Posts Tagged ‘Communications’

From 2008 to 2010, employee engagement dropped to 56%.  This was the largest rate of decline in 15 years, according to Aon Consulting. So how can you measure employee engagement within your organization?  Generally companies will deploy an employee engagement survey using an external company to administer the survey ensuring anonymity for employees. Others will develop their own internal surveys which  lack question validity and robust reporting features which can be drawbacks to developing an improvement plan.

But what if you don’t have the time or money and want to get a broad sense of overall engagement, what are your options?  My suggestion is to look for the top 10 clues that employees may be disengaging from their work.  And, the 10 clues are:

1. Quality of service and products is dropping–employees are not showing a geniuine level of concern for customer needs and the quality of their workmanship

2. Absenteeism is increasing–the amount of time employees are missing from work is affecting overall department or company performance and may be affecting the morale of those having to pick up a greater work load.

3. Employee complaints are on the rise–negative comments about management and the company from employees to other employees can be like a cancer and impact the performance of others. An analysis of where the complaints are coming from and the type of complaints may uncover some employment issues that should be addressed.

4. Employees don’t work as a team–there may be some great individual contributors but the environment doesn’t encourage cooperation and team work  which can lead to missed opportunities. Make sure that teams have the right members to be successful, that each member understands their role and how it fits into the team, and that the team understands what success looks like for them.

5. Shrinkage and theft rates are increasing–these issues can start small and then rise to levels of significance impacting profitability. Identify potential problem areas and address the issue as soon as you see an uptick before it becomes a bigger problem.

6. Lack of accountability–as the frequency of employees blaming others increases others will take the same attitude of avoiding personal responsibility for failures at work.

7.  Fewer employees are coming to you with concerns–don’t assume that this is good news and bury your head in the sand.  It often means employees don’t have a high level of trust and confidence in management. You may be missing the opportunity to hear about some good ideas and suggestions that can improve results for the company.

8. There are fewer times taken to recognize success–your organization may be struggling yet there is a team or an  individual who has been successful. Dont’ just get caught up with the big goals, remember to recognize and celebrate the smaller ones.

9. Turnover rates are too high–replacing good performers is expensive. Is it an isolated department or an overall company problem? Review exit interview results to determine any trends that should be addressed and then put a plan together.

10.  Key positions remain open longer–this may be a sign that your employer brand is suffering.  You may not have a good reputation as an employer in the market which impedes you from attracting top talent. With the internet and social media, employers bad practices and culture don’t remain a secret for very long.

So which one of these clues do you see in your organization? Ask some of your key managers for their input on these clues and sit down to determine what areas do you want to address first.  And remember that this technique is not a replacement for a professional engagement survey.  Make sure that this becomes a key initiative in the next 12 months!

Employee Engagement is a hot topic as the shortage of high performing talent increases.  A May study from McKinsey & Co. found that by 2018, the U.S. will face a shortage of 1.5 million managers who can use data to shape business decisions. And the shortage gets even larger for non management employees, especially knowledge workers in the areas of  healthcare, technology, and accounting.

Another study in June 2011 from Mercer, the global HR consulting firm, found that nearly  one third (32 percent) of American workers are considering leaving their organization, which is 40 percent increase since 2005. So not only is there a shortage but there is also a higher risk of losing the talent you already have on your team.

So what should you be doing to nurture and increase employee engagement on your team? Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Before hiring ask yourself does the candidate fit culturally with the organization. In other words, does the potential employee have the same set of values the company lives every day?  More often than not employees fail in the short term because they don’t “fit”  the culture of the organization, not because they don’t have the skills.

Coaching Tip: Devise several interview questions that can illuminate a candidate’s values and/or use an assessment that measures values such as the Hogan Leadership assessment.

2. Once you have the right person on board, you need to keep them challenged which means providing them with opportunities for growth and development.  Development plans are an integral part of the talent management system and should be updated on a quarterly basis. The types of development can include special projects, rotation to a lateral position, matching a mentor with the employee, structured learning, and executive coaching.

Coaching Tip: It is critical that the employee be a part of their development planning process. Too often managers assume that an employee wants certain opportunities when they either may not want the opportunity at all, or the timing isn’t right for them due to a personal situation.

