My desk is positioned facing the door with a view of the main office. I sat in my office, leaning back in my chair, hand on a mouse, gently tapping my index finger against the desk; the blue light of the computer screen assaulting my eyes. The light brightens the dimly lit room as I sit pondering the effort needed to fill the weekends number. My computer plays music in the background, a repetitious thumping of the base and treble take control of my mind and I am entranced in this endeavor.
Our number of security officers needed at the stadium had reached a thousand and there was a significant number of strategies to accomplish the task. The idea that you can have a large employee base and operate it like a cattle call is not the way to impact service delivery in this environment. Team members throughout the building have received training in their areas of responsibility and receive constant reminders through briefings and paperwork to ensure they understand the expectation. Having a large team is more like operating multiple facilities, as each area operates with a unique responsibility.
My managers were bustling in the adjoining offices, the printer humming loud with the click and the clack of the paper feeder as it burned through copies. They were preparing the information sheets, deployments and timelines. Our responsibility as mangers is to provide direction, leadership and care to our employees. Team members come to work with an understanding of the expectations we set for them in our actions. When we spend the time on the front end to provide materials that strengthen the training expectations, we reinforce our expectations in understanding.
The strategy begins with understanding where we are and where we want to be. I stared at the screen of my computer, searching through the available employees, shift needs and anticipated attrition. I look through the previous games for trends. It was always silly to me how many employees were available, but not in the schedule. I was certain that if I could just talk to these people that they would work. Our attrition each week was high but a consistent percentage, so our target to reach the overall need had to reach the higher number.
I call the team into the office to work through our numbers, as it is always a full team effort to reach our goals. The hustle and bustle grinds to a stop as we reset the strategies for the game. One by one, all our managers gathered in my office, chatting between the group and knowing most of what I was going to say; the gaggle is a common occurrence in my office.
I start with a quick open, joking with the group but preparing them for a very important conversation. They sit intently, everyone with a notebook and a pen. The meeting does not start until everyone has something to write with. The number of young managers that have come through my program who have told me they have a photographic memory is silly, but they have all tried without success to sit through one of my meetings without the pad and pen. Our meeting today is important. The strategies I have will require everyone to accomplish specific tasks and, with luck, the numbers will come through.
In strategy, there is common sense and common practice. The first is an opinion of what we expect and the second is an action-based uniform delivery of that expectation. The team gathers in my office so we could define the expectations to increase our numbers in practice. Anytime a manager would use the phrase common sense I would rebuttal, “common sense is only common when its common”. Ultimately, we build what is considered common sense with each other in how we implement the processes uniformly over time.
Our structure was built on this idea: by discussing what my expectations were, assigning the tasks and addressing each area of improvement as a piece of the whole. A thousand people is far too large with too many variables to address it in one piece. We looked at the problem in chunks. How many people do we need in each area? Who is available? How do we communicate with our team?
It remains my belief that people get a job in events because they want to work. How we communicate our availabilities to the available dictates the majority of the participation. I believe in a multi-touchpoint approach to communicating. We set several strategies in motion: e-mail, outbound phone calls, and in-person.
The phones stayed active the entire week. The office was loud and chaotic as the team implemented the plan. Outbound calls were being made, reaching out to the available employees based on those that worked within the previous month and working back to 3 months of inactivity. Emails were sent to all available employees. A survey message was sent to narrow the field of available employees and target the immediate responses with an outbound call. We hosted an in-person schedule opportunity that allowed people to come in and speak with a scheduler. We addressed our need from all angles and got a response that was quite impactful, scheduling well over twelve hundred team members.
Our management team put in the effort necessary to accomplish what I thought was a successful push. We were significantly above our expected attrition early in the week, with time to spare. In my mind, we were prepared for the event with the number of staff expected. As were true many times in history before me, overconfidence is the quickest path to failure.
I woke on gameday, with a spring in my step. I was fully scheduled with room to spare. Our client was expecting a good turnout, as I had boasted of our upcoming success in the week’s meetings leading to the game. I parked my truck at the office that sat just off the main road leading into the docks of the property. It was a decent walk, but the weather was comfortable, a little humid with pending rain later in the day. A breeze gently whistled through the trees on the outside of the parking lots and whipped into wind as it flanked the large corner of the convention center bustling down the road toward the northeast gate of the stadium.
I imagined the numbers coming in, the pre-event walk that I made every gameday, and the conversations that needed to be made prior to our managers deploying to their areas. The idea that we were in good shape in numbers was one variable in a very difficult event. Each area has activations that have to be operated on a timeline that is strictly maintained. Briefings must be made, staff notes, and post orders distributed. All these processes must be delivered while these team members enter through one location, are searched, issued uniforms, and directed to their areas of operation. I always took pride in the work done on the front end of the event and enjoyed the brief conversations with our team members as they entered the facilities for work.
