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Positioning Systems Blog

Time to be the Grinch?

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23RD, 2008
The holidays are a good time to do some evaluating of your current employees. Do you have a sense right now that some of your team are not putting in a full day? The season is competing for their attention and you as the business owner are losing. It’s difficult this time of year to get employees full attention dedicated and committed to work, however I’d be willing to bet that most of the real dedicated and committed staff you have is still doing a pretty good job of focusing on work, despite the hubbub around them.
 
So the question is which of your employees are wandering aimlessly, just waiting for the bell to sound for Christmas or New Years to ring so they can take off. Which ones are doing Christmas shopping or planning while they should be doing work?
 
If this is a serious problem with your staff, it’s probably a good time for you to turn into the Grinch and free up their future. I’m not someone who deliberately wants to hurt someone at this time of the year, however what I am saying is that this is a good time to watch your employees behavior to determine who is committed and who isn’t. 
 
We have not had many occasions the past decade or so where the number of people looking for work afforded us the opportunity to release people who were borderline employees. [Even though in most cases releasing someone who is not committed is better than keeping them due to the harm they cause influencing the good ones.] The present economy demands that we hold are people to a higher standard. [Arguably there is never a time when we shouldn’t hold our people to performance standards] If you don’t take performance more seriously now, chances are your business won’t be around to enjoy many more seasons. So it is critical to have the best people possible working for you and performing at a very high level.
 
We recently had the opportunity to have Brad Smart author of TopGrading join our Gazelles coaches on our monthly learning conference call. He suggested that the present economy offers businesses the perfect opportunity to sift through their current staff and improve it by replacing mediocre or poor performers with “Topgraded” employees.  
 
If you’re unfamiliar with TopGrading I suggest you visit their website  to find out more. As offered on the site: Topgrading means using the Topgrading Interview with other Topgrading techniques to achieve 90% high performers throughout your organization. If you’re looking for help with Topgrading and don’t feel you have the time to find “Topgraded” employees we’ve discovered a terrific resource to help you find, or aid you in the process of locating these “Topgraded” employees. American Workforce is a company that can help you either to find the right “Topgraded” workforce for your company or conduct all or part of the critical steps in Topgrading your next hire. If you’d like to learn more on effective hiring I’d suggest you read one of their blogs, starting with 5 Things You Can Do To Improve Hiring (Part 1) or simply visit their website for more details about their services.   
 
The point is that at this critical stage in the economy, when we’re still not sure how this current recession is going to play out, you need to be looking seriously at the players you have and whether you feel you’re willing to go into battle with them if the engagement heats up like it may in the next year or longer. As stated before, reality dictates that this is how you should always be conducting business. Your people should have critical numbers they are responsible for achieving each day, week, month, quarter and year. They should be reporting on them that frequently. They should have a scorecard for you and them to monitor their progress. This is how we coach our businesses to succeed. If you don’t feel the people in your business have the makeup to work at this level, to meet or exceed the standards you expect, it’s time to find and replace them with people who will. The future of your business depends on it.

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