First Impressions

First impressions will make or break a company, no matter the industry if a customer is unhappy on their first trip they will more than likely not return. A first impression means the difference between a customer for life and not having that customer come back ever again. Attention to detail is key, if someone is unhappy something needs to be done to fix what it was that was wrong. Anything from taking too long to do what they asked of you, to messing up their order no matter the reason it is important that the customer is always right.

Having your head on a swivel in a customer service environment is a must! Always looking at everyone in your domain, if someone is upset it is important that you find out what is wrong with them. Seeing if there is anything that you can do to make their visit better is a must, if you don’t take the time to help your customers and bend over backwards to make their visit stand out nothing makes you better from everyone else. If there is nothing that you personally that you can do to help them, get your higher up involved or whoever it takes to take actions to make your customers happy. Without happy customers you have no job as well as no customers.

 

Imortance of Rewiew

Has anyone ever told you that you were doing something wrong? At work or otherwise, you may have been doing something that offended or upset someone else, something that you thought completely harmless without a thought that it could possibly offend someone. Actions of your own or others can be easily misconstrued to hurt others. A great example of this is presidential races smear campaigns are constantly changing the context of comments to hurt the others. Point being that it is impossible to know that you are doing something wrong without being told. May not even be doing anything wrong, others could just be out to get you.

This should emphasize the importance of employee reviews as well as communicating with your peers. If you become mad at someone without the full story, their actions could be misunderstood and adverse feeling that you may be feeling towards them unwarranted. The same goes for the work environment, if someone is repeatedly doing something wrong then it is your job as their manager to tell them what they are doing wrong and teach them the correct way to do the task. The wrong way to deal with the problem would be to discipline the employee without first taking the time to teach them the proper procedures as well as showing them what they had been doing wrong. Taking action isn’t always the proper way to attack a touchy situation such as this.

 

Managment Decisions

 

Tough decisions are made every day. No matter your position at your job or if you just have to drive the kids to school. You make life and death decisions every day, decisions that mean the difference between having a job and not.

Management is no different. They make extremely important decisions every day. Anything from how many employees they want to have working to how to balance checkbook to keep the company afloat. One day is never the same as another, it can be extremely busy and you may be understaffed one day and in expectation of another busy day the next you might increase the staff. And then it could be slow. Their is very little way to tell how business will be day to day challenges will always arise. The best laid plans often go astray.

 

Tattoos In The Workplace

Diversity is what makes our world go round. It gives us great things like Mexican and Italian food. It is what makes America well… America. There is more diversity in the world we live in than just the cultural aspects. People strive to do something unique from everyone else, be it body piercing or tattooing. Different people like different things and want to do unique things with their bodies and lives in turn providing us with the diverse culture we live in.

From a hiring prospective, visible tattoos and more than traditional ear piercings can change job prospects. Potential employees could have a great personality and be perfect to fill a job opening but if their face and neck are covered in tattoos or their ears have been stretched down to their shoulders than they may not be the person that you want to represent your business. Especially in a professional environment these body modifications would not be viewed as acceptable.

Not to say that tattoos are a bad thing because I am in no way against tattoos. Many of my peers have tattoos, some of which are very intricate and are a great expression of who they are and representation of the beliefs that define them. In this day and age personal expression such as tattoos and piercings are becoming more widely accepted. Many people have tattoos and display them with pride; it isn’t as uncommon as it used to be to have tattoos. In the past tattoos were left to gang members, inmates, and people in the service. Although now days it is very common and becoming more widely accepted to have tattoos but in the professional world it is not as accepted and that may be something that will never change.

 

Communication Is Everything

In business and life in general you would get absolutely nowhere without communication. We use it to convey our thoughts, feelings, and ideas. It would be nearly impossible to tell how someone is feeling without hearing it from that person.  No matter unhappy, annoyed, sad, or even happy we use words to express ourselves.

It is unreasonable to expect someone to know what you are thinking without telling him or her. If they are to do something wrong in your eyes, there is no telling weather they may think their actions are perfectly acceptable.  Everyone has different views on what is right versus wrong.

Same thing goes for the workplace, as a manager you cannot expect all of your employees to know exactly how to do every task. If they are struggling it is your job to help them succeed at their task. But not make them succeed; they must do that on their own with your assistance. If they have to be told time and time again how to do the same task there is a problem. This is where communication comes in. Communication is a must have In the workplace, it is unreasonable to assume that your employees know exactly what they are doing wrong, just because you see it doesn’t mean that they do. So to discipline them for in their eyes no reason would be the wrong way to go about solving the situation.

