Fellow café owners were perplexed at how much time I spent on recruiting, hiring and training staff who we could all only reasonably afford to pay very close to minimum wage to. Most owners experience light-year type turn around rates; understandably the question is, 'why bother' investing time and money into the recruiting and training process when the individual is likely to leave in less than 3 months? Who wants to work with a team that can't wait to quit?? It's a case of which comes first, the cart or the horse. Recruiting for someone who's wired to delight, that is inherently gets pleasure from enhancing or creating someone else's great experience, determining whether or not they are a fit for the culture of your business, and then supplying them with the tools they need to feel competent, confident and empowered creates success. Taking the time to recruit and train gave me the longest turn around rate within my franchise community, and I expect, in cafés in general. One of the highlights of running the business was the relationships I enjoyed with my staff, and as it can only follow, with my customers as well. I was delighted to see one of my former customers blogging about us on facebook last week.
One of the perks of driving and owning the success of a business is getting to create and sustain that culture, and enjoy working with a personally selected team. I do wonder why this isn't more mainstream. It's talked about and written about - as one who's had the pleasure of reading and listening to Tony Hsieh's 'committable' mission. I'm inspired, and frankly reinforced as I read and heard refinements on the big idea of creating a place where staff and customers loved to be. Tony drove his success by not wavering from the ideals; by enrolling others, empowering staff, and checking in frequently in order to maintain the culture and correct imbalances. The skills are the science - the wiring and attitude the art. I quote Tony Hsieh, "Every employee understands that part of their job description is actually to live and inspire the culture in others. A lot of it is done on the front end; during the hiring process we do two sets of interviews. The first set is kind of the standard -- the hiring manager and his or her team will look for someone to a fit within the team, relevant experience, technical ability and so on, but then we do a separate, second set of interviews with our HR team, and they look purely for a culture fit, and they have to pass both in order to be hired. We have passed on a lot of smart and talented people that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line but if they are not a culture fit, we won't hire them."
My most recent experience of this idea being absolutely removed from a culture was during a weekend visit to the gorgeous new grocery store near our cottage in Muskoka. I didn't know who to feel sorrier for, the young women who were floundering at the check out counter, not knowing how to ring items in, let alone bother with looking at the customers, or the customers themselves. There is another grocery store in Gravenhurst... perhaps the folks who manage the new Sobeys forgot that the Independent existed. I met up with my husband there as he was checking out - sharing the perplexed look of the two people who checked out ahead of him. I had used the washroom (the store is less than a year old) which looked like something at a campsite after Woodstock. I politely suggested to the two people who were adding up our grocery tally for my husband that they may want to let whom ever is responsible that the washroom is a mess. In an honest and somewhere-out-there-in-the-I-couldn't-care-LESS-about-your-experience-land, one of the young women looked at the other and said, "I'm not telling anyone, 'cause they might make me do it." Got it. Of course I don't go to Sobeys for the washrooms... but washrooms can speak volumes about how something is run... a little window into the culture, so to speak. Next time, the Independent.
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