You Deserve Some Help

Staff performance reviews enjoy near-universal unpopularity—dreaded by employer and employee alike. For the employer, reviews feel like meaningless busywork, something you are expected to do but which never really seems productive or useful. Many employers are also uncomfortable having to assess people and possibly deliver criticisms. For the employee, the process can be both punishing and embarrassing.

Some avoid reviews altogether. In another common scenario, the responsible manager downloads a generic HR template online that contains only superficial review criteria like attitude and dress code, things that have little meaning and no direct relevance to the company in question. Or, to avoid conflict, the manager reviews the employee more favorably than what he or she really perceives. Either way, it means that even when reviews happen they seldom have the impact they should, i.e. move the company and the individuals who comprise it forward.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be like this. The staff review process can be a useful tool for everyone involved, helping to build a smooth-running business that is enjoyable to own and work for.

Reviews That Work.
First, tie staff reviews to job descriptions and any staff training you do so the items under review are directly relevant. Make the items specific. For example, rather than reviewing an item called Attitude, a concept too broad to be a useful starting point for a discussion, have an item called Willingness To Help Colleagues And Go Above And Beyond Where Needed. A detailed item like this gives you specific instances to refer to when assessing how an employee measures up.

Second, make feedback meaningful. The format of review feedback is often an undefined scale, for example 1–10. Say we know 10 is excellent and 1 is bad. That still leaves us without a definition of what it takes to be a 10 or any shared understanding of the numbers in-between. One employee might be proud of receiving an 8; another might see it as a rebuke. Neither knows what the 8 is meant to convey. Instead of vague scales, use rubrics.

A rubric is essentially a defined scale. Each number or rung on the scale is clearly spelled out.

How To Use Rubrics.
Make the scale short.
0–4, for example, rather than 1–10. This makes the rubrics easier to write and use, and leaves less room for haggling, misinterpretations, and so on.

Be specific.
People need to know exactly what you mean by a particular score and what is expected of them.

When writing rubrics, it is often helpful to start by creating a generic example. Something along the lines of:

4:    Exhibits complete mastery.
3:    Highly competent with some additional room for learning.
2:    Basic skills and competencies in place.
1:    Does not meet basic requirements.

Guided by this generic rubric, you are now ready to write rubrics for the individual employee’s points of review. Say a point of review is: Recognizes Tension On The Daycare Floor And Acts Proactively To Defuse Unsafe Situations And Avoid Incidents. That would translate into the following rubrics:

4:    Consistently reads overt and subtle body language and reacts early with appropriate measures to keep dogs out of conflict.
3:    Recognizes most body language and tensions, and responds in time to defuse tensions and avoid conflicts in most cases.
2:    Able to read obvious body language signals and respond in time to avoid conflict in those cases.
1:    Does not recognize enough body language to proactively respond to avoid conflict or may recognize body language but does not respond proactively.

Be prepared to share examples to back up your scores.
Name specific incidents and observations. Say you give an employee a score of 2 on the above rubric because you have seen this person miss subtle signs of resource guarding, making him or her unable to respond as quickly as is ideal. If at all possible, share specific incidents, like “The tiff between Fido and Spot over the pink tennis ball.”

Be as positive with feedback as possible.
Don’t focus exclusively on areas that need attention—give at least equal weight to things employees do well. And then be specific about areas for improvement, couching such suggestions in the context of the rubric. As in: “You are doing a great job noticing when chase and wrestle games are getting too heated and stepping in on those. What I’d like you to work on next to move from a 2 to a 3 is recognizing some of the more subtle signs dogs give each other when they feel possessive about a toy or another resource.”

Follow up with a specific plan for accomplishing this improvement.
For example, is there a staff training you would like the person to attend? Is there a DVD to watch or a book to read? Will you pair him or her up with a colleague who has these skills?

Set Goals On Day One.
Even the best employees cannot be expected to read minds. Don’t make it a mystery how to be the model employee; nobody should be left to guess. Give new employees the review points (in rubric form) the day you hire them, so they know exactly what is expected of them and what to strive for.

Get Employees Involved.
Self-assessment can be a powerful tool, worth incorporating into your review process. The potential gains:

1. Getting employees involved in the review process helps them better understand what they are being evaluated on and what you are looking for.

2. Employees who actively participate in the process are less likely to be taken aback by their scores, which means that conflict stemming from defensiveness and embarrassment is less likely.

