should I let employees make important choices?

[seabee24]

Originally Posted by sgbotsford

Here's how I'd work it, but it will take years to fully implement this
...... I hope it doenst take years. because ionly have a few guys on staff right now, and we arent taking back anyone else from last season so we would be hiring all new, thus why i need ot impliment the rules right off the bat

Overall you want to create win-win situations. The original poster is working himself into a management vs employee war. This seldom ends well. iv been fighting that war. so question is how to get out of it, and stay out of it. You end up with employees who will do the minimum possible work. Instead figure out a method that it's to everyone's interest to pull the same way. any ideas? perosnally i bleive its just the persons that we have hired. I worked for my old boss. 3 man crew, we where all hoenst, never too breaks, didnts moke, didnt own cell phones, we ate lunchs in the same spots that our boss had taken us to before he got off the crew. we packed our lunch and brought water with. we were all big boys. we had no technology at all yet we mowed over 100 homes per week, plus 1 day extra work, ZERO over time, average week was 37 hours, and we all enjoyed our jobs, best part was checking out the hot women while driving by.

As to personal freedoms:


Variable start times kill efficiency. On days you start early, people are half asleep the first hour or two. On days to start late, it's little better. If you are going to be flexible, be so at the end of the day.

I kind of learned that 2 years ago, and in the summer we start at fixed times. snow removal is a little different in that different hours, but the morning property checks could all start at the same time. it would suck a little bit to start at 5 am every day, but o well i guess?


I also found working with teens, that having mid morning and mid afternoon breaks WITH FOOD made a huge difference. I think this is true for any physical job. Feed people so their blood sugar doesn't drop and they don't get owly. Schedule it into their day, and it should become part of the foreman's time sheet. Foremen should note guys who didn't bring stuff for breaks, watch them for slow downs before lunch and quitting time.

do you think we should schdual multiple breaks, breafest and lunch? would you use fixed lunch times which would require them to bring their own lunch? or let them go get some from somewhere?

Thanks for the post - its exaclty along the same lines as im thinking.