Be a team player
The economic meltdown of 2008 posed a challenge to retail businesses, including shoe companies. People still needed shoes, of course, but perhaps they didn’t need as many pairs or tried to make the pairs they had last a little longer.
The priority suddenly became sustainability. So how do you keep employees focused on getting to know your customers when they’re worried about whether or not they’ll have a job tomorrow?
“You do create fear,” Cahn says. “You not only create fear, you wonder how many of your best people are going to leave you and what the morale is going to be. We handled it in such a way that we wanted to make sure everyone was going to get through this. Let’s do it together. It isn’t just that we gave cuts to employees. We took substantial cuts ourselves to make sure that we could survive this.”
It’s one thing to ask employees to buy in to your business and your plan when times are good, but if you appear to abandon them when times turn tough, you’re going to have a hard time maintaining their loyalty.
So you have to make it clear that you stand with your people, even when you’re faced with letting some of them go.
“We handled it in such a way that there was no safe haven anywhere,” Cahn says. “At least we had a track record of managing our affairs and people had confidence in our ability to do that. They were willing to go along with it.”
Cahn says you can go a long way in earning the support of your people just by the way you refer to the business.
“I have never looked at my business as my business,” Cahn says. “I’ve always looked at my business as our business. It’s one team. I march with them; they march with me. What can I do to make them more motivated?
“When we fly anywhere in the world, I don’t get myself upgraded and have my employees sit in coach. I don’t stay in better hotels or have a different food allowance. We march with the troops and they know that.”
You can also take visible steps to recognize employees who go above and beyond the challenges to provide great service to your customers or provide a needed boost or fresh idea to your business.
“Employees should be compensated for good work beyond average work,” Cahn says. “One works better and faster than the other does and they should be recognized for that. If not, you’re going to have communism and that didn’t seem to work too well. Recognition is important. Recognize the different jobs that different employees do. They don’t all do as good of a job.”
As for the employees you have to let go, don’t make any promises you can’t keep. But you can offer them hope if you believe there is a chance they could be brought back at some point.
“We said to the ones we let go, ‘As soon as we can, we’ll rehire and you’ll have first preference,’” Cahn says. “It was just a very obvious thing that needs to be done. We can promise that you’ll be the first ones we’ll look at. You can make promises that if we hire people in the next six months, they’ll be the first ones you’ll consider.”
The hope is that when the economic tide does turn, you’ll be able to put people in place who have already been trained about your culture and know what you expect.
“At that point, you’re going to go after people that you’re comfortable with instead of going after new people,” Cahn says. “It’s very open. We have nothing to hide. As soon as our business stabilized and we could see that our customers’ business was stabilizing, we gave them back more or less what we had taken away. They understood what happened. We certainly kept them informed and after that, we started advancing people again.”
When you’re going through a tough time, you can’t eliminate all of the fear that your employees have and you actually don’t want to.
“If they’re not going to worry about the future, they’re not going to be good employees,” Cahn says. “We’re all worried, even if things are good. We’re all worried about making sure we interpret the marketplace. That won’t change.”
When you have conscientious employees, you stand a much better chance of having employees who can help your company understand its customers and do what needs to be done to drive growth.
“They see it every day whether we get the order or don’t get the order,” Cahn says. “It’s not necessarily a matter of price, it’s not a matter of quality, it’s not a matter of delivery, it’s not a matter of information. It’s a combination of everything. Over a period of time, they all show up. Your abilities against your inabilities will show up in the long run.”
HOW TO REACH: Elan Polo International, (314) 655-3300 or www.elanpolo.com
