So the new guy / girl starts and they are full of great ideas so you let them go.

Is that employee management? Does the new guy / girl have your company’s interest at heart or their own? Do your staff resist change?

To understand the process of change you first have to understand one very important fact as it relates to the human brain:

Human brains are actively resistant to change.

This has very significant implications for both company executives and sports coaches alike. Imagine a world where every morning, when you woke up, you had to completely relearn how to walk and talk. To say the least that would be inconvenient. As a result once your brain determines it has learned a skill (e.g. walking and talking) it assigns that task to the deep recesses of the subconscious where it is saved just as surely as a computers saves its operating system.

Deeply learned behaviours don’t need to be modified very frequently so humans won’t change them unless there is a very good reason. To create change:

1. Firstly something has to convince your subconscious that the change is necessary.
2. Secondly the new behaviour has to be learned.
3. Thirdly the change has to be imprinted and saved in the subconscious.

Hypnosis and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) both attempt to bypass the conscious mind and speak more deeply to the subconscious mind. But unlike sports coaches very few business owners would be able to get their employees undergo hypnosis in order to change work routines.

So back to the question of the new ‘star employee’. Are they doing your bidding or simply laying in place the systems they know and are comfortable with? In truth it will likely be a some of both but be aware that a new employee will want to make their new work environment ‘comfortable’ and that means installing routines and work practises that they have become comfortable using. If it just so happens those new procedures are better than your current ones they will be adopted as ‘better’. If not then the new ‘star’ will fall as quickly as it rose.

But what of your other employees. They have ingrained your company’s systems into their deep subconscious and each of them no doubt has areas they would like to see ‘improved’. By improved they really mean: “changed in such a way as to more closely resemble what it is their subconscious minds believe they should be doing”. Unless the new changes agree with what they believe at a subconscious level then they will resist the new changes. In many cases entrenched employees will actively work against the implementation of these new changes.

Job Descriptions Manual.

One thing few small companies have are job descriptions. Many small businesses simply hire new people as they expand and fire the people who don’t work out. In between times the workers work and the managers manage. Each new employee is given a job and some limited training (e.g. this is your desk) and then left to their own devices as to the exact details. If two or three employees leave in quick succession then chaos starts to rule as each replacement changes the way their predecessor did the job to fit in better with the way in which they are comfortable working.

Bigger companies usually have job descriptions, training manuals, policy manuals etc so that training can be streamlined and procedures followed. Bigger companies know that leaving employees to make up their own ‘job descriptions’ picking and choosing which parts of a job they will and won’t do is a recipe for disaster, particularly when you are increasing or reducing staff numbers.

Why do so few small businesses have Job Descriptions written down?

Mostly the smaller the business the more often it is run by just one or two people ‘managing’ 2-5 employees. So if someone gets stuck then they just; ‘ask the boss’. This style of management works to a degree but falls short when:

1. The boss is away.
2. The company needs to expand or contract. Without written job descriptions which employee has to be let go when downsizing? The one who manages the office or the one who is always talking to customers on the phone? If you need someone new what jobs do you want them to do? After all there is no point in hiring someone who loves sales and PR if you need an accounts manager.
3. The owner wants to sell the company. After all you are not going to get far trying to sell ‘Tom’ and ‘Joan’ who have worked for you for 20 years. The potential new owner wants to buy a business.

Creating Job descriptions for your soon to be Systems manual are dead simple.

Let’s use the example of an office receptionist:

1. Obviously they would answer phones.
2. Greet people who come in.
3. Type up various documents and maybe file (although with computers and scanners that is a reduced task for most companies).

To create a systems manual simply have the receptionist keep a journal on a simple writing pad. Divide the pad into 8 x one hour time slots and record how many calls, people coming in and documents and anything else they do each and every hour of the day. Most businesses will find before 10am and after 3pm reception personell are at their busiest. There is often a slight peak around lunch when usually they are gone from their desks. Collect the page at the end of each day and tally the results for a period of 2 weeks.

After 2 weeks what you should see is:

1. Peak demand: those times during the day or days in the week where more customers want to call or come in.
2. What times are not busy and therefore which could be used to add new tasks e.g. chasing accounts.
3. Whether you have a full time job or a full time employee. As a manager you can’t sit and watch everyone so you need to have a baseline for how long different jobs should take. If an average phone call lasts 5 minutes you receptionist can only answer 12 calls per hour during the peak times. You may need to add extra people to this task at those times. At times of the day in which only 5 calls come in you have ‘spare capacity’.

Now simply take the information you have and create a Job Description:

Receptionist

• $35 000 per annum
• works 9am to 5pm.
• lunch 1-2pm (just outside the busy time in the middle of the day).
• Answers up to 12 calls per hour. Average call time is 5 minutes although it is variable.
• Greets clients.
• Files and types documents.
• Chases 5 overdue accounts per day.
• Responsible for keeping the reception area clean.

If you eventually do hire someone new and they suddenly require 10 minutes per call then you need to find out why instead of simply assuming they are a ‘rising star’.