Change for the better is never guaranteed. . . .learn about what you have

December 7, 2021/Business/

I’m a baseball fan. . . have been since I served as Batboy for the local town team when I was about eight years old. I was fortunate enough to get to see my Minnesota Twins baseball team win the 7th game of the 1987 World Series in Minneapolis. So, it won’t surprise you that I was excited to see Minnesota sign their star centerfielder, Byron Buxton, to a long-term contract.

But this article isn’t about baseball. . . .it is about employer/employee relationships. The Buxton/Minnesota Twin contract saga has went on for two years, but it was something in this article published Saturday in the Minneapolis Tribune that made me think of funeral home owners and employees and their sometimes “not on the same page” agendas.

According to Twins management the “key moment” in the negotiations came when they realized that both of them — the Twins organization and the Buxton family — wanted the same thing. “Buxton’s wanted to be here and the Twins wanted him here”. Once the sides actually realized that, the negotiations were pretty easy.

So, that reminds me of the dynamics of day-in, day-out funeral home operations. Do employees know why they want to be in the position that they are in. . . do employers know why they want to keep that employee? I’m of the opinion that both think about the compensation too much. . . . employees think they are not getting paid enough and employers think those same employees are being paid too much.

I learned over my 33 years of managing a funeral home that there are as many reasons that an employee wants to be employed at a certain place of work as there are employees themselves. Yes, some want the highest wages possible. . . but for most, at least from my experience, that is not the number one priority. I think funeral home owners and managers need to sit down with each employee and ask them about what they want most from work.

I morphed into an employer who told employees you won’t get the highest wages here, but you will get benefits, a flexible work schedule, profit sharing, professional responsibilities, paid vacation time off, and a boss who will listen to concerns. I found, when I sat and visited with employees, it was generally never about wages, their priority was always something else. By the way, in 33 years of management I never had a funeral director leave my employment, other than at retirement.

Specifically, I found that funeral directors like being professional funeral directors. Not many liked sales, especially of such things as Preneed insurance or post-service monuments. In deference to those items, we hired special Preneed sales counselors and partnered with a local monument sales rep who we could feed leads to, tell our families of, and work out a compensation agreement with him so the funeral home could prosper somewhat on the leads we fed him. And, by not having these duties. . . our funeral directors had more time to be funeral directors. And, being more conscientious and concentrating on our at-need clients, I would opine led to more business over time.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

And we found a way to put on-call teams into three person, three week scheduled teams. On Week 1 you were on call five nights — Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Week 2 you were on call two nights — Tuesday and Thursday. And on Week 3 there were no nights and it included all day Friday off. You worked a lot on Week 1, but Week 3, with the four-day, 20-hour work-week (9-3 each day with an hour off for lunch) was a breeze. Everybody, employees and the boss seemed to like this schedule better than a non-creative “every third day, every third weekend”. It was a schedule that came about only because I sat down with employees and asked what we could improve on.

So, just like my Minnesota Twins thinking that Byron Buxton “only wanted more money” and was willing to leave town to get it, make sure you know what the other side is looking for so you can help find it.

Here’s a partial list of things I found that employees sought outside of higher wages:

Decisions — the ability to be able to make “Wide-Latitude” decisions without asking the boss, but within a scope of acceptable confines. This might also be the ability to schedule a couple hours “out of the office” during the day to take in a child’s piano recital or school conference in addition to the decisions made with funerals.

Non-Cash Benefits Menu — Not every employee has the same needs. Offering a dollar amount of monthly benefits and then a menu of offerings including health care, child care payments, guaranteed issue life insurance, and more let each employee fine tune the benefits to their advantage.

Recognition in the Community — Our funeral home had a history of giving away 1% of our gross revenues to local philanthropy. So, if we did $2 million in business, then $20,000 was given away in a quiet sort of way to what I determined was an appropriate organization at the time. Over time, our full-time employees each got to pick these charities and a letter mentioned that that particular employee had selected this particular charity. So, it wasn’t only the funeral home, but the employee who received recognition. This helped many employees actually make a financial contribution to an organization they were volunteering with. . . such as a coat drive, or elementary school reading fair, or the Junior Achievement class. In addition to giving the employees some recognition (after all, they had helped bring in the revenue) it gave the funeral home a much wider net to cast our donations among then just those that I was familiar with.

So, my point again. . . . .brought out by the Buxton contract negotiations. . . . it is difficult for owners or managers and their employees to be on the same page unless we know each other a little better. Have these talks with your employees. . . . don’t let them be complaint sessions, but let them be “thinking, how can we do this better, what works for you” type talks.. . . . I think the operation will run much better when you all know what page you are on.

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