Managing Your Employees
Hiring and retaining good pet sitters and dog walkers is one of the most intimidating aspects of managing a pet care business. Not only do you want someone you can implicitly trust to look after the pets and residences entrusted to your company’s care, but you also want someone who can maintain good standing with your clients and represent your company and its values.
Once you have found team members that meet these threshold requirements for your business and have proven themselves reliable and good with the pets in their care, the next step is retaining them. Building trust with your staff members is incredibly important and can go a long way to ensuring they will stick around. Still, you also want to be sure you are effectively managing your team as a whole and living up to your fullest potential as a leader.
According to Ben Gold, a council member from Forbes, “Your goal as a manager is to create a cohesive work environment that motivates your team to consistently perform while instilling a desire to improve.” In this article, we will provide you with some essential tips and tricks to improve your management skills and how, with great software like Time To Pet, managing your team can become easier than ever.
Before Managing Others, We Must First Manage Ourselves
A lot goes into leadership, and when you are running a small pet care business, it requires you to wear many, many, many hats. That can put a lot of pressure on anyone, and before adequately leading others, you must first understand what makes a good leader and reflect on the kind of leader you are and what type of leader you would like to be. Even then, that’s only half the battle. The other half is figuring out how to blend these visions of your ideal leadership together while balancing the necessities of your team and developing yourself to align with their individual needs.
To that end, here are some ways you can figure out the management style best suited to you and some suggestions on how to grow into the leader your team needs.
Be The Leader You Like To See In The World
One of the first steps you can take toward being a good manager is to recognize what qualities are widely valued in other leaders. When you think of traits a favorite boss of yours has had, what comes to mind? Make a list and carefully consider if you exhibit these behaviors and, if not, how you might incorporate them into your leadership. And don’t stop at workplace leaders either - think of other authority figures in your life, like government officials, teachers and professors, and other leaders in your community and the attributes they possess. This can be a great launching point for figuring out how you want to best manage your team.
Know Your Enemy, And You Know Yourself
Part of being a good leader is knowing your strengths and playing to them, but it is also essential to acknowledge your weaknesses. By being aware of what situations challenge you as a manager, you can better prepare yourself for when these situations arise. As they say, “Forewarned is forearmed.”
For example, suppose you can be prone to projecting your worry or upset onto others when faced with a stressful situation. In that case, you don’t want to be lashing out at an unsuspecting employee or telegraphing negativity to your entire office team. If you recognize that this is something you struggle with, then the next step is to focus on finding ways to maintain positivity in the face of adversity and practice separating yourself from a situation if the moment calls for it.
That being said, we all make mistakes and can make poor decisions. Should you have a bad interaction with a staff member or cause an error with a client, do not shy away from holding yourself accountable and being transparent about owing up for any wrongdoings on your part. This will not only set an example for your staff member, but it will allow you to use every interaction, whether good or bad, as an opportunity to learn, self-reflect, and grow.
Safeguard Your Time And Protect Your Peace
Just as you should be aware of your shortcomings and how they might affect your staff members as a manager, you must also be mindful of how much you can take on as one person. Pet care is an extremely demanding industry, and it can be easy to be swept away by the demands of pet parents, pet needs, and emergencies in the field. Within all of that frenzy, be sure you are guarding enough time for yourself to see to any of your other managerial and backend duties.
If you find yourself with too much work, find ways to delegate your responsibilities, and be sure to find moments of rest. This goes for you and all of your employees. When you protect your time and peace, you will help to protect yourself from burnout and fatigue, which goes a long way to creating a positive work environment.
Being A Good Boss 101
While you should always be taking every opportunity you are handed to better yourself and strive for improvement, once you have figured out the type of leader you want to be and the steps you are going to take to achieve it, it is time to consider the best strategies to manage your team of pet sitters and dog walkers.
While some approaches are universal across numerous places of employment, some are more favorable to a traditional office environment where everyone sees each other daily. With pet care businesses, however, it is quite common for staff members to rarely, if ever, come into the office and interact with the office team (or each other) face-to-face. This scenario has only become more commonplace in the wake of the pandemic with the rise of remote and hybrid work opportunities.
Coach The Players You Have, Not The Players You Want
While it is essential to have a leadership style that suits you, a good characteristic for every manager to have is the ability to adapt their leadership techniques if the situation calls for it. No two staff members respond to discipline the same way or are motivated by the same goals. Determining what drives team members to do good work and how they best learn goes a long way to helping them correct any mistakes they might be making and encourages them to do their best on a day-to-day basis.
Each staff member is unique, and it is important to honor those differences and get to know your team so you can effectively manage them. You want to be careful that you are guiding your team as they need to be guided and that you are not trying to mold them into someone they’re not. Promoting similar values and having standard expectations for your pet sitters is fine – everyone should be aligned on these things to help best your business grow – but it is crucial to remember that trying to force people to be what they’re not will only hurt them and you in the long run.
