90 Steps to Employee Engagement and Staff Motivation
By
Finlay Morrell
Smashwords Edition
ISBN 978-1-4660-1373-5
Copyright Year: First published in Great Britain in 2011
Copyright Notice: by Finlay Morrell. All rights reserved.
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Do you want to increase the levels of performance in your business or department? Do you want to reduce your absence levels and increase the morale and motivation of your teams? Then this is the book for you.....
There is much documented research on whether employee engagement works in terms of delivering positive business results. Many people wonder whether putting their efforts into motivating their workforce or team is actually worth it.
Why bother? Does it make any difference?
Well the research shows that organisations that have highly engaged people, have better business performance and results than those organisations that experience low levels of employee engagement.
So, now we have a compelling business case for spending time and effort on motivating staff, how do we actually go about it? What are the key elements that go towards creating a motivated and engaged employee? How do I start going about this? So many questions, well, this book takes you through 90 steps that can be taken in order to achieve a highly motivated team of people. It covers areas of development, reward, communications, respect, collaboration and many more.
All of the techniques in this book are real solutions, they have all been used. This is not a theoretical book, it has been written by a Manager who woke up one morning and decided that there must be an easier way. He used the techniques in this book to create a highly engaged workforce. The results from the journey saw his operation rocket up his organisations employee engagement league table and saw him presented with his businesses national recognition award for developing highly engaged teams. You can achieve the same too....
To Donna, Elle, Fin and Amber… you make it all worthwhile and some…!
Contents
1.Introduction
2.Spokes of Engagement
3.Why bother?
4.The 90 Steps……
5.Summary
6.Overview
7.Further Reading
Introduction:
I suppose we all think that we can manage and motivate people, in fact, I bet a number of us who have been doing it for years, probably feel that we are very good at it. I myself have been managing staff for the best part of 20 years, not a long time compared to others, however, long enough to have gone through some very tough times. I considered myself to be a natural leader, someone who didn’t need to work too hard at getting the best out of people. Or so I thought!
After the company that I was working for at the time undertook an Employee Opinion Survey, I was a little surprised at the results. I was managing a medium sized Warehousing operation and had been for almost a year. The operational management team in my opinion were very proficient in what they did and had been running a mature operation for a period of years. The league table that was published at the same time as the results, showed my site to be mid table in terms of Employee Engagement. A little disappointing considering I felt we had a motivated team already. The survey gave the results across a number of areas and departments so it wasn’t too difficult to understand where we needed to focus our attention.
I guess during the release of our survey results, I was also hitting a bit of a cross roads in my career. Whilst I felt I was good with people, I also liked to ensure that we maintained good levels of discipline and that our employees knew the rules. Despite being good with people, I felt that I was also having a constant battle, getting people to perform the way they should and to push them into taking certain actions. It seemed like work was always about telling people what to do and by when and then if they didn’t, then there were avenues I would need to take to address the performance issue.
At the time of our results being released, I had a discussion with my then boss about what true engagement was and how companies achieved this. We agreed that I would research the subject with a view to producing a plan which could be rolled out in my operation. After a couple of months of research, discussions with other companies including Google and a couple of books later, I came up with a plan which was set around a number of spokes. You can read about these spokes in the next chapter.
What followed was a journey of discovery, and an adventure into changing the culture and attitude of my site. I found along the way that a number of colleagues and staff got confused with the term engagement, believing that this type of management approach was fluffy or soft. I didn’t see it like that, I explained to them that it was purely about one line in their job description which would read “Must be able to manage and motivate a team”…. Whether they believed this or in fact accepted it, I do not know, however, I know from the feedback from a number of staff that they feel the place has improved and it is certainly better than it was previously which can’t be a bad thing.
