Your employees are underproducing and being overpaid with overtime for the privilege to do so, and you may have only yourself to blame. To run a smarter, more profitable business, you must have a dream to reach for and a system in place to make sure it becomes reality. Efficiency Engineer Don Desrosiers has a few tricks up his sleeves to teach you how to track finances, train and motivate employees and cut costs like you never thought possible. He can help business owners and managers see problems, identify their causes and fix them. So, who's on board for the next training session?
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Don Desrosiers is a workflow engineer, efficiency expert and a management consultant to drycleaners and shirt launderers throughout America and Western Europe. The system he employs allows him to typically cut his client's payroll by 25% or more and it can be universally applied to all industries.
Unfortunately, employees too often goof off during the work week, sometimes subconsciously milking the time clock so they can get their 40 hours or more every week. However, it's not really their fault. Management has remained oblivious to the problem, or, worse, has simply endorsed it by letting it occur.
If you allow four employees to skate by and accomplish the work that should be done with only three, then your labor costs are simply too high. You can cut them drastically, but first you must believe it can be done. Then, you have to visualize a realistic goal and pursue it. Unfortunately, that is a lot easier said than done. The truth is, there is no such thing as a quick, easy fix to the problem. However, by reading Don's book, you will become capable of developing a system to significantly cut your labor expenses.
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Measure Everything
The first step is to measure everything. No matter what business you are in, you need to have certain productivity standards. There must be some sort of benchmark to measure your own results against.
For example, in the drycleaning industry, an experienced pants presser in a properly equipped plant should be able to press 42 pants an hour. Most cleaners fail to attain that. They usually fall into the 30-35 an hour range. Only by measuring production daily will you know the extent of your problem and be able to get to the heart of it.
Of course, in some cases there is no pre-defined standard, which means you must establish it for yourself. Labor Pains and Profit Drains! can help you make that happen. It is absolutely vital for you to track, measure and graph how much work should be accomplished each hour at your company. Spreadsheets will become the best friend your business ever had.
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Overtime
Overtime can be a blessing. Unfortunately, it can also be a drug to employees and a profit drain to employers.
At times, it may be utilized effectively as an employee motivation tool. After all, a 25 cent an hour raise won't likely prevent your employees from calling in sick often, but there are other solutions that might be more effective, such as scheduled overtime hours. It's like a built-in bonus system that rewards employees for showing up all week and working hard. In such cases, paying overtime is well worth it.
Unless. Unless employees start to abuse that system. Too often, employees pad the clock in hopes that they'll make those coveted time-and-a-half overtime pay hours. Once they get a taste of a higher disposable income in their pockets, employees will never again want to settle for a 40-hour week - even if there isn't 40 hours of work for them to do. They will either consciously or subconsciously slow down their production rate in order to obtain the OT. Worst of all, too many business owners and managers allow this to happen.
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Training Employees
Management positions have become convoluted w