For example, if someone is shy and introverted, prioritize one-on-one meetings with them to discover their ideas and opinions, and give them some tips and tricks to successfully express themselves when speaking with other team members and connecting with their clients. Don’t put them on the spot in team meetings or needle them for their shyness, even if it seems to be in good fun, as this will only serve to embarrass them and force them back into their shells.
Help to foster the potential that exists in each and every one of your staff members and honor what they bring to the table. You might be surprised at how they rise to meet (or even exceed) your expectations.
Communication Is The Key
Being a pet sitter or dog walker is a largely independent role. You spend most of your day in your car or bike, traveling from home to home, tending to sweet pups and kitties. Depending on how your company handles keys and route assignments, you may go days without face-to-face time with the office team, and if your clients don’t work from home, you may never run into them as you care for their pets. As a result, they can wind up feeling very isolated and disconnected from the rest of the team.
This is why it is so important that, as a manager, you prioritize communication between you and your team members above all else.
Make sure that you are clear, from the very beginning, what the appropriate channels of communication between you and your team are. Sitters need to know that they have ways to express their worries or concerns and that it is okay for them to ask questions. An excellent way to keep a clear line of communication open between you and your staff members is to schedule regular check-ins, both individually and as a team. This way, they feel as part of a united whole and know they have people to support them, even as they’re out there on their own most of the time.
Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast
In an industry like pet care, you and your sitters are what sell your services. How well you connect with the pups, how reliable your communication with the pet parents is, and how trustworthy you are in a client’s residence - all of this measures how successful you will be in the minds of your customers, and it rests mainly on the shoulders of your pet sitters and dog walkers.
It can be very challenging to retain good people, and no matter how sound your business strategy is, it can all fall apart if you don’t have the right people to enact it. An adaptive management style and good communication with your staff members are not the only things an exemplary leader needs. Another thing a leader needs to succeed is the ability to curate a company culture that not only makes people feel welcome but that also makes them want to stay.
Part of creating the ideal company culture is fostering an environment where values and goals align. In the case of most pet care companies, this relates to providing the best care possible to the pets and pet parents you onboard and expanding that network as far as possible. To do this, you want to promote honesty and open communication between you and your team members so that you can trust that your staff will be dependable and reach out to you should any troubles arise. In return, practice transparency where appropriate with your sitters and admit to mistakes. Setting this example will make it easier for your staff members to do the same.
However, aligned values and a good working relationship can only take you so far. The other part of cultivating a company culture staff members will want to stick it out for are good benefits and a wage worthy of their work. Be fair to your employees and reimburse them for things like travel or parking. The cost of living has gone up for everyone, and no matter how much someone may love their work or the person they work for, none of that will matter if they can’t afford to put food on the table or pay their medical bills. Offer what health benefits you can, and think of different ways your sitters might be able to earn bonuses. Whether it be through referrals or if they were a top earner for the month, find ways to motivate your team and reward those that go above and beyond.
An App Can Help To Bridge The Gap
One of the challenges when it comes to managing staff in the pet care industry is that all staff members have different needs. Each team member has a unique schedule from one another and may even have a different schedule each day, depending on how you staff your visits. They also all work in different geographic areas and need access to important client information like pet details and access instructions, which can also include keys to a client’s home. Add all of that on top of completing their walks and visits, and that is a lot for any one person to manage.
That is why finding the right software solution for your pet care company’s needs is essential. Pet sitting software like Time To Pet, which includes a mobile app for your staff to utilize out in the field, is vital to a team’s success. It can help your team to complete their visits, send visit reports to clients to let them know how things went, access necessary pet and client details, and keep connected to the office team.
With some of the management responsibilities taken off your shoulders and a means to hold your team accountable, it allows you to have the opportunity to oversee your team’s progress and spot areas that might need improvement. For example, with Time To Pet’s messaging and visit report features, you can monitor how your team communicates with your clients and point out if they need to be more detailed in their updates. You might also spot things in their reports that you may not have known otherwise, like problems with a pup they don’t inform you of or clients making requests that go beyond the scope of your sitter’s responsibilities.
Whatever the case, investing in a good software solution helps take some of the burdens off your shoulders, empowers your team in the field, and offers your clients a seamless customer experience. It’s a win-win for everyone!
There is no blueprint for being a good leader or guaranteed strategies for managing your team. People can still disappoint you, and mistakes will still happen. But by leading with your best foot forward, always striving for self-improvement, and carefully considering the needs of your team, you will become the best manager you can be. In turn, you will invite your sitters to become the best version of themselves they can be, and you will find yourself with a much happier, much more successful team.