3. Demonstrate that you care about your employees by recognizing their good work and showing appreciation. The number one reason good employees leave a company  is because they don’t feel appreciated. Many managers feel that if they show too much appreciation and recognition that it will make performance correction more difficult.  Studies show that it takes upwards of 5 acts of appreciation to equal one act of criticism.  Keep track of your appreciation for others over a week, be purposeful by looking for the sparks of good work, potential, and recognize it.

Coaching Tip: Make sure that when you do provide recognition and appreciation that it be done in a timely manner and with sincerity.  There is nothing worse than receiving insincere appreciation. If you can’t be sincere, then don’t even bother.

4.  Trust is a critical component to employee engagement.  Employees who trust their co-workers, managers, and company generally have a higher level of engagement than those who don’t.  And the one area that will impact trust the most is transparent leadership.  Organizational transparency requires among other things, open access to information, and participation in decision making.

Coaching tip:  A higher degree of transparency will exist if communications are timely and frequent.  And remember to use different communication channels to satisfy the preferences of the multiple generations in the workforce-email, text, hard copy, meetings, video, etc.

These are all techniques that can be implemented in a short period of time that can provide you with some insurance in retaining your key employees. Which one do you plan to implement first?

You probably remember your mother teaching you The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Well in this day and age I say “Do unto others as they want, not what I want” .

A great example of this is recognizing the good work of a team member.  You may like the “lime light” and want public recognition yet many people don’t want to be put in the spot light.  Private praise will do just fine for them.

Being certified in Myers Briggs and DiSC, I see leaders using the Golden Rule when they should be determining what their employee prefers.  For instance, I often observe a misalignment between introverts and extroverts.  Extroverted leaders generally don’t like silence, while an introvert is not challenged by silence.  In meetings, I will see an extrovert start peppering an introvert with questions to fill the silence. In turn, this further shuts down the introvert who likes to process in her head, not out loud.

There are plenty of situations during the day and workweek that a leader needs to adjust her leadership to the preference of the employee.  Here are some situations that you should be cognizant to being an adaptive leader:

• Decision Making
• Problem Solving
• Communications
• Conflict Management
• Change Management

So when you are in one of these situations, think about the people you are interfacing with, either through direct leadership or influence outside your organization. What are their preferences? And, how can you adapt your behavior to what they need in order to perform at their very best.  If your organization hasn’t done an assessment like Myers Briggs, this may be a good time. An instrument like Myers Briggs will provide you and your employees with a greater understanding of how each other prefers to operate and communicate.

Or if you aren’t ready for this step, start really observing the behaviors of others and take note of what they are doing in the way of communication, decision making etc and start mirroring them. A good time to start is during one on one meetings with your team members, there is less risk and you can direct all of your attention to one individual. It may feel awkward at first, so take it slowly and choose one area that you would like to adjust for the person you are working with. This should be an area you feel comfortable changing, such as speed of talking.  Ideally it will be one that, when mastered, has an impact on your employees performance.

So the next time you are treating a person like you want to be treated, stop and evaluate, is it what they really want?

Do you often wonder why you get information late and when you do,  are you surprised by it?  Or during meetings, you seem to be the only person talking? What is happening to cause these communication breakdowns?

Recently I was working with an executive who was frustrated that the information flow in his organization was often slow and/or incomplete. As we explored potential reasons, it became evident to me that the environment was one of distrust and fear.  Historically, when an employee had bad news to be delivered, the consequences for the person delivering the message were less than desirable. In addition, the leader went into a micro-managing mode as a defense mechanism to eliminate any future bad news. So what’s the message to the employee?  Bad news leads to bad consequences.

In addition when team members were asked for their suggestions and opinions, the leadership often ignored or dismissed them. No wonder communications were ineffective. 

The article , “Ruthlessly Realistic: How CEO’s Must Overcome Denial”, in HBS Working Knowledge March 29, 2010, points to CEO leading to a breakdown in communications as well. Middle managers are generally the leaders who will initially identify a problem. Yet when the bad news finally makes it up to the CEO who chooses not to acknowledge the reality because it doesn’t fit with his “reality”, guess who looses her job?  It is the middle manager who dared to speak the truth.

