying that, it’s also critically important that you’re actually setting up some accountability measures for your employees too. It’s no good telling an employee where they need to improve and then not providing them with some sort of accountability measure to ensure that they execute. Naturally, your employees will just default back to their old ways… Remember, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate!
As the business owner, you should never settle for poor behaviour.
And a performance review is a great way to address underperformance head on and/or evaluate whether or not the employee is the right fit for your business.
Your A-players will welcome this opportunity and the accountability that comes with it.
It’s only the poor employees who will breathe easy if they can live without accountability!
If you're an electrician, plumber, painter, carpenter, or any other trade business owner who is looking to take your business to the next level through help with your marketing, click here to learn more about how our team can help!
