Category: Newsletter

Common thinking is that employees need to be controlled, managed, and monitored to ensure productivity. Smart small-business owners are adopting the employee-driven workplace philosophy that translates into dramatically lower turnover rates and training costs, high customer satisfaction, and greater profits. What are the ingredients for an employee-driven workplace?

1. Give up control.

Many workplace decisions are made backwards, driven first by financial considerations. Just as no product is launched without “user” input, employees are best suited to make many work environment decisions. Open up financial and operational information and give employees the task of achieving innovative efficiencies.

2. Listen more.

Talk with—not at—employees through interactive communications, rather than one-way updates. Then track employee engagement and satisfaction. More important, act on the findings. Avoid benefits and policies that aren’t based on research.

3. Accentuate the positive.

Are your office policies built on a philosophy of restricting, controlling, and stopping behavior, or do they invest in ways to promote good behavior that drives business objectives?

4. Keep it real.

The employee-driven workplace cannot be dictated or e-mailed into being. Many organizations have a culture that reads well on paper, but doesn’t perform in reality. Posters about teamwork mean nothing if teams aren’t rewarded and recognized.

The transition to an employee-driven workplace requires time, patience, and—yes, even money. Companies both small and large have done it. Remember, your brand is defined most strongly not by what you say, but by what your employees say and do. Without the support of employees, your brand will fail to deliver. With their support, not only will you deliver on your brand promise, but you will achieve strong financial success.

Steps of Progressive Discipline

A primary objective of every supervisor and manager should be to establish a work environment where employees are productive, treated fairly, allowed to communicate openly with management and understand what is expected of them in the performance of their job. It is also a supervisor’s responsibility to recognize a potential performance issue early, and to take the necessary steps to assist the employee with correcting the problem. If, however, the problem is not corrected, supervisors and managers are expected to take appropriate disciplinary action.

Dealing With Poor Work Habits

Your success as a supervisor depends on your ability to maintain team work within your work unit. Employees with poor work habits decrease productivity, may create friction among employees and damage the entire group’s morale. Several different types of poor work habits may affect your work.

They may be work habits that, affect the employee’s output, affect the output of other employees, violate College policies and procedures, or become too annoying or offensive to overlook.

As a supervisor, you need to:

• Discuss the problem with your employee in a positive way, while maintaining the employee’s self esteem;

• Solicit the employee’s feedback and cooperation in solving the problem;

• Try to make the employee understand that the problem as well as the solution belongs to him/her;

• Offer your guidance by clearly and specifically stating what the employee must do in order to improve his/her performance, and set time lines to correct the problem;

• Monitor the employee’s progress; and

• Plan a disciplinary approach if the situation is not remedied.

It is important employees fully understand that, with the exception of certain specific offenses, they will receive counseling, coaching and adequate warning before the supervisor takes disciplinary action. When used properly, progressive discipline can benefit both the employee and management.

Employees and Companies Can Develop a Negative “Aura”

Just as some otherwise talented sports teams are accused of becoming “comfortable with losing,” employees and senior management of some companies develop a similar negative persona. Sometimes the reasons are obscure or even unidentifiable. A series of small setbacks, one major corporate setback, or a management team that consistently sends (often, unwittingly) negative messages to staff are often the cause.

Staff and management do not establish goals to infuse a negative culture into their department or company. The predominance of negativity is typically insidious because it happens over time. Much like the culture of “losing” that afflicts athletic teams, including the feeling that the players know the outcome before the game begins, some corporate teams, departments, and companies unknowingly adopt this attitude.

At other times, the reasons are not only obvious but understandable. Corporate downsizing, with many employees separated from the company, often create negative attitudes among the majority of remaining staff members. Unlike layoffs, which imply (at least) that the company will re-employ the separated employees, downsizing contains no such unwritten promise.

Unfortunately, downsizing indicates the former employees will not be rehired, which removes the always important human value of “hope.” When hope is removed from the personal or professional equation, a form of “workplace depression” often emerges. These negative attitudes can become damaging to performance, teamwork, and goal achievement.

The key for management is to identify negative staff attitudes and, once discovered, take immediate action to reverse these destructive issues and behaviours. Here are some suggestions for managers to consider.

Reversing Negative Staff Attitudes
Unfortunately, the reversal of negative staff attitudes cannot be compartmentalised into a simple, neat, and technical answer. Humans tend to be complex organisms. There is little consistency in their behaviour and attitudes. Further complicating this issue is the reason for the negative staff attitudes or behaviours. Understandably, management may not care about the motivation. Yet, they must take action to reverse the condition.

Some combination of the following actions often cures the problem.

