64 million dollar question....
either your cut out for handling and working with staff or your not.
if i went by what some say on here about how they work and what they do, or not do then its little surprise they have no staff or can't keep them, no one thing will work for everyone - some are motivated by money others flexible hours some its just a bit of cash to help ends meet and nothing more.
have a structure and procedures in place before you take anyone on - write out what you expect of them in way of working, cloths, attitude, time keeping etc...
Lead by example, if you slack off to the cafe for an hour then your staff will do/expect to do the same, same as time keeping and equipment
have a trial period then sit down together and see whats good, whats bad
our longest staff member is now 5 years ( i was hoping for a minimum of 2 ) followed by 4 years, 4 years P/t 2 at 2 years and 1 just over the year
Darran
This is exactly what our management training courses taught us. Added to this is some are motivated by producing good quality service and word of spoken gratitude goes further than a bonus carrot.
If staff aren't motivated, then the first port of call is their manager. As Darran says, you need to find out which button your staff member has and work with that.
Unfortunately, those motivated by money aren't always the best workers to have as they will often cut corners to achieve targets. By setting targets set against target achievement you could be encouraging shoddy workmanship.
This was especially so in the motor trade. The best performing mechanics weren't interest in spending time looking for faults that would waste their time. We had one that even forgot to service the customer's car but charged for it. He did it on a couple of seperate occasions that he was caught for. How many didn't get picked up?
You are looking for an employee who needs money to support his family and pay his mortgage, as well as having a caring attitude toward the customers he is servicing. If he arrives in a wreck of a car which is filthy, then there is every possibility he will treat customers windows etc the same way.
We have a local window cleaning company which is shrinking in size due to impossible to reach targets and poor clean quality. We have twice seen this employee stop at a customer, pull a pile of hose out of the van onto the road and then pull it around to clean the customers windows. He then chucks the pole in the back closing the van doors on the hose and drives off dragging the hose down the road behind the van to his next customer a block away. He drives around the estate doing that.
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