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Studies show many employees are dissatisfied in their workplaces. Employee dissatisfaction, of course, will adversely affect a company’s performance.
The dissatisfaction is global. The trend is likely to continue unless businesses improve their approach to managing their human capital.
A lack of employee engagement means:
— Higher costly turnover
— Less focus on customer service
— Less productivity
— Weak profits
Higher pay and benefits are important to workers. But they’re not the greatest motivators, and employees often have more salient non-financial concerns.
So, the key is to take steps that lead to higher employee morale and performance.
The bottom-line question for you: Do your employees mirror what you expect?
Solutions
Assuming you’ve hired the best talent in terms of attitude and to improve your business performance, here are 15 HR strategies:
- Be authentic, not a patronizing employer.
- Walk the floor twice a day to engage your staff. Show empathy. Ask questions, such as “How are you?” Wait for the answer.
- Demonstrate your listening skills with open-ended questions. (“What is the dumbest thing you on which you’re working?” or “Where is the company wasting resources – in time or money?”) Thank the person and follow up whereever feasible.
- Communicate what the company is doing and how it’s performing.
- Help employees to understand how they contribute to your bottom line. Show them your company-wide objectives and how their work contributes to your company’s performance.
- Give workers a purpose with challenges.
- Without being verbose, teach them how you think and why.
- Create collegial teams of workers without micromanaging them.
- Make employees a CEO of their work. Empower them to contribute ideas and allow them as much autonomy as feasible to make decisions.
- Encourage each employee to be customer-focused.
- Immediately, show appreciation for good work and counsel employees following sub-par work.
- Budget for development and training.
- Show flexibility to enhance employee balance for career and personal life.
- Establish an employee assistance program. Do what you can to help eliminate the employees’ stress factors so they can have maximum focus on their responsibilities. That includes financial tips. As my dad once told me: “It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you bring home.”
- Employees know who their toxic co-workers are. Don’t let the toxic workers hurt your workplace environment.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are more management suggestions:
20 Tell-Tale Signs – If You’re Under-Performing as a Manager — Managers can often struggle whether they’re new or experienced. Poor management, of course, leads to poor performance. As red flags, under-performing managers share one of two common traits with ineffective employees.
Avoid Nightmarish Trend: Discrimination Suits, EEOC Dragnet — News headlines from Seattle to New York are cause for some serious head slapping when it comes to managing employees. Here’s how to avoid HR troubles.
Human Resources – Profit By Not Letting Your Stars Become Free Agents — Like baseball, it’s important to identify talented performers and then take care of them. Follow these steps – you’ll be rewarded with a grand slam.
Boss Checklist: 16 Strategies for a Competitive Edge — Are you one of the countless businesspeople who needs a good look at your situation? Are you having a good year? Are your employees performing well?
Human Resources: 12 Errors to Avoid in Evaluations — How should you properly evaluate employees? Make sure you are careful to avoid errors in evaluations. Naturally, you want to praise good performance and discourage bad.
“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”
-Peter Drucker
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