When Does Your Workforce Need A Transformation?

When Does Your Workforce Need a Transformation?

Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about employee retreats – and why they are so effective in bringing about transformations for your workforce. But why does your company need a transformation in the first place? What unique scenarios require transformations?
 
Specific needs will be different for every business, but there are some certain situations where this idea of “transformation” is so much more important than training alone – or, maybe more accurately, regular training just won’t cut it.
 
Transformations, as discussed in the last post, are major changes to ways of thinking, not just ways of doing things – so when would this kind of change be most necessary? Here are a few examples:

1. New Leadership
 
When a new leader comes on board, it can be tough to gain the respect of existing team members. Additionally, it can be difficult for those employees to fully understand the necessity of bringing in this new leader, changing the group dynamic, and relatively upsetting the “natural order” they’ve gotten used to.
 
In a situation like this, the desired transformation is from an attitude of adversity to an attitude of acceptance, respect, and collaboration.
 
Through an effective retreat, the team would have a chance to get to know this new leader, address concerns in an open and supportive environment, and hopefully get on the same page about why this leader has been brought on board.
 
By taking the time to alleviate any apprehension from the team before normal “workday” operations are affected by the presence of a new leader, the team is transformed without taking a toll on productivity.
 
2. Merger/Acquisition
 
When two companies come together through a merger or acquisition, there’s plenty of room for difficulty. Operations and expectations within the two companies will certainly have some variation, and the necessary “transformation” involves finding a new standard that everyone can agree on.
 
Achieving this kind of transformation takes significant preparation, as well as some clear-cut standards for how you want the final, “combined” operations to look like.
 
The change in thinking involves letting go of “the way things used to be” and internalizing the need for operations that meet the new goals of the merged company.

3. Broad Restructuring
 
Sometimes companies have to go through massive changes. It could be an entire shift in products or services offered, an update in systems that affects the entire company, new employee standards, or anything else that impacts many people across different departments.
 
The transformation(s) involved might be as large and complicated as the company changes themselves, but much like in a merger, it’s important that everyone understands and internalizes the need for the changes, and overcomes any resistance they might have to the new ways of doing things.
 
4. Creating New Energy
 
Over time, people can get complacent. They may settle into a less-than-ideal pattern of thinking or behavior, and they need a bit of a transformation to refresh their enthusiasm and/or focus.
 
These kind of transformations will happen a little differently for every team or individual, but no matter what, it’s all about getting down the essential principles the company operates by, and getting everyone excited about their individual contributions – and the successes they can achieve as a group.
 
These are just a few examples that could necessitate the transformations that retreats provide. In any scenario that requires a large-scale change not just to the way employees operate, but also the way they think, transformation is essential.
 
Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

HR Leaders, What Grade Would You Give Yourself?

Let’s be honest here. HR people aren’t always the most popular people in the company. That’s not that big of a surprise, really, since they are usually the face of performance improvement processes, layoffs, annual reviews, and all those other fun processes.

Plenty of the time, they have to be the bad guy.
 
What about all the other things that HR is supposed to handle though? Have we forgotten all about the real purpose of “Human Resources” and turned the job into the office’s keeper of the process?  Between the mandatory employee engagement action plans and completed performance management forms, is that so hard to believe?
 
HR leaders aren’t supposed to be some militant watchdog – they’re the driver of talent management. They’re supposed to be the group responsible shaping future leaders and ensuring that its current leaders are agents of change.  In the age of knowledge workers, there is probably not a part of the organization that is more important than HR.
This is NOT the position of a bad guy or the “People Process Police”. In fact, HR leaders should be looking for ways to unleash the organization’s leaders not miring them in process.
 
So let’s get real – are you helping the organization to be their best, or just instituting programs? If you had to give yourself an honest assessment, a letter grade even, how would you rank your own performance?
 
Seriously – what is the letter grade you would give HR in your organization if the criteria were the following:
 
• Impact to business goals
• Impact on engagement
• Impact on being ready for change
 
IMPACT ON BUSINESS GOALS

HR’s programs, practices and initiatives should be designed to positively impact business goals.  Not just “cost of hire” or “cost of attrition” type of metrics.  Those are passive measures.  HR needs to link each and every program to a specific business goal.  It is likely that the success of the goal will not be solely impact by HR, but that’s not really the point.
 