3. If the rubrics are clear and well thought through, an employee’s perspective on his or her job performance is less likely to be far off yours. And if it is, you will have a clear sense of any areas in which perspective is out of whack or where expectations have not been clearly communicated before you go into the one-on-one review.

Give the employee the review and ask him to complete it before his scheduled review appointment and bring it with him. At the review, go point by point, asking the employee to share his self-score and to explain why he has scored himself this way. If your score matches, give any additional thoughts or examples to reinforce his. If not, tell the employee what you agree with in his self-analysis and explain why you have scored him differently, again using examples and specific incidents wherever possible. Avoid any negotiation. Your score IS the score – unless you realize there is a compelling reason to do so, do not change your score. If the employee’s score was higher than what you gave him, give specific examples and direction for how the score can be raised to the one the employee gave himself.

Be Goal-Oriented.
In addition to going over the rubric review points, use your staff review appointment to set concrete goals for each employee between now and the next review. Keep the goals to a limited number—something in the region of two or four, depending on the complexity of goals and length of review period. Be sure to define what success will look like. How will you and your employee know if the goals were met?

A non-concrete goal: Improve your understanding of dogs.
A concrete goal: Improve reading of canine body language, specifically recognizing signs of resource guarding.

In this instance, success would be quantifiably fewer incidents/tiffs on the playground.

Create an action plan with benchmarks and interim deadlines to make sure the work required to achieve the goals is not left to a mad dash right before the next review. Having progress meetings along the way re-ignites motivation for getting things done, shows support of employees and their development, and helps you catch early on if things are not moving along as hoped.

The first time you institute this goal program, start with simpler goals on a shorter time frame. For example, if you carry out reviews twice a year, make the goals quarterly. This is another great place to get your employees involved. Have them fill out a goal sheet in which they suggest areas for their own improvement or professional development. Have some ideas of your own prepared and decide with your employees which goals they will pursue this quarter. Make sure at least one of them comes from their own list and is of strong interest to them.

From here on out, the review process is made up of assessing goal success, revisiting your rubrics for the position in question, and setting the next quarter’s goals.

Everyone Wins.
A review process that includes collaborative goal setting and employee involvement is much less aversive and uncomfortable for both parties. It creates a greater sense of responsibility for one’s own job performance. And it allows you to be an effective manager and leader, rather than merely The Boss.

Job training is essential to the success of your business. The better trained your employees are, the smarter they work. Well-trained employees are more engaged and more likely to solve problems independently. Because they feel more valued, they are happier in their jobs, which in turn is reflected in their productivity.

And yet, job training is often random and uninspired. An outgoing employee shows a new person the ropes in whichever way he or she likes. A manager spends half an hour going over a new piece of equipment. One complaint too many triggers a lecture-style presentation by the owner on ‘best practices’ in customer service. But job training should be forward-looking, interactive, and carefully planned—it should be an integral part of your business strategy, not something you are forced into by circumstances.

Train With Purpose
Base your job-training program on your job descriptions.
What do you want your employees to know and what do you want them to do? Your program should teach and develop that knowledge and those skills. The more clarity and precision your job descriptions have, the easier it is to design a staff-training program.

Design for the long haul.
Training should be ongoing, not reserved for new employees or left until problems arise. You can follow this strategy and still allow for tactical, one-off sessions to address specific problems or to teach new skills. (Don’t be afraid to ask employees for ideas about topics for ongoing training. People on the front lines are often the ones with the greatest insights into what might improve everyday work life for staff and the service experience for customers.)

Goal Setting
A training topic—or fancy title—doth not a training session make. In other words, don’t mistake a training topic for the intended outcome of the session. Customer service may be the topic and How To Wow the title, but for training to be successful you need a clear set of goals for your desired outcome.

Goals should be:

Specific.
Spell out what you want people to know and do. “This training will be about customer service” is a non-descriptive statement about a topic broad enough to encompass most anything. By contrast, “Learning protocols for greeting clients in the morning rush” describes the content of the training session in specifics. “Learning to read canine body language” is too broad; “Recognizing when a dog is anxious” is well defined.