I walked the service level concourse making the turn on each corner to ensure team members and equipment were in place according to the timeline. I spoke to each of the fifty-plus officers that comprised the early morning service deployment. Greeting a team member in the morning and shaking their hands gave me the opportunity to confirm responsibilities and engage them in the process. I looked forward to the smiles of our team members and knew all of them personally.
One of my clients stopped me this day, and like most events asked, “What is your concern today”? As was my response each preceding event, I responded, “My concern is the unknown, and uncontrollable.” I take pride in this statement, as I have based most of my effort in controlling all items I can, but never has a statement been more prophetic.
I stood at the entry to sign-in to greet the team as they entered; smiling and welcoming, I paced the line. My muscles tensed and nerves tightened as time rapidly disappeared. I had an aching feeling in my gut as the people filed in through the door that we were going to be short of the number. I calculated the math in my head as each minute passed and our crowd slowed in entry. Participation was tragically low, and my confidence coming into the day hurt the more I tried to rationalize the outcome. The minutes flew off the clock and we were scrambling to get the gates open. We moved officers from one gate to the other, interior security to the exterior. We hustled to get through the gates with the expectation that we would redeploy them into the stadium as entry slowed.
My fear was realized just before doors opened to the event. We were significantly short with well over 25% attrition on the scheduled number. We came into the event with more people than we had scheduled all year long.
I was beaten by this number and the defeated feeling that sat heavy in my gut affected my entire day. I put in the effort to stay ahead of our challenges, moving people all day long to ensure the critical positions were all full. The weather never turned to rain until the end of the event, but lingered all day long contributing to the gloom of the day. Our managers ran all day, never slowing until the last guest had exited the building.
I spoke with my clients who operated our facility as partners in our success and it was devastating to acknowledge that I had failed to deliver on the number that I was so confident. I was humbled in the moment as I described the feeling. The hardest part of this was not knowing what happened. My heart pounded in my chest as they unleashed their opinion upon me through a barrage of disappointment. My head hung lower on that walk back to my office than I can recall to that point. The questions ran through my head that have hit everyone in their hardest times at work. Was I the right guy to fulfill this position? Did I do everything I could to be successful? Was my overconfidence warranted?
In a moment of clarity, the questions switched from self-pity and self-doubt to the questions that set my path for our success moving forward. Why was the no show rate so high? What can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again? In this moment, my failure lit a fire in my chest to find out what happened and fix the problem. My pace quickened down the sidewalk next to the convention center toward my office. The wind blew heavier than the morning breeze and whipped my tie into my face a few times that annoyed me into removing it. I folded the tie into thirds and tucked it into the pocket of my blazer. I walked quickly past the exiting catering and parking staff that were just getting off work, focused on getting to my office to start fixing my problem.
I walked in the door and opened my laptop that lay connected to the dock on the left corner of my desk. The Windows icon takes forever to open, as my mind races through the bullets of required effort needed to move forward. I stand up and shed my blazer and untuck my shirt, rolling my sleeves up to my elbow to allow my arms to breath as I impatiently wait for the computer to load. I have so many things running through my head of what to do and my angst is getting to me. For all intents and purposes, we were successful in the management of the event. Our number was less than requested and we had to work two or three times harder to accomplish a successful event, but we did operate at a high level. The number controls my mind and I am angry that I did something wrong. My computer chimes a familiar Microsoft tone that it is ready and I sit to evaluate the number.
Our number of no shows rose to an incredible 25% with over three hundred no shows. I sat looking for influences on the day. The weather was fair with a possibility of rain that never came, we had worked fully staffed through heavy rain earlier in the season. The team was doing well and won the game that day. I went through every scenario in my head that I could to figure out what the problem was and then it hit me: ask the employees. A novel concept in trying to figure out what was wrong with the event; call and ask the people who didn’t show why they didn’t show.
I hear the golf cart arrive with the boisterous voices of managers that just worked a 13-hour day. They are loud and animated in their conversations. They worked hard and I am certain are thankful that day had ended. They walk through the door as they left the cart, loud. My eye twitches and my mind begins to take me down a road a manager should not go: blame. I want them all to feel the way that I do, but my sense of purpose gets the better of me as they smash the silence of the office. This was a 12pm kick game and ended a little early, so they were ready to commiserate in the day’s misery over suds and wings at the local bar.