No HR program should be started or continued unless it’s connected to a business outcome or goal.
 
How many of your programs have a direct impact on business goals?
 
According to SHRM’s “Future of the HR Profession” white paper one of the most critical areas of focus (and improvement) for HR is to

“quantify in dollar terms the value HR initiatives bring to the bottom line, is the best way to ensure future investment in the HR function.”
 
If you had to give a grade for your organization on impact, what would it be?
 
IMPACT ON ENGAGEMENT

There has been a lot of talk over the past years about employee engagement. The problem is not that organizations aren’t concerned about it.  They are spending countless hours and dollars on it.  Unfortunately, the results have been less than stellar.
 

“A recent national study by Dale Carnegie Training placed the number of “fully engaged” employees at 29%, and “disengaged” employees at 26% – meaning nearly three-quarters of employees are not fully engaged (aka productive)” – Victor Lipman(@VictorLipman1)
 
With all of the measuring and talking about engagement, very little of significant impact is being done.  Study after study shows that there are a handful of methods to drive employee engagement:

1. Get results to people quickly
2. Empower teams, managers and employees to take action immediately
3. Connect employee engagement to business goals/outcomes that matter
4. Make sure that the business owns engagement, not HR
5. Make engagement part of the every day, part of a leader’s routine
 
How many of these does your organization enact?  If you had to grade your organization on how it impact’s employee engagement, what would it be?
 
IMPACT ON CHANGE READINESS
One of the most important roles of HR is to ensure the organization is ready for and looking forward to change.
 

“Forces at work in … business — increased competition, rapidly shifting technologies, and emerging disruptive business models — are the forces that are reshaping many parts of the global economy “ – Scott Anthony
 
It’s cliché, but true – change is the new normal. Organizations that are not constantly ready and even looking for change are doomed to failure.  It’s HR job to make sure its leaders are agents of change.

Is HR in your organization looked upon as change experts?  Do other parts of the organization regularly call upon HR to lead or facilitate change?

If you had to grade yourself on how well you’re preparing the organization for change, what would it be?
There are many areas that require HR’s expertise and wisdom.  HR can push organizations to greater impact or fight mightily for the status quo.  If you were grading HR for your organization, which role would you say they play?
 
I’d be curious to hear about other areas of grading for HR.  What are critical factors that HR plays on an organization’s success.  Please let me know your thoughts!

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Your Employee Engagement Isn’t Going To Work

“After five years of doing engagement, I’ve not seen a real impact.  The sad part is that I feel like I can predict the results before they happen,” stated a senior level executive.  He looked at me and asked, “Why do we keep doing this?”
 
As a former Gallup consultant, Employee Engagement is near and dear to me.  I have led engagement initiatives and witnessed the power of their impact on organizations.  Yet, far too often I hear this same concern.
 
There has been a great deal written about the power of employee engagement.  After the landmark study that launched employee engagement in Coffman and Buckingham’s First Break All the Rules, there have been hundreds of studies showing the impact of engagement. Every year all of the major employee engagement providers put out their annual “state of the state” regarding engagement.  Each year, there are many examples of companies leveraging engagement to be even more successful – Campbell’s Soup, Toyota, and Apple just to name a few.
 
But, the sad truth is that there are many more examples where employee engagement is not having the impact that it could.
 

“The latest findings indicate that 70% of American workers are ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ and are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive. These actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. between $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity. They are more likely to steal from their companies, negatively influence their coworkers, miss workdays, and drive customers away.” – Gallup State of the American Workplace
 
I discussed why this is so with leaders and employee engagement practitioners. According to them (and my experience) there are three prominent reasons Employee Engagement fails to produce the results intended.
 
ENGAGEMENT NOT CONNECTED TO THE BUSINESS

Time and time again, Employee Engagement is brought into an organization with a great deal of promise.  Senior executives are sold on the notion that Employee Engagement is a panacea that will make their business better, faster, stronger.  That somehow, just by taking this magical survey

1. Employees will sing the praises of the company
2. Customers will line up to buy and will actively sell without compensation
3. Competitors will fall by the wayside
 
Either it is said and executives don’t listen or it is not explicit that just like the ab machine bought on QVC at 2 AM if engagement is not linked to impacting business or organizational goals it will be largely ignored.  Employee Engagement is a powerful measure that can anticipate the performance of an organization.  Unlike revenue or profit or compliance, it is a predictive measure of performance (get quote or link) IF IT IS LINKED TO BUSINESS OUTCOMES.  Just taking the survey, rolling out reports and doing action plans will do little in the long term to impact business results.
 