• Be upfront and acknowledge the negativity problem. At first, this may seem like a useless or, at best, ineffective activity. However, remember two things: The staff is well aware of the negativity of one or more team members. Second, management attempts at being “subtle” often indicate to employees that they (management) are either unaware of the problem or choose to ignore it. Acknowledging the negativity problem is a critical component to its resolution.
• Display positive behaviour at all times. Much like political candidates and stage actors, management, regardless of their true feelings (they may also be a bit negative because of downsizing and uncertainty), must publicly display total positivity. Employees should witness the positive alternative to their negativity.
• Publicly identify any and all positive issues. Unless the company has already scheduled a meeting with legal counsel to prepare Chapter 11 bankruptcy paperwork, the business has many positive features. These factors tend to be overlooked during conditions that generate negativity. Management should be diligent – and very vocal – with staff to identify every positive aspect of the company and its products or services.
• Recognise every positive contribution by staff members. Always a successful procedure, public recognition of individual employee performance and contribution can be as “contagious” as its opposite – negativity. When management faces a negative-oriented staff, the importance and rewards of public recognition of superior performance take on majestic proportions.
• Encourage individuals and teams to contribute to decision-making. The popular term is “empowerment” but that is more appropriate to textbooks. When management gives its staff the ability to contribute ideas and suggestions to marketing, operations, or financial policies, employees typically respond with great positivity.

As long as there is a world of business, management will encounter individual negative employees. When economic conditions, business reversals, or workplace problems exist, negativity can spread to groups of employees or entire staffs. Management must have a plan and respond quickly before this negativity affects staff performance in the long term. No company can sustain staff negativity for long periods.

Using some or all of the above suggestions, tailored to the specific problems of your company, could give you and other managers the effective tools to reverse negative staff attitudes and the damage that inevitably ensues. Managers who adopt these techniques often find that superiors appreciate their efforts and results.

For years the subject of corporate culture was ignored, or at least downplayed, by management and experts alike. However, in recent years most observers acknowledge that corporate culture (or organizational behaviour) exists and, in some cases, plays an important role in the workplace.

Here are some suggestions to help you take control of your corporate environment and create a culture that attracts and retains good employees.

• While it’s true that excellent benefits are expensive, just consider the true cost of consistent staff turnover. Constant employee turnover may be the most expensive operating cost of all. Great benefits will encourage all employees to give serious thought before leaving your company since these may be harder to find in the marketplace.

• Give employees the opportunity to influence company decisions. While the perception of influence equals the reality, many companies have found that involving employees in operations and/or strategy decisions has generated some excellent suggestions. Occupying the operational front lines of implementing strategy, non-management employees often have a different and often effective outlook on company procedures.

• Share financial results with employees. Often called an “open-book” policy, many companies have generated newfound respect and loyalty from staff by keeping them up-to-date and on the same page with management.

• Publicly recognize employee performance, milestones, birthdays, etc. Don’t wait for major accomplishments to celebrate. Acknowledge all milestones, big and small. Your staff will not only appreciate these gestures personally, but they will tell their friends and potential future employees, too.

• Take an obvious interest in your stars. By making it clear you’re interested in your best employees’ thoughts, ideas and comments, you accomplish two motivational goals. First, you display that you appreciate and respect high performers, which typically creates more high-level results. Second, you tastefully indicate that other staff will receive the same personal interest from management if their performance reaches a high level.

• Offer varied opportunities for staff to get education, skill development and additional expertise. Implement liberal programs for continuing education, be it for formal degree programs, industry schools, seminars or any other teaching/training experience. Make these opportunities very public and supportive.

• Carefully strive for “meaningful depth” during candidate interviews. Consider conducting real behavioural interviews versus classic “What did you do? Where did you do it? When did you do it?” interviews. Try hard to find employees who “fit” your corporate culture to generate strong (and happy) team players.

• Install non-financial benefit items that improve corporate culture. Personal days, caring for a sick family member days, employee-of-the-week (month, quarter and year) awards, etc. are proven ways to generate a positive effect on corporate culture and employee loyalty.

• Always stay in “listening mode.” You may be pleasantly surprised at what your employees have to say if you convince them, through words and actions, that you’ll listen. Instead of having to repeatedly ask for feedback, your listening posture will elicit staff comments that you might find important and valuable.

Implementing these items (or combinations thereof) will help you create a positive corporate culture that should have lasting effects on your success in attracting and keeping the employees you want. Creating an environment that fulfils the objective and subjective needs of employees often creates (or changes) organizational behaviour that leads to improved performance and a more loyal staff. These actions can often be far more effective than the easy (and costly) method of simply increasing compensation.