Five Minute Friday: Employee Reviews 101: The Simple System to Build Leaders

Hey, guys, it's me on Five Minute Friday. And I'm here to talk about what I think is the missing link in your business. If you have an employees and if you're of the mindset that kids these days just don't work as hard as they used to, which. How many times have we heard that? And actually probably how many times we said that, yes, there's issues with kids today. They're different. They are not who we are. They're not how we were raised. But different isn't necessarily bad. And so I want to challenge you today if you're having any kind of employee troubles or you feel like you're stalled or you're stagnant, or you're just needing your team to be more on board, I want to encourage you to think about this today why employer reviews might be the missing link in your business. Because being a boss, having employees honestly is one of the hardest, scariest, most challenging things that we are not prepared to do in business. But it's essential for us to do if we are going to grow any business worth growing. And so what we need to think about with our employees is how do we create employees that are leaders within our business? How do we empower them to know what to do without being asked or told? How do we create somebody working in our business who we genuinely care about their future, no matter what, whether it's with us or not? Sarah Brooks always says, on our team, are you raising leaders and not leavers? And I think one of the most important steps in order to get there is continually having reviews or stay interviews, as we call them, to make sure that your employees feel seen, heard, understood, and like they have a future with your business. We talk a lot about inside of retail boot camp, the correlation between basketball and business. And that's because I love basketball, Sarah loves basketball. And employee reviews are your opportunity to coach your team just like a basketball coach would. So often without reviews, our employees don't know what game we're playing. They don't know where the hoop is. Right. They think to score is the only obstacle. Right. It's the only object of the game. And yeah, it's part of it. But in order to score, you have to know, well, what direction am I going? What is the quarter that I'm in? What is the score of the game and what play am I actually running? And the only way for our employees to know that is if you, the leader, set them up for success. So employee interviews, the way we look at it here at the boutique Hub, when we have those stay interviews and those reviews, it's really us asking three questions. What's working, what's not, and how can I help? And we stick to those three questions, and anytime a conversation comes to a bit of a dead end, my signature question is, okay, what else? What else do you think? What else? Tell me more about that. And I just keep digging and digging and digging and I want to know everything about what's working, what's not, how can I help? How can we do better? Because a lot of times if employees are missing the mark, it's because they didn't know the mark was there in the first place. They didn't know the score of the game. And we as a leader didn't set them up for success on how to read the play and be successful. And so their failure really is our failure as a leader. So those reviews help keep us on track. And then the other tool that we use when we're doing these employee reviews is we have a quarterly review sheet here at the Hub. And so the quarterly review sheet looks at a couple of things. First, it looks at how is the employee performing in their day to day role. You were hired to, you know, be on the, on the floor. You were hired to take out the trash, clean the dressing rooms, work with the, the guests as they come through the door and make sales. Okay, well, how are you performing there? Great. Give them a scale of 1 to 5. Then we want to know how are you performing with our company's quarterly goals and rocks? So here at the Boutique Hub, we operate by a system called eos, Entrepreneurial Operating System. It comes from a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. And every quarter we set goals. They're called company rocks. And everyone on our team sets personal rocks that are related to the overall company rocks. And so every time we sit down and have a review, we're asking, how are you performing related to the company rocks? And you can score yourself in that same way. And then the third thing we look at on our review sheet is how are you performing with our company core values? And so we have our company core values listed out on the review sheet. And our employees can score themselves on a scale of 1 to 5, how they think they're performing related to those company values. Now these are self evaluations. So the employee brings these into the conversation. We can talk through them along with what's working, what's not, and how can I help? And I think it just takes so much of the pressure off when you're having that conversation because they know how they're performing. Right? It's on paper and you can add and give a compliment sandwich. Here's what's great. Maybe here's what needs a little bit of improvement and here's what's great again and where we're going to go moving forward. So I challenge you, don't shy away from the opportunity to teach and to train and to lead and to mentor and to coach your team because your team is only as successful as their leader. And that's you. So get to it. The employee reviews might be the missing link inside of your business. All right, that's it for today's 5 Minute Friday, you guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you love these podcast episodes. Please subscribe. Please leave us a rating and review if you haven't done so already, share it on social, give us a tag. Let us know while you're what you're doing while you're listening to the podcast and reach out to me personally anytime at AJ Alderson on Instagram. I would love to hear your feedback. All right, have a great day, guys. We'll see you next week. That's it for five Minute Friday, you guys. I hope you found some quick, actionable steps you can put into play in your business right away. As always, if you're not yet a member of the Boutique Hub, I would love to personally invite you to join us. It's where all of the daily conversations happen. The up to date what is working now in the industry conversations, the latest trainings, trend reports, discounts, resources and of course, access to thousands of wholesale brands that you also know and love. So please take take a minute, follow the link in the show notes and we would love to invite you to join us inside of the Boutique Hub.