Executive Errands� is growing! Amazing! And we are so grateful. And it's not just us. Most of our colleagues are also thriving. All kinds of businesses are booming right now, especially here in the desert, and all of us are experiencing the same thing: Growing Pains.
Growing pains can come in many forms. As companies grow, they can experience a loss of quality if they don't have the appropriate policies, procedures and training in place. Or a company may find their response times slow as sales or requests for services accelerate.
But the worst growing pain of all, and the one our colleagues complain about the most, is the inability to find good employees. This is the growing pain Executive Errands� has been experiencing the entire last year.
ALL the business owners we know are saying the exact same thing: Their company growth is inhibited because they can't find good people to hire. You put out a proper ad, you do thorough interviews, you even hire what you think are good people, only to find out they don't fit in your company for one reason or another.
What all this translates to is employee turnover. For most companies, employee turnover is bad, but not horrible, because their clients and customers rarely see it. Yes it is costly for them due to lost training time and/or the fact they were counting on extra sets of hands so perhaps schedules are interrupted but there is rarely a direct cost impact from unhappy clients.
For us, on the other hand, employee turnover poses a constant worry because our business model (and one that sets us apart) is that we assign a person to a set of clients and together relationships are built. Our clients like their concierges and come to rely on them so having to tell them that we are changing concierge assignments is an activity we'd rather not do. Thankfully, the turnover of employees has not adversely affected our client base, but still......it is always cause for concern.
While many people have complimented us over the years on our consistently high quality, many of them do not know we have procedures in place to ensure it. We utilize a three step interview process for applicants and they can only get hired if they successfully pass each level. First we speak to them on the telephone, second, our operations manager does a pre-interview and a background check, and third, together we do a final interview.
Once hired, we spend a considerable amount of time training before putting any new hire solo into a client home. We have written policies and procedures for everything we do, and hands-on training is done in tandem with a senior employee. Tandem training can last anywhere from three to six weeks depending on a given employee's ability to follow procedures. And of course, there are random site audits and procedural audits for the life of their employment.
Our employees also participate in one of our software demos so they have a broader understanding of how our propriety system works. In my experience, the better someone understands the inputs to, and the outputs from, their actions, the better decisions they make.
And finally, because all our services are tailored for each client, we have detailed home-specific profiles that include everything a concierge needs to know to support the expectations of each client and their home.
The good news is, this hiring and training process keeps our quality high and even the clients who have endured the most transitions attest that 'everybody you give us is great'.
Fortunately, we believe the current growth spurt is covered, as now we have what we hope is a set of employees that will be with us for a while. So with any luck, we should be set for the time being.
Robert Lewis Stevenson once said, "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant". That's our motto too. With the right foundation (seeds) of policies, procedures, interview selection, and ongoing audits coupled with the technology to provide maximum efficiency for our employees, we will meet any growing pains head-on!
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