How to Quickly Track a New Hire’s Progress and Likelihood of Success Right from the Beginning
[This is the second of a three-part series on hiring and training laundry attendants.]
Last month, in the first of our series on attendants, I noted that it was important to get new employees started off quickly and on the right foot. The main reason for this is because it’s absolutely critical to know early on whether or not a new hire is a “keeper.” After all, if not, it’s better to discover this as soon as possible and then move on – before you’ve invested too much time and energy into that particular individual.
Whether you’re hiring an employee specifically to handle your wash-dry-fold service or to be a general laundromat attendant, you want to find the right person. You want someone who is a self-starter and who displays some signs of having initiative, especially if this person is going to be the only staff member in your store at times.
In my business, we’ve developed various training techniques for different levels of employees. However, the first thing every laundry owner needs to do is to track what that new employee is doing – because that’s going to tell you whether or not he or she will be successful in your business in the long term.
Perhaps you’ve got a cleaning list that you want your attendant to work through; maybe you train your staff members to handle detailed or specialty cleaning, or even to take care of coin jams, drain clogs and other light maintenance tasks as well. Whatever you plan on having these new attendants do for your laundry business, create a list of specific tasks that you will train them to do. And, once they’ve been trained, you need to be able to track of the amount of time they spend completing each task – so that they can hold themselves accountable.
At my store, we have a list of tasks for all of our different products. Therefore, when we hire a new employee, we don’t automatically train them to become a full-on customer service representative; we start new hires with folding training – and we watch them closely.
With regard to wash-dry-fold and commercial accounts, we have a set of folding standards to which we adhere. For example, we go through a lot of 16- by 30-inch facial towels, which are used by many of our commercial clients. These towels are quite simple to fold – so, we’ll show new attendants how to do it, and then we’ll see if they can use some initiative and creativity in this process and find out how much folding they can get done.
We have set a standard for the amount of time it should take an attendant to fold 100 of these towels and to create 10 packets of 10 towels. That goal time is 15 minutes.
Whether a new employee completes this project in 30 minutes or 25 minutes or 20 minutes during that first trial run will help us gauge how well we think he or she is likely to become at that task.
Eventually, a good attendant will be able to hit that productivity goal of 15 minutes. Do we expect them to be able to hit the 15-minute production rate for that particular item on the first day? No.
However, we provide a specific goal for them so that they know what our expectations are for them and how much production we will eventually be looking for from them.
Having such set standards are good for you, because they help you make the decision of whether or not you want to keep a specific new hire. In addition, these standards are good for the new employee so that they know what they’re doing correctly and what they aren’t – as well as the level of performance they’ll be required to achieve to continue to progress in their position and to become a stronger asset to the company.
We have set these types of standards for several products, services and tasks at my store. Another example is the folding of flat sheets, which we process for a number of hotel and light-duty medical accounts. Our goal rate for an employee who is just starting out is to produce 60 folded flat sheets per hour. The reality is that we have employees who can fold 120 of these sheets in an hour, but at least initially, 60 an hour is where we shoot for – one sheet per minute, but with the ultimate goal being two folded flat sheets per minute.
What’s more, we have a checklist for cleaning the store, and the employees have to put their initials next to each particular task. We monitor the time they start a task and the time they finish it.
Also, in general, during the initial phase of employment, one factor to look for is an employee’s cell phone use. Today’s generation of workers are extremely attached to their phones. At my store, the policy is that attendants cannot be on their phones on the work floor. However, many people just can seem to break the connection they have with their phones, and we certainly have had our challenges with this issue. So, that’s one specific trait to look for in your new hires.
In addition, it’s important to look for individuals who can focus and are proactive, as this will directly impact their production rate. Perhaps certain employees can keep up with the work flow during their timed production rate periods, but what do they do in between those times? How long does it take them to get started on the next project? And what do they need in order to get started? Do they have to ask someone what to do next – or can they figure out on their own what the next project is, after being told a few times?
All in all, having set standards, writing them down and then tracking and documenting how your new attendants are doing with regard to their positions’ tasks and skills is the key to determining which individuals are going to be quality, long-term employees – those who are worthy of having more time invested into their training in order to take them to the next level. Following the advice and few simple practices outlined above will help you figure out in the first few weeks of employment whether or not a new hire is a “keeper” or someone you need to cut ties with so that you can move on to the next potential candidate.
Next month, we’ll discuss some of the more advanced attendant training tactics.