Measurable.
Another problem with broad goals like “Learning to give good customer service” is that they are tough to measure. What would the yardstick be? No more client complaints ever? A measurable goal would be “Employee will be able to follow phone protocol.” The goal “Take good care of the dogs” is open to interpretation, whereas “Keeping kennels clean” or “Using positive feedback whenever a dog greets you calmly and politely” is immediately quantifiable.

Achievable.
“Learning basic training skills” is a specific and measurable goal, but it is too big a project to achieve to any satisfying level in just one training session. Instead, aim for something like “Learn basic luring techniques and when to reward.”

The Time Won’t Make Itself
Though many business owners believe in and plan for staff training and skill development (“I fully intend to do that some day!”), few actually find the time to do anything about it. Training is left until a crisis hits and circumstances force the situation. To make staff training a reality, first of all prioritize it. Think of it as a regular, ongoing business task that has to be worked into the schedule for, say, every third Thursday.

Second of all, make it mandatory. Anything else undermines the importance of the program. And third, keep sessions short. Resist the temptation to do too much in one sitting—with training sessions happening regularly, there is no need.

The more content you squeeze in, the less attendees will retain. Pick one thing and focus on it.

Make Training Effective And Fun
One of the biggest training sins employers commit is to choose a lecture format for their training program. The research is unequivocal on this. People retain only about ten percent of what is said in a lecture, making it a very poor way to teach anybody anything.

Instead, make your training interactive. Provide plenty of opportunities for your employees to apply the ideas in practice. In addition to increasing the likelihood that the learning will stick, this approach has the further benefit of giving you the chance to see what they are learning.

Step 1. Get people invested by asking them to participate from the very beginning.

• Send out a survey before the training, for example, asking people to contribute their experiences, concerns, questions, thoughts, etc. about the upcoming topic. In each case consider whether the survey should be anonymous, and whether it will be optional or mandatory.
• Request a case study. Giving people a form to fill out often makes this easier and yields better information. The form might include questions like: What happened? What did you do? What were the results? How did you feel about it? What questions did this experience raise that you would like to see addressed?
• Give people a short article to take a look at. Ask them to make notes for discussion.

And so on. The idea is to get people to interact with the material before the event. Say you were doing a training session on how to deal with difficult customers. You might send out an anonymous survey asking people to contribute a recent experience they found stressful and ask for details about how the scenario played out, the customer’s reactions, the results, how the staff person felt about the experience, and what questions he or she was left with.

Step 2. Always open your training with an interactive opportunity.

• A brainstorming session, for example. Have people throw out ideas or questions or examples and write them all on a whiteboard for later discussion. (Always have a few examples up your sleeve to get the ball rolling if nobody volunteers.)
• A quick poll. Prepare questions ahead of time and have someone capture the figures for some on-the-spot statistics: Sixty percent of Castor Kennel staff finds the cleaning manual confusing. Who knew?

Opening a training session this way gets people engaged and avoids setting the expectation that they are just going to sit and listen. Follow up by stating the goals of the session and, where possible, tying those goals into something your employees shared during the opening segment.

If we return to the hypothetical training session about difficult customers, you might open that by asking people to brainstorm the kinds of customer situations they find especially difficult.

Step 3. A lecture / presentation.

• Cover the points you want to make, and the things you want to teach.
• Keep it brief.
• Load it up with examples.

In the customer training example, you might use the presentation part of the session to outline strategies for how to defuse troublesome situations, provide specific language for employees to use when a customer has a complaint, and describe the complaint process from A to Z, so everyone knows what is required of them if and when a customer is unhappy.

Step 4. Give people a chance to apply what they have learned.

• Whatever format you choose, be careful not to put people on the spot. Begin by showing what you want people to do, while narrating what you are doing. Then give people a different scenario and ask them to brainstorm as a group how it might be tackled. If applicable, demonstrate their suggestions, and then ask everyone to chime in on how the proposed solution worked.
• If you ask people to carry out a task or role-play, don’t make them do it in front of the whole group. Avoid anything that smacks of performance or testing; this is training. Instead, break people into groups or pairs, or give individual tasks that people can self-assess by comparing against an answer sheet. (Any performance-like role-playing should always be on a volunteer basis only.)

In our difficult-customer training example, this step might be a scripted role-play between you and another manager or a confident, pre-recruited employee. The role-play would be followed by a discussion in which you ask the group to analyze what you did and why it worked.

