Articles

If you grew up on a farm you probably learned that PTO stands for “power takeoff’ and that it is the connection point on a tractor for other implements and attachments. But today we will be talking about PTO as “Personal Time Off’ or “Paid Time Off’ as a system to replace the traditional vacation, sick leave, and personal leave policies that you may be presently using. Simply put, PTO combines vacation time, sick leave, and personal time into one “bank” of time-off available to your employees as the need or desire arises. Employees have more flexibility for a work-life balance while no longer having to be untruthful or deceitful when obtaining time-off. You don’t have to have a very large operation with very many employees before you will recognize that you have at least one “warrior” and one “wimp” […]

What Is the Solution for the Continuity of a Perpetual Business? The age of most companies in the United States is relatively young. Even those huge companies on the Dow Jones (DJIA) are on average barely 20 years old. When we use the concept of a cemetery, they are intended to be perpetual. Perpetual is forever, which is longer than 20 years. While the anticipation of an on-going concern might be into perpetuity, no company on the DJIA can assert that they are committed to running their company in perpetuity. That is what makes a cemetery business so unique. Funeral homes are a bit different in their on-going concern mentality. Funeral home owners have a mentality of a perpetual provider. However, their historical reliance on a building makes the funeral home a business that is immobile. This means the business […]

A peacetime army often can be effectively led with good administration and management up and down the ranks, with strong leadership at the top. In wartime, leadership is required at all levels. No one has figured out how to manage people effectively in battle, they simply must be led. I am not suggesting that funeral service and wartime are one in the same. However, I do think this analogy does highlight the reality of the times we are facing in funeral service. The radical changes that have impacted our profession has often made it feel like we are in crisis mode. In general, times have been quite good for most of us in funeral service over the past few years. We have been pushed to the limits but have come out better and stronger for it. The pandemic ushered in […]

Scenario: David Sully has a thriving funeral business in the southern United States comprised of three locations serving more than 700 families. Recently he decided to create a multidenominational funeral home as well as building his own cemetery, crematory and pet cremation business. Given the success of his existing businesses, the current staff did not have the capacity to take on the added responsibilities that would be associated with the new development. Further, they did not have experience in the cemetery, crematory and pet crematory segments. As part of his expansion plans, David anticipated that he would be locating and hiring an entirely new staff to handle the new business enterprise. He carefully thought about the various positions and interviewed cemetery, crematory and pet crematory owners to understand the number of employees and the positions that he would need to […]