How To Attract And Retain Quality Employees

Whether you run an independent painting company or you’re contracting with an outside painting company, you want to know how to forge lasting bonds with your employees. Changes in personnel cost your company time and reduce the efficiency of your painting crews. One way to prevent this from taking its toll on your company is to carefully select employees from the applicant pool.

Hiring: Where to Look

When searching for good painting company employees, start with your success stories, the employees that have developed into solid members of your team. How did you find this guy? If you discover that certain channels (Internet, newspapers, job boards, and lumber yard referrals) delivered more than their fair share of great employees, and then focus your attention on employees who come in through those channels.

The method does not matter. Build your pool of employees through word of mouth only, if that is what gives you high-quality employees. The key is to build on your past successes.

Hiring: Who to Hire

Aim for stability when it comes to hiring your crew. If you select employees who desire stability, you will soon have a crew of project tested veterans who are with you for the long haul. Potential employees with little or no experience should be screened for their desire to learn the painting trade as a long term career. Training is costly, and if your employees are leaving after a matter of months, those training costs can cut into your profits. Plus, work crews with a revolving door are less efficient than a stable crew.

Retaining: What to Do

Retaining employees comes down to four simple actions: listening, making room, evaluating and rewarding. Do these four things well, and you will keep good employees.

Listening

Listen to your staff. Communication is the most powerful tool you have in your company, if you choose to use it. Ask questions about how employees feel about their jobs. If they complain about things, ask the employees what they want to do to fix the problem.

Making Room

Give your employees and supe
1000
rvisors the room to do their jobs. Once their training is complete, you should let them make competent decisions that benefit your company. Doing so elevates the employee to the status of a real team member instead of just another face on an assembly line. This increases employee satisfaction and encourages employees to build a career with your company.

Evaluating

Evaluating is the fine art of asking the right questions. The right questions promote growth and valuable change. Does an employee’s suggestion work? How well does this employee perform under pressure? Am I giving my supervisors the room to demonstrate their skills?

Rewarding

Reward the behavior you want to encourage. The method of reward doesn’t matter as much as its sincerity. A few words of thanks that are heartfelt and honest can be as effective as a gift certificate, provided the sincerity of the gesture is without question. Did the employee do something so well that it left you speechless? When you recover, tell him or her about it. Employees leave when honest praise is in short supply.

Hiring and Retaining: The Final Word

In the end, your company’s success at hiring good employees and retaining them is directly dependant on your ability to create an environment conducive to career-growth. As long as an employee sees your company as a fertile place for their abilities to grow, they will set down roots.

By: Steve A. Parker

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Steve Parker, Sr. Estimator. RaiderPainting.com is the preferred painting contractor for building owners and facility managers of commercial and industrial properties nationwide. Call 877-724.3371 for a free Estimate and read our daily Blog.

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Do you think that selling paint jobs is just giving a low price and letting the customer decide which painting contractor has the lowest price? Do you believe that price is the only thing on people’s minds when they buy a paint job? If your paint estimate was equal to the next painter but that painter was arrogant, nasty, physically dirty and had booze on his breath; which painter would the customer choose?

What I am getting at is the idea that price is not the only factor when a customer chooses a paint contractor. The biggest excuse I hear from paint contractors is that they either lose jobs because their price is too high or they don’t estimate a paint job correctly.

Think about the following items when doing a paint estimate.

1) Customers want value when deciding which paint estimate they will go with. What is value? It is not the cheapest price. It is the belief that the customer is getting more worth for the price from one painting contractor than the other.

2) Quality is relative to the price. If the customer believes that the painting estimate is too low then they might think that the paint contractor is either low balling, inexperienced or cutting costs by cheapening the job in some way or another. The customer will then believe that they are not getting good value from that paint estimate and will not but from that contractor even if the price is lower.

3) Service is a big issue in itself. Is the painting contractor perceived as being dependable, will the paint contractor finish the job in the quickest time? Will the contractor finish at all? If the contractor fails in some service issue, is the customer getting good value?

4) Do you buy the cheapest tools, food, clothing or anything else? As a professional painting contractor, you know that buying cheap tools can mean that you will possibly buy a tool twice, once when the cheap tool breaks and the second time when you buy a good tool to replace the cheap tool that broke. Is cheap the best value? The client thinks about this when looking at a house painting estimate.

To get more paint jobs, establish in your client’s minds that they will receive better value from you. The way to sell more painting jobs is to educate your customers. Selling is education, and educating your customers will get you more painting jobs. Does the client believe that you will give them more or less when you do a paint job for them?

Need to know how to estimate? Easy to use Painting Estimator. Click here Paint Estimator

Want to know how to estimate a paint job? Click here The Professional Painter

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