. I wouldn’t love to know your employee dynamics..How often do you see one given employee within the week and my first suggestion is to have an honest conversation with your employees and ask them what that actually looks like for them what activities would you like to see implant either in work or offered to help reduce your stress and then you can determine if that’s something that you can actually implement or variation to it.
One thing I learned when it comes to business is the best business is the one who knows the market better the one who knows the market better do the best research. You can implement that within most areas of your business. The business that has the best employee morale has the better research and understanding of their employees.
The most accurate way to please your employees is to ask them how they can better show up and get that answer directly from them. Also if there is a manager or someone else that works really close to your team, depending on the dynamics of the scope of work you provide and not to sure what business you’re in then you can ask that individual and get an idea of the conversations within employees and what they’ve observed so that you could possibly give them a activity/ incentive that is gear too, but it would actually help them .
I am the Operations Manager for a window cleaning/pressure washing company of about 10 members total. I go out in the field at times as needed to accomplish the bigger jobs and I manage the crew, equipment, supplies, and help the Owner and and Office Manager with some marketing, and other tech related tasks. The other 7 field techs handle the brunt of the work and I try to keep things running smooth from an equipment standpoint and when/if there are any customer complaints the Office Manager usually passes them to me. We run in-house competitions at least twice a year with before and after pics. We let our Web Marketing company pick the winners anonymously to keep it fair.
We start the week with a brief shop meeting to talk about the work and train the crew on adjustments we're making as a company. Typically, we schedule a Monthly Lunch/Breakfast for more in depth conversations. We have been so busy the past few months, we've let that slip, so I know that is on the schedule to get back on track, but that seems to be the source of the burnout here. It gets really busy, and even though the crew is paid on salary, they seem to forget all the short days they get in the slow season or when we get rain out days. I want to be empathetic and give them everything that they ask for when it comes to specialty equipment to make their job easier, but what bothers me is the tone/attitude that we as the Admin crew don't care about them doing the "actual work" or "making the money" when that could be the furthest from the truth.
I'm trying to find a balance between being the friend and being their manager. If I give them everything they ask for, then they are in charge. If I don't, then it seems like I don't care.
CalebR, you just described the company I work for to a T, and my role as Office Manager has me feeling all of these same struggles that you described. Our Operations Manager could have written your post word for word. We are a gutter cleaning/install company with 16 techs on a good month, and currently 9 techs in the slow season, but so many of them tend to end up with the tone/attitude that you mentioned and eventually end up quitting in a very dramatic fashion. We try to bring on new people that have more experience and start them at a higher rate, and that always trickles down to discontent with the employees who are not as skilled but have been there longer. It's so hard to navigate this.
We have tried regular meetings to get everyone to feel like they're on the same page, incentives for bonuses, tons of opportunities for raises when their performance shows clear improvement, and we try to do team lunches at least once a month to build morale, but it's always the same outcome of burnt out employees not feeling like the management team has their backs, despite us feeling like we are bending over backwards to get them everything they need to succeed.
I have absolutely no solutions or anything to offer other than an acknowledgement that your story is the same reason I'm on this forum looking for answers to improve this pattern. I am currently spending a lot of time planning a Christmas Party that I hope boosts morale, but again, it's hard to even know if that's going to excite or engage everyone. I am just continuing to read other's input on Jobber Community pages in hopes for some new ideas on how to avoid burnout for all of us, myself included.
