And the Winner Is......

Yes, this blog will be a cheap take off on the Oscars. I was going to write about safety, but after watching the Oscars last night, my weak and impressionable mind came up with this.

Who is the Oscar winner in your company?

No matter how big your company is, there are people who stand out for doing an exceptional job. (If you can't name one, go back to my blog about trading-up on personnel in tough economic times!) Do you recognize these stars on a regular basis? Yes, people prefer money to pats on the back, but you can and should give both. If money is tight now, then the pats on the back are even more valuable.

Set-up an employee-of-the-month program, or if you are under ten people, make it employee-of-the-quarter, or maybe the year. Get a nice plaque made at any awards shop, (or most sporting goods retailers can get awards made) and have a little ceremony to hand out the plaque. Actually make two, one to hang up in the workplace, and one for the employee to take home. This is the one that will continue to motivate them, when they can show it off to neighbors and friends.

Write a two minute speech saying why Joe Installer did a great job. Explain how Mrs. Jane Customer called to compliment Joe about his care in her home. Give Joe a public pat on the back, and you will both feel better.

If you have a larger company, select a committee of employees to select the special employee. Keep clear of the selection process until you make the presentation. A person honored by their peers and then acknowledged by The Boss, is double-honored. Give this award winner a special parking spot for the month. A "Reserved for Employee-Of-The-Month" parking lot sign costs about $50. This is a very low price to pay to have an employee who can't wait to come to work to park in their special spot.

If you have an advertising budget left, place a small ad in the paper with Mary The Bookkeeper's picture and a blurb about why she is special in helping your customers. Definitely send a press release as well to all local newspapers describing Mary's great customer relations skills, and that she was elected by her co-workers as Employee-Of-The-Month.

If you are in a very large company, you can have multiple winners, based on shifts worked, or by departments. Place all monthly winners in a drawing for a once-a-year actual prize. Large screen TV's are the best awards right now. Don't pick the winner yourself...you will be accused of partiality, no matter what you do. If you have one person in mind as your best employee, then recognize them yourself with a promotion or gift. If you have the employee committee pick an overall winner, or use the draw-it-out-the-hat format, you will be better received.

When you see an employee do something great, acknowledge that ASAP, not a month later at a meeting. Always be ready to pass out praise as easily as you correct or teach an employee when things are not going according to your plan.

Do this with some fun as well--during the fall give out the MVP award around the time of the World Series. In the winter, give the player of the game around the time of the Super Bowl.

When you give the award, get as many people as you can from the company to join you. Make sure the award gets home with your recipient, whether a plaque or physical award. Bringing the family into the recognition is important to the long-term motivation of the employee. You can even invite the family to join you for a surprise awarding at your company.

So, I hope you enjoyed the Oscars, and my wife says I think business too much as everything I see reminds me about a column to write. "Get a life" she tells me, and since she is correct, next week's column will be about managers who don't know how to relax and enjoy life. See you then.

Let's Clean Out The Mail Bag!

Over the last couple of weeks I have received numerous questions about the economy and the glass industry. Here are a few of them that I hope are beneficial to the whole industry.

From Bill F.--"What would be the single most important thing for a glass business owner to do in the face of this economy?

Bill--the best thing to do is :Don't Panic. Continue running your business prudently. Make changes with forethought and confidence. Don't reduce pricing below the point of profitability, don't do a mass firing, and don't climb into a shell. Run your business carefully and with any eye towards growing when the recession runs its course.

From Jayson--"We are a medium size shop doing store fronts and glass of all kinds. What should we be looking at for the future?"

Jayson--the future is in energy savings glass--well built IG with Low-e is the future. Become an expert in the various types of Low-e so you can offer your customers the best product for their needs. Sometimes soft-coat and sometimes hard-coat is the right answer. Make sure your IG supplier is certified by IGCC or IGMA. Even bullet resistant glazing can have an IG component. Oil is cheap this week, but that won't last. It will go back up.

There should not be an installation you do that doesn't have a low-e component as part of the unit makeup.

Tina F.--"Did you think I looked like Governor Palin?"

I just threw this one in to see if your were reading--Paul

Tom M.--"I use my bank line-of-credit when working with big jobs, and I have to make deposits for material. My banker tells me they might not be able to work with me in the future, even though I have never made a late payment. What can I do?"

Tom--More and more vendors want deposits as the economy tightens. Are you getting a deposit from your customers? Many glass shops are afraid to ask for a deposit, as they think it will scare away a potential order. Just about every business or property owner knows that funding is tough now, and they would rather use your funding than their own. Offer an incentive to get the deposit--a one or two per cent discount on the prepayment often works. Have your customer pay just for your materials in advance, or get your vendor to write a joint pay with you and your customer for the materials. This is an easy tool to use--call me at 603-242-3521 and I will go over the details with you.

