PUBLICATION CENTER

Is it really a crime if your employees make some signs and graphics for personal use? It isn’t if you set up some ground rules.

By Wayne Willis

I’ve got partners. We get along just fine, but like all partners, sometimes we disagree. They go home and talk to their wives about our little arguments, and the next day everything is fine.

I, on the other hand, prefer the more beneficial approach of writing about the problem and then publishing it on the Web for the entire world to read. It makes me happy and doesn’t annoy my wife.

For the sake of this article we are going to call my partner Don Overmyer. Of course that’s not his real name. Actually, Don is an old high school buddy who’s going to be surprised the next time he Googles his name.

Henshaw Strikes Again

This is what Don did to send me to the keyboard… One of our employees made himself some decals. I think it was some permit numbers for his boat. Or maybe it was window decals for his daughter’s soccer team. Either way, it was really something minor.

But I guess Don was in a bad mood the day he found out about it and he proceeded to jump all over this guy. By the time I heard about it, the poor employee was just sure he was going to be fired. Don was really mad. He was even madder when I told him that I had given the guy permission.

“You said it was okay for him to just make this stuff and take it home? What if everyone did that?! Where would we be then?” I tried to tell him that we would have a lot less scrap material lying around the shop and a lot more happy employees. He just glared at me and went into his office. I think he was calling his wife. And I started thinking about this article.

So here’s my take on the whole situation. We have a lot of employees that have been around a long time. As much as I would like to think that all of our success is due to my brilliant leadership, I am brilliant enough to know that is not the case.

These employees are the reason we are still around. They work Saturdays when we get swamped. They clock out and then swing by UPS on their way home to drop off a package that we promised would get out that night. They do all the little extras that we don’t have written down in their job description.

I feel they have earned the right to have nice reflective numbers on their mailboxes. The same way I feel that the girl who works at McDonalds should be able to get herself a fountain drink during break. No charge. And the guy who works in the shoe repair store can buff up his own wingtips just about anytime he wants. And let the construction worker borrow a tool or two over the weekend so he can build that deck in his backyard.

Don and I eventually came to an agreement. He’s really a fairly good guy. I convinced him that the freebie decals were something our employees deserved. And he convinced me that we needed some rules.

The first rule is to tell us what you want. Just ask. If I catch you walking out of the shop with my materials that you fabricated on my time without my permission, your chances of walking back into shop are slim. That’s called stealing.

The second rule is that the project must be for the employee or his family or some sort of organization that he supports. I don’t mind making signs for the church youth group car wash or a son’s name and football jersey number for a school locker. But I do mind making free Open House signs for your realtor brother-in-law.

Rule three is that we get to choose the material. I’m sure the church youth group doesn’t care if the copy on their sign is red or if it’s cut from that four-year-old roll of purple metallic that we will never get rid of otherwise.

And what if we apply it to the back of those Coroplast signs we screwed up and printed the wrong color last week? Or we could digitally print on that year-old, unsolicited sample roll of white vinyl that is taking up space in the corner of my office.

And the last rule is that the employee works on this stuff on their own time. I hope the kids have a successful car wash, but I really hope we get this work finished and shipped out for the customer that’s actually going to pay us. Work during your lunch or after 5. I might even hang around and help. But we can’t do it on the clock.

So that’s it. We now have a policy to follow that allows the employees an extra little benefit. So it’s not like a gold watch, but it makes them happy and that makes life around here a little more fun. And Don’s wife is happy.

If you’re a boss and reading this I hope you consider a similar plan for your shop. It really doesn’t cost you anything and you end up looking like some sort of big hero, which is nice the next time you need some help on Saturday.

Wayne Willis is the owner of Excel Graphics in Indianapolis.