It’s not simply exhaustion. According to the WHO:

“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by three dimensions:

– feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion

– increased mental distance from one’s job, and feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job

– reduced professional efficacy

Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life”

I completely relate to the WHO’s definition above, choosing to leave my previous globe-trotting career due to complete burnout in my early 40’s.    I didn’t recognise (or probably chose to ignore or accept) that the physical health problems, mental stress, and eventual complete breakdown that I experienced, were due to the sheer exhaustion, ridiculous hours and hectic schedule I sustained over a 12 year period.

The latter half of that period I was regularly travelling inter-continentally, working away from home sometimes for 3 weeks at a time.  My husband was a naval officer at the time, also having to spend weeks or months at sea, so I would occasionally have to travel with my two pre-school children.  Organising temporary creches or nursery schools, whilst I worked onsite with whichever client I was consulting to at the time, added more stress to the work life, as well as the feelings of guilt for dragging my kids from pillar to post (although they’ve turned out great).

Looking back, it was complete madness.  I started suffering from numbness, pins and needles in my hands and feet, migraines and sickness on a regular basis, and a constant feeling of exhaustion hindering my efforts to try and maintain my career trajectory and still be a great mum and wife.  Even after extracting myself from that career, I suffered serious health issues for another decade.  Only now, 20 years later, do I feel that I’m back to full health and in a great place mentally – despite lockdown.

So I really do relate to why the WHO are now classifying burnout as a definable disease.  Burnout and disengagement are on the rise as employees continue to work under challenging circumstances. Staff are either in fear of their health on the front lines, or logging long hours at home, in isolation.  And as I can personally testify to, when employees are burnt out, time away isn’t the solution. 

Coming to a company culture near you – a crisis 

The predicted crisis is the erosion of company culture – and the subsequent undermining of business performance – that will occur if business leaders fail to assess the impact 2020, and its continuation into 2021, has had on their employees. 

I suspect many leaders are experiencing the effects of burnout in their workplaces right now. Many employees have returned to work after the holiday break with dread, as the underlying drivers of burnout – including unreasonable workload, unfair treatment, and frustration caused by lack of role clarity and manager support – aren’t remedied by time off. 

Business leaders are about to be hit, out of the blue, with employee issues they never saw coming.  The tragedy is that this will occur just as businesses are poised for recovery and need all hands on deck.  Worryingly, this burnout will quickly turn into total disengagement if not caught and remedied.

But there are actions leaders can take to identify whether their own cultures are imperilled, along with steps for insulating the organisation from damage by developing a strong core purpose

Why It’s Important for Leaders to Assess Teams Now – A Solution

The burnout phenomenon and its underlying drivers are just one reason why it’s important for you to regularly assess your teams and gain a clear understanding of where underlying problems may be bubbling under the surface.  

Some leaders are suggesting they prefer to wait “until things settle down” or “we’re all back in the office”.  However, as we hope to start putting the pandemic behind us, and focus on recovery, you will be even busier than ever, whilst the issues present within your organisation will have had months to fester and grow.  

Savvy leaders who want to stay a step ahead will want to nip problems in the bud before they disrupt their businesses. This is where running an Employee Engagement Benchmark Assessment provides a litmus test to highlight any issues, giving you potential to make changes before it’s too late. It’s truly a case of prevention is better than cure.

Alluxi are proud to partner with EngagementMultiplier, a tried-and-tested online tool that provides the data and insights you need, acting as an early warning system, that enables you to see around corners and spot growing issues – before they become serious problems. 

Burnout & Employee Engagement – Contributing Factors

A leading researcher and expert on employee burnout, Christina Maslach noted in an article entitled Burnout is About Your Workplace, Not Your People

“Categorizing burnout as a disease was an attempt by the WHO to provide

definitions for what is wrong with people, instead of what is wrong with companies.”

There is a clear correlation between burnout and employee engagement. Gallup identified the top five reasons employees burn out are:

1. Unfair treatment at work
2. Unmanageable workload
3. Lack of role clarity
4. Lack of communication and support from their manager
5. Unreasonable time pressure

Fair treatment, role clarity, clear communications and support from ones manager are all drivers of employee engagement. However, when any of these are absent and are combined with an insurmountable workload and unreasonable expectations, it’s easy to see how a person would quickly become not just exhausted but disheartened.

Additionally, the rapid shift to working from home in response to the pandemic may be creating new issues for employees, as managers are still struggling with the adjustment to remote leadership, and exhibit new behaviours that were not previously observed.

Pitfalls remote leaders are falling into, that absolutely align with the burnout drivers listed above, include:

• Becoming invisible to employees when we all are working remotely
• Expecting employees to be “always-on” and immediately responsive to emails
• Using technology to monitor employee activities
• Over-reliance upon meetings, as a proxy for keeping tabs on productivity

The remedies for burnout take aim at these five contributing factors, and they start with the company’s leadership: revising policies will not resolve underlying drivers such as an absent leader, one who treats employees unfairly, or a poor communicator.

