Social networking is very much in vogue today. For a guy like me who was born in 1986, I tend to think of social networking as something that is done strictly with a computer. Occasionally, I meet someone who reminds me that the “social” aspect of this might actually involve physical interaction with another human being.

As it so happened, I had one of those moments this morning, and even managed to learn a great recruiting practice in the process.

I was speaking to a supervisor at a cable installation company, and she told me that they had been having trouble finding a young person to fetch cables. She said the wage was good for the work offered, but that the young people they had spoken to seemed to believe that the work was beneath them.

So, after hitting a point of frustration, she spoke to her mother. Her mother then put the word out through her network of friends by speaking to them. That’s right. Talking. No internet, which means no facebook, no MySpace, no Ning, no Twitter. You know, actual conversations. (I’m told that these occurred regularly in the dark ages before computers.)

The day after speaking with her mother, the supervisor had two people working for her who had called after their grandparents had told them to inquire about the position. One still works there today.

This is a perfect example of using connectors. Connectors are the people who can put you in touch with young talent. They know who works hard and they know who doesn’t. They know people who need work. They know young people. If you can build a network (online or off) of connectors to put you in touch with young prospects, you will soon be wondering what to do with your surplus of talent, instead of scratching the bottom of the barrel.

In this case, finding a couple young people who would help out was even easier because grandparents have a different influence on their children than their parents do.

To illustrate, the supervisor asked me, “If your grandmother called up and asked you to look into this for her, would you say no?”

She leaned back smiled because she knew my answer:

“Hell no, I wouldn’t say no to my grandmother.”

A memo recently came down from corporate at my retail job, instructing us on the new order in which our desk drawers should be arranged.

After cutting the profanities out, my initial response sounded something like this:

Who the hell do you think you are!? You are a thousand miles away, you’ve never seen my desk, you’ve never done my job, and you think that you have a better idea than I do of how the drawers should be arranged? What kind of idiot are you?

Don’t you think I have better things to be doing than justifying your paycheck by coming into compliance with a new schematic for drawer arrangements? You know, stuff like my job, which I now have that much less time to accomplish thanks to your ridiculous organization fetish.

So long as you are completely incapable of correlating drawer arrangement with job performance, and I know you are because my filing system has nothing to do with my job duties, how about you keep your mind off whether my TPS reports are in the top or bottom drawer and actually try to make decisions that will make a real difference to this company’s operation?

If you need some sort of suggestion for real work to do, I can point out a dozen different pieces of broken or obsolete equipment in my office that I’d like fixed or upgraded. Maybe you could start there. Or are you just the Executive Vice President of Drawer Arrangements? Please, God, don’t tell me you make six figures.

If you ever wonder why your front-line employees hold your corporate office in contempt, look no further than these edicts for ridiculous, meaningless changes.

One night at a retail store, I was working with a guy who had just graduated high school. He was working on the dock, delivering items to customers. Unfortunately, the sales staff had sold a single item to two customers. Now, it fell to this young employee to tell the second customer that he would not be receiving the item.

He had asked me to hang around because he was afraid the guy might take a swing at him. Seriously. When he approached the customer, I was afraid he just might. The problem was that the employee was so nervous that he was grinning, looking at the floor, and almost giggling. I realized that to someone who didn’t know him, it looked an awful lot like he was amused by the situation. Quite to the contrary, though, he was downright terrified by the upcoming interaction.

To his credit, the customer expressed his dissatisfaction as politely as one could be expected to in such a situation, then asked for a manager. Problem solved. But watching this did get me thinking about the ways in which young employees expect to receive negative feedback. I know it’s an unpleasant situation on both ends, and while it tends to be sticky regardless of the age of the employee, I think there are a few things managers should keep in mind when dispensing this kind of feedback.

