Give your employees the tools
to grow
For The Linc Group to succeed, its
employees not only have to hit their targets
— they have to know why they need to hit
their targets.
“I want the people who are the farthest
from the point of origin of the company —
the technician on the most remote outpost
— to understand how his job impacts our
strategy,” Price says.
To achieve that, Price has worked tirelessly to communicate the company’s values and to post and explain the performance metrics. You need to make your plan
visible, so your employees understand how
their job performance affects the big picture. Even if you have software systems
that make real-time benchmark tracking
possible, you won’t gain the benefits if your
employees don’t understand the strategy
behind those metrics.
“The nirvana for me is when a dispatcher
calls in sick, she realizes that by her calling
in sick, she’s going to know the productivity for us went down by X that day,” Price
says. “If we have the systems to allow her
to help us out remotely a little bit, maybe
she’d be willing to help us out.
“If we have a guy who blows off an afternoon and just says, ‘I’m done, I’ve got my
40 hours in, I’m not going to take any more
calls,’ we want him to know that the lost productivity for the company was X because he
didn’t want to take another call.
People need to understand their direct
economic impact on the company and how
that aligns to the strategy.”
Price has a simple tactic to get his
employees to buy in to that concept.
“In our company, everybody knows more
work means more pay,” he says. “We’re not
asking anybody to do more for less, and
we’re not telling them they have to do
more, then the customer is going to pay us
less. We’re saying the more you educate
yourself, the better you do, the more productivity and better performance, the more
money you’re going to make.”
Those opportunities are available at
The Linc Group, because Price is a firm
believer that if you want your employees to
improve, you need to invest in their development. He developed a robust training
and education platform that includes
online classes for employees to improve
their job-specific skill sets and on-site executive training sessions in finance, general
management and several other areas. He
also sends several top executives to Duke
University’s business school. The educational efforts are a considerable expense,
but a necessary one.
“You can talk all you want, but if you
don’t deliver and if you don’t spend the
money on them, it’s hollow,” he says.
Although Price spends a lot of time and
money training his people, it evens out
when he doesn’t have to spend time or
money replacing existing people. As a company evolves, it tends to outgrow some of
the people who helped it reach that level.
But by setting up educational programs and
training seminars, you can create opportunities for those people to grow along with
the company.
“Long ago, I learned the famous adage,
‘What if you train them and they leave?’”
Price says. “Well, what if you don’t and they
stay? I’ve always been an advocate of training our people, spending the money, and
hopefully, if they’re led well and we create
opportunities for them, they won’t leave.”
HOW TO REACH: The Linc Group, (949) 330-1555 or
www.thelincgroup.com
