Q. How do you create a good
management team?
Each manager that we hire
goes through a series of three
or four interviews with everybody he’s going to work with
here, whether it’s his equal or
his boss.
You want to try and get the
right person the first time. If
you hire somebody and it
doesn’t work, it actually costs
you quite a bit of money.
You’ve invested time and
money, and you don’t want to
find out four months later that
this really wasn’t the right person for the job.
Q. How do you manage
delegation?
Letting go is the hardest thing to do for someone who
owns their own business.
You’ve always made the decisions yourself, so now you’re
giving the authority to somebody to make decisions.
You have to have trust and
belief and faith that, that person will do the job, make the
right decision and, hopefully,
come tell you if there’s a problem with the one they made.
Hire the people that you can
trust to make those decisions
for you.
Q. How do you measure
employee performance?
We do a yearly three-page
evaluation at the company. We
talk about strong points, weak
points, areas of improvement
and continuing education. It’s
done for everybody that works
here, even me.
My managers do my evaluation because if I’m not giving
them the right information, they
can’t perform their job. It helps
me to get better at what I do.
Actually, it’s very enlightening.
Everybody knows that evaluations are coming at the end
of the calendar year, and from
an hourly standpoint, employees are anticipating some sort
of raise. In the evaluation
process, the HR manager
explains to them their total
wage package for the previous
year — what they’re getting in
health care and in their 401(k)
— so they understand what
we’re paying for workers’
comp, health insurance and
why so many programs are in
place to control these costs.
And, next year, we will have
this year’s evaluation to compare for areas of improvement.
HOW TO REACH: CnD Industries Inc., (330) 478-8811
