Managing staff | BUSINESS ADVICE
Simply the best
An often forgotten part of retail life is staff reviews. Retail consultant Paul Da Silva looks at the importance of regular catch ups and how to get the best out of your staff by making them feel valued
“M
y kitchen designer isn’t doing the business for me,” – I used to hear this a
lot, especially from showroom
managers who were struggling and were about to lower their business forecast for the year ahead.
My immediate response was always the same, “can you show me their weekly review sheets from the last three months?” This was usually met with awkward looks, a lot
of shuffling of papers and an admission that there were, in fact, no weekly reviews in the folder. My response was to tell them to go away and schedule in regular reviews with their team and to come back to me in three months’ time and tell me then that their kitchen designer wasn’t getting the results they were expecting. There were a lot of reasons why the reviews
were not getting done. ■ We didn’t have time ■ We talk every day about business ■ The kitchen designer doesn’t like doing them ■ We keep getting interrupted ■ They’ve been doing OK, so we’ve never needed them before There will always be a reason not to do a staff
review. But you absolutely need to make sure that this is priority one when you start your week. At the start of the year, when you are doing your business planning, you set a target of how many kitchens you want to sell and to make in profit for the year. To help achieve that, you will in turn have set
your kitchen designer their number for the year, broken down over twelve months. This needs to be revisited weekly and progress checked.
June 2022 ·
Managing month to month is a very difficult and exhausting way of working.
When you have an annual plan that is constantly
reviewed and updated, you have one set goal that everyone is working towards, understands their role in, and strives to succeed with. My golden rules to follow when doing staff
reviews are… ■ Consistency – do them when you say you will. It’s easy to let it slide. Monday 9am turns into 2pm, turns into Tuesday, turns into next week. A kitchen designer will quickly feel unloved if their session keeps getting postponed by things that you deem more important.
■ Privacy – use a separate office, coffee shop or even outdoor space when doing reviews. I always had greater
success during these
meetings when I took people away from the showroom. Barriers seemed to come down and people were more open when they were not as conscious of doors opening and people listening in.
■ Inclusivity – reviews don’t just exist to manage poor performance; they are also there to celebrate the performance of your staff when they do well. Use them to congratulate the people who are doing a good job. Don’t commit the ultimate sin of assuming that, just because a particular salesperson is doing well that they don’t need their review that week. See it as an opportunity to reward their success – this will only make them more passionate and encourage them to even better work. If you are managing a poor performer, they will soon pick up on the fact that they are the only one having a review. A designer who is doing
well needs to be told as much, and you want them leaving their review with an extra spring in their step.
■ Accountability – you must record everything. I used to schedule two reviews per week, one on a Monday and one on a Friday. The Monday review was focussed on the work we had on that week – how many surveys were booked in; how many jobs were coming in that week and what the kitchen designers’ forecast was for the week. The Friday review was then all about looking back at everything we had discussed on the Monday to see if the customers from their list had come in and was the forecast hit. I would also then get a forecast for the month. At the end, I would get the kitchen designer to sign every review. It is their review, and they should put their names to the numbers they say they can achieve. Staff reviews are an integral part of business planning and forecasting, and their importance needs to be understood by everyone involved. But reviews are not all about performance. Personal issues, training needs, development plans, and so much more can – and should – be discussed during these performance. Which is why it’s a good idea to meet away from the showroom. Employees will be more open and honest in a safe environment and there may be something they’re not at ease saying in work, but happy to discuss outside of it. Maybe there is some personal news that the designer wants to share, maybe there is a personality clash between members of staff that they don’t feel comfortable talking about in the office.
During the review, nothing should be off limits and both sides should feel happy to give their thoughts, opinion and ideas without there being an issue near them. Another good reason for recording everything that comes out of these meetings of course is that, in case of a change of manager, there can be no “Tony or Mary promised me a £10k pay rise before they left…” misunderstandings.
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