By: John Oei
Your most important job as a manager is to staff your club or department with an exceptional staff that can meet your requirements and exhibit top-notch customer service.
It takes commitment from you to ensure that your staff is great at every facet of their responsibilities. They must have guidance and leadership to make them great, as well as an unyielding belief from you that a great staff will create further greatness in your company. Improve your role in staff development by following these four points:
Expect greatness from your staff
Great staff members are the lifeblood of any service-oriented company. Therefore, you must view the value of a great staff as one of the most important assets to your company and the defining characteristic of your business. Enter into your staff development process with expectations of full competency and exceptional service ability and never abandon that benchmark.
Hire great employees
As any good chef will tell you, you can’t make a great recipe with bad ingredients. The first step in producing a great employee is to hire someone with the potential to be the superstar. Look for proven ability, but be open for undeveloped potential. It is fortuitous to inherit great employees that already have been trained with outstanding service skills, but often other companies do not share your heightened expectations of ability and service. You need to hone your skill for spotting raw talent. Look for core competencies of the job as well as an outward friendliness, a smile that comes easily and the desire to serve.
Give them the tools to be great
Your staff should expect from you the same level of commitment to their success as you expect from them. This means they should receive a full curriculum of training so that they completely understand their job and your expectations. From understanding how to use the physical tools of their jobs — such as the computer software, unique fitness equipment or simply the copier, fax and phones; to knowing all policies and procedures for both employees and members; to knowing all the answers to frequently asked questions; to being fully trained in your emergency procedures — your members should not have to forgive being served inadequately because someone is “new.”
Beyond training, give your staff exceptional equipment to work with and policies that make sense. It is a shame when an otherwise great desk staff member delivers poor service due to an antiquated computer system. Or, the most articulate staff member has to relay a policy that is not service-friendly or simply doesn’t make sense. In each case you have your good staff being handicapped by poor tools. If your staff members are as proud of your service culture as you expect them to be, then this is equally frustrating to them and you will contribute to your staff’s eventual dissatisfaction with your organization.
Hold them accountable for being great
You hired great people and trained them to be great employees. It is now your ongoing duty to expect greatness from them in their day-to-day work. Refer to the initial step when you defined the expectations for your staff and always expect them to meet that requirement. This means that policies are to be followed and the culture of service must always be preserved. There can be no deviation from your standards and it is your continual management that will oversee this. Give your staff constant direction in the form of praise or correction when needed, but stay tenacious in your expectations of greatness.
Your staff is the most important tool in defining your service-oriented club and their hiring, training and management must be given special attention. You must be prepared to support an unyielding culture of service and allow your staff to flourish. Hire well, train well, drive and support the greatness of your staff and both your members and your business will reap the rewards.
