4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

16 Things You Should Do At The Start Of Every Day

Our employers can beat themselves up trying to please and inspire us. If our heads aren’t in the right place, no action plan is going to move the needle for a dissatisfied employee. You could say a person like that ought to go find a new job but there is a possibility that, with a little attitude adjustment, these grumpy employees could open themselves up to a better work experience by simply organizing themselves a bit better. In essence by being in a good place mentally, there is a much greater chance that we will have a much more positive attitude towards our work day and be that much more open to responding positively to efforts from our managers to make us feel good about being there.

How You Can Make Work A Better Place

The way you think about yourself could be the most important reason why you are so unhappy at work. This may sound a bit ‘self-helpy’ but your attitude says an awful lot about you and how you view life. And as we know, like attracts like, so chances are extremely high that if you have a negative attitude towards yourself, you will attract other people who feel the same way. So if you find you are unhappy at work, that you are always taken for granted, used, misused, or even abused by your manager or a fellow employee, it is time to do a self check. Chances are you might be drawing this kind of response from others because you attract negativity. And at the end of the day, if you have the wrong attitude, work will never be great because you won’t let it be.
In a nutshell, if you value and honour yourself, believe that you are strong, successful, kind, loyal, and honest then those are the kind of people you will attract. Look at who your work friends are - it will tell you what you need to know.

Action Matters More Than Results

The two most critical phases of the Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) process happen after you have conducted your survey and have received your survey report. Once you’ve reviewed the survey results and identified your organization’s primary areas of strengths and opportunities for improvement, you need to communicate the survey results to your employees and decide what to do next.

It is during these two steps that employees will judge the value of the organization’s leadership, how well their voices are being heard in terms of improving their work experience and the strength of management’s commitment to continuous improvement.

Research has shown that, after an employee survey, employees are much more interested in seeing action taken than they are in seeing the results of the survey. Although it is important to share the highlights of the survey with your workforce, employee surveys have little or no value if nothing is done to make improvements in the organization. This is why successful Action Planning is a critical component of successful employee surveys.

Know Where You Stand

We believe that the overall level of employee satisfaction is one of the most critical measures of any employee survey, since it encapsulates what is important to your employees and how they feel about their jobs.
Employees’ overall satisfaction with their jobs is affected by a number of factors, including their relationships with coworkers, managers and/or supervisors, their impressions of senior leadership, their ongoing work activities, the availability of resources to do their jobs well, the perceived effectiveness of communications, the career enhancement and advancement opportunities available to them and how equitable they perceive the organization’s pay policies to be.
In essence, an employee satisfaction score reflects the more immediate impact of employees’ day-to-day work environment and their relationships with coworkers and managers on their state of being. In contrast, employee engagement reflects employees’ desire to work for an organization over the longer-term and their willingness to go “above and beyond” the call of duty to help their organization succeed. However, dissatisfaction with their work environment can often subvert their sense of commitment, which leads to employee turnover.

Should We Celebrate or Not?

Would you sue your workplace for saying you were ‘over the hill’ on your birthday? Some people have sued, so while celebrating employee birthdays is one way to show your staff they are appreciated and valued, you have to do it with care. In a recent SHRM article, titled ‘To Celebrate Birthdays at Work or Not?’ all the little do’s and don’ts to planning office birthday parties are provided to help us make sure we are recognizing our employees without risk of offending or discriminating against anyone. There were also some great ideas and ways to celebrate employees who are open to some recognition on their special day.

Emotions in the Workplace Impact Employees

When we study organizations, we rarely consider how shared emotions can impact employees. New studies have shown that emotions in the workplace do have an impact on employees and on overall work culture. Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor, says that what she calls ‘companionate love’, is when colleagues, who are together day in and day out, show that they care about each other’s work and non-work issues, they are careful of each other’s feelings, show compassion, affection, caring and listening when things don’t go well, or when a co-worker needs to talk. 

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