How to give instructions to employees correctly?

The moment a potential employee comes to an organization for an interview, he or she shows with his or her whole appearance that he or she wants the position and wants to work. All employees who come to work every day and perform their direct duties prove this every day. The employee confirms that in the workplace during working hours, he or she stops behaving as he or she wants and adheres to the standards of professional behavior as long as he or she is paid for his or her work. You, in turn, guarantee them decent working conditions and timely payment of their salary. Thus, the employee and the employer do not enter into a regular employment contract, but rather a kind of agreement to rent skills to comply with established standards.

For example, if several employees work at the checkout, it will not be quite convenient and logical to release goods and give change to customers in different ways. Undoubtedly, one template should be provided for all operations performed. The content of the template must be written clearly and understandably so that each employee understands what exactly is required of them and how they should behave in the workplace. To do all this, you need to make a list of standards.

Список обов'язків

Any position should have a list of duties that employees are required to perform during working hours. Over time, standards may change and, accordingly, be adjusted. It is worth considering that each duty should be broken down into a set of standards, which will allow employees to understand what exactly the employer wants from them.

Identification

Among the useful skills that any entrepreneur should possess is the ability to distinguish duties from their constituent standards. A duty is something for which all employees of an organization are responsible to their employer. Standards are one of the specific ways of fulfilling duties in the workplace.

For example, a manager tells an employee that he or she will be responsible for closing the store today. Thus, there was no additional information, so it is impossible to know that the employee will do everything right and not make a mistake. The information you provided is simply a message that a particular person is responsible for closing the outlet, but nothing was said about the standards. In this case, the list of standards includes a set of actions that must be taken to ensure the safety of the store. Let's take a closer look at what the standards consist of, focusing on this example.

The responsibility includes the security of the outlet at night.

The list of standards includes the following items.

1. Remove the cash box from the cash register. Put it in the safe on the top shelf.
2. Turn off the lights in the entire room, while keeping the bulbs that are supposed to function at night on.
3. Check whether the back entrance is closed from the inside.
4. Turn on the sewage system and leave the room within 45 seconds.
5. Turn the key in the door lock clockwise. Remove the key.
6. Check whether the door is closed. To do this, pull the door handle several times.

These standards can either be observed by the employee or not. It is impossible to evaluate these actions. It should be borne in mind that in this case, it is possible to assess how well the employee coped with the task.

Let's say you need to clean up a certain area in your store, and you assign this task to one of your employees. After the area is tidied up, you may think that the employee failed to cope with the task and did a poor job, while another employee may think that the work was done perfectly.

Now let's imagine a situation where the staff is tasked with washing the glass shelves in the store with special products and then arranging the goods on them in a certain order. It is almost impossible to predict how this situation will look like, and it is also impossible to assess the quality of the work done, but one thing remains the same - the work is either done or not.

Instructions.

As practice shows, most managers have a bad habit - they assign responsibilities to employees, but do not explain how to fulfill them properly. Difficulties will persist until managers learn to clearly and distinctly communicate to their staff what they want to see in the end. Let's think back to a time when your employee failed to complete a task. How accurately did you explain his or her responsibilities? Were the instructions specific, and were they at all? Keep in mind that your views may differ significantly from those of others.

An example of poor employee training

Let's say a new product has arrived at the store, and it is necessary to put it on the shelves in the sales area, and two specialists are appointed to do this. The manager delegates authority to the employees with the words: "Olga and Maria, you need to put the newly arrived goods on the store shelves. You need to move the products to the back room, and then put the samples on the sales floor. The products should be placed on shelves along the wall. There should be one sample of each type of product in the windows."

After that, the manager leaves and comes back to check in a day later. During the inspection of how the employees performed their duties, it turns out that the samples of goods are arranged in such a way that the shelves are sad. Since all the samples did not fit on the shelves, they are simply cluttered. A few days later, the manager receives a report from his mystery shopper, whose services he periodically uses. As it became clear from the report, the potential consumer was unable to get advice from the sellers, as they were busy doing something in the back room.

An example of effective employee training

After a new product arrives at the store, the manager turns to his subordinates: "Olga and Maria, I need your help. A new product has arrived, and it needs to be moved to the sales floor as soon as possible. Each sample should be placed along the wall on a shelf. You need to make sure that there is enough space for everything. Also, the product samples should be placed on the display case. Since at the moment there are already two previous samples on the counter, they need to be put away in the back room, thereby freeing up space for the new product. I am well aware that there will be a lot of customers, and it will not be possible to fulfill my order quickly, but it is worth considering that in any case, customers should come first."

This way, there is a chance that the work will be done properly in this case. For ease of use, you can develop guidelines that will help you comply with the standards. For example, you can create a planogram for laying out product samples.

Any salesperson can help develop a business, but to do so, they must have a clear understanding of what is being done and how. In this case, the manager is obliged to teach everything to his employees. It is necessary to explain and then check whether they have understood everything correctly.

One of the most useful stages is "show me," which, unfortunately, many managers do not pay due attention to. First, you need to explain everything to the employee, and then check how he or she has learned everything. This is the only way to understand whether an employee has mastered the material or not. As a rule, many employees need training, but until you ask them to show you, it's impossible to know. If you spend enough time initially on drawing up responsibilities and training your staff, it will pay off in full later.