Saturday, July 7, 2012

Grant Employees Task Identity

As the shop owner looked out the front window of her store, she saw a man digging a hole in the median strip of the wide street. Then the man moved about thirty feet beyond the pile of dirt and dug another hole. When done with that one, he again moved on about thirty feet from the second dirt pile and dug a third hole.
     An hour later, she looked out the window again, only to see another man shoveling the pile of dirt back into the hole. Sure enough, after filling in the first hole, he moved on to the second hole, filled in that one, and then on to the third hole.
     The shopkeeper couldn’t contain her curiosity about what appeared to be some monumental waste of city workers’ time. She crossed the street to the median, walked up to the man filling in the third hole, and asked him to explain.
     “Oh,” he began, with a nod which indicated he’d heard the questions before. “We have a system here. My buddy digs out the dirt from the hole, my other buddy puts a tree in the hole, and then I come along and fill in the hole with the dirt.”
     “There’s no tree there!,” the woman exclaimed.
     “Yea, that guy’s out sick today. But the other two of us still have our jobs to get done.”
     Indeed, the shopkeeper had been correct in her assumption. This was a monumental waste of time.
     In your store, you’d spot such an error. But the whole hole story might serve to remind you of the risks in dividing up a task and the advantages in giving one employee what’s called “task identity.” One of your staff is responsible for planting the tree.
  • Encourage each staff member to serve the customer throughout the purchase process. By identifying with the complete task, the retail worker enhances identification with the shopper as a complete person rather than as a list of impersonal steps. 
  • When you schedule a special event at your store, assign one person the responsibility for execution. They own that event. 
  • Have a “Product of the Week” you assign to an employee who has shown interest in the product. The employee sets up the display, keeps an eye on the shelves to see the item is properly stocked, and gets a special bonus that week for sales of the product. 
Click below for more: 
Burn Out Resignation of Skilled Staff 
Give One Staff Member Responsibility

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