4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

Get to Know Your Team

Managers and bosses can be instrumental in developing and nurturing teamwork and collaboration but their success depends a lot on how well they understand their teams. It’s not always easy but if the boss knows the full picture about what’s going on and consistently gets honest constructive feedback from their staff, they can help their teams achieve a greater sense of cooperation that will allow them to outperform teams that lack good interpersonal relationships.

Gaining employees’ trust so they feel secure enough to be completely honest with their boss isn’t easy, so it was refreshing to find 6 tactics in a recent article from the December issue of Canadian Business.

Control

Employees who have a say in setting goals and decision-making processes feel more in control of their jobs leading to higher levels of engagement.

Telecommuting: Not just another employee perk
SHRM research shows that “91% of HR professionals whose companies offer flexible work arrangements, such as teleworking, have seen positive results on employee engagement, job satisfaction and retention”.

In a recent New York Times article titled, ‘It’s Unclearly Defined, but Telecommuting is on the Rise’, the typical telecommuter is described as a 49-year-old college graduate — man or woman — who earns about $58,000 a year and belongs to a company with more than 100 employees, according to numbers culled from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. By one estimate, telecommuting has risen 79 percent between 2005 and 2012 and now makes up 2.6 percent of the American work force, or 3.2 million workers, according to statistics from the American Community Survey.

It seems that many organizations don’t recognize that employees are not “hard-wired” to be either committed or not committed to their jobs. Rather, organizations have to earn the loyalty and commitment of their workforce every day and demonstrate to employees that they should continue to invest their dedication, creativity and enthusiasm in that enterprise.

Here are few tips on how earn that trust and commitment:

1. Foster management talent – seek out employees who demonstrate natural leadership qualities and take action to develop those inherent abilities.
    
2. Expect ongoing contributions and acknowledge them – clearly show your employees why and how their efforts help your organization meet its overall goals.
    
3. Build trust, teamwork and camaraderie – be transparent about your expectations of your employees and rigorously fair in how you assess their performance without “playing favorites.”
    
4. Help manage change effectively – your employees may be naturally wary of the unknown so recognize that how they perceive changes within your organization (whether positively or negatively) has a lot to do with how those changes are communicate. This includes explaining the reasons behind what changes are being made and articulating the benefits expected from those changes.

How committed are your employees to your organization? Find out by conducting our 4Cs study. Call 866-802-8095 ext. 705 for more information about our services.

The Motivating Impact of Reward and Recognition

Our work with employee surveys has clearly shown that employee satisfaction with the level of reward and recognition at their organization often makes a critical contribution to their overall job satisfaction.

However, few organizations in the U.S. seem to realize this, as employee satisfaction with reward and recognition is not very high – in fact, based on our most recent norms study, the proportion of those who are satisfied (36%) is not much higher than those who are dissatisfied (33%)! Although reward and recognition encompasses more than compensation alone, there seems to be a general lack of knowledge within many organizations about this important issue and its critical role in attracting and retaining a talented workforce.

Having the Right Attitude Makes Happiness Happen

Lately there has been a lot of research and discussion around the subject of employee stress and the need for employers to initiate strategies to meet the needs of their employees. To succeed, however, it can’t be all one-sided as, like any relationship, it takes effort from both sides to make any relationship work.

In this way, it is important for employees to consider their own behavior and attitudes towards their work environments to ensure they aren’t sabotaging themselves. If employers and managers are making the effort, employees need to be mindful of their own feelings and how they are influencing their own opinions to ensure they are giving their work and their managers the best opportunity to be good employers. Experts agree there is a business case for being fully present and mindful of what’s going on around you. To be mindful is to be aware and intentional, in other words, “aware of what’s going on around you, aware of what’s going on inside you as a response to what’s going on around you, and being intentional about what you’re going to do next”.

This is a quite long but very informative presentation by Google on the concept and implementation of an organizational system known as OKR (Objectives and Key Results) It's useful for just about any company or person who wants to create a simple, easy-to-follow system for getting stuff done. And since getting stuff done is vital to the success of any organization, this should be required viewing for all managers.

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