• Nearly every consolidator, from Arbor, Park Lawn, and SCI, has invested in reception rooms. Families appreciate the benefits of an on-site reception service, particularly cremation families. Yes, reception rooms require an investment, but if you continue to have a casket selection room, you can accomplish the same digitally, and convert the room for receptions. Once a caterer(s) is selected, providing a reception is no more difficult than ordering a vault placement and bussers to bus the room, which is included in your reception room charge.
• Cremation businesses, augmented with an ecommerce cremation arrangement website. Large corporations pay a premium for market share as they are confident in their ability to upgrade cremation families; maybe not immediately, but sooner or later the family will want memorials or receptions, and the large consolidators want to be positioned to sell it to them.
• Pet disposition was a questionable business for traditional funeral homes, but many providers have created very profitable secondary businesses that may lead to additional human pre-need and at-need business.
• Cremation niches on funeral home property, or even in the funeral home. Many states allow niches at churches, football stadiums, funeral homes, even small roadside cemeteries. Not legal in every state, which brings us to the issue of antiquated state laws which have been the subject of many previous articles.
• Diversify your clientele. Segregation has a long history in traditional Funeral service. It served a purpose when the nation was ethnically divided, and many firms were founded upon a particular ethnic or religious group’s tradition. And, of course, these ethnic based firms continue to exist, but many of them are smaller volume firms, many of which do a poor job of serving their specific community either through exploitive pricing, poor service, neglected facilities, etc. Again, looking at what the consolidators have paid premium multiples for, many of the largest sales have been to businesses with branches that serve ethnic communities; IE: Hispanic, Italians, Greeks, African American, Jewish, Asian, etc. 
• Advertising strategy to position the firm as specialists in serving veterans. Amazingly, few firms located near, or relatively close to national cemeteries, position themselves as the firm specializing in veteran services. Many veterans select cremation even though they would prefer burial, but they or their family are ignorant of the benefits of burial in a national cemetery.  Advertising programs exist to position your firm to capture that business. 
• An in-house florist display will keep floral orders in your business, and your website can promote your in-house florist.

The most common excuse for not moving a business forward is that it’s all you can do to accomplish your current job, which is likely true. Given the job you have assigned to yourself, it is unlikely you could do more. The objective is to promote yourself to a bigger job by becoming a bigger business. Yes, there is risk, but it is manageable risk. Each of the above listed business building options have proven successful for other businesses. Start with the strategy requiring the least staff and offering the most success with the lowest investment. A cremation arrangement website can generate anywhere from 100 to 1000 cases annually and the only promotion cost is pay per click.  As the business grows, you will add one or two first call drivers and a crematory (assuming state law allows) and a crematory operator.  

Summary:

What makes this decision difficult is the lack of commitment to grow your business. It’s much easier to continue keeping the job you have and kid yourself that the business will never sell. Someone in the near future will be selling your funeral home; the only question is who will benefit and will it generate sufficient funds to meet your family’s needs. Have questions or want to learn more? Contact the JCG team today! 

Written by: MKJ Marketing

The post Creating The Business You Need appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

While there are a variety of ways to engage the staff of your funeral home — incentive compensation, robust benefits, and growth opportunities, to name a few — no two team members desire the exact same things. To better understand how to engage your teams, leadership must regularly meet with their staff. 

By creating a schedule of informal check-ins combined with more thorough quarterly and annual assessments, managers can better understand their employees and how to engage them most effectively. 

One-on-one Meetings

Funeral home leadership should set aside time for casual, one-on-one meetings with each of their team members. Occurring on either a weekly or bi-weekly basis, these meetings offer managers the chance to check in with their team members on both the personal and professional levels. 

Unlike more formal review-based meetings, weekly one-on-one sessions allow team members to express how they’re doing, what’s currently going well, and what they might be struggling with. This information is valuable for leaders as it can alert them to potentially larger issues before they affect the business. 

It’s important to note that this one-on-one shouldn’t feel like a laundry list of tasks for the employee to complete. Rather, it’s a time to check in and address any issues that might be holding them back in the short and long term. 

Quarterly Check-in

While similar to weekly one-on-one meetings, quarterly check-ins require a bit more preparation, and they should be primarily focused on team member goals and their progress. To start off, managers should ask about each goal of the team member. These goals may be related to numbers, or they might consist of personal development. Regardless, managers should use this time to get up to speed on each team member’s status. 

Once updated, managers can then dig deeper and figure out what’s going well for the employee and what challenges are holding them back. This allows managers to adjust goals effectively and offer assistance as needed. 

Annual Review

The most formal variety of meetings, annual reviews should begin with written evaluations of the employee, both from the employee themself and from their direct manager. Once this information has been collected, both team members can use it as a jumping-off point for discussion, running through each goal, success, and challenge of the team member over the last year. 

During the performance review, managers should remind employees that these sessions are two-way conversations. If a manager notes that an employee struggled with a component of their role, an employer should feel comfortable to honestly express what contributed to this struggle. This way, both personnel can discuss the ways in which these issues can be addressed in the coming year. 

Overall, annual reviews should be future-focused. Through the process of retrospectively reviewing a team member’s performance, managers should help them build new goals for the coming year, goals that both challenge their strengths and encourage them to grow in areas of struggle. 

Develop Your Team with JCG

Regular meetings help you stay in touch with employee strengths, needs, and struggles. By using these meetings to inform your managerial practice, you can improve engagement and retention in the long run. While much can be done to engage employees by increasing pay and providing on-the-job training, in many cases, team members can benefit from outside learning. 

