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I have a friend who was recently hired with about five other people as full-time seasonal help at a local nursery. The owner planned to open the nursery April 17th.
However, last week she said that since the employees are doing such an incredibly good job in preparing the place and getting things ready, she is going to open one week earlier-April 10th-instead.
Hmm...
Let's say you are the owner of that nursery. Here's my one-question-multiple-choice-fill-in-the-blank quiz for you:
In response to your employees' hard work, and the fact that by their effort they are allowing you to make potentially one more week of profit than you otherwise would have made, you should:
- Pat the employees on the back and thank them for their fine effort.
- Ignore their effort since they were simply doing their jobs and to compliment them for that would be to encourage laziness.
- Say nothing to them because if you don't say anything, they should know that they're doing a good job.
- Do nothing for them because you could have some bad weather this summer that could hurt your profits. It's best to keep whatever nest egg you can just in case.
- Buy them lunch one day as a big thank you.
- Sell the nursery out of the pure shock that your employees worked so well.
- As a thank you for a job well done, tell the employees that you will calculate any profit from that week, set aside 10% of that said profit and divide it amongst them prorated according to how many hours they worked. The one who worked the most gets the most, but they will all get some.
The answer index:
If you answered #1, you're nice, but boring. If you answered #2, you can no longer be in a leadership position-leave your badge on my desk. If you answered #3, I want to punch you. If you answered #4, then you are too paranoid to run a business and you will be out of business soon. You might as well quit now. If you answered #5, it's a step in the right direction, but really...whoopee. If you answered #6, I totally get it! It's still wrong, but I totally get it.
If you answered #7, then you are a creative, reasonable and generous leader. You just garnered a whole bunch of loyalty, motivation and effort from your team for the rest of the summer and any money you spend on them will come back to you in spades.
Congratulations.
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