Off the Cuff: Evaluating and Compensating Production Employees, Part 1

How do you nurture a happy and productive workforce? One proven way is with an employee manual that outlines policies and basic expectations as well as criteria for getting a raise.
Jan 7, 2008

By Mark L. Venit, MBA

I remember, as a 9th grader, facing for the first time in my life my first real boss giving me my first performance evaluation. Having three months of evening and Saturday work under my belt, this 80-cents-an-hour stock boy at Hobbyland in Philadelphia in 1962 was being reviewed by the boss. I was excited and terrified.

I felt I'd done a pretty good job so far, but I didn't know if my opinion of my performance would be the same as Mr. Weiser's. A dime-an-hour increase was on the line!

As the boss explained that my three latenesses meant he wouldn't give me the raise, I felt about as low as a kid could get. It wasn't fair. After all, my latenesses weren't my fault — or so I thought — because the extracurricular activities I was involved in ran overtime. Mr. Weiser lectured me that he didn't care why I was late, only that I was, in fact, late. Three times! In three months!

I learned several lessons during that encounter that stayed with me for life. The first thing I learned was that there were rules at work and I was expected to live up to them. I felt, however, that since I wasn't told all the rules, not getting my raise was downright unfair — the lesson of which is: Life is not always fair. I also learned that only if I played by the rules and did what was expected of me could I get a raise. Three months later, I got that dime-an-hour raise.

Thirteen years later, it was I who was in a position to give or deny raises. But I saw to it that my employees had a rulebook, an employee manual that outlined policies and basic expectations as well as criteria for getting a raise, things I had learned in personnel management courses in college.

Forty-five years after my career as a stock boy ended, I can tell you that employees in most apparel graphics firms still don't have basic written policies to refer to when it comes to how one gets a raise.

So, when do most employees in screen printing and embroidery companies get a raise? The answers entail a variety of factors, such as:

a)    when the employee cannot wait any longer for more money (whether deserved or not) and finally gets up enough courage to ask the boss for a raise;

b)    annual length-of-service increases (if the employee and/or the company remembers when they're due and actually does something about it);

c)    when the boss is in a good mood at the time a raise is asked for and that business conditions are generally good at the time as well;

d)    when an employee has performed some extraordinary effort — like working furtively and putting in ridiculous hours to get a big order out the door in time to meet a critical deadline or by performing some other miracle that saved the day or saved a fortune for the company;

e)    some other reason triggered by the boss's gratitude or altruism or some other epiphany in the boss's mind.

Regrettably, most companies in our industry — and most small businesses in general —don't have written, well thought-out policies. I estimate that only one in 10 companies in our industry has an employee manual worthy of the term and that raises in 90% of apparel graphics companies are awarded on a less-than-equitable basis. Pay raises or denials of raises remain essentially largely matters of what's happening at the time the subject comes up, how good the boss's memory is, what kind of mood the boss is in, how things are going for the company and who specifically is asking for an increase.

What results from not having written policies includes:
•    "teacher's pet" raises (for "special" employees);
•    significant discrepancies in wage levels for employees doing the same type of work;
•    an atmosphere where employees feel unappreciated;
•    losing good workers whose skills and overall performance will be missed and costly to replace;
•    potential litigation arising from discriminatory practices;
•    and an adverse workplace environment that fails to recognize and reward initiative, loyalty, dedication, and quality performance.

But there is a better way of handling employee performance and compensation and avoiding these unproductive situations. In Part II, which will appear in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of the Impressions Newsletter, we'll explore implementing an Employee Review System that you can use to evaluate employee performance.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He is also the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can reach him at markvenit@cs.com.