Many business owners complain about the lack of quality employees—especially salon owners, whose pool of job applicants tend to be in their teens or 20s and consider working at a salon to not be a “real job.”
But, in a recent “Viewpoint” article for BusinessWeek, Keith McFarland suggests that managers put less emphasis on getting the "right people" and more on getting the "people right."
He explains this in regard to the military, which takes 18-year-old kids—regardless of what skills they have—and manages to turn them into high-functioning soldiers in charge of equipment worth tens of millions of dollars in just a few years. All because they spend more time training these kids to become the right people as opposed to recruiting the so-called already-right people.
To begin a process that will help you get the “people right,” McFarland says to take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns. In the first column, write down the names of your employees. In the second, list the positive qualities each person brings to the salon. In the third, list the things that each person would have to develop or master in order to maintain his or her position or obtain a higher one. Then spend some time thinking about how you can help each person develop those third-column skills.
For more tips from McFarland, click here.
Source:
BusinessWeek: The Right People vs. Getting The People Right
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