Beware of the in-betweener employee
byFilling an open staff position can take much of your time – running an ad, background checks, scheduling, conducting interviews, etc. When you finally make a decision to hire one particular individual, it’s time to get back to your normal routine and other projects in the store that may have been neglected during the hiring process.
Even with a good orientation for new hires, it’s easy to make excuses for mistakes a new employee makes. It’s true – with the exception of those near perfect employees (I call them Great Employees) – new employees make mistakes until they learn all the practices and procedures as well as the culture of your particular store.
You may have a policy to put a new employee on probation for a few weeks or a few months to see if the employee “works out.” There are very good reasons for doing this, not the least of which is to keep your eye on the employee to evaluate his or her performance. At the end of the probationary period, you can make your decision as to whether this person stays on as a permanent employee.
One of the good business reasons for this is to make sure you haven’t hired what one HR guru calls the “in- betweener.” This is the employee who is never bad enough to fire – he doesn’t come in drunk or steal or snap at customers, but he’s always lagging behind and his performance is never quite good enough to satisfy you.
Even Profitable Retailers have gotten stuck with an in-betweener. She’s the one who you don’t quite trust to telephone a vendor with an order. She’s the one that you may keep away from your best customer. But in-betweeners never are quite bad enough to do something about. When an employee needs to be fired, typically the proof is clear – not showing up for work, physically confronting a co- worker, chronic tardiness, insubordination, etc. But once an in-betweener has settled in, that person is tough to fire. And so that employee drifts year after year annoying the heck out of you with barely adequate job performance. How do you fire someone who has worked for you for ten years and has never done anything really worthy of termination?
But it gets worse. As a manager, you will spend an inordinate amount of time supervising this employee. The in-betweener will drain your time and your energy in a way other employees won’t and don’t. After all, this is the employee that you can never quite trust to do something right, to do something in a timely manner, to do a project thoroughly or to use his best judgment. Profitable Retailers monitor new employees early on so that they don’t get stuck. If you do, employees’ poor performances will be your fault. And as an owner of a small retail business, you don’t even have the option open to managers in large companies. At least they can transfer the in- betweener to another department – you’re stuck.
Email doug@dynamicexperiencesgroup.com
Phone 781-861-7803
www.dynamicexperiencesgroup.com
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