In order for engagement to have impact, employees can’t just be engaged they have to be engaged to something.  Prior to rolling out an employee engagement survey, there has to be work done to link engagement to some measure that is important to the business.
 

“Researchers studied 49,928 work units, including nearly 1.4 million employees. This latest iteration of the meta-analysis further confirmed the well-established connection between employee engagement and key performance outcomes:
 
• Customer ratings
• Profitability
• Productivity
• Turnover (for high-turnover and low-turnover organizations)
• Safety incidents
• Shrinkage (theft)
• Absenteeism
• Patient safety incidents
• Quality (defects)

Work units in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile units by 10% on customer ratings, 22% in profitability, and 21% in productivity. Work units in the top quartile also saw significantly less turnover (25% in high-turnover organizations and 65% in low-turnover organizations), shrinkage (28%), and absenteeism (37%) and fewer safety incidents (48%), patient safety incidents (41%), and quality defects (41%).” – Gallup Business Journal

 
Any of these measures can be linked to engagement because what impacts them the most is PEOPLE.  But without that causal link, eventually engagement will be a “program” that managers and leaders “have to do”.  There will be less and less emphasis put on it.  Eventually leaders will only give it lip service.  Then a new Employee Engagement vendor will be selected and the cycle will start anew.
 
HR IS ADMINISTRATOR, OWNER AND CHAMPION OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

HR is the very best place for Employee Engagement to “live”.  However, HR being its owner and champion is misplaced.  In order to ensure that Employee Engagement carries its required weight, the owner must be a senior leader from the business, preferably someone that is in charge of a revenue generating part of the organization.  It is impossible for HR to be administrator, facilitator, coach AND enforcer.  At some point those roles will be indistinguishable.
 
In order for Employee Engagement to be seen as a business initiative, it has to be owned by the business.  It also means they are accountable for its success.  But, a business leader won’t take on owning an initiative that isn’t tied to business outcomes they care about.  Hence the reason #1 is so important.
 
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS AN EVENT NOT A MINDSET

The drumbeat from thought leaders in Employee Engagement is it cannot be a “once a year event”.  It is doomed to insignificance if the focus is on survey, report and action plan.  That makes it a program with checkoffs.  It undermines the most important part, conversation.  Employee engagement must be a mindset.
 

“Employee engagement will not thrive when it’s handled like an event. But when it is vigilantly cultivated and purposefully spread through the interactions between managers and employees, it becomes a way of working. It becomes part of a company’s culture.” – Shawn Murphy (@shawmu)
 
The survey and all that is part of it are only a portion of actually creating an engaged workplace.  It is not enough to talk about engagement or promote being more engaged.  Developing an engaged workforce takes ENGAGING THEM.
 
Employee engagement has been proven to improve organizational performance.  What is your organization doing to increase the impact of Employee Engagement?
 
Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Healthy At Work

When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no “I’ll start tomorrow.” Tomorrow is disease. ~Terri Guillemets
 
There’s a growing trend in companies across many industries to help employees of all ranks focus on personal health. There’s plenty of talk about “wellness at work” in terms of insurance premiums, posters hanging in eating areas, discounted health club memberships, and other fairly “surface level” nudges toward making healthier choices – but what are they really doing?

The reality of food at work

Picture the last birthday in the office, the last company cookout or potluck… what kind of food was served? Cake? Donuts? Cheese dips? Pizza?

Most of the standard “work party” fare is about as far from healthy eating as it gets, and yet the company focused on “healthy choices” doesn’t make a peep about it!

For all the talk about healthier employees, most companies leave the actual responsibility in the hands of the employees themselves – and while that’s just fine (there shouldn’t be RULES against eating fatty foods or not getting enough exercise), a company concerned with the health of its workforce should at least be leading by example, and rolling “wellness goals” in with other company goals.
 
When food is coming out of the company coffers, why not make it a healthy meal?
 
What about a focus on wellness education? There’s an awful lot more to healthy living than just diet and exercise.
 
Linking Employee Health to the success of the Business 

To help root these ideals in reality, companies can look at how employee health affects business goals. Healthy employees are less likely to miss work due to illness, and because healthy choices often carry over into home life (improving the health of children and other family members), health-focused employees are also less likely to miss work to take care of an ill family member.

