Hello people!  Yesterday I posted a tweet on Twitter written ‘Want to know your employees’ real characters? Check the state of your restrooms’ (visit https://twitter.com/PlexisStrategy to view the tweet).  What I meant by this is that a restroom is where employees believe that no one can see them and as a result their true characters come out.  If your restrooms are clean all of the time then you know that you have responsible people in your firm.  If the restrooms are not clean most of the time then you know that there are other issues that you have to look at as well as some of your employees might be two-faced.  A small exercise like this, daunting as it may seem has many strategic implications for you especially from a human resources standpoint.  Such an exercise might reveal that you are not making the most out of the salaries and wages that you are paying people.  Let us take a look at what other things your employees could be doing behind your back that could be costing you money.

An employee has a salary/wage that translates into a daily and then an hourly rate.  How much time an employee spends working per hour will largely determine how productive they are.  The less the employee works the less value you will probably get from the employee.  When you notice that your restrooms are not being kept clean also look out for the following:

Cellular phones and landlines:  Be on the lookout to see if your employees are not spending a significant amount of the man hours that you are paying them for chatting on their cellular phones.  It could be WhatsApp, Skype or even making calls.  Social media helps employees to relax which is good but it can be addictive and if you do not keep tabs on the employees you might lose out.  A remedy would be to provide an internal messaging system so that employees will not tell you, for example, that they were using WhatsApp to ask for stationery from the Administration Department.

Chatting:  It is good that employees bond in the office by engaging in personal conversations as it helps to build teams.  On the other hand employees that are not responsible will overdo it.  Some of the effects of this are reduced productivity and mistakes being made on the job.  This is especially true in service firms were customers complain that front facing staff chat amongst themselves while the customers wait.  A remedy would be either to put cameras in the office or increase your presence in the office as a boss.

Shortcuts: Employees that are not responsible will be tempted to take shortcuts when doing their work in order to get more free time to engage in non-productive activities.  These shortcuts include by-passing procedures e.g. not giving feedback to a customer or checking up on a customer in order to see if a solution has worked.  In the extreme employees can brush a customer off without solving their problems leading to a loss in revenue.  A quick win for this would be for you are the manager or owner of the business to know all of the processes and procedures which will enable you to conduct quality checks when necessary.

Sneak Out or Skip Work:  An employee who does not feel accountable for their actions can leave work in order to go and engage in extracurricular activities or pursue personal business interests.  This will usually happen when someone thinks that they are not being watched especially in firms with many employees.  A simple remedy would be to control the exits and ensure that people check in and check out whenever they leave the building.  If you have the finances you can consider installing software on employees’ machines that will monitor them.

Abuse of Resources: By making this post I am not implying that employees should be treated like children but as the fact that we need policemen on the streets is because sometimes people can act in a way that is not responsible.  It is the reason that you, the boss is needed in a firm to ensure that people stay on the right path in terms of achieving the firm’s vision.  You should be on the lookout for the abuse of resources from stationery to vehicles.  A remedy would be to stipulate guidelines for the use of various resources.  You could even consider placing GPS trackers on company vehicles to ensure that they are not being taken on joy rides.

As you have seen there are simple ways of getting to know what your employees are really like.  This will help when you are creating strategies as you will have an idea of what the most important resource that you have at hand is like.  A more effective method would be to call in an expert to analyse the procedures and determine the time frames in which work should be done and or set targets to ensure that employees are working at optimum levels.

Have a nice day.

RM