If you want to increase the flow of communication here are some tips:

1. If in fact you have an unsafe environment for communications, you need to be transparent with your team and share with them your desire to change the environment and ask them for to help you with the change process. How do you find out if they believe it to be unsafe? You can measure the level of communications safety by way of a 360 degree feedback tool or interview process using an outside resource to insure anonymity. This process will give you a benchmark of communications safety which you can then re-measure after a significant time period to see how you have progressed.

2. When in meetings where it is important to get many ideas and opinions out on the table, don’t dismiss an individual’s comments.  A great technique to use is the “yes, and” technique.  This is opposite to “yes, but”, which people use when they don’t like a person’s idea or opinion. Commit to this technique and see how the volume of ideas increases.  Also, others will notice and start to adopt the technique as well.

3. There are always individuals on a team that you can count on to speak up and voice their opinions and then there are the extreme introverts that need to be invited to share their thoughts.  Make sure that all voices are heard during a meeting. If you have someone who may be uncomfortable sharing their ideas, let them know in advance that you will be asking for their opinion during the meeting so they aren’t caught off guard.

So the next time you are having a meeting, listen and observe. Are people not sharing their ideas or revealing problems in a timely manner because of a behavior that  you are displaying or not displaying? Don’t be a victim of denial and take the steps to change the dynamics of communications within your team or organization.

You see it at work. You drop by an employee’s workspace to discuss a current project and she continues to work on the computer while you are having the discussion. How do you feel as the person continues to “multi-task”?

Then you’re at home and your spouse is in the kitchen preparing for dinner or loading the dishwasher. You start a conversation with him or her and they continue on with their task at hand while conversing with you. Did they really understand what you said? Did they really hear you?

So, you do see it. Are you also part of it? Multi-tasking, for many people in this ever changing and demanding world, has become a badge of pride. I can’t tell you how many executives I have worked with who actually believe that multi-tasking increases their productivity.

It Doesn’t Increase Productivity

Yet, research shows just the opposite. Back in 2001, in Journal of Experimental Psychology – Human Perception and Performance, Vol 27. No.4 the article “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” Joshua S. Rubinstein, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic City, N.J.; David E. Meyer and Jeffrey E. Evans, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., conducted a study which “revealed that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs also were greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar.”

In a 2007 New York Times article, Jonathan B. Spira, an analyst at the business research firm Basex, estimated that extreme multitasking costs the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity.

And in a recent article from Harvard BusinessSchool http://bit.ly/LLEtx references another study from StanfordUniversitythat supports the earlier study. The article suggests that we should be focusing on the value of the task and that single-tasking is probably not practical in the 21st century.

Multi-tasking Effects on Interpersonal Relationship

And even if you don’t believe this scientific evidence which shows that multi-tasking does not save you time, think about the other effects it has. What message are you sending to the people you are multi-tasking on? They probably wonder what is more important than the discussion they are trying to have with you. They may even think that you’re just plain rude.

I agree with the HBS conclusion that it is difficult to move to single-tasking, BUT only when the multi-tasking does not involve interpersonal communications with another individual.

So how can you change this multi-tasking behavior when you are confronted with someone wanting your attention?

Set aside time during each day when you will not multi-task. You will focus on one task or one person. When someone approaches you for a conversation and you are in a time crunch, let the individual know that you only have a specific amount of time or ask them to come back at the specific time you have set aside for single-tasking. This is time when you can give them your undivided attention. If you do have time to speak with them, turn away from your computer and put your PDA and cell phone on silent so you aren’t tempted to multi-task.

Giving your employees, team members, family, and friends your undivided attention during an important conversation will build stronger relationships by increasing understanding, decreasing stress, and increasing respect. Managing multi-tasking will also increase your productivity and model appropriate behavior to other employees. What’s keeping you from starting to manage your multi-taking behavior?

As the H1N1, Swine Flu, gains momentum, the government recently launched guidelines for businesses on how to prepare as we move closer to the winter months.

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/workplaceplanning/guidance.html

As a business leader, how will you communicate your plan that will provide employees with the necessary and appropriate information? And as the flu spreads, what plans do you have to adjust and adapt your communications to maintain calm within the workforce?

How will you be perceived as a leader during the crisis and the ensuing months afterwards? Employees will be looking and listening intently to you, make sure you have a plan and be ready to adjust based on changes in the flu pandemic.