According the CDC, obese employees show a more than 50% increase of missed workdays when compared to “normal-weight” employees. These statistics apply to both men and women.
 
Not only are healthy employees more likely to be at work, they are also more likely to be productive (and in high spirits) when they are there. A team of healthy employees will likely work together better, and maintain a less stressful work environment as well.
 
From an owner and shareholder perspective, healthy employees reduce insurance costs, and health programs can function as great incentives for prospective employees.
 
So what to do

Companies can work with their staff members to help them make healthy food and exercise choices, provide an environment for health education, and even work as a support system for maintaining healthy lifestyle changes. Let employees include health goals with other annual business goals. Track progress, offer encouragement, and make sure employees know how important the health of the entire organization truly is.
 
Again, all of this rests on the individual choices of each staff member (and healthy choices should not be required, nor should health be tracked if and employee doesn’t request it), but by creating a landscape where health information, healthy food, and open dialogue about the benefits of health-based decision making are readily available, companies can nudge employees toward improving their health – and everyone benefits!
 
Are you making health a priority?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Do Your People Programs Have A Purpose?

Seems like organizations after organization roll out people programs to drive….engagement? Career development?  Honestly, it’s a little unclear. Organizations are masterful at developing business strategies. MBA courses are dedicated to it. But what about people programs? What is the seamless connections between them?
 

There is no doubting that happier, more involved employees yield numerous benefits, but it seems like too many companies are pursuing these goals as an afterthought (or as part of jumping on a bandwagon) instead of including these efforts into their overall business goals.
 
In the end, the driving force behind all people programs should be “how does this drive gaining/retaining customers?”  Each program needs to be linked to an organizational outcome. Yes there are organizations that are exceptions to this , like Southwest. But the majority of organizations putting out people programs with no tie to the business doom them to being:
• An afterthought
• A nice to have
• Another thing to do
• What to do when you have “free time”.
 
Initiatives that aren’t integrated into the business of the business don’t make people’s top priority list. “How do we increase employee engagement” Question after question are posted on LinkedIn.  There are beautiful solitons and TONS of data that point to why engagement is an awesome thing to drive. Yet, it’s not a focus still. Maybe it doesn’t have to do with engagement tool but where engagement  fits or is positioned.

To create a climate of universal adoption and enthusiasm for people programs, wouldn’t it be wise to frame them in a way that satisfies the interests of shareholders, managers, and employees alike?
 
It’s pretty clear how this can be accomplished: tie the benefits of people programs into quantifiable business results – how will engaged employees increase productivity? How will career development help attract and retain customers?

If they aren’t directly helping the business operate, what’s the point? Or rather, if people programs are helping the business, why aren’t they treated like it?

Regardless of the program, these same questions can be asked. There needs to be a direct link between a given program and a desired result.

Simply improving engagement is not a result in and of itself; it’s the means to a result like higher productivity, more effective collaboration for creative projects, increased communication for better conflict resolution, etc., and even these effects need to be tied back to reducing overhead, retaining customers, or increasing product value.

Ask yourself, what is the actual, tangible purpose of your company’s current people program? 

If you can’t tie it back to a company-wide goal, you just might be wasting your time.   

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The Big Employee Engagement Oversell

Employee engagement is not a silver bullet.  It is not the “wonder pill” that will magically transform a failing or floundering organization into a profit-making powerhouse.  Honestly, there is really nothing out there like that.  Really.  Nothing. 

Employee engagement is one of the most powerful tools to drive organizational performance as a part of an overall strategy.  It is  and can never be the answer.  For too long, consulting companies have sold employee engagement as the pathway to understand all that ails them and lead them to the promised land of high performance.  Those companies have not been honest.
 
In the seminal book about Employee Engagement, “First Break All the Rules” Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham outlined a method to understand the gap between current and high performance.  It was a powerful measuring tool.  But, just like the MRI, CatScan and EKG, it can only read the issues.  It can not fix or even really diagnose.  There is not one part of the employee engagement toolbox that can improve organizational performance by itself.  Not one.
 
THE THREE BIG REASONS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT ISN’T WORKING FOR YOU
 
1. “DOING ENGAGEMENT” AS A SEPARATE INITIATIVE.
Survey, manager training, action planning…the mantra of employee engagement.  Focus on these things, empower your managers and poof your organization will magically be transformed.  Uh, no that is an epic fail in the realm of organizational change.
 
