hello my name is Gary Shotton and today we’re going to talk about “Fair, Firm, and Consistent” in the way we deal with our employees and our staff and I’m just going to kind of give you a review again you probably if you’ve been watching me for very long at all you know that I own a machine shop I’m sitting in this machine shop you’ll notice that there’s a parts that we made I’m sitting in our finished goods department and we have about 60 employees right now and for me that’s my sweet spot that’s the size of company that I’ve worked with my previous company was a moving and storage company it was between 50 and 75 employees and it’s just a great size for a company not that it’s great for everyone it’s just right for me because if I had a company of a hundred and fifty five hundred five thousand I wouldn’t know everybody it would be impossible but I want to know all of my employees we’ve just hired a few new people so I’m getting to know them know their names I don’t see them every day and if I only had two or three custom ploy e’s you know it’s just a little too small for me to delegate and to be create systems and operating systems but that’s just me and it made it be different for you but no matter how many employees or staff members you have you’re going to have to come up with what I think those three words fair firm and consistent and let’s talk about it one-on-one so let’s talk about fair fair as number one you know the more people you have the more it’s going to be challenging you must create systems that would we create fairness your pay reviews we’re going to need to be fair we consider and ask our employees to keep their personal pay private not share it with others that should be between them and us the company but realistically that’s going to get out and it’s not going to be that private and so I’ve made the statement many times on pay and levels of pay that yes they should be held private but if the new news got out if it became public what we’re paying different individuals compared to the others that I would have a good defense this is why we’re paying we’ve just recently gone through a new procedure and improved on it that when we have a review and I don’t make the reviews to other people do together with each one of the employees that their direct supervisors make that I give guidelines of where and how that much range of pay written increases could be made but they go through a good evaluation so it’s not just here’s your raise here’s your paycheck but they understand after that meeting whether they could have maybe done better have come up with more ideas what they could do better next time to even get a better raise if it would be possible you know if you have only one child at home I always kind of joke with the single child families and I’m not knocking it here but they really haven’t experienced some of being a family until you have two three four five six kids and you have to work with what’s fair because Johnny’s going to make sure that Jane didn’t get more of something than he got and and Jo is going to be these are names of kids possibly is going to be very upset because Johnny got something more than he did so you’re going to have to work out that element of fair if you want to be a good parent I’m guaranteed let’s talk about firm well firm is something that doesn’t have to be rude doesn’t have to be cruel doesn’t have to be demoralizing can be very very respectful to our individual and at different levels of respect always respectful but different levels of firmness so let’s say you have a company-wide rule let’s say that something like wearing your safety glasses now I don’t have safety glasses on here a rest of the company would we’re in an area that doesn’t require that but the rest of the company requires safety glasses and so if we had someone that was walking through the shop in that most of the area or was working at their machine and and you know they didn’t have their glasses on or they had a tip so they weren’t protecting their eyes we have to make that clear that’s not snot acceptable so it would be very expected by my management and even some of the fellow workers to say hey don’t you know our policy is to wear safety glasses so you don’t get hurt don’t get dust in your eyes one of our leading injury causes is dirt in the eyes you must wear your safety glasses and so that person could have forgotten I give them the benefit but they’re constantly forgetting and I’m constantly reminding them or somebody is constantly reminding them we’re going to wrap it up and say we’re going to get a little firm and it’s going to be something like this Bob we’ve talked to you about always wearing your safety glasses Bob is there anything you misunderstand about the need for that are you challenging our authority we’re going to put the pressure back on them it’s not a question of safety glasses anymore it’s a question of challenging our authority challenging our safety policy challenging who we are we’re going to ramp it up to be more firm but after a while they keep messing with us we’re going to say we prefer this method for people to think about it rather than fire them immediately because this isn’t really a fireable a incident to be honest but it’s something that has to be made we have to make a point we would probably go to the level say you know we’ve been trying to emphasize the importance to this and I don’t think you’re getting it why don’t you go a clock off and take the rest of the day off with no pay because I can’t have you here being unsafe and they clock off now they have something to go home and think about they’re not working maybe this is getting more critical and we don’t want to create this looseness that once we let one worker not wear their safety glasses and there are many other examples then the rest of everybody today we don’t wear safety glasses because we want to be fair and some people do and some people don’t that’s not where we’re going ferm let’s talk about consistent nobody wants to work for somebody or in an environment that one day they have to walk on on what we call eggshells Oh be real careful because the boss had a bad day today the manager has really really been really being a jerk today he’s really causing a lot of problems and the next day everything’s just fine that’s inconsistent we live in a world that we have enough personal in consistencies that pop up into our life that we want to have at work as consistent and as predictable as we possibly can have and so there’s all kinds of elements of that if we’re going to be consistent we’re going to deal with things consistently we’re going to be as fair as we can fit have we’re going to be as firm as we have can be but we’re going to also be consistent we make a video we have a video to everyone to say we’re consistently honoring you respectful to you we’re consistently going to be respectful no matter of your personal religion no matter of your personal preferences where is nobody that’s a great friend that’s going to get special privileges all of this works together and if you can master these things you’re on the road to having a wonderful company that can be profitable and be a success please share these videos if you would these audio teachings we appreciate being you being a part of this thank you