Then, in a second role-play, things should go less smoothly. Your counterpart would now throw complications at you. Stop at various points during the role-play and ask your employees to give you specific advice about how to handle the situation. Again, ask for input about what works and why, and what alternative approaches one might consider.

Finally, you could have your employees role play a new situation in pairs, letting them stop at various points to discuss how to handle things. (If an employee wants to role-play in front of everyone, take on the role of customer yourself. That way you can ensure the experience is useful, not painful, for your employee. Allow him or her to pause the action at any point and get suggestions from the whole group.)

Make It Count
Training is too often carried out in a vacuum, unrelated to everyday routines and problems. Tie training topics to daily protocols, systems, etc., and follow up to make sure procedures are applied. Use daily or weekly checklists to make this easier. Say you do a staff training on proper phone protocol. Provide a form that guides people step by step through the protocol while they are on the phone. Or, if your staff training focused on proper opening and closing protocols, provide checklists for people to follow.

Remember to reinforce the behavior you want. Make a point of complimenting people when you see them applying what they have learned during a training session.

Finally, tie your staff training into performance reviews. When you go through the trouble and expense of providing training on a subject, you are entitled to hold people accountable for what they have learned. And yet most staff reviews bear no relation to day-to-day tasks, centering instead on vague, generic standards for dress code and attitude. When your job descriptions, staff training, and performance reviews are in sync, you are much more likely to have a smooth-running business where everybody knows their role and plays it competently.

Read more about getting the most from your review process in Staff Reviews That Work

Most dog service businesses are one-person affairs. If you run one, you know what it’s like to juggle a multitude of tasks and wear too many hats at once: Trainer/walker/sitter/daycare or boarding operator, administrative assistant, marketing manager, bookkeeper, accountant, customer service rep, even janitor.

We find in our business consulting work and when on the road speaking at conferences and seminars that many dog pros are exhausted by the pressure of keeping up—or the stress of not being able to. When we suggest hiring some help, the reaction is often shock. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I can’t afford it.” The question is, “Can you afford not to?”

You can afford it. Really.
You may not be in a position to bring on a full-time salaried employee, but that’s not your only option. Start small if you must. Even hiring someone for five hours a week can take a good deal of pressure off. It’s not just the five hours of work another person can get done for you—it’s also the peace of mind of having those particular tasks ticked off your list.

And don’t forget the five hours you suddenly have that didn’t exist before. Five hours a week to build your business and make more money. Say you hire an admin assistant to help five or ten hours a week with answering emails and returning phone calls. Right away you’re improving business by increasing your response time to potential clients. Or maybe you’d like assistance with your bookkeeping or other paperwork, perhaps some cleaning around your facility if you have one. Now you have five or ten hours to work on marketing or to add client screening appointment times or an extra dog walk or pet sit. Already the money you pay your assistant is paying dividends. And if you’re really over-taxed, you might grab some of that extra time for yourself, too.

What would you like help with?
Before you hire, decide what kind of assistance would be most helpful. Does the admin side of your business bog you down? Then the above example of hiring admin help would allow you more time to market or add sitting appointments. But sometimes it’s the direct service duties, like running the daycare floor or walking the boarding dogs, that keep you from other pressing tasks. If you feel you don’t have time to run the business side of your operation it might be more helpful to hire someone to care for the dogs. Hiring a daycare floor attendant, for example, allows you to spend some time in the office returning phone calls, handling paperwork, and taking care of marketing—which helps your business to grow.

Which kind of position to hire for is a personal decision, and I advise making it that way—what do you personally want to do less of? What would you like more time for? One of the reasons you went into business for yourself was to enjoy life more, to be your own boss, to be in charge of your day and how you spend your time. So hire accordingly to release yourself from tasks that make you dread your day, weigh you down, or cause you stress.

What to look for.
Once you’ve decided what you want help with, make a list of the specific tasks you want that person to accomplish for you. Then write down the skills and qualities they need to tackle these successfully. This second list is what you’re looking for in your new hire. Keep in mind when considering candidates that some skills are easier to acquire than others. For example, if the person you bring on will be interacting with existing and potential clients, prioritize customer service and language skills over dog knowledge. It’s much easier to train someone to interact with dogs than retrain how they behave with humans.

Don’t underestimate the importance of a strong personality match. You’ll have to be around this person on a regular basis. And if you have employees, they will, too. In addition to whatever skills and qualities you seek, look for a team player. Nothing sours a workplace faster than someone who is negative or unable to get along with others.

