So just hired a new guy last week. Gave him a couple hours of training and then had him ride with us for a week. I keep going over the basics of window cleaning as well as the need to pick up the pace.
" Take your time learning how to squeegee the glass but do everything else fast. Walk fast, scrub fast, detail fast".
He says “Ok”
But he is NOT getting any faster. Plus today he did a horrible job on most of the windows.
But he’s a nice guy and I can see he’s trying to get it down. He’s on time, he’s polite but just not too bright.
Last Saturday we had just finished the upstairs interior of a house and he just walks outside and starts putting the ladders and tools away. He thought we were done. We still hadnt done the downstairs interior.
So is this a new guy thing or just being spaced out? I know when I first started cleaning windows I wasnt nearly as clueless.
Im thinking I’ll give him one more week. What would you do?
He sounds like my part-timer. He lacks self-awareness, problem solving, and mechanical abilities. And he was brutally slow for the first 3 months. He’s always dropping towels and leaving tools at the job site. It took him awhile with the simplest of tasks such as strapping the ladders down and rolling hoses. He still misses windows from time to time. And on every job, there’s about 5% of it that he wouldn’t be able to do without me. But he’s so honest, nice and polite, my customers love him. I can’t quantify that but I see the guys who work for my competitors and am thankful I have him.
Take him to a strip mall on a sunday preferably with closed stores like a liquor store and practice the hell out of it till he has got it down.
Scrub, squeegee, detail, Scrub, squeegee, detail, Scrub, squeegee, detail…
problem solving can come with time. A lot of times people are nervous and scared to bust something on another persons house. Me on the other hand i’m a bull in a china store because I was more concerned about completing the job. That has changed though.
I have a employee that is very self-aware, intelligent and a problem solver… but was SLOOOOOOOW. I found out why though, he was trying to figure things out on his own. Maybe watch him a little closer a couple times or something. If he’s just slow and always slow then can em’ if thats all you want from em. If he shows improvement even if its in small increments it might be a good idea to do what DFW suggested.
Don’t necessarily think that everything is his fault. I know that I’ve had a few employee issues like that this year and even a couple customers comment to me about some issues. Some of them came down to my fault for a lack of system or lack of proper training.
I’ve learned from each problem I’ve had this year. Some people just need more direction than others. You can’t assume that someone has as much common sense as you and I and our superb problem solving skills. Each person is different. With every new employee I realize this more and more. I wish it were as easy as pushing a button and we could clone ourselves. Then we’d have the perfect employees.
So far joining the WCRA and getting the WCBO magazine is as close as I’ve come to finding that button. (nice plug, huh?)
On the other hand, if somebody doesn’t got it, they don’t got it, and you have to just let them go.
Sounds like he isn’t being paid to think. Perhaps it would not matter what or how much you paid him either. He is incapable of seeing the potential for advancement… if it is there.
I think your guy has the most important which is people manners and honesty, the rest you can teach it to him or he’ll learn it with time and experience. You can have the fastest squeegee guy and be worried all the time if he’s gonna steal something or engage in “strange” conversations with customers among other stuff.
if a customer is a slow pay on the first invoice, they will be a slow pay on the umpteenth invoice years from now
if an employee leaves you wondering from the first day, they will still have you wondering the day you finally let them go, whether it’s tomorrow or a year from now
Colm, my suggestion, think of hiring top down to the maximum of what you can afford (your future foreman)
to bring someone “up” from square 1 will take a big investment from you, and they may well leave you before you realize all that you have invested
I have had many as you describe in years gone by, no, it never got better (transformed into something that I said WOW!) and I hung onto one or two waaaaaaay longer than I should have to no benefit
Try looking for somone who [B]has already[/B] worked outdoors, worked in the field somehow, whether construction, lawns, pools, whatever, something time sensitive already.
That way you are getting someone who is already light years of this square 1 thing, you don’t want to be their first job, let someone’s father take care of that for you ( I am assuming this guy is on the youngest side)
LOL the last 3 guys we have hired were very nice guys but slow as hell.
They would always ask now what do i do when there were more windows to clean .
And the best was after months on the job doing route after they have been there at least 10 times asking what do you want me to do.
Its hard to find guys that want to work like getting out of the truck grabbing the bucket poles and ready to start the job instead i have to grab everything to get these guys moving.
Thanks for the help. He is paid hourly during these training weeks.Yeah he’ll get better over time Im sure. I’m sure I could have a better training system in place as well. But I think Bruce is right. I dont think he has the “right stuff”. He’s not a go-getter. If someone walks really slow, theyre probably just plain SLOW.
It does make me realize how awesome my other guy is though. He does have the “right stuff”. When I tell him to hurry up he gets mad and just plows through the windows!
My guys only do this because prior to arriving on site I go over our battle plan. At the end of the day your the boss (my guys even call me boss) and it’s your decision how things will go. I suppose after a month or two there should be some level of productiveness. I got two guys who have it. Theyre quick, dont mind hard work, dont bi*&h, happy with pay and listen to me. They have been working from day one with minimal instruction for me and thats the way I likes it. They just cant remember how to put in screens sometimes lol. It was like watching a circus act the first job.
3 weeks? 4? It’ll take a bit for some people, I think. It’s hard to move fast right away.
Sounds like he’s really trying to do a great job( unless you push him in the wrong way to go faster, (no offense)). It might help if you reiterate the importance of doing a great job, but that if you mess up, we’re gona catch it in the walk around and go over what probably went wrong.
Good luck, but I say give it a little time and then decide.
Either they have it or they don’t. First 2 weeks usually tell the story.
I don’t care about slow (as long as they are steady & speed comes with time) so much as much as the little stuff you mentioned – putting the tool away before the job is done, not being aware and paying attention not only will slow your operation down but is also putting your business in harms way if he does things like this when he is setting up a ladder etc. Then he becomes a liability.
Here is the true test – tell him you need something right away (with a sense of urgency) out of the van when you are in eye shot of the van. If he goes outside and walks slow as molasses to get what you need let him go at the end of the day – if he runs, train him up.
When I used to work for a major newspaper I was the trainer for new hires. We worked in a VERY fast deadline oriented department and people had to get up to par pretty quickly. Steven’s suggestion makes sense and does work.
I would set up two pages of the paper to be made up and stand next to hires who struggled a bit and we would go through the motions together on two identical pages so he/she could see, and do, the quickest and most accurate way to build a news page. This always gave them more confidence and understanding of the product as it wasn’t as easy as professionals with lots of experience made it look. Some people learn by doing - AND have to be taught planning what’s next. Like a chess game, five moves ahead until the end.
Colm, it’s going to come down to how low of a ground level you want to deal with and spend time on
you may invest in this guy as a family friend etc
but I recommend getting someone past all this “basic” stuff and it will be night and day difference.
yes it may take time for someone to get up to speed, it may take time to learn, but to me, that’s a much more favorable thing to deal with then such basic stuff as “we gotta go a little faster”
in other words there’s a [B]huge[/B] difference between putting gas in the tank of a car that works (gas being the training of what we do) vs building a car from scratch, so that, you can put gas in it.
