One of the major issues faced by a business owner is when employing their first staff member and trusting them to carry out their duties as if they had been performed by the owner themselves. Having started a new business and been the sole employee for the initial period the owner has carefully introduced automated and manual systems designed to cater for their specific methods and style of working.
As their own business they will have strict quality guidelines and it is this that can cause anxiety when a new employee arrives. There is an automatic expectation that not only will the new staff member will be as conscientious as the owner in the manner in which they conduct their work, that they will also carry out the tasks in the same way.
A typical example of this could be when they new employee answered to the telephone call from a customer or responds to an email. The owner is prone to have thoughts of “I would have said that” or “I would have mentioned that”. This is particularly evident during the periods of training when the new staff member does not have comprehensive knowledge of the business, its products or the tone which with information is provided or responses are made.
The entrepreneur letting go and trusting the staff member can create stress and feelings that their hard earned efforts are being destroyed by a relatively carefree and ambivalent employee.
The realisation and acknowledgement that whilst the employee may have a different style of operating, their manner of conducting their duties is still valid can take some time to land.
Trusting staff in a business is an essential mechanism for commercial growth and change. Whilst the owner may lose immediate and direct control over emails, telephone calls and other parts of the operations the contributions made by the new employee might be significant.
Indeed the new staff member might allow the owner to begin working on the business vs. working in the business or undertake other tasks which time constraints have made impossible until now.
As with many business mechanisms, the doctrine of trusting staff does not relinquish the owner from total responsibility for what the new employee does. Supervision, training and review must accompany the dissemination of particular operational duties so as to ensure that quality control is functional and corrections made when required.
