EMPLOYEES’ LOATHE THEIR WORKPLACE Look at the co-worker to your left. Now! to your right. At least one of them loathes their job. Maybe you do, too. According to a recent survey of working adults, 52% of employees say they are not engaged in their work. They limp to work, toiling without passion. That’s half the workforce! Another 18% describe themselves as "actively disengaged” – disgruntled and spreading bitterness among co-workers. With the exception of recession periods, the majority of employees start each New Year vowing to look for a new job. Imagine a 10-person bicycle. This means that three people are pedalling, five are pretending to pedal, and two are jamming the brakes. That's you, corporate America. Now scale that bike higher. 520 out of every 1000 employees don’t care. 180 are trying to sabotage the place. 300 are left doing their darnedest. The most strategic act that any organization can take is to better engage and inspire team members. Here are, what I consider, three (of many) ways you can make life better at work and for your employees.
1) Abandon your sick-pay and vacation-pay policies.
If you can't trust me when I say I have the flu, why are you letting me engage with customers, define budgets, stack shelves, merchandize the warehouse and shop floor and access internal documents? There's a radical disrespect involved in limiting the number of sick days employees can take each year. Replace that with this simple policy: Require that everyone NOT come to work when they’re sick. If you think an employee will abuse this system, you need to re-assess your entire relationship with them. Your workspace is about to get a lot healthier on multiple fronts. From here, get rid of limited vacation days, too. Show employees that you value the sustainability of their great work by letting them take what they need, approved by their managers. I have observe that the best use of this policy is the use of half days where needed to tend to life. A culture built on trust and respect will pay for itself several times over.
2) Make your office or work place live and breathe.
Employees spend a third of their lives at work. Make your office or shop floor a place someone would actually want to spend time. No sane person can inhabit a cubicle or walk around a shop floor 8 -10 or more hours a day, sedentarily, and remain healthy.
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™
Page 1 of 4
EMPLOYEES’ LOATHE THEIR WORKPLACE Let employees check FaceBook, ESPN and Twitter. They’re going to do this anyway. Don’t make them feel like they’re cheating the system. (Remember, at dynamic companies, more work is being done off hours -- via mobile texting and email – than ever before. Give your workforce credit for this!). I have worked abroad and I find that the German companies have more trust in their employees than in the UK. Computer are open for their employees, whereas in the U.K. it seems Management are terrified of any negativity that is publicized via the web or social sites. IMHO, if Management don’t trust their employees to a certain degree, the management is most likely also sneaky and dishonest! I have always run my offices on the principle when a member of the company in a senior position visited my site or office I did not need to inform my subordinates to tidy the place up, look busy, wear appropriate clothing (when this was required. I.e. PPE, uniforms, correct colours etc., because my staff were trusted and trained in the company policies and not belittled or handled as unimportant or as an irrelevant person in the company. If I had to ‘tidy-up’ the site, then it was obviously not operating at full efficiency.
3) Let employees write their own job descriptions. This final challenge is more difficult, but also very rewarding.
The vast majority of employees performing well at their job are also miles below their potential and bored out of their minds. They’re doing repetitive work. You know what happens next? They leave. To counteract that, a few months after a new employee is settled, coach them through the process of writing their own job description. Their dream job description. As a manager or boss, your job is to do everything to make as much of that dream a reality (so long as the job helps your organization fulfil its purpose). I would label this "job crafting." It's when employees get to reshape and redefine their work to better fit their passions and talents -- passions and talents the employer probably didn't know existed. Maybe your accountant has unexpected marketing insights. Maybe your IT manager would like to beat traffic by leaving at 3 p.m. and working from home in the early evening. Maybe
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™
Page 2 of 4
EMPLOYEES’ LOATHE THEIR WORKPLACE your recruiter wants to create a new training program. You’ll never know until you ask. Allowing employees to articulate their passion puts them on a path toward fulfilling their true potential. It’s a win-win for you and them. Because there is simply no doubt that the average organization is operating at less than 30% of its full potential.
REASONS EMPLOYEES HATE THEIR MANAGERS and/or THE COMPANY THEY WORK FOR. Having asked around in various industries, the pattern is roughtly the same, and here is a list of the most common gripes employyes have about the company they work for. Employees Are Treated Like Children We Feel Like Slaves I Know How to Do My Job, Why Can't They Just Let Me Do It? I Am Afraid to Speak Up Nobody Appreciates My Hard Work There Are Different Rules for Different People
Employees Aren't Respected Management Doesn't Listen to Us Management Doesn't Respect Us So Who's in Charge Anyway? I Don't Trust the Information I Receive from Management My Boss Is a Terrible Manager
Employees Aren't Receiving What They Really Need I've Lost Confidence in Management We're understaffed They Don't Tell Me What I Need to Know to Do My Work We Need More Training The Quality of Our Products and Services Is Terrible I Receive Poor Service from Other Departments There's Too Much Red Tape Here Why Don't They Get Rid of the Entire Deadwood Around Here? There Are Too Many Damn Meetings
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™
Page 3 of 4
EMPLOYEES’ LOATHE THEIR WORKPLACE Employees Feel Unappreciated I'm Not Paid Fairly It's Just Not Right That We All Receive the Same Pay My Performance Reviews Are Useless There's No Link Between My Pay and Job Performance The Cost of My Benefits Is Eating Up My Pay check It's Impossible to Get Promoted Here
W-O-R-K Has Become a 4-Letter Word I Hate Coming in to Work, It's Become Just a Job for Me Now There's No Job Security Here I've Got No Time for Myself or My Family I Feel Trapped, I Wish I Could Go Out on My Own My Company Isn't Committed to Me, So Why So Why Should I Be Committed to It?
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™
Page 4 of 4