• Managers aren’t natural students.  They aren’t going to learn about engagement if it doesn’t help them NOW.  Manager want information that will impact their team’s performance and help them reach their goals.  Doing action plans without a tie to the organization is not going to work.
• Managers are   BUSY and if engagement is handled this way it is just another thing to do.  Put at the bottom of the 1,000 item long to do list.
 
 
2. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT SURVEYS ARE NOT ACTIONABLE
Unfortunately, many survey questions that are asked on surveys are not actionable by managers and team leaders.
 
“My senior leaders model the behaviors in our corporate values” – Excellent question and gives great information for a senior leader.  But what difference does that make to an employee.  How will it make their life at work better?  In short, it won’t.
 
Engagement questions should be thought provoking and interesting.  But they MUST be able to impacted by the front line manager.  If they can’t have an impact it leads to them being frustrated and employees not seeing any impact of giving their input.

3. THERE IS NO OVERALL STRATEGY   TO WEAVE ALL THE “PEOPLE INITIATIVES” INTO A COHESIVE PLAN. WORST OF ALL, NONE OF THEM TIE TO ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS.

Career development – great for employees’ growth
High potential program – excellent way to prepare for future leadership
Employee engagement – superior measure of employee passion
 
Each of these programs are outstanding. They enable a well developed workforce that is poised to take on new challenges and step up when leadership needs require…if that is what your organization needs.  The starting place for any new employee/people program initiative should be –
 
• What is the goal of this?
• How does it tie to our current or future business/organizational goals.  
• How does tho fit into our already existing “people programs”

Programs that are initiated without some tie to improving organizational goals will be seen as “busy work” or will be put on the very very bottom of the list of to-do’s.
 
If people programs are not woven together they can’t be leveraged to make cumulative goals.  If they aren’t integrated they can be confusing for managers to explain, hard for employees to use and expensive for the organization to run (duplication of effort and excessive bureaucracy).
 
Employee engagement as a part of an overall strategy tied to business goals can be very powerful. Engagement done on an island can cause more problems than solve. Which one is your organization doing?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

What If Work Could Be Awe Inspiring?

What if work could be awesome? What would it be like to wake up in the morning and think, I can’t wait to get started and it wasn’t a vacation?
 
Okay, not every day can be that way no matter what. But there are SO many blogs about making a great workplace directed at leaders and managers. What about everyone else? Don’t we have some responsibility?
 
Yes, yes we do.  Knowing that and acting on it as an employee gives us power. It takes us out of victim mode and into action!

So, now that we have our super hero cape and are in the appropriate superhero stance, how do we make work great? There are a lot of excellent ways to make this happen. Here are four methods that I, and people much smarter than me, have found to be successful
 
FLEX YOUR CHOICE MUSCLE
 
Yes, you have one. It’s located right next to the flight or fight muscle. Choice is pretty powerful and you’re actually using it all the time. How ever you react to a situation, unless you are in danger, it is a choice. Now, whether its conscious or unconscious is another story. Generally speaking, many of us react unconsciously. When asked to work late, we act like we are put upon and just do it. As if there was no alternative.  But what if there was? What if you could consciously choose to accept the option to work late? Maybe use it as a time to really make yourself look good.  Or maybe you could bargain to complete the work at home.
 
In the end, how you react to situations is your choice.  If you get cut off on the expressway, you can chase the offender or you can turn up the news and be thankful you’re not that much of a jackass.
 

While external pressures may trigger our feelings, we are the ones wearing those feelings like a suit of clothes. We can either be subservient to external events, few of which we have any control over, or we can take charge of our own response. – FISH!
 
The best and most healthy way to deal with things is to choose your actions and reactions.

KNOW YOUR LINE OF SIGHT
Be very clear about how what you do impacts gaining and retaining customers. It will help you to understand why you take the actions you do (or should). You should be able to trace your actions/role to the customer within 3 steps (add jpeg of LOS path)
 
Knowing why you do what you do should help make your job more enjoyable.  It will help give it meaning.  If you can’t see how what you do impacts the customer, then you and your boss need to map that out.  Once you figure that out, share it with your boss. They will likely be impressed and it’ll cause a good conversation about what you should be spending your time doing or not doing….
 
