Issue 6 - May 2003

Follow these 10 tips to become a better employer
By Michael LaMancuso

Here are 10 often-overlooked tips to help you become the best employer possible:

1. Take a good look at your office. Stand back and take a look at things as a potential employee would. Do you like what you see? If not, change it.

2. Define your philosophy. One way to articulate your chiropractic philosophy is to write down your core beliefs (5 or 6 at the most) as well as a core purpose. Once you have these written down, distribute them to your employees and post them on a bulletin board.

3. Hire slow, fire fast. Hiring too fast often loads you with an employee that doesn’t fit the job, and firing slow bumps up your unemployment and discrimination exposure, poisons your remaining staff and tarnishes your reputation as a manager who can’t make tough decisions.

Interview until you find the right candidate. And when you give employees legitimate opportunities to succeed and they don’t, cut your losses quickly and move on with your business.

4. Hire based on traits. You obviously have to look at a person’s skills relative to the job you are filling. But to really hone in on whether a candidate is a fit for your organization, find out about their traits and tendencies. Are they detail-oriented? Are they a relater? How do they reason and think? Ask probing questions that have nothing to do with your business. You can always teach skills, but you more than likely can’t change someone’s inherent traits.

5. Be creative in your reward systems. “Money can’t buy happiness” is usually not applied to business but it should be. The days of a regular employee working solely for a paycheck are gone. With competitive business pressures forcing you to watch your dollars and employees demanding more flexibility, look at things like non-taxable benefits, flex schedules, telecommuting, and paid trips. Tie rewards to pre-set performance measures. A lot of little kudos can mean a lot more than a few big ones.

6. Be sensitive to the difference between career people and job people. A lot of bosses mistakenly expect all employees to put their jobs ahead of everything else. The reality is that some people want to advance their position in life and in business, and others just want to do a good job.

7. Don’t hire and forget. You established a practice to help people and to make money, but you’re also in business to take care of the people that take care of you. Out of respect to your employees, you owe it to them to provide regular reviews and performance evaluations.

A lot of small employers don’t like to do this because they never establish performance expectations to begin with. It may be more difficult to discuss any shortcomings with an employee as opposed to praising them, but all employees deserve to know where they stand.

8. Talk – and listen. The days of being a leader who presides from an ivory tower and sends one-way directives to those below are over. Two-way communication is now the name of the game.

Promote open communication with all of your employees. Empower your employees by sharing your vision, setting goals and rewarding achievements.

9. Understand the cost of doing business. You know your practice’s revenues. You know the value of your hard assets. It’s just as important to understand the cost of labor.

In labor, other than the gross payroll and statutory dollars paid, most of the actual cost is variable. The Small Business Administration estimates that for companies with fewer than 500 employees, the average annual cost of regulation, paperwork and tax compliance is a shocking $5,000 per employee. Don’t kid yourself – there’s an opportunity cost beyond the payroll that actually comes out of your checking account. And it’s significant.

10. Consider alternatives. In business, it’s impossible and not necessary to try to know everything about anything. Focus on your practice — that’s what makes the money. Consider alternative resources – outsourcing – for peripheral and non-core facets of your business such as human resources, accounting and others.

Michael LaMancuso is president of Contract Staffing, Inc., a Buffalo, New York-based Professional Employer Organization. Contact LaMancuso at michael@contract-staffing.com or visit Contract Staffing’s website at www.contract-staffing.com.