To have an energizing employee team, you must have positive staff members that are passionate about your pet care mission.

Do your employees energize you or suck the life out of you?

Today I enjoy my role as general manager of Urban Tails because my employee team energizes me. In hindsight, there was a simple formula to the transition of our employee team from vampires to Energizer bunnies.

Step 1: Know Your Destination
What would an energizing employee team look like in your pet center? Take a few minutes and think about your answer – and even better, stop and write down your specific vision. My vision for Urban Tails was to have a positive, fun environment based on teamwork providing high-quality pet care. Most importantly, no drama!

What is your role? For Urban Tails, a shift in culture was required, and it started with my modeling the vision for our managers and supervisors. I focused on the positive, turned complaints into opportunities, and changed procedures to clarify responsibilities. Our internal complaints related to departments working together, so this process built teamwork and improved communication. A part of this step was my letting go and allowing my managers to do their jobs – no micro-managing. I was clear about my vision and expectations and then stood aside and allowed them to manage. We started with zero tolerance for negativity and drama. A lot of time was spent sitting staff members down together to talk through issues face-to-face. Our message was consistent; they did not have to like each other, but they did have to work together respectfully without creating drama.

Change is hard for most of us, so be prepared for some bumps in this journey. You have to be prepared to lose some existing team members that are not a fit for the new culture. Be open that these changes are a positive for your team. Raise the bar on your expectations of performance of all staff, from the basics of attendance to following procedures always. Be consistent and follow through with corrective action steps when staff fall short. On the flip side, go overboard in recognition and praise of small steps in support of your new vision.

Recognizing that new team members would be needed, our focus was on hiring the best candidates. The key to our success was a focus on pet care as a great career for full-time team members. During the interview, we talked about our formal training program. Candidates looking for a “job” were not a good fit; we hired team members that wanted to work in pet care as a “career.” This simple shift in our view of pet care as a respected and important career was one of the keys to changing our culture.

Step 2: Plan the Journey
Do your employees have a clear map to follow to reach their destination? Job descriptions, employee handbooks, and operating procedures are the primary tools needed in every business. Employees need to know what is expected from them in their roles; the foundation is their job description. A great policy is to give each new employee a copy of their job description. Confirm they have read and understood the job description by having them sign a copy that you keep in their employee file.

An employee handbook details employment policies and your expectations of their daily performance in your business. Operating procedures are your rules and guidelines for pet care. As with the job description, get signed confirmation from each new employee that they have read and understand the content of both of these manuals.

The handbook and procedure content is only as good as the enforcement of the policies, and this is where we often come up short. After we spend time creating this great content, it is critical that you consistently enforce compliance from all employees. This goes back to step one where you outline the energizing employee vision for your center. Do your handbook policies and operating procedures support this vision? We found revising our policies and procedures to be a great step in clarifying our expectations to the employee team. Requiring all employees to read and confirm understanding again will help you enforce the culture change needed in your center. We took this extra step and did group retraining sessions for all employees and clearly raised our bar of expectation that all policies and procedures be consistently followed.

Do you have the right team members? To have an energizing employee team, you must have positive staff members that are passionate about your pet care mission. One or two negative staff members can make this an uphill battle and, in my experience, are not worth the extra effort. As you hire new staff, listen carefully to the tone of their responses to your interview questions. We implemented a policy of not hiring any candidate that said two negative things during the interview. This could include complaints about a previous employer or job duties. Limit your hires to candidates that find something positive in their life experiences. It is easier to train staff on how to provide great pet care than to change their outlook on life.

Is each team member prepared for the journey? How complete is your new hire training program? Do you provide an orientation to your business, including services offered, pet handling policies, client policies, and other team members? Do you include technical training on pet health and body language? Is your on-the-job training (OTJ) formalized in checklists to ensure consistency and completeness of training? Are your OTJ trainers good in their role? Training staff is an investment of time and money in our businesses. The performance of our team and the quality of care provided can be linked directly to the quality of this investment.

Make the move to energizing employee teams in small steps. First confirm that your foundation documents reflect your current vision and have each employee sign off. Next take a fresh look at your interviewing and hiring process, and outline qualities of the candidates that meet your vision of the perfect team member. The third step is to confirm your new staff formal training process provides consistent and complete information for their journey to success in your business.

Step 3: Coach to the Finish
Do you have a quality control process? In a perfect world, trained employees would always follow procedures and never make mistakes. The reality is that we are all human, so utilizing quality control (QC) checks on key processes is an important tool in providing high-quality pet care. Each pet care center must decide the processes that warrant a QC check. Additional decisions include how frequently each process is QC’d (every time or spot-checked) and what position is responsible for performing QC checks.

In addition to preventing critical mistakes in pet care (e.g. improper feeding or medications), QC checks can point out opportunities to revise procedures or retrain staff. When numerous errors are made by multiple staff members, we have to stop and evaluate if there is a better alternative to achieve our desired outcome than the current process.

Accountability is an important part of the QC process. Staff members should clearly know their role and responsibility (refer back to step 2); the QC process is the accountability function. It is important to take action when your QC process reveals a pattern of errors with a specific employee. You must decide if that action is retraining or staff corrective action.

How is feedback provided? Staff need ongoing feedback and coaching on their job performance. It is not fair to wait until the end of their probationary period or annual review to provide feedback. We all benefit with more frequent informal feedback from ongoing QC. Coaching helps to develop staff by fine-tuning their performance and teaching them more about pet care. This contrasts with corrective action, which is perceived as confrontational and negative by the staff member.

A good QC process provides timely feedback before bad habits can develop and keeps all staff on the same page. All of us prefer coaching discussions to the negative corrective action meetings.

Is success celebrated? Recognizing employees for their successes is critical to keeping good performers and building an energizing employee team. Taking time to focus on work above and beyond expectations is important. Be sure to recognize the behavior you want repeated; good teamwork should be on your list. A personal acknowledgement and thank you from the owner is recognition that many staff enjoy. Celebrating success does not have to cost a lot of money. It should be specific and sincere, recognizing the behaviors you want your new team to replicate.

Susan Briggs is the founder and co-owner of Urban Tails, a large multiservice pet care center in Houston, Texas. One of the first cage-free sleepover and dog daycare centers in the country, Urban Tails evolved into a training resource for pet professionals on safe daycare operations. Staff training is a passion for Susan, resulting in the development of tools available to pet care professionals and Crystal Canine, a training and consulting resource for the pet industry (www.crystalcanine.com). In 2008, her first book Off-Leash Dog Play: A Complete Guide to Safety & Fun, co-authored with Robin Bennett, was published. This successful book inspired a Dog Body Language poster set and pocket guide tools for pet professionals using the traffic signal safety colors. It was also the resource for Knowing Dogs Staff Training, a two-volume “staff training in a box” program on dog body language and group play produced in 2012. She authored her second book, Counting Noses: Accounting and Financial Management Guidelines for the Pet Care Industry in 2009, which is available as an ebook download from the Crystal Canine website.

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