Give it your all
Yes, that’s right give everything you do your best effort.  Often times when you put your all into a task it allows you to focus innovate and be more efficient.
 

Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success. – Sivanda, Swami
 
Getting the reputation for excellence is always a great thing. People will know that when you are given a task it’ll get done. That is not to be taken lightly. Being a go-to person is a path to promotion and access to working on the best projects.
 
SHARE YOURSELF
Mentor someone or take on training new hires. Often times you can get the energy you once had as a newbie by being around new people. Doing this will also hone your skills. There is nothing that increases your own skills faster than teaching them to someone else.
 
DO SOMETHING GOOD FOR YOU
Take time to reflect and recharge yourself. Nothing makes work (or anything for that matter) seem like drudgery faster than burning out on it. And if you don’t take breaks, recovering from burn out gets harder. (Remember that song you played over and over as a kid. The one you can’t stand now? Yeah, it’s like that)
 
Make sure you are doing something that you think is fun and is for you!
 
Now, it’s up to you.  You can go to work and be miserable, change jobs and eventually be miserable there too (unless you work for a horrible company, more on that another time). Or, you can work on the only thing you really have control over, you.
 
As my mother used to tell me –
 
You can run away from your problems or things that bother you, but the problems will never change unless you do.  The constant is always you.

(Yeah, I probably should have listened to her more too…)
 
What do you do to make work  awe inspiring?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

3 No Brainers To Boost Employee Engagement

Based on the countless surveys, consultants, strategies, and team activities that have permeated the lives of corporate employees.
 
Every company wants more engaged employees.
 
• Why, then, does engagement continue to dwindle?
• What about these strategies isn’t working?
• Why does it seem like the companies with the highest levels of employee engagement are trying the least?
 
The answer is fairly simple – the companies struggling with engagement are all about changing policy and practice, but not about impacting company culture.

Here are three ways to foster the kind of change that will boost engagement in any company:
 
1.    Transparency

People want to know what’s going on, plain and simple. When bureaucracy and “need to know” information stand in the way of an employee getting a clear view of what the company is up to, they feel like an invisible cog, moving the machine toward an unknown destination. If an employee isn’t even aware of the end result of their work, or what goals they are helping the company achieve, how can we expect them to care about it?

Instead of keeping employees in the dark, why not share information across the board? A big contract or new project on the horizon might drum up some excitement. If employees know why a program excelled or failed, down to the gritty details, they will be more likely to take personal responsibility.

This isn’t rocket science: the more people know, the more they care.
 
2.    Recognition and Gratitude
 
People also want to be recognized for a job well done, or really, just for a job done. This doesn’t mean incentivizing every employee or throwing a party every time a project is completed. It means real, genuine thanks for each individual’s contribution to the company.

This is something that doesn’t really function as an official policy – no one wants to be thanked because it’s required. There doesn’t even need to be a big show made of it – simply thank and employee for contributing to the company’s success in a personal and individualized way.
 

People don’t forget kindness. – Tom Peters

Managers and supervisors must also understand the cultural shift involved here: express gratitude genuinely because the employees are the lifeblood of the company, because you actually appreciate their contributions, not because it’s required or because it will boost engagement. A genuine thanks goes a long, long way.
 
3.    Autonomy

Independence can be scary for some employees, and particularly for managers, but studies (and successful companies) show that the more freedom we give our employees, the more productive they become. Allowing employees, no matter what kind of environment they work in, to have some control over their own professional lives is hugely empowering. Even small steps, like choosing your own lunch break or slightly flexible scheduling, puts the responsibility on the worker – they will take lunch when it fits with their wants, needs, and workload, not when the whistle blows.

Some companies take this concept further, allowing employees to determine their own schedules, or focus on task/project completion, not hours on the clock. This kind of autonomy puts the ball in the employee’s court – they are responsible for maintaining their own standards of productivity. Allowing employees to self-manage indicates two very important things: that they are trusted by the company to make decisions and maintain their own projects, and that their workload is no one’s responsibility but their own.
 
When people are micromanaged or feel like someone is always looking over their shoulder, they shut down. Constant supervision restricts creativity. Allowing employees to find their own methods, to apply their own unique perspective to the needs of the company, promotes independence, stimulates “outside the box” thinking, and of course, boosts engagement. People tend to rise to the challenges presented to them.
 