1. It’s not the end of the world.

No, this is not a demand from my generation to yours to care less about workplace screw-ups. This is me asking you to show your young employees that mistakes can be fixed, and that front-line workers should put their energy into solving problems instead of worrying about your reactions to them. In other words, put the mistake into perspective for your employee. This may be someone who’s working his first job and hasn’t had many opportunities to learn that everyone screws up. It can be quite reassuring to have a manager tell you that life goes on.

2. What’s done is done. Don’t rub it in.

One night, I hit up a drive through to pick up some chicken nuggets. I did this going much too fast, skidded on ice, and impaled my station wagon on a concrete post. The next morning, when I called my dad to tell him this, his reaction was, “I’ve told you you drive too fast.” Thanks. The gaping hole in my rear quarter-panel told me that, too. Don’t do this to employees who have come to you with a mistake. If they know it’s a mistake, there’s no reason to remind them of it.

3. Help me fix it.

This is the single most important part of the entire process. If I come to you with a mistake, odds are good I’m looking to get it fixed. Helpful suggestions toward this end are much more useful to me than anything else you could provide. In fact, if you do not provide steps to solve the problem, it’s much less likely that I will solve that problem, and it’s even more unlikely that I’ll come to you with problems in the future. I want to know what I need to do to make it right. Stick to concrete, easy-to-follow instructions, and before you know it, I’ll be back on track.

4. Show me how to prevent it.

After it’s all said and done, it might be worth it to sit down for a few seconds, look at the mistake, and see if there is some little bit of training that can be done to prevent this mistake in the future. Again, if you’re able to focus on concrete steps to follow instead of your disappointment, your employee is going to learn that when a mistake happens, action should be taken.

Remember: Young employees, especially those who are new to the workplace, will follow your lead if you establish a norm. Make your norm actions and solutions, not bluster and blame.

Anyone who works within a large corporate structure has gone through the pain and anguish of an audit. One small part of preparation for audits involves making sure that your employees can answer a couple questions about specs or the company’s mission statement.

Asinine nature of this particular aspect of the audit aside, the worst part of this is that they always the wrong questions. “How many tomatoes go on a sandwich?” “To whom should you fax your TPS reports?” “What is our company’s mission statement?”

Who the hell thinks that these are the questions you should be asking young employees? If they can’t answer the first two, they should have been fired a long time ago. If they can’t answer the last one, but they’re still good at their jobs, who cares?

There are questions about your company that your young employees should be able to answer. If they can’t answer these questions, it means they don’t understand their impact. Even the best intentioned employees in the world can’t possibly make good decisions if they don’t understand the consequences of their actions. The answers to these questions should be an integral part of your training program.

1. How does this company make money?

Understanding every minute detail of a business model is unimportant to a front-line employee, but knowing that the company makes its money in a certain way, from certain people, because of certain processes is powerful knowledge. If, for instance, you make mega-dollars off of extended warranties while your margins are slim for the products themselves, make sure your employees understand this. Their understanding of the way the company functions will affect their view of their role within the company.

2. How do we get customers?

Your young employees should understand that TV spots aren’t the sole reason customers frequent your establishment. If you’ve never taught them the dollar value that can be created by positive interactions, a good environment, word-of-mouth, repeat customers, or any of the dozens of ways you earn customers, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

3. How much does it cost to run this business?

Don’t bother handing your new high school employee your P&L. With a young employee who is just trying to make enough to fill his gas tank, you’re simply throwing out astronomical pie-in-the-sky numbers that don’t mean a thing to him. Instead, appeal to baser instincts by way of simple arithmetic. If everyone needs to understand how much beef costs you, find ways to break that cost down. Calculate daily, weekly, and monthly numbers. Put those numbers in relation to an employee’s real life. For instance, two weeks of beef loss might equal one car payment. Or, if food loss eats 10% off your profit, explain to a young employee that the business has essentially taken a 10% pay cut. Calculate out the new hourly wage of the employee if his pay were reduced by 10% to show him a meaningful difference.

