BLUF: I’ve been unexpectedly handed responsibility for a struggling employee at my church and am looking for advice.
DETAILS: I am the property manager for a 200+ year old church (historic landmark). When I took the position I cautioned the pastor that I didn’t have a lot of bandwidth, nor am I handy, but I am highly-organized and good at vetting vendors and negotiating for services. He agreed that this was fine. To my knowledge that was the extent of my duties other than serving on Council.
Flash forward 4 years. Some of the Council members believe the church custodian is underperforming. He’s an older man with some disabilities (unable to climb a ladder, missing fingers on one hand, etc.) I was informed that according to the by-laws he was my responsibility (news to me). I suspect that they may be moving in the direction of firing him and none of them want to do it. They've openly discussed what will come next.
I pushed back. I told them management was a big ask, it requires:
- A time investment which I specifically had said from the start would be difficult for me.
- Frequent feedback with at least a 3:1 ratio positive to negative to allow the employee a chance to correct and improve
- At least 6 months of official coaching before releasing them – IF it comes to that.
With that I tentatively agreed.
I'm on good terms with the custodian. I spoke to him and got his buy-in for my management. I also acquired a copy of his duties.
- My first task will be to go over those duties with him to find out how frequently he believes each item needs to be done.
- Task 2 will be to determine what constitutes a “good job” for him and document that so all parties involved know what the expectations are.
- After that, metrics.
- ?
Open to suggestions. Are there specific steps you think I should take? Are there suggestions for metrics? What are the most-relevant podcasts for this situation? What would you do?
Some ideas for metrics
Belief and evidence can conflict. How do you know he’s struggling? That should suggest metrics, plus directions to take conversations. Maybe some Council member just wants faster turnaround with cleanups after receptions in the church hall?
Custodial duties — keeping a place physically clean — seems to me a natural part of keeping a property safe and usable for its intended purpose. So I understand why others on Council feel it appropriate to hand this to you. Oftentimes I see some light handyman or other maintenance tasks falling to the same person. Is that the case for this role? If not, neither of the disabilities you mentioned seem obviously relevant to cleanliness.
#1 will uncover whether there’s disagreement on what’s to be done. If part of the job description is new to him, or long delayed, you get to figure out how to adjust. For instance, you might put window cleaning on an external vendor and changing lightbulbs in the high sanctuary ceiling on a different maintainer.
Keep Council apprised of how it’s going, for him and for you. These are useful data for deciding on future actions for Council to take.
In reply to Some ideas for metrics by Joseph Beckenbach
Thank You
Thank you my friend. One of my first goals is to get the employee and Council on the same page as-to the expectations - both in terms of outcomes and frequency. "I'm just not sure he's doing a good job." is a direct quote from one of the members. First question is - what's constitutes a good job? What are the measurable and observable outcomes we're looking for? And how often does each item need to be done? Creating a checklist for results and frequency that I'll go over with him and when I have buy-in I'll take to Council for the same. It could be as simple as they have different ideas for performance atm. Once that's sorted I can start providing feedback - positive and negative - and documenting if this starts getting turbulent.
One of my favorite Demming quotes - "Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better."
Initially I want to avoid deciding their future employment based on back-channel communications and expectations that he never has an opportunity to address (or even be aware of). We'll work on performance from there.