Employees

Dont think sharing your vision with them is a good thing. They don’t care about your dreams or business. Get into the mind set of a honest day’s pay for a honest day’s work. Reward your A grade workers, with higher pay/insurance. Make it hard for them to leave. B graders treat well and pay accordingly. C graders same. D graders move on. Staffing is a huge headache for low skilled jobs. Don’t leave yourself open to the disappointment of broken expectations.

I’ve had a shop with employee and they walked all over me. It was shocking to me because as a manager I’m a bit bullnosed. Well, a lot. As owner, I’m a real softy. I’m by myself right now but I’m gearing up to get some more employees in the next five years. I’ll hire a heavy handed manager this time to be the bad guy and let me be sunshine.

No offense but that just means you bought yourself a job. I’ve built plenty of small businesses and if they can’t be run mostly with employees, you don’t have a viable business.

The state that you are in can offset your wages by 50% for the first 500hrs. Plus if you hire a veteran with GI Bill, you can retain a good motivated employee for at least a year. Veterans with the GI Bill benefits may use this benefit in an apprenticeship program to receive a monthly untaxed stipend. For example. I have a national apprenticeship out of our San Francisco office. I start the veteran off at $18hrly. The VA stipend pays $4,449 per month on top of what I pay them. With raises, the first year pay to the veteran apprentice is over 90k. By the end of the year, they are highly skilled. By 90 days I’m the program with my company, they are on numbers like regular workers.

I DID fire my office. I pay a private book-keeper. And I pay a phone service to act as my front.office. cost less money and shit gets done

Why not ask the employee what they need to do the job to your spec? Then written directions with expectations. Little grace and a little grey area.

• Work out your values and business goals
• Write them down and add them into each job description. (Everyone needs a job description)
• Have an employee handbook everyone needs to sign, with the responsibilities and expectations the job requires.
• Work out and document a training plan for these roles, that you can implement yourself.
• Get rid of all of your employees. If these people are as crappy as it seems, they will have infected or will be in the process of infecting everyone else. Make sure you do it all legally, pay them our entitlements etc.
• Employ new people, onboard them correctly so they understand your values and expectations and keep rules in place no matter what. If anyone violates something important, they are gone. Train them the exact way you want them to do their job.