Another way I like to look at this one is to ask, “If I paid $100 for labor from noon to one p.m., and I took in $110 dollars, how much money did I make?” So long as you pay rent, utilities, costs for supplies, taxes, and any of a bevy of other expenses, the answer is guaranteed to be less than $10. In fact, you may well have lost money. I also like this question because it segues so nicely into:

4. If I pay you $50, and you make $50 for me, what should I do?

If your young employee says, “Give me a raise!” you need to teach him that the correct answer is, “Fire me.” Employees need to produce more than they are paid for the business to make money. I know you’re supposed to be running a business, not teaching economics. But dispensing a few basic lessons in subjects like profit, loss, supply, and demand may prove more valuable to you than you could ever imagine.

5. Who pays your paycheck?

This one is an oldie, but a goldie. You don’t pay your employees’ paychecks. Your customers and clients do. They provide the money. They provide the need for the service your employees’ provide. Be sure your employees know that.

HOMEWORK

Ask your young employees these questions. I’m interested in knowing if their answers make you weep, laugh, or beam with pride.

10. “You need to work Saturday. And Sunday.”

9. “You did a terrible job on this, Wihera.” [It was Johnson's project.]

8. “You did a great job on this, Johnson.” [It was my project.]

7. The word “planogram.”

6. “My boss is going to be pissed at me if this gets screwed up. Consequently, I’ll be pissed at you.”

5. “Someone took a dump in the urinal. Go clean it.”

4. “We’ve instituted a new dress code. I don’t know the specifics, but I know it involves fishnet stockings.”

3. “Turn off that rock ‘n roll racket. Then, put in this Kenny G album.”

2. “You’re fired.”

1. “TJ, You have beautiful eyes.”

Like I said, employees will tell you when they’re checked out. Look for any of these changes in behavior:

1. Explicit admissions of being checked out.

“Dude, I am so checked out.” Most folks won’t simply say this to their boss. It’s more likely to overhear it. But that doesn’t mean some people won’t just say it to your face. I suggest getting rid of those people.

2. Decreased attention to detail.

Sandwiches were supposed to be made with three tomatoes. This is for taste and food cost. I cared deeply about this. Until I had turned in my two weeks’ notice. At that point, I rewrote the spec: “Sandwiches should be made with as many tomatoes as I find it convenient to grab.” While this is likely inevitable for people who have turned in their notice, it’s something you should be weary of in employees who claim that they intend to hang around.

3. Sudden apathy toward customer interactions

Despite everything you may have heard, most young employees care about doing a good job. So, when customers are unhappy with the job we’ve done (or worse yet are making it very clear that this is the case), we tend to be annoyed by it. Part of it is that we’re pretty certain we’re good at our jobs. Sure, the customer is always right, but that doesn’t mean he has any idea what’s going on. So, when he puts on airs of knowledge, this can be very frustrating. Unless, of course, you’re completely checked out. Then, you just give difficult customers a 1,000 yard stare and eventually they’ll stop bothering you.

4. Newly Iffy Attendance Habits

If an employee was once the most punctual and dependable of people and he quite suddenly develops problems with his attendance, it’s very possible that he has checked out. Punctuality, at the barest minimum, is a young employee’s way of keeping bosses from harassing him. If he no longer cares enough even to prevent that, odds are good he doesn’t care about your bottom line either.

5. A startling combination of the preceding factors

Any of the above on its own could be an indication of something else. For instance, someone who has adopted a live-and-let-live approach to customer interactions might not get frustrated when someone accuses him of incompetence. An employee might suddenly be late frequently if his bus route is changed. But if you start noticing a number of these together, you’re getting a lot of data that suggests it may be time for you and this checked-out employee to part amicably to avoid a less pleasant departure in the future.

I’m curious:

Managers: What is the worst way you ever had an employee quit? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail (tj@generationwhy.com).

Employees: Tell me about your worst departure from an employer.

I don’t really like horror, but these stories can be fun to hear.