Develop leaders
Capó’s interest in retraining employeeshits on another family element that’s prevalent at El Dorado Furniture: The companylikes to raise its own leaders.
“We’d rather have somebody inside thatknows the culture of the company andknows their way around the company,” hesays. “And when you hire somebody, evenif it’s a cleaning person, you say, ‘Could thisperson eventually be a supervisor, be aleader someday or be in charge of their particular area?’”
If you want to do that, you have to bethinking of someone’s potential and his orher interests right from the beginning.
“When they come for an interview … theinterviewer would talk to the person a bitdeeper and say, ‘You know, how do you feelabout or what do you think about thisother position?’” Capó says.
This conversation is logged down in theperson’s original HR file to ensure that ElDorado Furniture’s leadership team isaware of the initial prospects of the newhire. That heightened awareness doesn’tstop after someone is hired.
“All of our leaders are constantly beingtrained and being told that part of theirresponsibility is to search for those peoplewho have a passion for whatever they aredoing and to let human resources know, sowhen the next available position comes up,you can go to those people, depending onthe job and the responsibility,” he says.
Once you start a culture where you arelooking first to promote within, it starts tofeed on itself.
“Now, to be honest, it’s a very difficulttask for them to do,” he says. “Let’s say it’sa sales leader in a particular store, and theyhave a great, great receptionist, she’s thebest, but she’s doing a hell of a job in there.Now sometimes, they try not to tell youthat they have a great person because theydon’t want to replace them, but they knowbetter. Probably all of them right now,especially the leaders in the stores, startedworking as a receptionist or in customerservice or as a salesperson, then becameleaders in the organization. They know thatthey were there one day.”
And for the rare person who might not beable to be that charitable, Capó makes surethere are other avenues in place for helpingpeople move up. Aside from counting onthe appearance of senior leaders in thestores, he says you should create systemsfor people to clearly spell out their interestin advancing their career.
“If someone’s really a shooting star, theywill shine so much that somebody else willnotice them,” he says. “The other thing isthat every single employee has a right tosend in for information or a document wehave available that says I request to workin this particular department — and thatdoesn’t mean that I’m going to give it tothem — but they always have that on file.Once you get that, we keep that on file andsay, ‘OK, we got this from you, what makesyou think you can be here instead?’ andthey tell you, ‘I can do this and that,’ and sothere is a mechanism there. If the leaderdoesn’t want to give them up, eventuallythere will be a way around it either by theemployee or by someone else.”
HOW TO REACH: El Dorado Furniture Corp.,www.eldoradofurniture.com
