THERE IS A HELL! - - - IT IS CALLED RETAIL THE WAREHOUSE | Page 8

THE WAREHOUSE
CLEARLY COMMUNICATED CONSEQUENCES

Your subordinates need to clearly understand what
the consequences will be if they do or fail to do
something. All violations are not necessarily equal, if
this is the case in your operation, the differences
should be clearly communicated. For example, a
common approach for disciplining employees is a
warning for the first offence, followed by a
suspension for the second offence, followed by
dismissal for the third offence. However, there may
be some violations that justify immediate dismissal.
This should all be communicated to the employees.
Just the act of communicating consequences to the
employees can do a lot for getting them to follow
policies and procedures. In addition, it makes
disciplining employees much less traumatic since everyone involves knows what is going
to happen.

TESTING

Training isn’t complete until you are certain the employees understand the policies and
procedures. The best way to determine this is to test them. A written test not only verifies
their knowledge, but also provides you with documentation that they understand the
policies and procedures. So now your employees know that you know that they know the
right way to do their job. Don’t underestimate the power of this. A written test shouldn’t
be difficult. You’re not trying to make them fail; you’re just trying to verify that they
understand the policies and procedures. Depending on the task, you may also need to
actually observe them performing a task as part of the test.

MONITORING FOR COMPLIANCE

This is the “supervision” part of supervising. But this doesn’t mean you need to have
supervisors constantly watching the workers. I’ve never worked in an environment where
supervisors just supervised, nor do I think this is necessary. Working supervisors
(supervisors that have other tasks to perform) only need to be present and alert. They
don’t need to see everything; they only need to be able to occasionally look around to see
if things are being done properly. This, combined with some random inspections is really
all you need.

FAIRNESS AND CONSISTENCY

This is what separates the good managers and supervisors from the lousy ones. Fairness
means the same violation receives the same discipline regardless of who the employee is.
Consistency means that every time a violation is observed, an action is taken. That’s all
there is to it.

DISCIPLINE THE ACTION, NOT THE RESULT

The natural inclination of bad managers is to have a hissy fit whenever something bad
happens. Some product is found damaged due to a forklift impact, or a “big custom er”
calls all ‘pissed off’ about a screwed up order, so the boss gets all red in the face and
disciplines the at-fault employee in a big way. At the same time, many of the other
workers are doing the exact same things that led to these problems, only they are getting
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™

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