employees, employee-compensationI’m the founder of a small tech startup with limited private investment, I hired 4 skilled staff to build our first product.
Each member has a profit share agreement in our first product on release, maturity of this agreement requires staying with the company for some time after release of the product.
One of the employees who has a significant share, treats the project like a cruisy 9-5, takes regular days off to look after kids and averages ~ 3 sick days a month (without any current chronic illness).
I feel like it is generally accepted that a startup requires a different mentality to working for an established company. This however is much harder to express in writing, or definitively argue that their efforts are not up to scratch given the situation.
How should I approach the problem without turning the person in question hostile?
EDIT:
To clarify my description of the work ethic was not specifically related to hours, but more an attitude of not being invested in the outcome of work and more the process of sitting at a desk.
I don’t expect people to work more than normal hours, our hours are completely flexible. The problem is when that freedom allows everything else in their life to take priority over work.
Like get to work at 11:15 late for meeting
Go to lunch at 12
Leaves at 4:30 to pickup kids sheepishly
Comes to work next day half asleep and works long hours to make up day before, isn’t productive because of lack of sleep from freelance job worked late on.
This combined with frequent days off reduce the actual work output to much lower than I expect.
The pattern is this person is spreading themselves too thin to have energy left for much work at all. The productive number of hours cap in a day can be consumed by non work related things too, I fear too many are being consumed on other things to output a decent amount of work.
Echoing the other two answers, expect hard work and results rather than long hours, and organize yourself accordingly. Adding to this…
One of the employees who has a significant share, treats the project like a cruisy 9-5
I’m not even sure you’re entitled to expect employees to put in more than the legal work week.
Even if you are, you should actually want your other employees to work less. Your productivity rapidly drops to zero after 8h of programming. You’re usually damaging your code base after 10h. And you’ll burn out before you know it if you regularly do 10h+.
Also, keep in mind that your employees are engineers who won’t stay around with a fussy boss who expects them to work long hours when they can get the job done in less. If you want A people around, you most definitely do not want to be that boss.
takes regular days off to look after kids and averages ~ 3 sick days a month (without any current chronic illness).
A few pro-tips if I may: 1) Kids get sick too. 2) Years with the kids aren’t coming back. And 3) significant others seldom stay with partners who constantly work more than 8h days.
Adding in light of your edit, since it was unclear in your initial question that your employees were working on the side…
If your employee is doing freelance work on top because he’s not getting paid enough to make ends meet, keep in mind that he has a family to feed and probably all sorts of other financial obligations that you might not have yet. The situation will resolve itself with a capital injection from an outside investor – pay him more on the spot to get his full time commitment.
If on the other hand it’s just for bonus revenue, then yeah: You’re right to be somewhat annoyed and Matthew’s answer lays out the correct steps to take IMO.
In my experience, one of the biggest difficulties to overcome in any sort of business, and particularly those in startup stage, is communication. Make sure everyone is on the same page about what’s expected.
Some people just aren’t used to working 24/7, which is pretty understandable, and it isn’t a malicious move when they avoid it, it just doesn’t occur to them that that might be what’s expected.
So talk with your team, as a whole. Don’t call the person out, but just talk about how many hours you need to put in to get to launch by your target, and how much of that can be done from home versus how much needs to be done at your place of business.
On top of that, and as a developer with a reputation for being fairly efficient I consider this one really important, talk about what work you want to get done. Don’t focus on how it’s getting done, just make sure it is.
Is this employee putting in two-hour days and getting done what everyone else gets done when they work all day? If not, focus on that. It’s hard to materialize time spent on something, but it’s really easy to look at a list of to-do items and see that someone is underperforming.
Once you have that tangible evidence, again, bring it up as a group. Talk to the group about what you need to get done and when, and make sure responsibilities are very clearly laid out for each person. If this employee continues on and meets the goals, then is there a problem? Focus on that (for example, “they’re missing meetings” might be a problem that’s still around). If the person doesn’t meet goals, then talk to them about that specifically.
Don’t focus on how the work is getting done, focus on that it’s getting done. Then the conversation is a lot easier to form.
If they get hostile when you point out in a polite way that they aren’t getting as much work done as you need to launch, then it might be time to question whether they’re bringing as much to the team as you need them to.
There really isn’t a problem with people not being at work long hours. The problem is when things don’t get done. In order to ensure that, you need to have a performance management system in place along with your incentive plan. For instance, taking 3 days or 10 days isn’t a problem (as long as its within company policy) if the employee is consistently meeting deadlines and doesn’t let him or herself hold up work for others.
If you already don’t have done so, rolling out a performance management system where goals are assigned, monitored timely and employees are held responsible in a meaningful way (loss of reward, loss of employment) that would go with the reward system already in place may work.
It is very difficult for a founder to let unconscientious behavior pass and on some levels it should not be tolerated as it can grow and spread. The fact that you are not going to find employees that all have the same level of drive and loyalty and passion for the company vision makes it hard as well. What can be done, is identify the behaviors that are detrimental to the team. . What you can do is have a system that can objectively communicate expectation and filter people that fall below par. A good performance management system can easily do that.
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