Monthly Archives: November 2016

How often do you give raises? The art of raises and rewarding your employees for deserved behavior, but avoiding running the risk of overly rewarding them and making them think they deserve another raise before they’ve earned it.

My solution was to give raises every 90 days to full-time people and every 180 days to part-time. I realize that this is a powerful strategy, however there were a few kinks to work out. Someone full time will feel a sense of moving up in the world if they are always getting raises. Keep in mind that you need to set their starting salary a little lower for them to merit raises. Also keep in mind that they need to merit the raises with an increase skill set and hard work. Most people are very short sighted which is why 90 days raises are so effective. Google uses this strategy by the way! After a year or two, the raises will become a little smaller. You also have to give people more responsibility otherwise they will not feel useful. Letting them learn new skills is very important to many employees who want to feel like they are growing, while others specifically do not want to grow at all.

The flaw in my system is that my part-timers seem to put in as much time as they feel like. This is not good for long-term employment. Those who are not reliable in their hours will not last long, or will not be that valuable as employees. It seems more sensible to have a starting wage while in training. Then have them put in 400 hours before getting a raise. If they are slow pokes and do five hours a week, it might be two years before their first raise. But, this way the raise is based not only on how much they learned and produced, but how much loyalty and hours they put in too which is a very important factor.

Someone who sticks with you in the long run is valuable, especially when combined with versatile work skills. So, reward people for everything.

These days with millennials, especially in India, there is a lot of job hopping. You cannot get ahead in any career by job hopping. But the time you half know what you are doing, you’ll be at the next company. For managers, knowing they have someone good to do a job is important. How well will they know your work if you hop from job to job? If you are dealing with perpetual job hoppers, I would give them a lower starting salary simply because you’ll have to invest time hiring and training them only to have them quit. Let them pay for this out of their salary and reward them later on if they stay.

When people call your business, what kind of people do they get to talk to? Do your prospects or customers talk to smart people, dumb people, helpful people, ignorant people, or charismatic people? If you give your customers a good phone experience, that can make quite an impression. Charismatic people might not come cheap, but neither is losing out on hundreds of great customers that you are losing by hiring losers to answer your phone.

Nobody has to know the truth about your company. Nobody has to know that you hire lousy people. If people call and get to talk to a different interesting person every time they call, they will have the impression that everybody that works for you is amazing. The truth might be that only four out of two hundred is amazing, but the customers won’t know that unless they visit your office. And even if people visit your office, have the charismatic people jump out at them and chat them up and offer them some coffee or chai.

It doesn’t matter what the ratio of great employees is to terrible ones. What matters is the perceived ratio. If every interaction I have with your staff is amazing, I will have an amazing impression. If most of your workers are amazing, but you only let me talk to the terrible ones, my impression will be terrible. You can manufacture an experience at your company, so design it the right way to make the right impression.

The joke is that extremists in Iraq who like to cut people’s heads off were late to an appointment. All of their friends were there wearing ski masks with the video equipment ready, but two guys were late to the beheading. The leader of this satirical extremist group scolded them on their tardiness and said, “You can’t be behind when you behead! Next time will be your last!!!” The late guys said, “Gulp?”

But, having a business is just like fighting a war. You are in a sense beheading the competition or getting your head chopped off by them. If you are always behind on your work, your business will never grow. Your customers will always be upset with you for your sluggishness. Most businesses want to use manpower efficiently and make sure that each labor resource is used to its maximum. The problem with this is that you won’t have time for last minute emergency projects, not will you have time if existing projects take longer than anticipated.

If you want to grow your business, hire more people, buy more computers, buy more inventory, make things bigger. If you have a little extra available labor resources, your business can grow. If you are always up to capacity, there is no room to grow. The analogy is having a city on an island. If the city takes up all of the island like Singapore, then there is nowhere to grow unless you find a way to build into the water. You need new land to put your buildings and farms.

So, stop being behind. Start finding ways to have more labor capacity and more managers ready to assist. Have people who are ready to answer phones who can communicate well. I wonder what the Mayans would say about this article — they did lots of beheading back in the day!