Susan L. writes--"What is with the workforce? We did a small layoff, (4 people) at the first of the year, and now my workforce thinks they are safe. They have gone back to their lazy ways. Help!!!"

Hi Susan--there could be many reasons--from one bad seed who influences the rest, to a certain laxness in your foreman. Whatever the case, just because you did a lay-off is no reason why you can't fire a malingerer and replace him with a person who wants to work. The only golden part of this recession is that there are a lot of good people who are unemployed. Use this time to trade-up on your employees. Replace one or two of your rotten eggs, and the rest will get the message real quick.

Michael S. asks--"One of my vendors is having trouble with money and sometimes runs out of glass sizes or tints. The owner has asked me to buy ten-percent of his business, and with my cash, he will increase inventory.

Any thoughts?"

Dear Michael--Wow, this is a bigger question than can be answered in a few paragraphs...but here is a plan. Ask for audited statements from your vendor and give them to your accountant and your lawyer, asking them to look them over as a possible investment for you. Their advice will be your best local source. Think if your vendor has you has a partner, will your competitors be afraid to buy, as they will feel that you will get the inside track on all quotes. Will the vendor's business go down rather than up because of this?

Are you a good fit with the vendor? Do you have the same philosophies on business management. Will he spell out what your duties and rights will be under this new arrangement? As a ten percent owner you can demand nothing, unless you have it set up along with your purchase documents.

Get the advice of two or three industry people who you trust. These should be people drawn from your bigger customers who are good business people, or a local chamber of commerce can recommend a local consultant.

Feel free to ask me any direct questions.

Phil from Washington DC writes--"I use a lot of tempered glass, for shower doors and store front work. I have looked into buying my own tempering oven for my own product and to sell in the local area. Is there a guideline on how much tempered glass I buy now as to whether it would be worthwhile for me to go ahead?"

Dear Phil, We would have to do a survey of the current temperers in your market area to gauge if one more can profitably set-up. If this is promising, the next step is to sort your purchases by thickness of glass and types of edging, computing square feet purchased, along with inches of edge work. Also do yo use a lot of low-e? Split it out between soft-coat and hard coat.

An oven's cost is based on size. An eighty-six inch oven costs more than a seventy-two. Look at your product mix and see where you peak out. If 90% of your glass is under 72, go with that. You can still buy your larger glass out. The smaller the oven, the lower your expense, your plant size needed, and your utility bill.

The cost of the oven is equaled by the high-speed cutting line, a couple of edgers and a beveller, a shape polisher, a washer and overhead cranes and forklifts.

You need at least $500,000 and up to $1,000,000 for a better manually operated system. There are fully automatic plants available, but those are for the heavy-duty users, like auto-parts fabricators, or mass produced patio furniture makers.

A very quick rule of thumb is this: You will get abut 50% efficiency out of your oven...a 72" x 144" oven has 72 sq. ft. of area, so your average yield will be 36 sq. ft. per load. In a single chamber oven, which would be a good starter oven, figure one minute of heating time per each sixteenth of an inch of glass thickness. So, a 1/4 load would take about four minutes, and so on. When you have totaled up your usage by square feet and thickness, it is just a lot of math work to figure how many hours of tempering you will use. Can you fill up the rest of the time by selling more to current customers? To new customers?

I would be glad to meet you to go over these concepts and help you to draw up budgets and space requirements.

Please feel free to write at anytime. I will try to answer each question individually and privately. I only print the generic type questions that come in. Catch me at paulbaseball@msn.com

Spring Training Starts This Week, or How Your Attitude Effects Your Glass Business

Play Ball! No two words in the English language offer a better attitude adjustment. Spring is just around the corner. You will change from heavy mittens to leather gloves used to shag a fly ball, and with spring here, you will smile more and have an improved frame-of-mind for your glass business.

Of all the things your can bring to work each day, the most important is your attitude towards work and your co-workers.

You, Mr. or Ms. Owner have the greatest impact on your employees through your everyday interactions with them. If they see you frowning, they will frown. If you scream, they will too. But...you are worried about the economy, and that your employees are on reduced hours, or laid off, and you wonder what will happen to your years of sweat equity.

You can and should have these concerns, but if you let them weigh you down, you have have a harder uphill battle to conquer them. Share your concerns with your employees, making them partners in the rebuilding or repositioning of your company. In my consulting business, I speak with many glass shop owners and I can tell you that he ones that share problems and solutions with people down the line, have greater success financially than the owners that keep it bottled up within themself!

Your employees have as much at stake as you do...it is their future as an employee that has them equally concerned as you think about your future as an employer. You might have an extra $ in the pot, but from a people point of view, everyone has the same caring about the future of your business.