I bring them into the office and explain my reason for not going with them this day. I have my mind wrapped around an idea and I need the evening to myself to accomplish my task. I thank them all for the effort they put into the day. There had been many times before this that I felt it necessary to put all the chips on the table, but this day was different. I had not found out why our attrition was so high, and there is a very good possibility that there is a variable we did not accommodate for. We will all discuss the next day what our move forward plan is, but that evening, they had earned a reprieve from fault with their effort. I tell them good night, shut the door to my office and sit down at my desk.
I write down a few questions I want answers to and pick up the phone to start calling the no show list. I call every phone number, reaching less than fifty percent but leaving a message to call me back on my office number. I ask the basic question: Why did you miss work today? I received some of the most informative responses, “you don’t pay enough”, “your schedulers stop calling when I am scheduled”, “I never get to work where I am scheduled” to “what are you going to do about it” and a handful of legitimate excuses. To their credit, everyone that I reached seemed to be genuinely honest regardless of how inappropriate I found their response.
I hung up the phone from my last call just before 9pm with a full understanding of where we went wrong. From 9pm until after midnight, I looked up every scheduling record for the past 3 months of all these employees. I found a pattern. The majority of these people never had the intention of working, but scheduling for the event stopped the phone callers from reaching out to them. This created a benefit for scheduling without the intent of working. When there was an event they were truly interested in, they called and scheduled. We removed any negative from scheduling and not showing up as they were still able to schedule for the events they wanted, even after a no show. Ultimately, we created our problem.
There was a combination of issues but in the end, many of the employees were the wrong people and when we reinforced their negative behavior, we discouraged our good employees. We had an accountability problem that had to be systematically restored. As managers, our responsibility is to be accountable for our actions and hold those that report to us accountable for theirs. The challenge in this is that, while everyone wants the benefits of an accountable environment, nobody wants to be held accountable.
Our Monday morning starts early with an 8:30am meeting. We start every day at 9am, but Monday it has always been imperative to get an early start, so we do not lose the day in preparation. I was in the office early, writing out the plan for our move forward and the meeting crept up on me. I eagerly get the managers together and bring them into my office.
I start the meeting with a smile on my face and a statement that does not match my exuberance. “Yesterday we failed”. I stay silent for a moment watching the faces in the room try to connect my words with my demeanor. “Your effort was awesome, and I am going to need it again to fix our problem.” I followed up and witnessed a sigh of relief in the expressions of the faces that stare inquisitively at me. I called all 300 employees the evening before and put a handful of data in front of everyone. We started that day with an accountability plan that will propel our office beyond anything we could have imagined.
We closed out the season lowering our attrition every game, but we placed our eye on the end of March for a full reset of our accountability strategy.
We set a plan in place to re-interview every employee before they could move on to work with us. At the end of March as our season began to slow down, just before a major convention at the beginning of May, we inactivated the entire employee base. The idea was to bring all employees into the office for a 100% review of their file with them and discuss our disciplinary action plan. I did not want anyone to be able to say that we changed our processes without informing them. We created a memorandum that detailed our process and had every employee sign the document for their employee file.
Upon meeting with a manager and reviewing their file and employee record, the employees were categorized into two groups “active employees” and “former employees”. We activated nearly 800 employees and removed approximately 300 over the month of April, from 10am to 8pm daily. Those “former employees” were notified of their separation and the reason, then directed out of the building. All “active employees” were ushered into my office for a face to face meeting with their Branch Manager. They had earned their opportunity to discuss their concerns with me in a setting that encouraged their participation. I wanted every one of them to understand that I was approachable and actively engaged in making their experience better. I met them 5 to 10 at a time for about 15 minutes per group every day until it was completed.
I set a new payrate prior to beginning the re-interviews, which gave me the opportunity to give everyone a raise at the conclusion of this process. The rates also had a schedule based on tenure, giving our employees a goal to reach. I sat intently, writing down every concern and suggestion. The meetings would have been for nothing if I had not been able to show our employees the results of their effort. At the close of the month, I took my notes and combined them into an action plan of things I will do to make our employee experience better. I made it a point to create a notification plan for every item that I changed out of my notes. We celebrated the changes as a team and our employee feedback was through-the-roof positive. They truly appreciated being listened to.
My moment of clarity occurred on a walk back from a defeat. I hurt inside; filled with self-doubt, thinking about my failure when I made the change. Fix the problem, not the symptom. Our problem was in accountability: both of our managers and our team members. We were reinforcing the wrong thing and listening only to the people making the decisions. When I finally took the steps to rebuild with employee input, I saw the greatest impact.
Accountability is knowing that the responsibility one has excepted results in a negative or positive impact on the completion of that task. As a leader, I have gained more from showing people the benefits of their participation and being accountable to my employees for what I say.