Need to find Another New Employee… again? Is Re-hiring Becoming Routine?
Here’s How To Make Your Employees Stick Long-term If you’ve hired an employee (or many) in your time as a painting business owner, you’d be well aware that finding the right person isn’t always that simple. A lot of time and money is involved in the process. So ideally, once you’ve found the right person, you want them to stay with your business long-term.
The downside of hiring in the trade service industry is that, for prospective employees, doing their trade is the same no matter whom they work for. What I mean is that painting is painting, so as a business owner, it’s important that you do something differently to encourage employees to stick with your business over another. To help with this in our business, we developed and implemented an employee onboarding process. It is a step-by-step process to
6 | Aussie Painters Network
setting up new team members for success and promoting long-term employee loyalty. A structured and specific onboarding process is a must in promoting employee longevity. What you communicate verbally and visually, and how you make a person feel coming into their new role will shape their thoughts and behaviours going forward, and will have a huge impact on whether or not they will stick with your business long-term. These steps include a combination of: Giving your new employee the necessities to do the job This includes paperwork, compliance letters, uniforms, tools, technology (iPad and phone) and a car. Empowering them with training and understanding about the business
For the first couple of weeks, it’s a great idea to have a new tradesman in the truck working alongside the leading hand or business owner. In this time they should learn how to refer to flowcharts and gain practical hands-on experience of the tasks involved in their role. Employees should be taught not only ‘how’ to do things correctly, but ‘why’ this is the correct way of doing it. Encourage engagement Employees are most engaged on day one, so aim to maintain this as long as possible. A great way to initiate this is by coinciding the employee’s first day with your team meetings (it’s a great way to build camaraderie), check in with them regularly, give them credit where credit is due, and listen to their concerns (this makes them feel important and heard).