Whether I have achieved true employee engagement, I am not sure. If I left the business tomorrow, would it still continue? Who knows, certainly things continue to happen when I am out of the operation for a period of time. I did learn during this journey that you need to think about how you can make this stuff stick. How can it continue and evolve and what processes need to be in place to make this happen? I talk about continuous improvement processes towards the end of this book and this also needs to be engrained in the hearts and minds of the team.
I am also pleased to say that after having implemented many of the steps and ideas listed in this book, my site has gone from mid table to top 4 and I myself have won two of my organisations National Recognition awards in the same year, the first for the development of highly engaged people and the second for being passionate about continuous improvement.
I am sure that by implementing the steps detailed in the book, that you yourself can achieve success in building employee engagement and staff motivation, whatever industry or working environment you are in.
Good Luck
Spokes of Engagement
There are a number of elements that need to be linked together in orders to achieve true employee engagement. Much research has been undertaken on the subject and many people have tried to implement initiatives which seek to improve the motivation of their staff. I believe it is a cultural thing; it is something that is observed through behaviours and the way we act with our staff on a day to day basis. There are of course elements to engagement which are quantative, pay and rewards for example. However, they are not solely going to motivate a workforce. You may have the best pay; however, if your relationship with your immediate line manager is not good, then this can be a major influencer in you wanting to leave the organisation.
The following are the main key drivers in Employee Engagement; Reward & Recognition, Training & Development, Fun, Environment, Respect and Communication.
These spokes need to be considered together in order to truly achieve high levels of motivation. They can not be taken in isolation so any program you establish must be broken down into the 6 work streams. Let’s take a look at each one and you will notice that some of them cross over.
Respect: This is about creating an atmosphere of trust and respect for our staff. It is about how we deal with staff on a day to day basis, it is about building a level of trust in their dealings with us, it is about “winning friends and influencing people”, it is about collaborating, listening and acting upon their ideas. This is largely about how you interact with your staff and work colleagues.
Environment: This is about creating a work environment that is pleasant, that is respected and that is looked after. It is about the working conditions and the tools that are provided for staff to undertake their duties. This does not always mean spending loads of money, but it does mean that you should make the environment as pleasant as possible to work in; anything from bad coffee to running out of printer paper can demotivate staff when they are trying to do a good job for you.
Training & Development: This is about identifying the staff that want to be trained and developed; it is about giving them the opportunities to progress and to create a learning environment. It is about expanding their knowledge and seeing them grow. Not all staff will fit into this category and this is fine, however, many staff can give more to the organisation, if only the organisation did something about it. I did not start off as a site Manager in my career, I learned, I expanded my knowledge, I gained experience. I worked for organisations that provided me with these opportunities. Training & Development is not just about putting people on external or internal training courses. Creating secondment opportunities or working in other departments will support an individuals learning and development.
Communication: Remember the last time someone didn’t tell you something? How did that make you feel? Not being communicated too effectively can lead to all sorts of issues and it de-motivates big time. Communication is about explaining why we have to do something, it is about listening, informing, collaborating, being attentive, understanding, and it is about interacting.
Fun: There is no reason whatsoever, that we can’t link work with the word “Fun”! Say it; go on, I dare you… “Fun”…! We spend an awful lot of our life at work, why shouldn’t we associate it with having fun. Now I obviously understand that there is a serious element to work, namely safety, profit, professionalism to name a few. However, by incorporating a little bit of fun in and around our work, we can enjoy it more which in turn will help us get out of bed and make the effort to attend!
Reward and Recognition: For most of us, we come to work because we have to. We need to pay the bills. This in itself suggests that reward is pretty damn important, and it is in most cases. However, reward must be appropriate to the job and it does not compensate for very long for working in an environment that does not consider my learning and development, or a poor relationship with my boss, or a really stressful miserable workplace. You can be well paid for what you do, but if some of the other spokes are damaged or out of line, you will soon look to leave. Recognition is important to most of us also, we need to know that we are doing a good job. No many people enjoy doing a bad job. Recognition needs to be genuine and sincere in order for it to be accepted. Reward needs to be appropriate and relevant to the job, the market conditions and the business.
