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Originally Posted by Rob
 Caution! Caution! Achtung! Achtung! This is a business related thread Caution! Caution! Achtung! Achtung!
I have a problem and I would like to know everyone's philosophy on hiring new employees. I will present my philosophy and if you could, let me know if there are any flaws in it.
I am a quality over quantity kind of guy. The way I like to operate is to hire one person to multi-task and pay him/her over the standard rate. For instance; rather than hiring a customer service person, a sales rep, and a designer I would hire a designer that can do customer service and sales and pay him more money. My partner doesn't agree so he hired people to work in certain departments rather than multi-taskers.
The problem I'm running into is that my employees are starting to rattle the "I want a raise" tree and it's not in my budget to give them raises. I have a customer service department, a prepress department, a design department, and a shipping department. Each with their own employees doing only what that department is responsible for. I pay them what I think is the going rate for that respective position.
My designers won't answer the phones, my customer service people can't design...it's causing small rifts. I want to scratch my entire customer service department and tell my designers and prepress to start answering the phones. I can give them pay raises since they'll be doing more work but it will still be less than paying my customer service people.
I'm having a tough decision on what to do and I know it's a stretch, but get some solid business advice from another business owner. |
Our company policy is whoever is around does customer support, whether it's affiliates or site members. We have specific people doing some jobs; but, if there is a death in the family or time off for sickness, even the President sweeps the floors at times.
Our customer support team works six days a week, in shifts, to cover 24 hours per day. But, shit happens. Our programmers are in job specific titles; but, that doesn't mean they can't add text to a page or fix some little tiny html issues.
Our designers have been known to do small tasks which do not involve design, although we keep them pretty busy with design.
Then, we have a specialist for traffic generation, but that doesn't stop him from doing tedious bullshit.
I personally think putting a team together, a well oiled machine..is difficult...and paying them what they are worth is very subjective.
I'm here on a Sunday covering a shift for one of our customer reps, because her grandmother died. It's secretary work.....but, it is necessary. The owner of the company has been known to work well into the wee hours of the night because we had an issue when one of our staff wasn't present, for whatever reason.
I think someone else said it best....it's motivation and drive within the individual.....that makes the difference. If the company thrives, everyone benefits.....at least, that is as it should be.