Who to hire, and where to find them.
Start by looking around you. Is there someone you know who might fit the bill? Consider acquaintances, including your clients. I’ve often seen particularly strong training class students become excellent training assistants, for example. Or maybe there’s a client you find intelligent and articulate who’s looking for some extra work. And if not, maybe they know someone who is. You won’t know if you don’t ask.

If putting the word out informally within your personal network fails, broaden your search. Put together a job announcement and post it to the places that make the most sense in your area. Online avenues like craigslist.org can be a good bet. If you live in a college town, post to the job boards there to find a responsible upper graduate or grad student. This is also a good time to use government unemployment listing resources, as so many qualified and talented people are looking for work.

Writing an effective job description.
The type of candidates you see will depend in part on your job posting. If you want serious, qualified, committed folks to apply but are only hearing from sixteen-year-olds who mumble and avoid eye contact, it’s time to rework your post. Look at job postings for serious positions and model yours on them.

Your description should include a bulleted list of the responsibilities involved, and another of the skills and qualities you are looking for in a candidate. Make some reference to higher education as well. Depending on your area you may either require a college degree or mention a preference for one. By so doing you signal that you are looking for a mature, accomplished adult. Finally, require that all interested parties apply with a cover letter and resume. Requiring a formal application helps to weed out less serious and skilled applicants, and saves you time lost to drop-ins and phone calls.

Separating the wheat from the chaff.
Interviewing potential hires is a much more complicated process than it seems. It’s all too easy to get through a lengthy interview process and learn nothing of real value to help with our decision making. For one thing, we’re very good at telegraphing to others what we want to hear. And for another, we rarely ask the kinds of questions or put people in the kinds of situations that would give us any insight into how they might be on the job.

Here are some tips for effective interviewing:

Refer back to the lists you made. You decided what you want your new employee to be able to do, and what skills they need. The interview process should be built around these lists or it won’t serve you as it should.

Don’t tell candidates what you’re looking for. If you tell me you’re looking for a team player who takes initiative, I’m going to tell you (if I’ve any smarts at all) that I’m that person. Instead, ask questions and listen to my answers, and to the questions I ask in return.

Ask application-based questions. Want to know if I’m a team player? Asking me outright will telegraph to me what you’re hoping to hear. Instead, present me with a scenario and ask me what I’d do. For example, “Let’s say you notice something that isn’t being done as well as you think it could be. What would you do?” Or if you want to know if my default response to dogs is positive or negative you might ask me, “How would you handle a dog who is barking excessively?”

Put candidates in real-life situations. If you want to see how I’d handle a difficult client and/or test my writing skills, give me a sample client email and ask me to write a response. If you want to gauge my comfort around dogs, put me on the daycare floor. Can I read body language? Ask me to watch two rambunctious players and tell you when I’d step in to ask them to take a short break. And getting back to my cooperation skills, you might also ask me to engage in a task with you or another employee to see how I handle a group project.

Keeping the good ones.
Once you have a hire you’re happy with, do everything you can to keep them happy, too. It’s worth the effort not to have to repeat the hiring process again. Engage in effective staff training and a productive evaluation process (See Staff Training That Works and Staff Reviews That Work). Take the time, regularly, to let your hire know what you appreciate about her and her work. A little praise goes a long way and, just like we do with dogs, we humans sometimes forget to let each other know when we’ve done a good job.

Be flexible where you can be about schedules, particularly if you’re unable to offer a full-time position just yet. Keep the job interesting by adding new responsibilities or projects, particularly for employees who enjoy being creative, learning new things, or being relied on. And openly welcoming suggestions and ideas from your staff keeps everyone feeling engaged and a valued part of a team.

Give yourself a break—and watch your business grow.
If you find your time so tightly squeezed that you have no way to increase your revenue and/or your downtime, it really is time to get help. You can’t market your business to make it grow if you don’t have time to put into it. You can’t serve more clients if there’s no room in your schedule or not enough people to care for the dogs. You can’t step back from the brink of burnout if you don’t get your schedule under control.

Hiring someone to take some tasks off your plate can make the difference between stagnation and growth, between a frantic existence and a balanced one. Start slow if you’re worried or short on funds. But do start. You’ll be amazed at how quick and strong an impact even a little help can have.