{"id":661,"date":"2011-08-20T13:16:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T03:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=661"},"modified":"2011-08-12T16:11:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T06:11:47","slug":"how-do-i-fix-all-my-staff-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=661","title":{"rendered":"How do I fix all my staff issues?"},"content":{"rendered":"Do you have a constant battle dealing with staff issues? Does it feel like every day there is another fire you need to put out, fuelled by a staff member? Why don\u2019t staff think like a business owner?\r\n\r\nIn a recent survey of vet practice owners, when asked to name their biggest challenge, 52 per cent nominated staff issues.\r\n\r\nWhen the Commonwealth Bank surveyed 32,000 small businesses and asked the same question, about 60 oer cent of them said that staff was their biggest issue.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m going to tell you in a nutshell why this is the case.<!--more--> If you seem to have a lot of staff issues on a constant basis, it is one of three things.\r\na) You have employed someone who doesn\u2019t fit the role you want.\r\nb) You are not an effective leader for them.\r\nc) There is no \u201cbigger vision\u201d or mission for your practice that they believe in.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s look at the third possibility.\r\n\r\nWhat do you mean by a bigger vision?\r\n\r\nThe best way to explain this is to tell you a story.\r\n\r\nDuring the late &#8217;60s when the USSR and America were racing to be the first to land on the moon, an American reporter wrote an article on it. He went into NASA and was interviewing staff there. He saw a staff member on his knees scrubbing the floors until they were spotless. He asked him, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe janitor looked up from his job with an enthusiastic smile and responded,\r\n\r\n\u201cSir, I am helping putting a man on the moon.\u201d\r\n\r\nThat janitor didn\u2019t see that he was cleaning floors; he felt he was part of a team trying to achieve something amazing. He was part of something truly great. I think he would have done the best he possibly could have, without supervision. Herein lays one of the secrets of leadership: selling the mission.\r\n\r\nLook at a football team. Are they just running around on a field with no idea of why they are there? No, they all have specific roles to play with one common mission: to win.\r\n\r\nThe question I would ask you is this. Does your practice have a bigger mission?\r\n\r\nDo all your team know what the bigger mission is for your practice, or are they just turning up to be paid?\r\n\r\nIf you want to know the secret to being able to find great employees in a limited supply market (which vets are), find a really big mission and sell it in your adverts when you are looking for that crucial team member. Spell it out.\r\n\r\n<em>What is involved in being an effective leader?<\/em>\r\n\r\nThis is outside this discussion as it is such a big topic. However, being an effective leader is something that can be learned. There is a system you can apply to get the best from your team. The payoff is a business that gives you a life, with minimal stress.\r\n\r\n<em>How to select the right person for your practice.\r\n<\/em>\r\nOne of the most common questions I am asked is how best to motivate staff. Incentives, rewards, recognition, promotion &#8211; which works the best? The answer is this: you can\u2019t motivate staff. You have to employ motivated staff.\r\nSure you can inspire staff by good leadership, but they are either motivated or they aren&#8217;t. Trying to motivate people who have no desire to be motivated is a tough gig. They are just not interested.\r\n\r\n<strong>SAM BOWDEN<\/strong>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you have a constant battle dealing with staff issues? Does it feel like every day there is another fire you need to put out, fuelled by a staff member? Why don\u2019t staff think like a business owner? In a recent survey of vet practice owners, when asked to name their biggest challenge, 52 per [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[196,297,311,85,376],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-196","tag-june","tag-june-2011","tag-opinion-2","tag-staffing"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":82,"name":"Opinion","slug":"opinion","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":83,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":94,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":82,"category_count":94,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Opinion","category_nicename":"opinion","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"Do you have a constant battle dealing with staff issues? Does it feel like every day there is another fire you need to put out, fuelled by a staff member? Why don\u2019t staff think like a business owner? In a recent survey of vet practice owners, when asked to name their biggest challenge, 52 per cent nominated staff issues. When..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"82":{"name":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=82"}},"tags_names":{"196":{"name":"2011","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=2011"},"297":{"name":"June","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=june"},"311":{"name":"June 2011","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=june-2011"},"85":{"name":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=opinion-2"},"376":{"name":"staffing","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=staffing"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}