I’m going to get personal for a minute.
Last week my Dad, who owns car washes, fired an employee I have know for years, he was a friend of mine. He was the car wash’s full-time maintenance man.
He is a good person, honest, and hardworking. I was there when my Dad let him go. It was painful to see a friend lose their job. The worst part for me was realizing that he didn’t really understand why he was fired.
As a maintenance man your tasks are to fix things: Keep the car washes running without downtime. He had been successfully completing tasks for my Dad, the car washes had been running.
But he didn’t understand one thing: He didn’t understand his role in the company.
His role as a maintenance guy was to relieve stress from my Dad. To make my Dad’s life easier so he could focus on other things. Although he was great at his job, he was completely unsuccessful at his role.
Without getting too personal he brought some situational drama into working at the carwash. Schedule conflicts and conflicts between employees were just a couple out of many examples. This forced my Dad to deal with more stresses than he wanted to tolerate.
His job was to fix pumps, pressure wash equipment, grease parts. But his role was to relieve stress. The employee would get his work done, but his overall net effect was a null because he relieved as much stress as he caused.
But this isn’t an article shaming an employee. Consider as a business owner…are you properly teaching your employees their role?
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