Disengagement 

Engaged employees bring their best selves to work, and are enthusiastic about and committed to their work and their employer. They relish playing an active role in the business and are willing to go the extra mile.

A disengaged employee is the polar opposite, and no longer cares about the work they do or the company they work for. At their worst, actively disengaged employees are miserable and spread dissent and unhappiness to others on the team.

Disengagement can be extraordinarily costly to a company, stemming from increased absenteeism and higher rates of leave, lower productivity and quality of work, and ultimately, a higher rate of employee turnover.

While burnout and disengagement are different things, they are often found together, and without a doubt, burnout can lead to disengagement, if an employee sees no forthcoming improvements to their situation.

Diagnosis

The most effective remedy is one that’s targeting the right issue. As they say, you don’t want to perform surgery with an axe.

The first task is taking a brave look within your organisation, and understanding how your people are doing. Are they exhausted, or do you have more serious, systemic problems that are leading to employee burnout, or worse, full disengagement?

These issues can be easily masked, and may not be evident at a glance. Depending upon the size of your organization, there are various steps you can take to better understand if exhaustion or employee burnout are impacting your team.

• Talk to people, and not just your direct reports. Schedule skip-level meetings or small group discussions to hear directly from front line employees.
• Check your HR records for unusual patterns, such as a higher than normal absences, or increases in employees on leave.
• Survey your employees. Without a doubt, this is the quickest and most accurate way to get a read on where the organisation stands. A well-constructed survey that guarantees employees full anonymity will enable you to gather frank feedback and provide a source of truth about the health of your company culture.

Recovery

Recovery will start when you identify core issues and act upon the information and findings to begin resolution and improvement. The process can be aided significantly with healthy doses of transparency and clear communication, such as:

• Share the findings with your team. In addition to building trust and credibility, being transparent in this way also creates shared context by defining the issues at hand, putting everyone on the same page. You may also find that sharing information in this way invites more feedback, motivating people to share more insights and feedback with leadership.
• Communicate which issues you’ll be addressing first, along with any related plans and timelines. Be sure to communicate progress and outcomes along the way, to keep building credibility and make it clear to all that actions are being taken based upon employee feedback. The old adage of “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; tell ‘em what ya told ‘em” holds here. Repetition will make the message stick.
• Re-survey your team (or go back for another round of skip-level and round table meetings) to gauge the impact of your actions, and gather reaction and feedback on your efforts.

Your efforts to diagnose and resolve issues within your team can be aided by an employee engagement survey platform such as the one Alluxi offer to clients through our partnership with EngagementMultiplier.

“Belonging” – The top employee engagement trend for 2021 

It seems you can’t read an article about employee engagement without a reference to a sense of “belonging”, and for good reason. Defined as

“the feeling of security and support when there

is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity

for a member of a certain group or place”

belonging is currently top of employees current needs for two key reasons

• the impact that working from home has had on many individuals, inculcating feelings of isolation and loneliness.
• the renewed focus on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and

The underlying drivers that create a sense of belonging are not new, and actually drive an employee’s overall engagement with your business. What IS new is the emphasis being placed this year on the sense of belonging, and how that impacts an employee’s overall experience.

Together, they create a sense of belonging, which is crucially important in organisations that have been stressed by furloughs, lay-offs, and remote working.  You can read more about this new trend in Sarah Skerick’s article “Top Employee Engagement Trend for 2021: Belonging”

This is yet another instance where the Employee Engagement Benchmark Assessment can help your business. If you’ve not surveyed your team recently, this will help you understand at a glance what your employees value – and where the organisation is falling short.  This free survey, simple to set up, anonymous, and taking just 10 minutes to complete,  will show you where your company stands.  Get specific insights into unforeseen issues and prepare your teams for a strong recovery.

Your Next Steps to Greater Productivity in 2021

Looking ahead to 2021, Alluxi is here to offer you support through these times of change, bringing a scientific facts and figures approach to evolve your business and realise your goals. Alluxi provides an initial 60 minute Productivity to Profit Breakthrough Session to understand your unique business frustrations and uncover where your hidden potential lies, to boost productivity in your business. You’ll receive an e-scorecard to benchmark your business propensity for success and you’ll leave the call with clear guidance and action plan to address your key issues. 

The Alluxi 60 minute Breakthrough session, including the Alluxi Business Success Scorecard, will illuminate hidden opportunities to maximise your business potential. Book now for just £125 + VAT, or by email linda@alluxi.co.uk or call 07717 221368

The post THE LOOMING CULTURE CRISIS & EMPLOYEE BURNOUT appeared first on Alluxi Consulting.

