Aim for consistency
O’Toole thought one of the most important aspects of the tool kit would be consistency. Mixed signals or confusion from leadership about direction is often a factor in an employee’s decision to leave an organization.
“You want consistency across the entity because you don’t want people making it up on their own,” O’Toole says. “You don’t want good practices to not be known across the organization.”
The tool kit would be an opportunity to create a common way of doing things throughout the organization.
“It’s highlighting areas we do have in the company for recognition and reward and satisfaction and coaching and managing difficult employees through situations,” O’Toole says. “It was put together in a written document, which means they could share the whole document and program with new managers that come in from time to time or with individuals that feel they need to be refreshed on it. If a manager is not having success with turnover or an employee has a complaint against them, they have a kit that can tell them, ‘This is probably something you’re not using as well as you should.’”
For example, one of the points in the employee retention booklet, which is in the tool kit, talks about the importance of giving employees meaningful work to perform.
“Allow employees to express and create themselves through their work,” the booklet reads. “Give employees challenging assignments a
nd reward them with praise and recognition. Engage employees in conversation about their career goals and aspirations. Ask and listen. You’ll be surprised what you may learn.”
The section goes on to list questions that can help the manager and employee analyze whether an employee feels like he or she is getting the most out of his or her talents.
O’Toole says role-playing is another method that is strongly emphasized in the tool kit.
The point is to put together a common way of training your employees so that no matter who is doing the training or when they are doing it, it is being done in a consistent manner.
“Issues that we historically had coached and trained people to utilize just had not been packaged together under a communication effort,” O’Toole says.
While emphasizing consistency, he also reiterated throughout the planning process that the tool kit was not being written in stone.
“It’s like anything else, you don’t want to work on it forever,” O’Toole says. “You can always keep working on something and make it a little better. It allows that tool kit to be a living document that can be improved and modified from time to time as the situations change over the years.”
The booklets that make up the tool kit are kept in a binder. This leaves room for new booklets to be added or for older booklets to be replaced by versions with updated policies and procedures.
The company uses a checklist to make sure the tool kit is being used and O’Toole takes it upon himself to monitor this checklist and talk to his employees about the tool kit on a regular basis.
“As a CEO, it’s my job to shake the tree a little bit and follow up with them on areas they are working on and just remind myself to say, ‘Hey, what’s been going on with the tool kit?’” O’Toole says. “’What new things do we need to add? Give me your thoughts.’ Hopefully, you get that from management, and if not, you need to ring their bell a little bit.”