All of these elements together, go to make up the spokes of engagement. They are ALL needed in order to make for a successful, highly motivated and passionate workforce. They are applicable to all levels of the organisation and must be given equal consideration in the development of any employee engagement improvement plan.
Before you get stuck into this book and the 90 steps, sit down and consider where your organisation performs well under these spokes and where they don’t. What are the issues you have in staff motivation and which category do these issues fall. Also consider that true engagement is a culture, it is largely in the way that you and your business leaders act. It is about creating an environment that fosters creativity, trust, respect, development and community. In most of the steps listed in this book, we endeavour to improve each one of the spokes. We need to continually look at what we are doing in each of the spoke areas and review what is working and what isn’t.
It is not recommended that you run off and implement all of the steps in this book on your own. That could be perceived as another load of management initiatives, however, you must obtain buy in from your team and staff in order for these initiatives to “stick”. People need to support these initiatives in order for them to have the maximum impact. Make a point of discussing options around solving your issues and throw in the ideas or steps as a possible option. Allocate a team member or establish a committee who have the responsibility for implementing the initiatives, but make sure you mentor them and keep close there implementation. This will help ensure your success.
It’s a well used phrase, but this is definitely a journey. It will take time; you will need to consider adapting the initiatives in order to fit with your organisations culture and values.
Always consider how you can make the initiative work successfully before introducing it. Think about what resistance you may get. Consider how you might make the initiative self perpetuating and that it will work long after you have gone! That is the ultimate success, that the people who will be involved in the initiative will actually make it work of their own accord and that they value what the initiative is doing for them.
Overall, be flexible, adapt and adjust as may be required and enjoy the journey.
Research
There is an awful lot of stuff floating around about Employee Engagement. There are many books on the subject and quite a lot of research. I remember having a conversation with my boss before I started my journey in which he questioned whether or not it was possible to really engage with staff in order to improve business performance.
There are far too many organisations that do not perceive there to be any benefit in investing in activities that engage with staff. This is most definitely an old and out dated view, in fact it can be proven that engagement works and provides superior results. You only have to take a look at research undertaken by organisations like Gallup to see that they have found the evidence to demonstrate that engaging with employees really works. Even the UK Government commissioned a report to look into the subject. The report, “Engaging for Success” by David Macleod and Nita Clarke, sought the views and opinions of may well know organisations and also looked into previously published findings. It recommended improvements in order to promote engagement in organisations, both public and private sector.
I have listed much of the research publications in the section at the end of this book, however, I felt that in order to silence the doubters, that a few snippets should be shared with you here.
Engaging for Success: Government report, page 38
A Watson Wyatt study of 115 companies suggested that a company with highly engaged employees achieves a financial performance four times greater than companies with poor engagement,. They also reported in 2008/9 that the highly engaged are more than twice as likely to be top performers – almost 60% of them exceed or far exceed expectations for performance. Moreover the highly engaged missed 43% fewer days off work due to illness.”
Engaging for Success: Government report, page 38
Gallup found that engagement levels can be predictors of sickness absence, with more highly engaged employees taking an average of 2.7 days per year, compared with disengaged employees taking an average of 6.2 days per year
Hay Group: Engage employees and boost performance 2001
Engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones
Gallup Research undertaken in 1999 and 2005
Customer loyalty increases by 56% above the average
Employee retention is 44% above the average
Safety record improves by 50%
Productivity increases by 50%
Overall profitability increases by 33%
Right Management: Measuring Employee Engagement 2006
70% of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs, while only 17% of non-engaged employees say the same.
Marriot Hotel Group
Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them
Edgar Dale, a highly regarded educationalist
Students only retain 10 percent of what they read. If you read and hear something, you retain 20 percent, but if you teach, you retain as much as 70 to 80 percent. By getting protégés to become teachers and to present to other employees and managers, their learning reaches a dramatically higher level.
Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference and they will.
Kelloggs
Some of the initiatives run by Kellogg’s include: Flexitime, home-working, part-time working and job share. Career breaks, parental leave, time off for dependants and maternity and paternity leave. Personal development planning, secondments and study leave. On site gyms, or subsidized access to local facilities, free annual lifestyle assessments in work time, a variety of physical exercise based programmes
The 90 Steps
1. Get to Know Your Team, really get to know them!
Your immediate team members are going to be the ones that you have most of your interaction with so seek to understand who your key team members are and get to know them. Get to know what motivates them and what makes them tick.
Understanding what type of character they are in terms of their personality profile will help when you are managing day to day. Consider undertaking a personality profiling exercise on your individual team members. This gives a picture of how they are likely to respond in certain scenarios. There are a couple of good organisations that specialise in profiling. Take a look at the following web sites or search the internet for “Personality Profiling”.
a)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
b)www.myersbriggsreports.com
c)www.SHL.com
It is important to get to know them personally, ask them about what they did at the weekend, learn what their outside of work interests are, you might find that you have something in common.
Developing an understanding of the people you work with day to day, will help you achieve more and will build your relationship with them. They are much more likely to help you get things done if they believe that you are genuinely interested in them and their families.
Seek to find a relaxed state of working with them, not too relaxed so that they don’t take you seriously, but more that they are not frightened to tell you the truth or to give an open and honest opinion. You need the truth in order to make things better; you do not want to hide behind your team telling you all is well, when in fact it isn’t. Facing the truth is the best way in dealing with an issue. You can’t make it better if you don’t recognise that it is a problem. Therefore creating a working relationship with your team that encourages challenging each other whilst respecting each others opinions in a non threatening environment is a big plus. Some people can be reserved about giving their opinion to their boss for fear of the boss getting a bad impression of them or thinking that they are stupid. You need to create an environment that encourages your team to come out of themselves.
Personality profiling will help you understand an individuals comfort zones.
Get each of your team members to complete a profile of themselves; encourage them to sit down and discuss it with you.
Consider setting up a team session for your direct reports whereby each member shares their own profile with the team and the team members are allowed to share their views and opinions of their colleagues profile. This helps develop an openness and understanding for all team members about what makes each other tick.
2. Spend ½ day in each department and meet the teams
You know who your key team members are, now get to know their staff. It is obviously impractical to spend all of your time with staff, however, getting to know a couple of names every day will help you learn what the issues are affecting your individual departments.
Be prepared to take criticism when doing this, some of them may not be happy. However, if you spend time taking on board their issues and being seen to help resolve them, you will start to build some momentum and gain respect.
If you have been at the company for a long time, put together an induction program for yourself. Treat yourself as if you were a new starter. Look to spend ½ day or at least a couple of hours in each department. Work with the guys and girls that do the job. Ask them to show you how the systems and processes work. Ask them what their issues are and what prevents them doing their job. Ask them what they would do if they were in your shoes.
Get to know their names and again, understand them personally.
Do they have kids?
What do they do at the weekend?
How long have they been with the company?
Do they enjoy what they do?
Try to take away one or two of their issues and try to fix them.
Get back to them to let them know what you have done. Fixing someone’s problem, no matter how small, will demonstrate that you are interested in them and helping them to do their job. This can earn great respect and will encourage people to come up with ideas or discuss problems that need resolving.
Make sure you gain a good understanding of how each department functions, about how each one interacts with the other and what drives there particular levels of motivation or engagement. What appears to be the big problems that frustrate and demotivate staff in each department? Find this out? Ask the staff about it; ask them what they might themselves do to fix this if they could.
Ask them to show you the job they do. Make sure you have a go at doing their job, maybe taking the phone call or picking the order. Have some fun doing this, get your hands dirty and be empathetic towards the difficulties they experience in their job and departments.
