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Twelve Things You Can (and Must) Do to Create a Better Place to Work (Part II) (This article may be combined with “Twelve Things You Can (and Must) Do to Create a Better Place to Work (Part II))
By Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette
Last month, if you recall, we shared with you the story of Dr. David Smith, the British researcher who claimed that simply thinking about strenuous exercise could lead to the same benefits as actually doing the exercise.
To test Dr. Smith's theory, one of us spent the month of May contemplating bicep curls, believing wholeheartedly in the bench press, and imagining aerobics. The other went to a gym 4 times a week during the same month, even when on the road. Guess which one got to break in a new belt loop last week…and which one didn't.
Our experiment only serves to reinforce our assertion that when it comes to being an employer of choice, all the great intentions in the world will finish a distant last place behind actually doing something. It takes action, sometimes courageous, innovative, and sacrificial action to be the leader your workforce needs.
So here are six more ideas, making it an even dozen, to put on your to-do list for creating a great place to work.
7) Conduct a survey. Go out there right now and find out how you're doing in the morale department. If you've waited for the appearance of a dark cloud over your place of business, or if your fears of defections leave you feeling like the chair of the Republican party, you're too late. Regularly (and formally) assess employee attitudes, morale, and perceptions of the work environment through the use of a survey. Feed the results back to everyone (as in, everyone) within one month.
Make sure the survey scores play a significant role in the promotion, retention, and compensation of all those in a leadership capacity. Use the data to manage, measure, and reshape the organization's strategic people priorities.
Make it easy for people to give you the information you need. Put the survey online, on your intranet, or in a secure area of your website. But a HUGE caution here. If you're not prepared to share the results, and act on what you learn, in a reasonable period of time, don't even get started. Just start planning the going away parties.
8) On the premise that great places to work start with great people (kinda like baking a cake, isn't it?), start measuring, managing, and rewarding each manager's hiring performance over time. This IS part of your business metrics isn't it? (If all you've got to say is "we measure employee turnover," then, to borrow an expression from a currently popular game show, "You're the weakest link. Good bye.") Ditto if that portion of a manager's bonus potential tied to quality of hiring is less than 25% of the aggregate.
9) Identify one person on your team who seems to be bored - underchallenged in their work. Ask them to develop an idea for a meaningful project they would like to work on. Involve them in as much of the detail as possible. Ask them to develop a budget, identify resources, timelines, and expected outcomes, and then get out of their way.
10) Show people the fruits of their labor. Find a meaningful way to show people how the product they make, service they support, or work they do is actually used, and enjoyed, by your customers. One company we work with meets this challenge with field trips. Yes, field trips. Like when you were in school. They make highly technical medical supplies. You know, tubes, valves, that kind of thing. The work is tedious, painstaking, and, well, boring.
The first step in combating complacency was to build some task variety into the job. Then, the plant manager started arranging tours of a nearby hospital, where the assembly workers could see their products at work, saving lives, and delivering drugs and pain relief to patients.
The assembly workers came back so excited that the office staff wanted to be a part of it too, so they chartered a bus for themselves. Now, everyone in the plant makes a couple of trips a year, to keep reinforcing the message, "What we do here is important."
11) Engage a promising employee in a well-structured career development plan. Learn about their career aspirations and aptitudes, then explore available directions and opportunities. Involve them in a plan to begin taking concrete steps toward achieving that goal.
12) You undoubtedly spend tons of money on internal corporate communications. Here's a little pop quiz you can use to see if it's working. Ask the next 10 employees you happen to bump into to write down the company' s top 3 business priorities. If the answers are all exactly the same, give us a call; we'd love to congratulate you (for real.) If they aren't, you had better get busy, because as former NFL head coach Jimmy Johnson once put it, "confused players aren't very aggressive."
All right. We'll make it a baker's dozen.
13) The next time one of your employees does something they didn't have to do, purely out of a sense of commitment to the team or the organization, write 'em a note. Yes, get a note card, and a pen, and write it out by hand, even if your handwriting is lousy. Put the note in the envelope with their next paycheck. Make this a habit.
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.