Chapter 15: Managing People

"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people."

John D. Rockefeller

The "people factor" is what makes a service successful or unsuccessful.  Staffing has always been challenging, and still is.  90% of a manager's time goes to handling staff and staffing issues.  There are outside forces that apply influence, like ADA, EEO, OSHA, state regulations, unions, and the organization's HR department, in addition to the internal process of determining needs and recruitment/selection and retention/assessment.

In 2006, workplace, generational demographics were:
Boomers- 44%
Gen. X- 34%
Millennials- 12%
Veterans- 10%
As of 2012, Boomers have already retired and many are still retiring. So, replacing staff is a big concern for current managers.

HRM staffing procedures:

• Determining needs
• Job design
• Recruitment
• Selection
• Orientation and training
• Evaluation
• Coaching and Discipline
• Resignation and termination

From Tina:
Recently, the Great River Regional Library branch that I work in had two library aide positions open up.  We went through the process of recruitment, interviewing, and hiring two new aides.  After going through the entire process, the aides began working, but after only two days on the job, one aide had a major meltdown and quit.  This came as a complete surprise to all of us, because the new hire had been a volunteer and was really excited to be joining the team.. Once she started working as an employee things quickly changed though, and she unloaded on the branch manager about how "unprofessional" she felt our staff was, because we were "too friendly" with patrons, some staff were not dressed professionally, in her opinion, the library was "too noisy," and the summer volunteers were "too young and should not be helping with shelving" (because that was her job).  I think this incident really demonstrates how a candidate can seem perfect for a position, and in this case she was even known to all the staff, but once hired, you can never really be sure what will happen.  She was hired at a very chaotic, high stress time of the year, summer, and it is noisy especially on Tuesday afternoons when we do summer programming.  We are a small community and we are very friendly with our patrons, and we have a lot of teen volunteers in the summer who help keep the books on the shelves.  Apparently this was not the new aide's idea of a library, so she quit two days after she started.  She no longer volunteers for us, and has not come into the library since this happened.  The regional manager visited our branch manager and found the complaints to be unwarranted, and HR was not happy because of the work involved in hiring a new employee, but acknowledged it was better to find our sooner rather than later in this case.