Your attitude adjustment should start now. You can be in a problem solving mode and still smile. You can thank an employee for a special effort on a task, without bringing up you hope they have a job tomorrow. You are the one that has to lead your company out of rough times.

Your attitude is infectious witin your organization. If you make your employees smile, they will sell more goods. They will install products with fewer callbacks. Together you can pull a company through a tough and ugly economy. There is no way you can do it without your team.

And since we started this blog about baseball....well....go Mets!

If You Think Cross-Training Is A Shoe, Read On

Cross Training is the easiest, least expensive and most important concept you can introduce to your glass company during this period of slowness in the industry.

By now, you have reduced your work force, shifted hours and stopped new hiring. You, like all of us, are keeping people working with paint and fix-up around your shop. Here is a better project: cross training is the best use of time for your glass and metal business. The more skills each of your people have, they more productive they can be for you.

Here are some simple steps to implement a successful cross training program:

• Make a list of your employees, write down their current skills and rank them A, B or C for skill competence. The A people will be your teachers.
• The most important part of the program is to get the A people committed to being teachers. Have a short meeting with all of them, explaining your goals of sharing skills so that the entire company will be more productive. Some A people will be very hesitant to share their skills. They feel that if they are the only ones to know a task, their jobs are safe. The next lay-off or trade-up you do should be to replace this person.
• Help each teacher come up with a plan for the teaching. How many hours to learn a certain job; or materials needed to practice with.
• Encourage the teachers to do a run-through of their first lesson with you as the student.
• Set your schedule for training. It may be one hour a week, or one hour a day! Whatever fits.
• If your teacher's ask what's in it for them, explain job retention and more prosperity for the company when the economy turns around. Do not offer any extra compensation now. At the same time, give the teachers time during the day to prepare. If you ask them to prepare at night, then a small extra compensation is appropriate.
• Post your list of classes (it may be only one or two to start), and ask for volunteers who want to learn more. The ones who do are your keepers. You know what to do with the ones who say they know it all.
• Give out work assignments to teachers and students as a team. This may take more hours to get a job done; so what else are you going to do?
• Accept the fact that you will expend time and effort to train people, and someone will go to another shop now that they are better trained. You still come out ahead by retaining any of your better trained people.
• Hold a graduation ceremony when students finish a course. Make up a diploma on your computer, and have a pizza lunch to celebrate.

You can place a PR piece in your local paper. Editors love this kind of news...it shows a local business fighting back against the economy and improving life for their employees!

If you are dealing with a multi-lingual work force, be sure to hold your lessons in the language that will teach the most to the students. You can hold English as a Second Language (ESL) classes as well. Contact a local community college to check their ESL offerings. Our firm found that our local community college came to our building for free with an experienced teacher for ESL training.

Go to glasswebsite.com, the home page of the Glass Association of North America. There are many educational manuals and cross-referenced sites listed. Give out copies of US Glass magazine and discuss articles. Ask your vendors to send in a speaker to train your employees. Attend trade shows, going to seminars, and see if any of the teachers will come to your shop.

And there is more to training than glass and metal. Teach everyone how to answer a phone politely, how to surf the web, how to ring up a customer sale in your showroom. Bring in a physical therapist to teach stretching exercises which will reduce injuries; teach safe driving practices, teach emergency first-aid.

Good luck with your training. I promise you that your firm will be better off for it!

It's Time To Trade Up

Eleven million men and women are unemployed in the US. 7.2% of the workforce, one in fourteen are looking for work. And you are keeping your weakest employee because "he may improve". Why are you keeping the one in your office who has more excuses for coming in late than you could imagine?

Hello---are you there? Now is the time to look at your workforce and trade-up.

Yes, trade-up. There are people who are out of work through no fault of their own. The economy has kicked you in the teeth. Trading-up is the way to take advantage of tough times. You told your employees that they had to take a wage freeze and there would be no new hires for a while. You didn't say that everybody was guaranteed to keep their job. If you have ten people working with you, with a trade-up, you will still have ten people.

Everybody has a weak employee, the one you kind-of-feel-sorry-for and you keep on the payroll. Stop it. I know it feels good to help, but you are doing so at the risk of hurting your whole company. In good times you could do this. Not now. Let the weak link go, give a severance if you can, and don't block unemployment insurance.

Help wanted advertising is so thin now, that a simple ad will bring in good resumes and good people. Take your time interviewing, making sure that you get a winner. You will be gaining an employee who understands what it is like to be out of work, and won't take their job for granted.

This will impact your entire work force positively. They will see that you are serious about the survival of your company. They will work hard to equal the tone set by the new hire. They will appreciate the fact that you are working to save the company and their jobs.

You will find many qualified candidates for your company. You may see that you can go after a slice of the market you didn't have before. An experienced person can come in and help train your current staff in their specialty.

