Have you ever sat down and thought about what a good day looks like for your company?
You know what the bad days look like. Employees don’t show up for work. A truck or mower refuses to start. An infuriated client calls. Materials are late for a job you’re already behind on. The list can go on and on of all the ways your workday can go wrong.
Knowing what a good day looks like in your operations does two things – it helps pinpoint areas for improvement and highlights just how many days actually are going well. As humans, we have to deal with negativity bias, where we notice the bad more readily and tend to dwell on these events as well.
Defining Your Good Day
It sounds incredibly simple to define a good day. You just don’t want anything to go wrong. For that to happen operationally, you have to be a well-oiled machine.
Think through how often projects are being completed on schedule. Are employees working efficiently? How often is equipment downtime impacting your team’s ability to work? Working efficiently helps ensure your days are good because you’re able to execute to budget.
Also, consider how frequently accidents or near misses occur in your business. If your team isn’t being safe, then your good days are probably few and far between.
In your ideal workday, you’d also probably like your customers to be satisfied with the services provided and happy enough to leave a review. Consider the quality of work your team currently provides and if it warrants that kind of response from a client. If you think you’ve earned it, don’t be afraid to ask for positive feedback on your business’s social accounts.
Sometimes you might not have a good day as a whole, but there are still good things that happened throughout it you should celebrate. This could be as simple as learning something new. It’s often said the day you stop learning is when you begin decaying.
Other wins could include bringing on new talent, hearing and giving words of appreciation, and simply making an impact by helping an employee progress in their career.
Create Good Days for Your Team
Sometimes, your days are so chaotic because your schedule, or lack thereof, is chaos. Sit down with your team members and discuss what a perfect workday would look like for them in their specific roles.
Talking through their pain points can bring things to your attention you may not have been aware of. Are crews parking company vehicles in a way that makes it easy to get out in the morning? Do you have bottlenecks preventing other teams from executing their part of the job in a timely manner?
When planning this out with your team, approach their schedule from what should be done in the morning, mid-day and afternoon. For instance, set a goal for how long it should take your crews to leave the yard in the morning. Similarly, having a set order of operations for how each site visit should go during the day can help your team with their efficiency and quality.
Another way to set the following day up for success is to cover what tasks should be done in the afternoon upon return. This includes talking about what work wasn’t accomplished, what jobs are coming up, and having trucks and equipment ready for the next day.
Approaching each day with organization and proactiveness can help increase the number of good days you and your team experience. While you’ll never completely eliminate fires from popping up from time to time, approaching your days with a clear outline can help you take stock of how many good days you’re having versus the bad.
