Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/178275
38 • OCTOBER 2013 • WORLD FENCE NEWS Tom Luby – Working smarter continued from previous page to reduce outstanding A/R and collecting "problem accounts," and measure their success. This could be measured on an ongoing weekly or monthly basis and while measuring your performance you can work on steadily improving it. Enforcing the labor standard – Here is something important for you to remember: Studies have shown that before any labor standard is ever even set for any duty, task, assignment or function, just the fact that you are measuring and tracking labor efforts will, in and of itself, increase productivity. This is a proven fact! Once the employees realize that you are going to hold them accountable for their performance and not just accept whatever they feel like producing that particular day, in most cases they will respond by increasing their efforts. You will notice that some employees will respond better than others. You will quickly find out – if you don't already know – that some employees will have already stepped up to the plate and given a little extra effort. These will probably be the individuals that will establish your labor standards for you. The key word here is accountability. As I mentioned earlier, if you don't let your employees know just what you expect of them, you have no right to expect them to do very much at all. You need to demonstrate to them that your fence company will not accept mediocre performance, but will settle for nothing less than a 100% effort on everyone's part. Obviously, not everyone can operate at the same level of efficiencies. Some of your employees will always be able to outperform others, but what you are looking for here is each individual's best effort every time. This means that if you have established a labor standard for the crews in the field of being able to stretch 1,000 feet of chain link per two-man crew per day, then that becomes your new labor standard. If you have some crews that string 500 feet and still others that string 300 feet, you will have to draw the line somewhere and inform the under producing crews that they will have to increase their performance or you will have to replace them with another crew that can stretch 1,000 feet per day. Another byproduct of measuring, tracking and enforcing labor standards is that this should be a constantly improving process. That is, your employees should strive to always do better and therefore increase the labor standard again and again. The 1,000 feet of chain link that was the labor standard last month may be increased to 1,100 feet this month and maybe 1,200 feet next month, etc. This then becomes a win-win situation for the company. Again, the key words here are accountability and measurability. The "labor standards" that you need to be setting at your fence company need to first be measurable and then you need to hold your staff and crews accountable for maintaining these standards you have established. Do not settle for less! Chances are, your fence company continued on page 42