Just today, Home Depot announced they were closing their EXPO Design Centers. Go there now, tonight, and shop for a shower door or a table top. Watch the various salespeople and see who is good, who understands the product. Give that person your card and tell them to see you when they are out of work. If you are not near an EXPO store, watch the news for businesses in your area that are closing. You will find a gem working and smiling at customers, even when they know the store is closing.

After one successful trade-up your staff will understand that your company needs hard working people. If not, it is trade up time again.

You Are The New President

The excitement of the Inauguration. The anticipation of change. The beauty of the balls. The invigorating speech. The careful planning to make all this successful. Now, today, inauguration day, you are still the President of your glass company. What are your new policies and plans for the next four years?

Well, you have plans don't you? When are you going to implement them? What are you doing to make them happen. As the old saying goes, 'there is no time like the present'!

You have been up late at night thinking about plans for your company. It is time to start acting on your plans. Maybe not on January 20th, but pick a day that works for you, and introduce new ideas and plans to your company. Bring in a new product line. Do you sell wood windows? Do you sell film or do filming of windows? Do you go after the Bullet-resistant glass marketplace? You can talk about these things just so long, now you have to act.

Set a day within the next month as your inauguration day. The good news is that you didn't have to go through an election. Do the homework. Select the new vendor or the new product line, and make that part of your company. Decide on the new computer system, redo your showroom and train your staff.

A tough economy means that vendors will cut deals with you to start new product areas. Many great employees are waiting to be hired.

Your employees will work harder with a defined plan, with a goal that they know will help the company, which helps their job security and growth. Change is all we are hearing on the news. It is a unique time for every business owner to create and implement changes for the betterment of all.

Tough Times---Tough Decisions

Yes, you are going to reduce your workforce. Maybe you already have; maybe you may need to do more. My consulting partner, Stan Lane, and I had an interesting conversation about which is better: laying off 10% of the work force or keeping everybody and reducing everyone’s hours or wages by 10%. Here are parts of our conversation to help you decide which path best fits your business.

Some of the thoughts we agreed on:

If you feel that 15% or more of your labor dollars needs to be eliminated, go with actual layoffs, not reductions in wages or hours.

Check your employee manual or labor contract. That will usually explain the layoff procedure you must use. I hope that it gives you the right to lay off based on employee review results, rather than on strict seniority. (If you are on seniority, change this for the next edition of your employee manual, which should be ASAP.) Look at your reviews and layoff your weakest workers, the ones that haven’t learned more than one skill, or the ones that seem to miss the most amount of time. Again, be sure these occasions are well documented within your employee review system. (If you are not doing employee reviews, you are not going to have a successful glass company.)

Maybe you don’t even need a layoff, but you have the chance to clean house of your late-showers and quality-impaired workers. Even if you layoff the bottom 5%, wait two months and rehire, with the number of people unemployed in the US (over 7%), there are a lot of very good people looking for jobs. Trading up and improving your workforce should be a main topic for you to be undertaking right now.

Also, don’t implement a hiring freeze by formal announcement. Just stop hiring until a good applicant comes in the door. There are millions of people out of work and many of them are excellent employees. If you want to trade up, don’t be blocked by your own rules about hiring freezes.

So, Stan feels it is better to reduce wages and/or hours by 10%, rather than to lay off 10% of your workforce.

Stan's points:

• Keep your entire workforce so when you get busy you can easily expand hours. You have your whole work force there without having to hire and train rookies.
• You maintain morale by keeping all people working.
• You don’t take the risk of laying off good people, who would go to your competitor.
• By spreading the pain across all workers, reducing wages by 5%, Stan feels all people will work harder to improve the company. If workers feel that the “other guy” will have to pay the piper with a layoff, they won’t work as hard.

My points are:

• You clean out the weak workers and when you go to rehire, plan on hiring better workers.
• Do the layoff and be done with it. You have 5% of the staff out, but the other 95% are there at full wages, working hard to avoid the next (hopefully not) layoff. In the ‘reduce wages plan’, 100% of the company is unhappy with wage cuts. In the layoff plan, 95% are happy they have their jobs.
• Just about every company, anywhere, can survive very well with a 5-10% staff cut. It will make you sharper to reduce by this amount.

Whichever plan you feel is right for you, there is no sense waiting. The economy is not going to turn positive for at least six months. Hoping that if you wait one more week, you won’t have to do anything is foolish.

Which ever you plan to do, plan to do it once. Do all layoffs or repricing of workers at one time. If you lay off five people today and next month five more, everyone will be wondering what’s next instead of doing glass work. Go as far as you feel you’ll need to cover your employment picture for at least six months.

On one hand, you will feel bad for the employees that you laid off or reduced their hours. On the other hand, if you don't take action, you may be responsible to the entire work force if your company sinks.

These are not easy times to be an owner. Remember--this is what you signed up for by starting your business.