 

You Are Nothing More Than Your Best Employees

Every reputable business has an image to uphold no matter if it’s a sandwich shop a retail store or a casino.  They all pride themselves in their quality of customer service, customer’s satisfaction, and of course quality of product that they put out. In the customer service industry there is little room for error. It takes much more money to earn a new customer than to keep an existing one.  Hence the importance of keeping your customers happy.

The image of your company is in the hands of your employees. If you have hard working very accommodating employees that pay close attention to detail, the image of your establishment is going to be much better than that of a company that the employees are the opposite. Meaning that they are lazy and incompetent and really don’t care about what happens around them at their job. For example, if one person is helping a customer, and then two other employees approach just goofing around while another customer is nearby, who hasn’t been helped yet, and walk by without the slightest acknowledgement of the customer and proceed to do something else will create a bad image of the workers and most likely the business as well. Simply because they didn’t take the time to help that single customer. Word travels at an alarming rate and if one person is unhappy it may cause their relatives or close friends to choose another establishment that offers the same product.  Successful businesses are all about having something that sets them apart from everyone else who offers the same product.

 

Trade Secrets Or Personal Knowledge?

 

Every business has its secrets, anything from the secret recipe of some dish in a restaurant to top-secret money making tips for the average grocery store. As for these secrets someone has to know them, they couldn’t be put to use and would be worthless if at least the management didn’t know them. This can cause problems if someone is to be let go or quits.

Secrets are not secrets any more if they leave the company that the originated in. if everyone starts to use them they become standards, that is if everyone receives the same results, not everything works for everyone.

If a member of management in a sensitive position is to leave a company for any reason weather it be a personal decision because he was fired that company secret goes with him. but is it lawful for him to use these secrets for personal gain? Or to help the company that he is to work for later on in his career?

In my personal opinion I believe that those memories cannot be taken away he will always know the things that he was taught or told, it may be unethical for him to use the things he learned at his previous job but can he consciously watch his current career work inefficiently if he has a way to solve the problems and make it better? It really comes down to personal feelings and how big of a secret it really is. But in the end it becomes his knowledge after it is passed to him and nobody can take your memories from you.

 

The Grass Is Always Greener.

Managers have much different prospectives than their employees. As they should it takes a lot of knowledge of the business to manage it. But as everyone who has ever worked knows most people think they have the worst boss ever. This maybe be right in some ways but it is also more than likely simply because this person of power has the authority to tell you what to do. And you have the choice to either listen or move on and do as you are told. 

In this situation it could be much worse. Weather you believe it or not as a manager you may think that your employees have it easy but they have to take orders from you and customers. All the time. This is no easy task. 
 As for employees thinking Managers have it easy thinking all they do is boss people around are very mistaken also. Although they pick and choose which customers they talk to they also have many things to do that aren’t seen by most employees. 
Many managers get a bad name, And can be sometimes considered lazy because they are sitting around reading or something of the sort. Even if it looks leisurely they may be balancing the budget or ordering supples for the business. In all everyone in a business works hard everyone from managers to janitors and regardless if you feel you have it bad (some worse than others) their is more than likely someone who has it worse. Or just as bad as you and everyone around you has to work just as hard even if it’s not at that very second. 

 

Managerial Style

There are many ways to look at the position of Manager. Everyone who is in this position uses their power in a different way, frankly everyone has a different style, work ethic, and thoughts on how the position should be used. Some managers take the power and sit high on their throne and dictate what needs to happen and feel that they have no need to help out and get their hands dirty. Such action as to say that they did their time, they were the new guy once and have no need to help out because they have been through exactly what you are experiencing.

Others have a different prospective on this, they feel that if they are asking their employees to do it they better be able to jump in and do it themselves in order to show good work ethic. This proves to their employees that they aren’t asking something unreasonable of them because if I can do it you sure can also.

Both of these styles of management can be seen in many businesses and companies. Neither of which is wrong its all about personal preference as well as experiences, how they may have been managed in their previous jobs. In my personal experience I have seen many different styles of management and my preference of management style would be a hybrid of both of these types of management. Different situations call for different actions.  If it was a really busy day on the job I would most definitely use all of the resources at my disposal, meaning that I would delegate jobs to my employees as well as helping them out whenever possible. If it were a slower day and my management duties were light I would have no problem doing some things that need to be done. But if I had things that needed to be done I would find an employee that wasn’t busy and pass the task on to them. But in the end the management style really comes down to who your boss is what their experiences are and even how they feel on that particular day as to how they may act.