Parking Company Operators
Right now, parking companies are choosing to operate lean throughout the country, temporary employees are being utilized in all facets of the operations from the backend accounting to the front end cashiers. With temporary employees, you appreciate the fact that the fee quoted is the only fee you pay. All taxes are factored into this fee, including Federal, State, Unemployment, Worker’s Compensation, Medicare, and Social Security taxes. When your accounting department is short and you cannot get monthly billing out in time, you just go get a temp right? But when you have an opening at one of your key managerial positions, you go short the position for significant periods of time. Does this make sense? Maybe the General Manager in Cincinnati goes to Cleveland once a week. Is this getting the job done? Or maybe the Regional Manager spends an extra day or two in that city each week. Is this pro-active? Or maybe you decide an unqualified and unprepared subordinate can keep the boat afloat for a while during a search for qualified upper management. That’s never the answer.
Hire a Temporary Parking Manager.
Sure that temporary manager costs a little more, but when you have a need to function effectively, it is money well spent. The city flows with no GM training curve necessary. Provide me an example budget or RFP bid, or a formatted excel budget or bid template (if you have one), and they are done. If you don’t have one, I’ll design one for your company with the proper formulas. Your clients prefer to have a face in front of them and their requests and problems handled in a professional manner. They do not want to call someone long distance or deal with someone you have already decided is unqualified, and likely, so have they.
You need a Parking Professional.
Once I am in the city, your current operations, revenue controls and staff get a professional review and when you decide on the right transfer or hire, you have someone on site to train that new City Manager for as long as you (or they) need. Of one thing you can be sure, the city will be handed over to the permanent City Manager in better shape than when I got there. While I am there, if you so choose, I can assist you with the human resources hiring process prior to the manager hire as explained in Parking Manager Testing. Your primary angst is going to be your going to hate to see me go.
And what if you have a City Manager, but you want a new set of eyes to review revenue issues in a City or Region. That’s my specialty. Many upper managers simply do not realize you are limited in your impact to current location revenue when you manage primarily from the office. Also, you cannot see what a good, or bad, job your operations and audit staff is doing from the office. Nor can you can you properly train your middle management from the office as you are missing what they are missing. Depending on client requirements and RFP workload, City managers should always employee the 60-40 rule. 40% to 60% of every day should be spent in the field. It is the best way to make everyone around you better and maximize current revenue.
When I am in a city, everyone is more focused. Everyone is learning parking. And a good part of every upper management position is teaching and training subordinates to do their job better. I bring that to every city and situation I go into: A willingness to learn parking and a willingness to teach parking. |
