Apprentices

Hiring and training apprentices

Hiring and training apprentices can be a great thing for any company.

To bring new fresh faces into your business can also bring with it a new found energy and great people to surround your existing team.

We always say competition brings out the best in most people and for those that are threatened by it and fail well at least you removed those from your company.

The most important part of the apprentices is having a training program for them and keep up with it, to just hire a new painter and call them a trainee or apprentice but never train them is not fair to them and won't benefit your company in the long run either as they will never turn into your painters of the future.

With our company we do apprentice training each Friday, the first three weeks is a simple one-page training and the third being onsite and hands-on training. We have found it best to keep it short.

The biggest and most important thing in all of this is you experienced painters taking the time to help train these people, if they won't take the time to train them, again they are not helping the company out, the apprentice or themselves, wouldn't it be great to have a team of apprentices who can do a large project under you as the crew leader? You would be under budget, help others out and also make yourself look good. It's a win-win situation.

Asking for a discount

One thing that always drives me a bit crazy is the discount shopper.
Now everyone wants the best deal I understand that I am referring to the one that we spend a ton of time with, discuss the entire project and take the time to present a proposal and then.....

Can you do any better?

This drives me nuts, do you go have a nice dinner and at the end ask if you can pay less?
I equate this to someone not respecting what it takes to complete a job on time and correct, the way they asked for it to be done.

Here is a short video that goes into more detail .

Snow day but not really

A snow day when I was a kid was a day to have fun with friends and not have to go to school and for some adults, this is the same just subtract school and add work in.
But when running a business is there really a day off?
Since I am writing this blog that answer is no.

A day off, while everyone is off, is the perfect day to catch my breath and evaluate things that are moving so fast on a normal day. When no one is in, customers have no demands time moves slow and I can check in on almost every process in our company and trust me there are a ton of them

We are always striving to make each process better for us and our clients, on a typical day they are all work in progress, continually updating, changing and updating.

Wehn things slow down, I can track the success of them, remove some and add others.
I bet the most changes I make come on Sundays and holidays while everyone else if off and it is most likely the least favorite of my employees when they return to work the next day as 100% there will be changes and evaluations

It may be a painting company however, we are really filling the roles of many different trades such as color consultants, psychologists for our customers and employees, human resources, delivery drivers, carpenters, cleaners and much more. Not too mention the sales aspect and accounting.  It seems as if I am pulled in so many different directions.

This is why I am steadfast on my time, I strictly enforce my available time and delegate many tasks to the appropriate person not working on the day to day tasks but managing and training the employees to make their own decisions as I would.

So a snow day to most is fun and relaxing a snow day for me actually means extra work , the normal days are less work as my team is back in.