Manage My Employees

Most managers think they provide crystal clear standards to their employees, when they haven’t.

Ask an employee what his/her job is and chances are they can tell you. Ask them to define the standards or values at their workplace and chances are you’ll get varied answers across the department.

Implicit standards don’t cut it either. Saying “I expect you to do what’s right” or “We expect you to give good service” or “You need to reply promptly” fails to be clear enough.

What’s perceived as the right thing to do, or what exactly makes for good service in one employee’s view versus another, leaves your company’s standards at the mercy of an employee’s judgment. That is foolish.

Ambiguity produces predictably inconsistent results. When clear standards aren’t, it’s like asking employees to hit a target without knowing for sure what they’re aiming for.

To have clear standards focus on four elements:

• Follow an effective process for arriving at clear yet thorough standards/values,
• Place ongoing emphasis with associates on those standards,
• Conduct regular measurement of standards,
• Link specific standards with employee performance and incentive.

To woo customers back to your enterprise, make standards expressly clear and then regularly reinforce those standards through training, accountability and incentive.