3. What are your KPI's and what affects them?
Getting to know your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) is extremely important in running an effective operation and communicating these KPI’s helps demonstrate to your staff how well or not the business is performing.
KPI’s are a set of measures which represent the main elements of your operation. You would look at these metrics every day. They tell you how well your operation is performing or not as the case may be. They are the key metrics by which you make your daily management decisions, if one of your KPI are going in the wrong direction, then you would need to take actions to ensure its trend is reversed. Usually you would report on these KPI’s daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly. They are specific to your operation as a whole. Individual departments can have their own KPI’s which influence the performance of your site KPI.
If you don’t have any KPI’s you need to set some up. If you do have them, review them to make sure they are meaningful to your business today. If you need to set them up, consider what the 5 key measures are that you need to focus on daily in order to improve your business. Absence, Overtime, Efficiency, Service level, Accuracy, Call Rate, Cost per Unit, Customer Complaints.. Etc. These are all measures that can demonstrate how well your business operation performs.
Once you have set these up and have validated them, share them with your staff. Explain what they mean and demonstrate actions to make them go in the right direction. Produce simple KPI charts that can be displayed around the organisation to communicate how things are going. This is a great way of keeping your staff involved in the business and their own departments. It shows the link between what they do and how their own department and their own work, contributes to the running of the business.
Consider setting up a “how are we doing” notice board, which shows the KPI’s, perhaps in a graphical form using a traffic light system.
Your staff will be able to see the impact of their actions on the movement of the KPI.
Using KPI’s in this way and by publishing & communicating them, is a good way of keeping your staff involved and making them aware of how the business is doing.
Consider collaborating with your staff on how you can improve the KPI performance of their department. Talk about the KPI’s daily. When you see staff, ask them how their department performed against one of their KPI’s last week, What prevented them from achieving or exceeding their KPI? What can they do to make sure they hit their KPI consistently? How can you help them achieve their KPI? Staff who are engaged will consider the KPI in the actions they take daily, further helping your business achieve its goals. Having KPI’s for each department is a good way of fostering competition and inter departmental rivalry. Departments will be interested in what their colleagues are doing in order to achieve their own KPI’s.
4. Review Your Communication Processes
Communication is a huge piece of the employee engagement pie! Poor or non existent communication can lead to staff feeling unhappy, un-loved and un-valued.
If they feel like this, they will not perform and will more than likely begin to resent the management and the business which is a dangerous situation to be in particularly if they are dealing with your customers. Therefore it is important to think long and hard about your communication strategy and the processes you use.
Write down all the elements of communication you use now. Take a walk and ask your staff how effective they feel communication is. What do they think could be done to improve communication? What do they want to know about? What do you need to tell them?
Always consider communication in whatever you do. Ask yourself and encourage your management teams and colleagues to continually ask the question
“WHO NEEDS TO KNOW?”
Design a computer/workstation screensaver which has the message “Who needs to know?” on it. Develop a communication plan and strategy, showing what is going to be communicated, by what means, when and to whom. Always develop a communications plan when going through major changes, but consider it in any project or initiative you undertake.
Consider the following in your communications….
Quarterly fun newsletters
Notice boards
Monthly team briefing sessions
Information TV screens around the site or office
Social media including face book (develop a page about your operation or department)
Regular information bulletins or letters to all staff
We often spend too much time telling staff what to do and maybe how to do it, but we often neglect to tell them “WHY”. If they understand why, they can help and are more likely to support the objective or task.
When we have a task to undertake we need to spend more time explaining the reasons or the “Why” we need to undertake the decision or task. Look to your staff to come up with the how and what. This will help make your change successful. By telling people the what and how, we create a demotivating situation, think back to the last time your boss told you exactly what to do. How did this make you feel? When taking this approach, people are treat like robots and creativity is stifled.
5. Review Your Training & Development Processes
Another popular reason for employees leaving a company is because they feel they have not been developed enough or provided with adequate training.
