Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Strengthen Your Jewelry Repair Team
As with any business, your jewelry company’s success starts with the people on your team. Strengthening your jewelry repair team gives your brand the foundation it needs to increase production quality, efficiency, and ultimately, revenue. So how do you strengthen your jewelry repair team from the ground up? Here are five steps you can take right now:
Hire Some Rockstars
Your jewelry repair team is the engine in your business machine; you can’t complete repairs without them! Be sure to build a solid group of individuals that exhibit excellent communication skills, high levels of efficiency, and the ability to produce quality work at the right pace. Finding the right fit might begin with examining your goals: what is your desired output, what salary can you offer, and what kind of values do you want to see embodied in your repair team? Do you want your team to exhibit motivation, determination, and positivity? Once you feel confident about the soft qualities you’re searching for, put the word out to let people know you’re hiring. Tell your industry contacts and vendors and post job listings online. Make sure to hire a manager who you can trust and empower to lead your repair team to greatness.
Create a Culture You’re Proud Of
Before making jewelry repairs you’re proud of, you need to establish a work culture that you’re proud of. Culture specifics can differ across businesses; success means something different to everyone. A healthy team culture might include collaboration, comradery, and respect, for example. Whatever culture you envision, be sure to lead the way by exemplifying what you want that culture to look like. On any team, culture starts at the top. Make sure you and your deputies are all demonstrating that asking questions is encouraged, sharing and accepting criticism is important, and support is always available.
Find a Task Assignment System that Works for You
To create a healthy workflow that supports every member of your team, you’ll want to find a good method for assigning tasks. It’s important to make sure everyone on your team is aware of their responsibilities and workload so they can prioritize accordingly. Giving your team clear and thorough assignments helps them perform their best. Providing a direct system for assigning repair orders is also helpful from a management perspective; knowing what everyone is working on will help you establish a manageable amount of tasks for each team member and can give you an idea of how much time is spent on each repair. A good task assignment system creates a sense of responsibility and accountability for each team member. At the end of the day, this increases your team’s efficiency and output.
Provide Recognition and Constructive Feedback
Giving regular shout-outs for great work is an easy way to develop a supportive group mentality and reinforce quality standards. Celebrating small wins builds morale, creates a sense of community, and makes everyone feel like their work is important. In turn, this sets the tone for your team to recognize each other’s work and helps to foster a sense of teamwork.
And there’s always room for improvement — everyone’s work can benefit from some external assessment. Providing honest feedback is an important way to make sure that your employees feel confident; with direct evaluation, they won’t have to guess what you think of their work. If you struggle with providing feedback effectively, consider giving a compliment sandwich; start with a compliment, clearly state where there’s room for improvement, and then end with another compliment. The positive reinforcement helps the recipient feel validated and appreciated, which will help them accept constructive criticism.
Create a Framework for Communication
Getting and keeping everyone on the same page is one of the most important elements of a strong jewelry repair team. With all your employees connected and aware, your team is going to be more productive, which will boost your revenue. Open channels of communication (that run both ways up and down the chain of command) and foster a culture that supports asking questions and checking in. This works best when there’s a demonstrated method or approach; standardize the process for posting progress updates and sharing feedback so that everyone can stay informed, regardless of where they sit in your organization’s hierarchy.
Reshyne was created to help jewelry repair shop teams run like well-oiled machines. Our software makes it simple to assign tasks so that your repair team can work efficiently, facilitating smooth and easy communication between your employees, your vendors, and your customers. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how you can use Reshyne to strengthen your jewelry repair team.
