How do I deal with this problem?

[welshgirly]

I am a manager of a store (new this role) and have two assistant managers, im having problems with one area of the store at the moment with the staff and the assistant manager.

The staff in this department have never had an assistant manager before and have pretty much got away with doing whatever they want. They are not use to been told what/how to do things and this is the problem. Whenever the assistant manager has to speak to them about there performance it ends up with the member of staff been in tears and accusing the assistant manager of bullying them.

How do i deal with this, how im i going to find out if its my assistant manager thats the problem or the staff.

thanks for the advice the problem is it always seems to happen when its my day off/on holiday so i cant witness it

I would say that you need to call a meeting with the Assistant Manager and the staff. You need to set out your vision as to what you want them to achieve and ask them how they can help you to achieve it. Then you need to give each of them objectives as to how to achieve it. The manager and the staff need to be absolutely clear about who does what and where the responsibilites lie. You need to ensure that the staff have clear lines of escalation up to the Assistant Manager or beyond if things are not going to plan.

Then you need to set up weekly checkpoint meetings - on your days in - to evaluate progress and to deal with staff feedback.