Companies that have high levels of employee engagement, also have training and development high on their agenda. They support training and development with reasonable training budgets and processes and will refrain from slashing training budgets when times are hard.
In order to maintain good levels of training, it is essential to have robust processes for training and development in place.
Start by looking at how training is identified, it should be fair and consistent and should be relevant to the individual.
You need to ensure that training and development is not allocated based on favouritism and that you consider the needs of all staff.
Your process should commence by identifying an individuals training needs.
How do you do this currently?
Who identifies that a training need exists?
Are training requests formally documented?
Do your processes consider internal opportunities for enhancing development?
Review your budget for training; is it adequate enough to support your training objectives?
Set a target for a number of training days per person per annum and measure your progress towards achieving the target. Make sure that you are training for a purpose and not just to hit a training day’s target. Staff will become frustrated if they go on courses or have training which they do not see the relevance of.
Training and development does not need to be built around external courses, it can be through mentoring or job swaps or through internal projects. Encourage your teams to create learning and development opportunities for their staff.
Ask your department heads to identify at the beginning of the year the training plans for their staff.
Review how your sites training is delivered, is it effective, is it relevant to an individuals role? Does the individual actually need the type of training that is being delivered?
Consider implementing a career development meeting for staff at all levels to understand where they want to go in their career. Agree a number of steps or actions, in order to help your staff get to where they want to go.
Develop a training plan template that is smart (see objectives) and gives commitment to what can be realistically delivered. When you have reviewed your processes, promote them to staff, make a big thing of it, and put posters up around the place to communicate what is going to happen.
Communicate your training targets and progress against them.
Make a commitment to your staff that they will all have a training and development plan that is realistic and time based which consists of the right mix of internal and external training as well as in-house development opportunities, such as job swaps or rotations.
Make sure your training and development processes have an element for evaluating the success of training which has been delivered.
Use a training matrix, (see the chapter later), to help you identify training needs and to highlight any areas of the operation that has skills gaps.
6. Review Your Administration Processes
Red-tape can be a huge frustration to staff when undertaking their job. Most people would generally appreciate the need for administration, rules and procedures, however working in an environment which has many bureaucratic processes which slow down a job or delay someone achieving their goals and objectives can become a large demotivator.
Requests for tools, equipment and information that take too long or have to go through a convoluted sign off/approval process really bring frustration to people who have focus on achieving their set task.
How did you feel the last time you had to wait for something that you needed in order to do your job effectively?
It is sometimes difficult to understand why these types of requests take so long and it is usually due to the administration process that the organisation uses for requesting and approving such items.
Take a look at your administration processes and sign off procedures. Do they have the frustration factor? How long does it typically take for the process to run from end to end? Track a couple of requests or processes to see how long they take in reality. If they are adding unnecessary delay to a job, look at streamlining them so they are much slicker.
Removing this type of frustration will further engage staff and help them drive to achieving their own goals. Ask them to get involved in your process review, ask them how they think the process or procedure can be improved or even better, eradicated.
Undertake a brown paper exercise on a couple of your more cumbersome administration processes. How many people are impacted on or involved in this particular admin process? What are the steps that the process follows and where are the points in the process that add time and or unnecessary bureaucracy? What can you do to reduce the steps in the chain?
Consider what value each step in the chain adds to the end result for you and your team achieving their objectives.
Administration processes usually evolve to handle or manage a particular issue at the time. Are they still valid today? Ask your staff why they undertake such admin processes; they could well answer “because we have always done it...” Ask what would happen if the process was not undertaken? Find out how much more effective they could be if the admin they are doing could be removed.
7. Review Your Performance Appraisal Processes
How is your staff’s performance reviewed, or is it? Most people actually want to know how they are doing in their jobs and having a clear, structured performance review process in place is a key mechanism for doing just that.
It should be used to determine how the individual is performing against set criteria (usually competency based), how they have done against any set objectives and how their personal development can be further enhanced.
