Recently I went to my local McDonalds drive-thru window to grab a quick breakfast sandwich (I’m kinda partial to the Egg McMuffin with sausage and cheese). I’m not sure if your local McDonalds is like this or not; but ours has an employee whiteboard located directly behind the drive-up window. It usually has great employee instructions and announcements like, “Be sure to wash your hands after using the restroom” or “Only 3 pickles per Big Mac”… But last week, the manager had written some scribbles about the latest customer satisfaction survey. Here’s something (close) to what it said:
Store cleanliness – 85%
Employee friendliness – 82%
Speed of service – 83%
Yeah! We passed!
My first thought was, “We passed?” What a way to set the bar high! Do they not realize that nearly 2 out of every ten people thought their store was not clean; their employees were not friendly; and the service was slow? Does this manager not understand that if my Big Mac is cold, next time I’ll just buy a whopper? Or if there is dried ketchup and straw papers on all the tables, I’ll probably opt for a double with ketchup, mustard, and pickles from Wendy’s?
Then I wondered, (as I often do) how this relates to churches. Do we as church leaders, set the standard high enough? Or do we pat ourselves on the back when 80% of our people don’t complain? Here’s a little test. Do you catch yourself saying any of the following things on a regular basis:
“It’s good enough.”
“No one will ever notice.”
“It’s just a small thing…”
“Whew… we’re done with that.”
“Someone should really clean that nursery someday”
“Practice… who needs practice?”
“I’ll just write my sermon Saturday night.”
All these type of comments exhibit what I’ll call “McDonald Manager Syndrome”… setting the bar just high enough to say “we passed”! Doing the bare minimum to get by.
We need to set the bar high at our churches.
And there's no better place a higher bar than when it comes to staffing.
Bad hiring mistakes can sideline your church. Big. Time.
We see way too many churches say things like:
"We hired too soon"
"We rushed the process"
"We didn't do a good enough background check"
"We didn't ask the right questions"
"We hired someone we liked rather than someone we needed"
"We discounted how much 'chemistry' was really needed to be a part of our team"
"We hired out of desperation"
"We hired to fill a hole"
Chemistry Staffing is here to make sure that you hire and hire well. We try to find long-term healthy candidates for your church. That means we're looking for candidates that can join your team and have the ability to be at your church at least five years. We do that by asking lots and lots of questions, and putting all of your candidates through filters that no one else can do for you. The end result is over 100 points of information about each and every candidate. This helps us identify areas of common DNA and also areas for potential concern.
Kingdom work is JUST THAT IMPORTANT. When you're ready to hire... we're ready to help.