Michele Harmon
For this month’s article, my co-writer is Michael Crain. Michael’s experience includes owning and operating a restaurant, construction company, and manufacturing facility that interacted with global partners. His background includes engineering in multiple disciplines and lecturing at UTPB, achieving the Teacher of the Year award recognized across all UT campuses. He is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he received his Master’s degree. He now owns BAM Consulting, where he and his staff assist entrepreneurs with all aspects of starting and succeeding with a new business.
I ended my September column with the following, so I am going to start October’s column, where I left off. Reinvest in your workforce to maintain a valuable infrastructure, to streamline manufacturing, and to capitalize on efficiency and effectiveness to secure profitability. If a specific kind of job is not fillable, then find a way to implement automation. Remember, now is the time to retool, remain ahead of the competition, develop cost-effective options, and increase morale and retention. Lastly, be the employer of choice that everyone wants to work for when Texas begins to recover from this Tsunami.
How do you reinvest in your workforce? You allow them the opportunities to attend online and on-demand modules of training that are both good for them and good for you. Do not be afraid to spend money on your staff for training because you fear they will leave you when things get better. The odds are, and research supports, that when you invest in your employees, they stay with you. Most people are not risk-takers, and investing in your employees reassures them in these difficult times that their job is safe, barring another shoe dropping.
Michael Crain
So many people are homebound while the pandemic takes advantage of our immune system and continues to change our normalcy. While your employees may be bored and frustrated, encourage your staff to explore their talents to pass-the-time and reconnect with their interests and career aspirations. The old saying, “it’s better to do something than do nothing,” is prolific in an uncertain world. However, the opportunity provides a new focus to transform from something you are not, to something you can become.
As you take stock of your employee’s skills and expertise, invest in their growth by guiding them to further their knowledge in the direction they are best suited for and where you need them to go to be a value to your organization.
Businesses have closed and more will do so because there is a chain reaction going on now. Restaurants count on the lunch business, and there are not many people downtown. Jobs will continue to erode, and there is still a disruption to the global supply chain. As business owners, you need to remain vigilant. This situation will pass, some jobs will return, and most assuredly, new methodologies will surface, and market competitiveness will ultimately prevail. Our economy will continue to experience challenges and undergo changes like we may have never seen. However, once we return to some normalcy represented by a shift in oil production, revived job market, and an increase in manufacturing, various employers will need to react, reconnect, and reactivate their market while improving efficiency and effectiveness to increase profitability.
Retooling your employee’s expertise is mandatory so that you are ready to establish your new market position and competitive edge with the implementation of, without a doubt, new technologies, initiatives, knowledge, and skills. Connect your employee with their interests, allowing them to escape the current reality and empower them to do something that can add significant value to your organization.
How do you support your employees and transform them to be prepared to change your organizations? Online training programs commonly minimize unnecessary tasks as well as improve consistency and efficiency to achieve predictable outcomes. I recommend online courses with certifications attached. As employees increase certifications that you pay for, tie them to increased pay. In my consulting experience, I have seen the end reward ignored. Prestige is excellent, but money makes the world go around.
Today, not next week, is the time to identify and compare the expertise your organization will need and the skills of your current employees. You hired people that may or may not have been the perfect fit for the job a year or two ago, and you took what you could get. Take a hard look at those folks. I’m a believer that less is more. You may only need one CPA and not three staff accountants. Remember, less is more. However, you can improve the skills of those non-CPAs with some customized training. Did you hire a warm body with some experience to do Risk Management? Before you let them go, let them attend online training to be a Certified Risk Manager. Other top jobs with certifications include logistics, supply chain, and purchasing management. In the boom, I remember how difficult it was to find a great supply chain manager. When I was a purchasing agent a million years ago, my Fortune 500 employer never mentioned certification. On the job training (OJT) was the only way to learn. Now, your employees can learn how to do their jobs better and learn new skills—skills that you feel will fuel your organization’s future growth—with a quality online program. What used to cost thousands of dollars—to send an employee to professional development—is now online. I gained one of Myers-Briggs certifications. I did it for the cost of the course and materials in my home office.
When we return to some degree of normalcy, you will need to continue to run lean and mean. You have found that less is more, and retooling the skills of your current employees supports cost savings in the long run. It costs money to get rid of employees and hire new ones that may or may not fit with your organization’s culture. If you strategically evaluated the employees you decided to keep in the downturn, I bet they are highly motivated to learn and grow for both their own and your organization’s benefit.
As we enter the new normal, we encourage you to look at the benefits of Six Sigma. Expectations are rising to resolve problems centered on improving business performance—creating a competitive edge once reentering the marketplace. The value of the Six Sigma method increases business profits and minimizes wasteful resources while expanding a strategic structure that embraces data-driven methods to optimize the core process. Six Sigma uses a rigorous and systematic methodology identified as DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) and several qualitative and quantitative tools for driving process, product, and service improvements that reduce defects and variations. Companies will persist to become faster, efficient, more responsive to customers while striving to achieve near-perfect quality and quantity.
In preparation for a healthy, competitive, and complex market, readiness becomes a significant factor, requiring retooling your employee’s career objectives as we approach a different economic era. The demand will encapsulate web experience, simplify manual processes, and improve communication capabilities to support future strategies. The expectations require innovative thinking and unique skills that incorporate the right tools to secure market share. Given our current situation, keep your eye on the prize—on survival, and on profit.
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“Your employees are the heart of your organization.” Dr. Michele Harmon is a Human Resource professional, supporting clients in Texas and New Mexico that range in size from five to more than 3,000 employees. Email: micheleharmon1@gmail.com