Take a look at what review mechanisms you have in place, do they cover objectives, competency based performance assessment and personal development planning? Does the performance review process span across all levels of the organisation? How often does an employee have a performance review? Annually, Quarterly, Six monthly?
It should not be so that performance reviews are held for just the management or admin populations, but that all job levels should have some form of performance review. It may be that different levels of job role, strategic, tactical or task need slightly different competency criteria.
There is little point in assessing someone that is working on a task based job, against strategic competencies and vice versa.
Consider undertaking performance reviews every six months as a minimum, quarterly is good but may be too frequent dependent on job role. If you have staff whose job is based on achieving daily productivity targets, then you should consider having some sort of weekly or monthly performance review.
Develop a performance review document that records the meeting, the criteria, objectives, development plans and comments/signature boxes.
A good performance review should take around 2 hours. (Probably less the more frequently you hold the reviews).
Consider the following sections in your performance review documentation;
a) Overview page, date/time of review, who undertook the review. Job and person being reviewed
b) Review of last years objectives
c) Review of performance against competencies
d) Identification of training & development needs
e) Overall rating, Exceeds, Meets, Falls short
f) Comments from both parties
g) Next review date
The performance review meeting is important and should be carried out in a relaxed and quiet environment, free from interruption.
It should allow for the individual being reviewed to have enough time for preparation. They should be encouraged to bring to the review, evidence and examples showing how they have performed against the criteria. Equally, the reviewer should provide fact based evidence and examples to demonstrate why they feel the reviewee has performed in a particular way, both good and bad.
The performance review meeting is not just a forum for delivering bad news, in fact, it is better to ensure that the reviews do not present any surprises to the person being reviewed. Do not save up all of your bad news for the performance review. Make sure you continually highlight any performance issues on a day to day basis.
Try to have some contrast during the review giving good news as well. This is equally important. You don’t want to totally demoralise a member of your team. Consider the performance review process as a way of motivating your staff members. Making it more focussed around the good things they have done and their future career path, will give them a good feeling and they are more likely to feel uplifted about their own future in the business.
We all love to be told we are doing a good job. Don’t get me wrong, you also need to ensure your negative comments or the issues the staff member needs to address are dealt with during the review in a respectful and dignifying way.
8. Set up your meeting structure/schedule
Establish a regular review structure which allows for regular, well structured and documented meetings.
Publish your meeting schedule and make sure the dates are in the diaries of both you and your colleagues.
Think about what needs to be reviewed and when, consider what should be reviewed daily, weekly and monthly. Make sure you review the important KPI’s daily or weekly. You do not want them going in the wrong direction and waiting a week or a month in order to put it right.
Setting up a regular structure will get your team into a well disciplined routine and they will begin to make things happen through the review process. Having this sort of review process in place maintains momentum and keeps a focus on improvement. As long as the reviews are action based and actions are getting crossed off between reviews, then progress will continue to be made.
This review process also ensures that communication keeps flowing which is vital in achieving your team’s objectives. Keeping a focus and making progress through your meeting and review structure will help drive your staff towards their goals. Make sure the meetings are meaningful and are not just being held for the sake of it. Ineffective meetings are a huge drain on resource.
9. Demonstrate the behaviours that you wish people to espouse
Look inwardly at yourself and the behaviours that you demonstrate. Remember what it is like having children, if you swear at home and the kids hear you, they in turn will copy the behaviour that you demonstrate. It is exactly the same at work.
If you lose your temper, then you can expect your staff to do the same. Your mood and attitude can rub off on your staff and you should ensure that you do not demonstrate negative or bad moods in the work place. Take a look at the “Fish!” philosophy. They determine that you actually chose your attitude every single day. Make sure your choice is positive.
