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| Ask yourself, haven't I made a mistake or two throughout my career that I wish I could take back? I know that I have, the people I work for have and the people who work for me have.
Another question to ask: has the employee had the proper training, knowledge and experiance to prevent this from happening, or is this my fault for expecting them to be able to do somthing that they were ill prepared to accomplish with the training and ability that they had?
I had a boss tell me years ago that if mistakes aren't made through the course of the job, then nothing is being learned. "if you don't make any mistakes, you're not doing anything"
His point was that as long as nobody got hurt and that the same mistake was not made again; something was learned from the experiance; it was all part of doing the job. He wanted his employees to be thinking about what they were doing and make the best decisions that they could on their own; they also knew that they were responsable for . He said that he did not have time to micro manage every decision that everyone made every day and that he knew that mistakes would be made. He also did not tolerate anyone who he determined to be "brain dead", as they would repeat the same mistakes over and over; they did not last too long with the company.
If it is a good employee who you like having in the operation, and unless there are better potential employees beating on your door to come work for you; write it off as experiance learned and discuss with the employee what may have caused the accident and what can be done to prevent it in the future. If it is a good employee, they already know that they made a mistake and they understand that they cost you money.
Good employee's can be hard to find. I have a neighbor who I help with harvest every year; he is large enough that he needs a full time person year round, but he can be difficult to work for as he does not notice that he makes as many mistakes in a day as the people who work for him, but he has little tolerance for others making mistakes and does not stop to think about what he is saying to them after a mistake has been made. In the past 13 years that I have helped him, he has had two people who lasted more than one year, but less than three; his last really good guy left in February, since then he has had several new guys that have lasted from between half a day and three months; just during the month of August this year he went through 15 potential employees looking for one that had some ability.
From another perspective, There are other ways to cost big $ in a farming operation that have nothing to do with equipment operation, picking the wrong day to market can cost you more dollars than damage to a piece of equipment. Do you remove person who made the marketing decision from the operation because in a split second they cost the operation what could be the total replacement cost of a piece of equipment. | |
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Major Screwup ... What's your First response?