Employee engagement is not rooted in policy or surveys, nor can it be gained overnight. Real employee engagement comes from working in a place that is enjoyable, where individual ideas and strengths are embraced, and where the employee feels like a valuable component of the company. This is a culture of engagement, and the businesses that get it right will continue to enjoy success, both internally and externally.
 
HOW DOES YOUR COMPANY CULTURE FOSTER ENGAGEMENT?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
 

No One Values Bland Corporate Values

It seems like most businesses, from mom and pop shops to corporate giants, are getting caught up in the trend of “defining company values.” While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can be pretty useless if not executed correctly.

Companies want to create unity among their employees, as well as project an image of solidarity, value, and respectability to potential customers or clients. This is all well and good, of course, but what happens when every business is making a move to show it? We end up with a great deal of generic, trend-following value statements that are ambiguous to both customers and employees. That pretty much defeats the purpose of defining values in the first place.

Often, the problems have been that the values are typically expressed with meaning-neutral (if not meaningless) corporate-speak, or that the values aren’t of a first-order nature. That is, they don’t touch on what truly constitutes the “good” for people inside and outside the organization.

Of course “customer service” is valued at any given company – what business doesn’t value their customers? They would be foolish not to provide great service to their patrons, but does this really have to be defined as a corporate value? The same is true for other generic values like “market leadership” and “commitment to employees.” Do a quick Google search, and you can probably find 20 companies with these same phrases listed among their company values – hardly a unique position.
If the point is to select and identify values for all employees to embrace, then these values have to be relatable, and more importantly, specific to each unique business. Overly generalized value statements come off as corporate jargon, and most employees will simply let this kind of talk go in one ear and out the other. To present values that are actually valued by employees, owners and management teams have to find factors that the staff actually identifies with. They have to be tangible.

Creating stellar core values isn’t exactly easy. You’ve really got to dig deep and figure out what is at the core of you business. That kind of soul searching doesn’t happen overnight and often takes someone outside of the company to take a look at your business

For workers constructing skyscrapers, perhaps “fearlessness” is a value that is both identifiable and extremely important to a job well done. For those handling dangerous chemicals, a “commitment to proper use of safety equipment” is something that employees can get behind. Corporate values should be important to the success of the business AND the direct interests of employees.

There is a great deal of emphasis on how to make corporate values “sticky” to staff members, but this is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. If the ideas are to be truly valued, they have to be valuable to the people adopting them – specific, well-thought corporate values will be perfectly “sticky” all on their own.
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Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

3 Great Ways To Scare Off Potential Employees

Here are three sure fire ways to not only lose the people you have but also scare off any great potential employees.

1. Use layoffs as a way to “meet the quarterly numbers”

Although proven time and time again, somehow organizations STILL use layoffs as a tool.  Layoffs are NOT a good tactic to remedy short term budget crises.
 

More than anything, layoffs — and the potential for layoffs — causes a sense of panic within the employee base. – Mr. Van Gorder, CEO Health Scripps
 
2. Don’t allow for flex-time, working from home, job-sharing or other alternative work arrangements

Somehow during economic programs like flex-time, working at home or alternative work weeks seem to lose their luster.  But why?  Is it because they are less effective?  No.  Most organizations see these types of work arrangements as “perks”. But they are not perks.  They are the new way of work and actually work to INCREASE productivity

Companies are finding that flextime boosts productivity, and more and more of them, including Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT – news – people ), Texas Instruments (nyse: TXN – news – people ) and First Tennessee Bank, are taking advantage of it. When employees manage their own schedules, their stress levels decline and they focus better on their tasks. – Emily Schmitt, Forbes

3. Don’t focus on results

There are still too many organizations that operate under the misconception that working longer hours (night, weekends, through holidays, etc.) shows how dedicated an employee is.  Often, employees that don’t put in that “face time” are seen as “not dedicated”.  Unfortunately, there is nothing further than the truth.

Simply put, punching a time clock makes no sense for professionals. Their contribution is not the time they spend on their work but the value they create through their knowledge. – Robert C. Pozen Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School

• The recent uptick in employment,
• The strengthening economy
• The vast majority of employees are not engaged at work

All three of these facts indicate that employers need to start thinking of how to KEEP their best employees.
 
What are you doing to make sure your best are not thinking of leaving AND you can hire the best when you need them?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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