My conversations with professional horsemen often touch on one or more of the three not enoughs of business: Not enough time, not enough money and not enough of the right people working for them. Lately, the subject of locating, educating, motivating and compensating help has been popular.
It’s true, when employees do things wrong, refuse to cooperate or don’t bother to show up for work, the thought of scaling back the business to a utopian no-employee world is hypnotically appealing to business owners.
Who needs ‘em anyway? You can do anything they can do better, right?
Wrong. You do need help in your horse business if your physical and mental health is important to you.
I talked with Seth Burgess, president of Equimax.com, a horse industry employment service, last week about the subject of locating, educating, motivating and compensating employees in the horse business. Seth has been helping employers and employees in the horse industry for over twenty years. His experience has made him a deep reservoir of knowledge in the best practices for finding and retaining good employees.
Seth told me two points that he considered to be of great importance to horse industry employers.
1. No Written Job Descriptions
Many employers choose to have no written job descriptions for employees. Often, the reason for not having a written job description is lack of time to write it and confusion about what it should look like and contain. Employers in small businesses, including the horse business, are dependent on employees to do a little bit of everything every day.
Burgess encourages written job descriptions because they keep the farm work force on the same page and help the employees better understand what the employer expects. Another advantage he points out is the fact that the job description gives the employer basis for cause for disciplinary action or even termination of an employee.
If you need to get more information about job descriptions Burgess recommends a book titled: The Job Description Handbook – with CD-ROM Everything you need to create effective job descriptions at his website. click here.
2. Don’t Let the Experience of the Past Color Your Future
Seth encourages employers to remain positive when writing ad copy or job descriptions. It’s easy to get in a negative frame of mind when the problem employee you just fired was: not reliable, knowledgeable or hard working. Stating in your ad copy the givens: must be self motivated, reliable, energetic is a waste of ink and money. Keep an open mind to attract an employee that truly wants to work around horses, learn and be a productive employee.
He recommends assigning the same tasks to candidates to measure their job knowledge and skill levels. As examples: hitch up a horse trailer and back it up, look at website or brochure and come up with 4 ways to improve it or send a cover letter and a resume via mail to the employer.
Granted, good employees are difficult to find, but failure to look for them is no excuse. Good employees may also move on to another job more quickly than you’d like to see, but that’s no excuse either. Good people can’t be held back.
To minimize your stress, hire the best.