The Challenge of Successfully Managing Employees
Contractors say the most challenging task they face is managing employees. As soon as painters become managers, they are faced with a host of new problems and challenges that didn't exist when they worked on their own.
by Bruce Hackett
you’re probably in it because you have the talent for it, and you might even enjoy it. As you got even better at it, you no doubt built a reputation as someone to do business with, and before long, you had more work than you could handle. So you hired some employees — and that’s when everything changed, perhaps for the worse.
Now you’re a manager as well.
When painting contractors are asked to name the toughest part of their job, answers are varied. Many say estimating is the most challenging task they face; others think unreasonably demanding customers can be difficult; still others find coping with messy materials or unpredictable weather to be an annoyance. But in nearly every survey, the answer given most often is managing employees. As soon as painters become managers, they are faced with a host of new problems and challenges that didn’t exist when they worked on their own.
They quickly find that they’re no longer able to do what they’re good at and enjoy — painting. Instead, they’re too busy hiring, training, motivating, counseling, disciplining, hand-holding, firing, and doing paperwork related to employees. They quickly discover an almost universal truth: It’s no fun being the boss.
And yet, it doesn’t have to turn out that way. While it’s true that, once you take on employees, more of your time will be taken up with employee-related matters, it needn’t be unpleasant or difficult, at least not all the time.
The first and perhaps most important thing to remember is to put yourself in your employees’ shoes. Most likely, you were an employee at some point in your life, having to answer to a boss or supervisor. Just about everyone has a horror story of a tyrannical jerk of a manager who belittled you in front of others, offered little or no encouragement, and generally made your work experience miserable. Conversely, most people remember at least one job at which the boss was basically a well-meaning person who exhibited patience, reason and respect in dealing with you. It’s the latter example you must strive to emulate.
“My partner and I try hard to treat our employees the way we would like to be treated if we were employees,” says Dan Standley of Taylor & Standley Painting Co. of Portland, OR. “Employees should be treated with courtesy and respect as the professionals they are. People want and need clear direction and reasonable guidelines about how you expect them to perform and behave on the job. If you give them those things, and you praise them for a job well done and patiently offer constructive criticism when their work is substandard, most people will respond well.” Beyond that, though, it’s important to remember that employees are individuals with different backgrounds and skill levels. Some people are very self-motivated and ambitious; others require more supervision and prodding. Some are motivated solely by money, others by decent working conditions. Not everyone responds the same way to the various benefits or “perks” you might be willing to offer. Some are married with children and might prefer a flexible working schedule instead of cash rewards.
Most painting companies are very busy through the summer months, and most employers are understandably reluctant to grant any vacation time during those periods of heavy activity. “We try to encourage our people to take their time off at other times, but we understand that that’s when the kids are out of school, the fishing’s good, and so forth,” says Standley. “So we allow them to go pretty much when they want to, as long as we have enough advance notice to prepare for their absence.”
An excellent way to minimize difficulties in managing your employees is to hire the right people in the first place. One approach is to look at the employees you have now, determine who your most prized employee is and what makes that person so valuable. Then try to hire people with similar skills and character traits. One contractor said he used to hire people solely on their painting skills, but he soon found that many of them were combative, uncooperative, and unwilling or unable to work well with others. “I’d rather hire a good, honest, hard-working person and train him to paint than hire a skilled painter with a bad attitude.”
During the interview process, there are several signs to help you determine if a person has what you’re looking for. Painting can be a messy business, but that doesn’t excuse a candidate who arrives looking unclean and dressed sloppily. How does the candidate speak? Can he express himself clearly? Is there some sense of enthusiasm exhibited? Can he/she answer your questions about technique or experience with some degree of confidence? Does the person seem to be someone with whom you wouldn’t mind spending several hours a day?
Once you’ve identified the people you’d like to hire, you need to make the job attractive enough for them to accept your offer over those of other potential employers. Your package should include a fair, competitive wage, reasonable vacation/comp. time plan, and perhaps other benefits such as profit sharing or a pension fund after a probationary period. Involvement in your state’s workers’ compensation insurance program is not only required by law, it sends a strong message to your employees that you are protecting their interests and well-being.
Says Standley, “Because we offer medical insurance and vacations, and a retirement pension-type fund that kicks in after 12 months, we’ve had painters come in to talk to us and say, ‘Wow, this is like a real job!’ Evidently, their previous jobs involved cash under the table and no benefits to speak of. You’re not usually going to get loyalty from people if you treat them like expendable, part-time help.”
Determining a fair wage can be tricky, and it depends on your market, the size of your company, and the type of competition you face. Some contractors devise various formulas that tie wages to a list of various skills. Higher wages are then awarded to those who exhibit a mastery of those skills.
“We try to pay people as much as we can and still make money,” says Standley. “We have to be profitable or we won’t be in business for long.
There are those who pay more than we do, and many who pay less than we do. We try to give raises for good work, but there’s only so much even a high-end customer is willing to pay, and only so much a painter can do per hour, so there are limits.”
Employees need to know from the outset that you take your work seriously and expect them to do likewise. It’s important to provide a written job description that outlines their duties and explains that any future improvements in wages or benefits will be weighed against their on-the-job performance. Some painting companies have a booklet that explains company policies, including what steps will occur if rules are ignored or disciplinary action is required. Just as your relationships with customers tend to go more smoothly if everything is discussed or put in writing right from the beginning, problems with employees will likely be minimized if they are aware of your expectations.
Some new hires arrive on the job with a preconceived notion of how to do their job, based on their experiences with other employers, but it may not be the way you want things done. Perhaps you are a stickler for thorough surface preparation, scraping, priming, etc., but your new employee is used to doing only the bare minimum in this area. It’s up to you to ensure that he adapt his technique to conform to your company’s standards. In these instances, consider yourself more of a teacher than a boss, explaining how and why your method is more professional, more efficient and, ultimately, more profitable.
Regardless of the type of business, employees overwhelmingly respect employers more if they demonstrate a willingness to get “down in the trenches” and help with some of the grunt work on occasion. One rule of thumb is: Don’t ask an employee to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself. Standley says he and his partner, Ron Taylor, frequently go out on jobs and even perform tasks others don’t like to do. “We have a spray booth here in our shop where we do cabinets, and we’ve found most of the guys hate the booth work. So I end up doing most of it, and bring them in to help only when needed. I think they appreciate that.
“On the other hand, this is a small company — we have just seven or eight employees — and they understand that if we’re out with them on the job day after day, then we’re not finding or bidding additional work. They know if we don’t have work, they don’t have work.”
One revealing mark of a successful business person is acknowledging your own weaknesses and shortcomings. If, for example, you’re not confident of your bookkeeping abilities, get help in that area. Similarly, if you find after several attempts that you simply aren’t very good at managing people, perhaps you ought to think about down-sizing your company or reverting to a one- or two-person business.
“We’ve had as many as 26 employees,” says Standley, “but my partner and I found that was too difficult for us. We found we weren’t making any more money with that many than we were with seven or eight people, so we cut back the scope. With the shop we own, we know we have to do a certain volume of business each year to pay for it, and we can’t do it with just the two of us, so we need to have a certain number of employees. But we’ve talked to painters who said they’ve gotten rid of all their employees and are now much happier going out by themselves. It’s a personality thing. Managing people isn’t for everyone.”
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