Top-performing employees are often rewarded with increased responsibilities and pay. To make sure these growing employees have the skills they need to do the job right, you can look to the help of outside funeral home training courses. 

Offered through Johnson Consulting Group, a leading funeral home consulting firm, JCG Academy helps equip death care professionals with industry-leading tactics. Currently, our consulting firm offers courses in leadership and customer experience. Led by experienced death care consultants, these courses augment employees’ skill sets.

By meeting regularly with your employees, you’ll gain a thorough understanding of how they perform and how they’d like to grow. In many cases, this growth requires some outside help, making JCG Academy a great way to refine your employees’ approach to work. Contact us today to learn more.

The post How Frequently Should I be Meeting With My Funeral/Cemetery Staff? appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

Financial incentives and career growth opportunities can both help engage your employees, but leadership should never overlook the power of positive acknowledgment. Here’s why you should incorporate employee recognition into your performance review meetings. 

1. Greater Employee Satisfaction

As you might expect, employees appreciate when leadership recognizes their work and achievements; however, many managers underestimate just how much this type of affirmation can mean to their team members.  

According to a survey from Achievers, a majority of employees (69%) value recognition among the top factors they look for in an employer. This surpasses company culture and even opportunities for advancement. 

Because of this, leadership should make it a point to continually use performance review meetings as a chance to congratulate and praise the triumphs of their employees. This small action can make a world of difference. 

2. Improve Team Culture

The leadership of your funeral home sets the tone for your workplace culture. When employees see their leaders conduct themselves in a certain manner, they’ll most often emulate these behaviors.

As such, when leaders make an effort to recognize the achievements of their team, employees will follow suit. The result will be a workplace culture that supports, nurtures, and motivates employees. Rather than compete with one another, team members will honor each other’s achievements and collectively reach for success. 

3. Increase Productivity and Engagement

From a logical perspective, employee recognition functions as a form of positive reinforcement. When leadership praises certain behaviors and actions, employees are more likely to continue these behavioral patterns, resulting in increased productivity. 

According to research from Deloitte, team member engagement, productivity, and performance are 14% higher in organizations that regularly recognize their employees. This same study also found that a 15% increase in engagement can result in a 2% increase in profit margins. 

4. Increase Survey Response Rates

For leadership teams, it’s essential to solicit feedback from employees, most often as part of the performance review process. However, it can often be difficult for staff members to provide critical feedback to or about their leaders, even if this insight could help improve the workplace.

When team members receive positive feedback, allowing them to see how valued they are in their roles, then they’re more likely to feel emboldened. By empowering employees in this way, leadership can increase the likelihood of receiving positive feedback from employees. 

5. Higher Loyalty and Satisfaction Scores from Families

According to the Harvard Business Review, 40% of workers say they’d put more effort into their work if they received more recognition from their managers. And when team members feel compelled to excel in their roles, they’ll provide improved service. 

The logic is simple: happy, productive employees translate to satisfied families. 

6. Increased Retention of Quality Employees

Recognition of employees can also increase retention. According to a survey conducted by Achievers, recognition and rewards were ranked among the most important motivating factors for staying with a company. 

This same survey found that, of those looking to switch jobs, 44% of them noted that a lack of recognition and engagement were contributing factors. 

Attain a New Level of Employee Success with JCG Consulting

While the importance of recognizing employees is clear, it’s not always obvious if your employees currently feel valued. To cut through this lack of certainty, your leadership should administer internal surveys that inquire about job satisfaction. The expertise of consultants can help. 

At Johnson Consulting Group, our team of funeral home business consultants can help you create a strategy for regularly recognizing the work of your employees. By leveraging internal surveys as well as day-to-day tactics, your team can recognize staff members in a way that spurs their productivity and increases retention. For example, we can help you introduce an incentive compensation plan that acknowledges your team’s efforts and ensures they feel valued.

That said, recognition is only one key to the puzzle of engaging your teams. By partnering with JCG consultants, we’ll help you develop a holistic approach to engagement, one that also includes incentive compensation and career development, helping to reach your teams at every touchpoint. 

The post 6 Ways Consistent Employee Recognition Can Change the Game for Your Business appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

If you’re keeping up with the world of business news, there’s no doubt you’ve heard about quiet quitting. It’s a new buzz term that strikes fear in the hearts of business owners and managers, but once you take a look at the idea, it’s clear that it’s really about a healthy work/life balance and being able to work at work without feeling a 24/7 connection to the job.

Perhaps the best way to put quiet quitting worries to rest is to create a workplace where staff feels comfortable and valued during their working hours. Incentive plans, trust, and an opportunity for career growth are great ways to help your funeral business staff feel valued.

How to improve workplace relations:

One of the best ways, according to Forbes, to improve workplace relations and take quiet quitting off the table is to lead by example. Honor your own work/life boundaries as well as those of your staff. Show them that work stays at work by abiding by the same ideology yourself. It will improve anxiety and give you and your staff the time they need to rest and be the most productive versions of themselves during work hours.

The article also serves as a reminder that it’s okay to rethink what the workplace should look like from time to time. Just because this is the way it’s always been done, doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way. Speak openly with your staff about their needs and what is important to them at the workplace. This doesn’t mean you need to change everything or accept every bit of information provided but showing an openness to listening and implementing reasonable change goes a long way with people.

Johnson Consulting Group can help with this through business consulting services and leadership and management courses. As experts in the profession, our consultants are aware of the trends and can provide the guidance you need to keep your staff as happy as your families and customers.

The post Overcome quiet quitting worries with these workplace improvements. appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.