How Global Helped One Week Bath Renovate 100 Bathrooms in 6 Months
For eight years, Matt Plaskoff, founder and CEO of Plaskoff Construction, has been using DiSC as a management tool. When he began planning a new company, One Week Bath, which specializes in high-quality bathroom remodeling in—you guessed it—only one week, he decided to really put DiSC to the test by turning to Global Leadership and Management Resources to help inject it into the company culture and sales process.
The results blew expectations out of the water. Employee turn over has been virtually nil—a money saver for a startup with 30 positions—and the busy company renovated over ...
...100 bathrooms by the halfway point of 2005.
DiSC is a behavior assessment tool that provides insight into employee leadership strengths and styles. The assessment is based on the two sides of behavior—“nature” (inherent) and “nurture” (learned). DiSC examines these two behaviors in relation to four employee characteristics: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance.
Plaskoff has given DiSC to “hundreds” of employees. Here are four lessons he’s learned along the way:
Lesson #1. Create a wish list
Typically, companies create job requirements for each opening. But One Week Bath decided to use DiSC to create ideal profiles for every position within the company.
“Using Disc’s behavioral charts, we pinpoint the behavioral style we want for every employee in every position,” Plaskoff says. ”We’ve shortened the application process by targeting candidates more effectively."
Lesson #2. Trust the results
One Week Bath tests candidates and compares the results with the DiSC profile created for that particular position and can see if they’re the right fit. “We’ve learned that we need to trust the science behind DiSC,” Plaskoff says. When there’s a problem with an employee, Plaskoff usually discovers that not enough attention was paid to the DiSC results at the time of hire.
“If you consider the hiring process, training, and stabilizing new employees, a bad hire can cost $50,000 to $100,000,” Plaskoff says. “With DiSC, our turnover is virtually nil.”
Lesson #3. Build a unique culture and language
One Week Bath has each employee’s DiSC assessment taped on their office door. The benefits are amazing. Everyone knows each others behavioral and communication style and, if needed, can adapt their behavior to create a productive work environment.
“I work quickly,” Plaskoff says, “but if I’m speaking to an employee whose DiSC shows them as being more methodical, I know I need to slow down. Since that employee’s position profile asked for a methodical person, the payoff in adapting my style is usually huge.”
Lesson #4. Find the right customers
Early in the creation of One Week Baths, Plaskoff realized that he could use DiSC not only to increase efficiency within the company, but also as a stellar sales tool.
One Week Bath can recognize the behavioral styles of potential customers and its sales team can modify its behaviors and communication styles to better suit the client. “We’ve shortened our sales process and the time savings has increased revenue because we can recognize which customers are ours and which are not and know how to better communicate with all of them,” Plaskoff says.
Want to try DiSC for free? Take a complimentary DiSC assessment.
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BY-THE-NUMBERS
- Only 22% of employees in small firms (2-9 employees) are satisfied with the benefits that they receive through their employer, compared to 44% of employees in the largest companies (25,000+ employees).
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- Nearly half of all employers believe their benefits plan is comparable to that of their competitors, while 39% feel their plan is better.
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MetLife Benefits Benchmarking report
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The Global Leadership team has been assisting leading CEO’s, Presidents and Executives in achieving goals and taking their great organizations to higher levels for more than twenty years. Hundreds of organizations have had the benefit of using Global’s tools, systems and processes to rewrite their expectations of profitability and control. Visit us online at www.glamr.com or call us at 818-782-6880.
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