If you are a seasonal contractor you know the realities of finishing out the season and sending many of your workers off for the winter. Often, these days are not overly fruitful and quite honestly can be downright depressing. Want to turn that around?
Begin to hold a formal end-of-the-season “all employee” meeting. Sure, bring in some pizza and wings for lunch but add one more profitable element to this meeting. Spend a few hours with your workers allowing them to comment on every area of your company. Break it down to the following areas:
- Equipment
- Suppliers
- Safety
- Quality
- Accountability
- Customer Relationships
- Communications within Company
- Leaders & Leadership
- Teamwork
- Training
- Company Image
- Potential Markets
- Employee Relations
- Pay & Benefits
Simply ask the following questions, inserting any of the topics from the above list as the primary focus. (You don’t have to ask about every topic listed above; you may have some of your own topics to explore.)
Ask:
- How effective is our Equipment?
- How can we improve our Equipment?
- What Equipment should we be seeking to get?
You will obviously need to adjust how you ask the questions for each topic but I think you get the point. Now, once you ask the first question, “shut up” and take notes. Record the feedback from your workers on a flip chart or marker board. This effort, on your part, will often loosen up the workers and encourage them to add to or clarify comments made.
Ending the year with such a meeting can actually provide you with some very good “intel” while also engaging your workers, one more time, before the off-season. This effort will also remind your workers that you are interested in their input and leave them wanting to come back to work for you in the new season.
This annual meeting is not only profitable for seasonal contractors but for “all-season” contractors as well and any equipment or material company. We all could become more aggressive and interested in the one group of people who may know more about our flaws and have some worthwhile and realistic solutions…our employees.
Don’t miss your opportunity to get some free consulting from those who may know you and your company the best!
