Considering how much you’ve invested in attracting, selling to and pleasing customers, how many of them can you afford to chase away by scrimping on employee quality?

Staffing deficiencies are most obvious in service-oriented companies where employees come face-to-face with your most precious asset—customers.

But, employee incompetence isn’t restricted to the front lines. Inferior assembly line workmanship is similarly detrimental. Product defects are often traced to human mistakes.

So, set standards for your employees, individually and as a team. Communicate those standards frequently and clearly. After all, you can’t hold an employee to a standard if the employee doesn’t know what that standard is.

Follow these recommendations for making the most of talented employees:

• Create job descriptions that precisely identify what’s expected and how performance will be measured.

• Hire people competent in those job skills.

• Have a clearly defined probationary period for new employees to demonstrate their competence.

• Pay what they’re worth. If you cannot, expect angry or lost customers, product returns or worse—product and service liability lawsuits.

• Develop contingencies to meet unexpected demands, such as a sudden spurt in business. Get to know temporary staffing agencies. But screen them by the same standards you screen your own employees.

• Invest in your employees. A little time teaching them the proper ways to perform their jobs avoids potentially much more time undoing their messes later.