novacpa wrote:Collect the cell phones - give em' back at lunch, collect them after lunch, give them back at end of work day.
This is absolutely dreadful advice. If you treat employees people like children, they will act like children.
ItDepends wrote:Cell phones (endless), messy food everywhere, docs everywhere, falling asleep sitting up, giving crazy tax advice to non clients on the phone, sorting away emails that need action and creating open loops, misfiling downloaded docs, asking clients for document passwords when they have already been clearly provided in the previous email, ignoring voicemails, not reminding clients about tomorrow's appointments again and again, ask the covid question..."why did you hang up again without asking the Covid questions"?. Etc. It never ends.
The cell phone complaint... If you are angry because employees are looking at their cell phone in front of clients leading to an unprofessional image, or if looking at their cell phone means that they are not accomplishing a reasonable amount of work in a reasonable timeframe, that seems like a legitimate gripe. Otherwise, I tend to associate that specific complaint with bad/micro managing. That said, when I link it with the rest of everything else you wrote, it does seem to suggest that there is a pattern of the employees not taking ownership and pride in their work.
Lucky we check everything. But what's the point of having employees if we have to check everything? Same amount of work, but more overhead costs.
You have admin staff to do work but you check everything? So they know that if they screw up, someone else will be there to fix it for them, so they have no reason to take any level of ownership in the job they're doing?
Honestly, if you make them more responsible for the quality of their work (especially for the little things) you will drive more care in their work. Sure, there will be mistakes made, but expect to pay a few penalties for a few mistakes in advancing a larger goal.
ItDepends wrote:Still, it might be easier and more profitable, considering my own (lack of) management skills to "automate" and downsize instead of to "delegate".
I'm not exactly sure how you plan to "automate" things to remove the human element... in my experience, instead of a human managing another human it becomes a human managing a computer program written by someone else, and at least you can change a human's behavior. Yes, if your portal is connected to your software programs it helps, for example. And I have loved using a calendar solution that automatically sends my clients an e-mail reminder 24 hours ahead of my appointment. But automation rarely is as good as promised.
My gut would be to fire the one admin who sent the payroll tax returns to the wrong client
and hid it from you, if not today, then right after busy season. During the summer there is a reset of expectations on both sides with the remaining admin employees. They need to change (and part of this reset means that every issue up to a certain date is as if it never happened) but you need to change, too. Come up with about 3 overarching, 30,000 foot goals that the firm needs to achieve with your partner. Then you have the entire firm add a couple subgoals for each goal that will help achieve the stated goals. Of course your big issues with them (which generally seem to be that they need to improve professionalism and the quality of work being done) are also included with your employees' suggestions in those subgoals. Once you have the subgoals set in stone, everyone can then together create a number of small objectives for each subgoal (cleaning the office and maintaining documentation organization would be examples of specific objectives to attain).
You pick a few objectives for everyone to meet over a period of time (a month or two). If the staff has an idea that might help meet the goals, be willing to invest a reasonable amount in these projects -- not everything will work exactly right, but so long as everyone is learning and moving forward it's fine. An 80% win is a win. You then have one-on-one meetings after the time period is over, and you talk about how you and they did on meeting those objectives, and you select some new ones to accomplish over the next month or two, lather rinse repeat.
This is, of course, a series of meetings and it will take some time to develop trust. You outline the project in meeting 1 and give them some time to think about improvements in your management style and the subgoals. You need to give them a fair amount of time to come up with a list so that you can have a reasonable discussion as adults. Not everything they say will be valid but not everything will be invalid, either, and you don't downplay or naysay their criticisms of you in that meeting. Know that your ego is going to take a bit of a beating, but it's for the bigger good.
That reset of expectations has to be a real reset. And the reset of expectations does come with a reset of compensation. They will have a higher level of responsibility moving forward which would be commensurate to a higher base pay package. There may be opportunities to grow in their admin position where they take on additional, higher-level work. And their contribution to meeting the firm goals means that not only will they keep their jobs, they will participate in the firm with a bonus structure. You want these employees to advance firm goals as much as the partners do, so you need to make them participate in the benefits as well. Not all rewards need to be specifically monetary, and you can use additional vacation days or "close the office early on a Friday" as part of it.
Isn't this going to be expensive? Not at all, because you have a pool of money from what you're not spending on Admin 3. Your other two admins can tell you if you need to hire a part-time person to do some tasks (such as answering the phones) or not, or maybe Admin 3 can just be replaced seasonally. The way you're going to accomplish this is by moving some duties from them to partner level so that the remainder of Admin 3's work can be shared among the other 2. And the reason you're going to have the time to take on the additional work is because you're removing yourself from doing things that you don't need to be doing (like reviewing minor things).
That is, if you think you have the ability to become a better manager. Have a go if you think you're hard enough. Otherwise, if you don't think you're up to it, then maybe you need to cut your losses and run.