Always act in the way of your respect charter; actively demonstrate this behaviour in your dealings with staff whom you come into contact with. Keep your promises, treat people with respect, remain positive, calm, trustworthy and authoritive. Demonstrate a can do attitude and always seek to delight people that you come into contact with. A good leader can motivate and inspire just with one conversation.
These competencies will help lead you to success. Encourage your staff to act in the same way, if you walk the job and see litter on the floor, pick it up. Demonstrate high standards.
10. Set up a site consultative council or committee
Having a site council or joint consultative committee is very helpful in getting the workforce involved in making decisions that affect their day to day working. A regular forum with elected representatives from the various areas of the business or operation, which is documented with forthcoming actions will aid the communication process and will help make the place better for all. The idea behind setting up this forum is that staff that work in the business can have a say and input into how certain things happen. It is good practice from a management perspective that the views of staff are taken into consideration, prior to decisions being made. Now obviously not every decision or change can be subject to the “approval” of the committee, but if the representatives are actively involved and consulted, then decisions and change will come that bit easier.
Consider the following framework for setting up your site committee
PURPOSE
The “Colleague Committee” exists in order for members to meet at regular intervals to discuss relevant business matters. The Forum is used as a means by which views, opinions and ideas are shared as part of the decision-making process. By improving awareness of views and tapping into the knowledge and experience which exists, we can improve the quality of the decisions made. There will also be better understanding and co-operation amongst all colleagues.
AIMS
To provide an environment within which management and employees can meet to promote the maximum efficiency of operations and foster good employee relations with respect to the welfare of all employees, through joint consultation and communication, to ensure the long term efficiency and prosperity of the Company for the benefit of shareholders, employees and customers.
ACCOUNTABILITIES
To foster continuous improvement within the business and the Forum itself.
To form part of the consultation process during periods of major change
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Forum members recognise Management’s responsibility to PLAN, ORGANISE & MANAGE the Company’s operations efficiently
To utilise existing procedures for the resolution of issues & grievances
Recognise that our colleagues elected members are responsible for promoting the interests of their fellow colleagues and those of the Forum
To conduct Forum business through the authority of the Management Members of the Forum
MEMBERSHIP
2 Management Members
1 Secretary
5 Area Members
Any permanent colleague with a minimum of six months continuous service shall be eligible for election so long as they conform to the above guidelines.
In the event of an elected member moving areas permanently, i.e. not having worked in his/her elected area for a period of more than three months, colleagues in that area where the member previously worked will be asked to elect a new member or if they wish to keep the existing one.
ELECTIONS
Elections shall be held every year
The secretary shall advertise for nominations, in writing, at least one week before the election.
Nominations shall only be considered valid when the nominee confirms a willingness to stand for election.
Approved nominees shall be advertised on company notice boards. If only one nominee is received for a particular area, then that person shall be considered elected.
Forum members shall normally remain in office for a year when they can choose to stand for re-election, if nominated.
To be eligible for nomination, a colleague must:
a) Be working in the area for which he/she is standing.
b) Be proposed and seconded by a member of his/her area
c) Not have progressed beyond the “written warning” stage of the Disciplinary Procedure. If a sitting member progressed beyond the “written warning” stage, he/she will automatically forfeit his or her seat.
TERMINATION OF FORUM MEMBERSHIP
Any forum member wishing to resign must do so in writing to the secretary.
A member who leaves employment with the Company automatically is dropped from the Forum and nominations are sought for replacement from the area concerned.
CO-OPTED MEMBERS
By prior agreement, a representative of the forum can recommend that any person having particular knowledge of matters under discussion may be co-opted to join the forum for one or more meetings, where it might be considered beneficial for the enhancement of effective consultation.
MEETINGS
Meetings will normally be held every six weeks, on site and in company time. All attendees shall receive downtime for the time that they are present at these meetings.
ADMINISTRATION
All members will normally receive a draft agenda at least three days prior to a meeting. Any topics may then be added. The secretary will then issue a complete agenda at least one day before the forum meeting.