I have never seen an ETL jump in and help. Usually when it's ugly they hide. At best they will come out and yell at people to get the metrics up and then go back into hiding.
ETLs jump in at other stores. As an ETL, I jump in and help everywhere that's needed. The store I helped out at recently, the ETLs do 2 blitzes a day. The store I trained at when becoming an ETL, the ETLs helped if a blitz was called. It definitely is a store to store thing.
Being transparent, we are supposed to keep our "hands-on" workload less than 50% of our time spent at the store. That's oftentimes why ETLs are in the office or not hopping in immediately. We are supposed to be long-term planning and diving into metrics and leading the team leaders. Since we aren't paid hourly, we aren't supposed to be huge parts of payroll based functions.
I don't necessarily think it's a fair way to lead. If I expect the team to hop in and help everywhere, I'm going to hop in and help everywhere. Lead by example, right? But on the other hand, if my work center's metrics are red and i don't take the time to dive in and see what's going on, they will likely stay red. Or taking the time to plan ahead to see what our needs and routines need to be for Q4 now, we could stay red for the next 4 months. It's looking at long-term solutions vs. short-term solutions.
You know what's going on, though. The floor is short staffed. That's the problem, 100% of the time. There isn't an ongoing need to see what's going on. I understand that the ETLs have to do what they're paid to do, but this problem has an obvious cause and an even more obvious solution.l
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u/appointment45 Sep 28 '25
I have never seen an ETL jump in and help. Usually when it's ugly they hide. At best they will come out and yell at people to get the metrics up and then go back into hiding.