Should you bribe or bully your team?

Running a propane retail business is like driving a racecar: you can conceivably do it yourself, but the odds of winning improve if you’ve got a motivated team working in the pits.

Your team of bobtail drivers, bookkeepers, service personnel, installers and salespeople is essential to keeping your business operating at top speed. But as any NASCAR driver will tell you, it isn’t how many warm bodies you have standing around in the pits; it’s how motivated they are to put forth extra effort to ensure you finish first.

Most company owners agree that employee motivation begins with the hiring process. If you hire good people in the first place, the battle is half won.

Attracting and then keeping good help is a growing problem for our industry and beyond, however.

“You always have the problem of finding good people,” says Eldon Bultman of LPG Delivery Service in Elkhart, Kan.

John Holloway, owner of Tri-State Propane in Hiwasse, Ark., says he tries to hire known quantities.

“I’ve lived in this area my whole life, so I mainly hire people I know personally. I try to hire the type of person that I know is safe and easy to get along with,” says Holloway, who has 10 employees.

“I look for good people people. I sit down and have a personal interview and try to get a feel for how they’re going to associate with the customer and how they feel about safety, and we have a pretty thorough interview.”

Holloway also runs thorough background checks and always contacts references.

Once they’re on the team, the next motivational step is making sure they understand what’s expected of them.

“I just sit down and talk to them about what the job entails,” Bultman says. “I tell them what they’re expected to do and what time I expect them to be here, how many hours they have to work. Then I go over the work they’re going to be doing.”

Constant feedback during the crucial first few weeks on the job helps too, according to Laurie Gore, who with her husband, Rick, owns and operates Mountain Propane in Port Hadlock, Wash. She says they give new employees a flexible period to prove themselves on the job.

“Some people learn faster or slower than others. Usually, by the time 60 days is hitting close, we know whether they’re going to make it or not.”

Long-haul Motivation

Once the probation period ends, the fun begins as you and the no-longer-new employee settle down to the daily grind of business. Sometimes, it seems, the employee’s main goal is to see just how little effort needs to be expended to earn a day’s pay.

Often, it’s not the employee who grossly misbehaves that presents the biggest problems; it’s the one who routinely performs at a fraction of their potential that saps profitability. The bad character draws attention to himself and can be terminated; the under-performer hides in the weeds.

“It’s when they stand around waiting for someone to tell them what to do that I don’t appreciate it, especially when there are obvious things that need to be done,” says Gore.

Generational differences are sometimes the culprit, according to Bultman.

“Normally speaking, the older workers value their job a little bit more than the young ones,” he says. “It’s a trend of the times. A lot of the young ones figure that if they lose this job they’ll just find another one.”

Gore agrees. “Older employees have better work ethics because the younger ones seem to expect things to be handed to them for nothing. The older people know they have to work for it or they won’t get it.”

One way to face this problem head-on and keep productivity up is to constantly reiterate what needs to be done and who on the staff is supposed to do it. It’s important to recognize each individual’s state of mind, though. Holloway does this during daily meetings.

“We all talk,” he says. “We have a meeting every morning in the driver’s room. I can get a feel if they’re not feeling good that day or if they got into it with their wife and are mad at the world.”

Gore stresses interpersonal communication, too. She reports that they have regular staff meetings during the summer when there’s time, but handles communications one-on-one during the hectic winter months.

“We have some written policies to cover the basics, but we try to keep open communications and do things verbally on a constant basis,” she says.

Another positive motivator is the example set by the boss. Working side by side with the employees every day serves another important purpose, too.

“Since I work hand-in-hand and go out with them, I see how they’re working,” Holloway says. “We haul gas and set tanks together. I get in there and dig ditches with them. If they see me doing it, they know what they’re supposed to be doing.”

Short-term Approaches

Negative motivation is probably a contradiction in terms, as anyone with teen-age children has observed.

Punishment such as docked wages or a probationary period may temporarily stop the offender who is grossly negligent, blatantly dishonest or rudely intransigent, but the change in behavior is seldom permanent.

About the best that can be done is to clearly communicate your desires and the consequences of further misbehavior.

“We look at each person as an individual,” says Gore. “If somebody starts out not doing very well and we give them more instruction and more feedback and they improve, we’ll keep them. If they keep doing the same thing over and over again after they’ve been instructed two or three times, then we usually let them go.”

Bultman is also big on direct communications.

“We just sit down and have a talk. I tell them this is what they have to do,” he says.

But there are downsides to termination, he points out. “I usually hesitate firing them because the first thing they’re going to do is file for unemployment. They love that.”

The ultimate motivation tool, nearly everyone agrees, is a stack of documents signed by the treasurer of the United States. Money works well as a reward on both a long-term and short-term basis.

Bultman doesn’t pay bonuses, for example, but is more than willing to give raises to employees whose performance brings in new customers or otherwise contributes to the company’s bottom line.

Gore says that her employees who perform above and beyond the call of duty are given cash bonuses.

Holloway likes to hand out one-time rewards, too.

“If we pick up a new customer, I try to give the driver a bonus,” he says, although he believes they work to sign up new accounts for another reason as well.

“They like to see us grow and do well, too,” he says. “That’s just job stability for them. The money certainly doesn’t hurt anything, either.”