As regular followers will testify,  I’m on a crusade to highlight how engaging your staff is key to unlocking greater productivity and profitability in your business.

In my previous series of posts shining a light on the Great British Productivity Swindle, I showed how identifying your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and setting up a Management Control System (MCS) is the crucial foundation to turn up the dial on your business productivity. The next key step is to ensure you are training your managers to give your employees clearer expectations and stronger, more meaningful performance appraisals. This will enable everyone to work more effectively together in a way that is truly aligned with your overall business goals.

As a business consultant and Engagement Multiplier Partner, I am privileged to see behind-the-scenes in a range of different businesses. I’ve seen first-hand how engaged organisations are much easier (and more pleasant) to run.  Value wise, engaged organisations show improved employee retention, lower absenteeism, better quality of work and productivity.  Together with findings from other Engagement Multiplier users, we see how a greater sense of ownership results in

– fewer sick days

– a 21% increased efficiency 

– increased retention of staff with an average of 87% less turnover

The best performing companies are proven to have highly engaged employees.  According to research by The Temkin Group 82% of companies with strong financial results are “highly” or “moderately” engaged, and are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work .

And happier, more loyal and satisfied staff has a ripple effect, making it easier to attract talented new candidates to expand your team, and happier customers too.  All of this results in a better bottom line – with engaged businesses becoming on average 22% more profitable.

ADD £££’s to your bottom line boosting staff engagement!

Even with a team of just 10 people, you could be throwing up to £140,000 of your current wages bill down the drain (based on each person being on the UK average salary of £36,000 including employers costs). Imagine if you could flip that profit drain around by maximising the output you get from each person and generate a better return from every member of your team. Where do you start?

4 Big Issues Business Leaders Face Right Now

Before we get going with the solutions, it is useful to really understand the reasons why staff may be unengaged and unproductive. Many business owners have few, if any, productivity measures on their dashboards, and are oblivious how unproductive their staff actually are.  Some of the surveys I’ve referred to in the past show 89% of employees admit to wasting time at work, with most of those suggesting they actually only use 60% or less of their available paid time on effective work.  This means that 2 of their 5 paid days are effectively unproductive. 

According to a Scoro survey during 2019, office workers said their number one time waster is too many meetings – and that’s before the pandemic forced many employees to work from home; their only contact with other team members and managers is now via Zoom or Teams etc.  

There are a number of small quick wins that could be achieved, such as addressing the effectiveness and number of necessary participants in meetings. This would free up time for your teams to do more of the revenue generating work.  This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improving productivity. There are four more fundamental changes that a business could yield significant productivity gains from which I will outline here, with a particular focus on how the latest national lockdown could be impacting your business.

“We can’t control our circumstances, but we can control how we respond”

People are the foundation of a productive business, and the current pandemic lockdowns are bringing additional problems to the surface.  Mental health and wellbeing in staff working from home is being impacted, and as we’ve seen above, if it isn’t already this could directly hit your bottom line.

ISSUE 1 : Concern about remote team performance?

The Symptoms

– nagging concerns about remote worker productivity

– a decline in communication & connection between people and

– the erosion of your normal culture

In my last blog, looking at the Covid Productivity Tax, I talked about some of the challenges businesses have been facing over the last few months with teams being forced to work remotely.  Employees are feeling the effect of this isolation.  It’s impacting motivation, communication and collaboration.  Staff are feeling lonely and finding it hard to define and divide the work vs home boundaries.

Even managers are beginning to have trust issues.  Recent Harvard Business School research shows that managers who cannot ‘see’ their direct reports struggle to trust that their employees are indeed working, which adds to the employee engagement issues.

People, Structure & Process

From a process perspective we’re in a  world where communication needs to be much more efficient, and more multi-channel.  There is a notable lack of connectivity and lack of structure in the way people are collaborating and being managed, which needs to be rethought in the light of remote working. 

Similarly, structurally the shift to remote working is amplifying many challenges around decision making, bringing people together and upheavals around workflow.  Business leaders have to look at their governance, and simplify it drastically to operate in a new remote-working or hybrid working model.

Taking data from countries around the world who have been working remotely for a while longer than the UK, and adding to the initial reactions emerging in this second lockdown – the principal message is that motivation is taking a nose dive.  The “home vs work life balance” challenge is becoming more prevalent, with the burnout mentioned earlier becoming a reality, and anxiety related to the pandemic is deepening.  

The Solution: Alluxi ‘Working from Home & Winning’ Analysis

We know this is an extremely trying time for business owners, especially those making the rapid adjustment to remote teams, even as they respond to difficult conditions. The recently introduced “Working From Home and Winning” survey helps you quickly understand how your team is adapting to working from home, and what adjustments need to be made to help employees stay connected and productive.  By using the survey you can quickly assess your staffs current mindset and take progressive action to strengthen your team now, and for the future, in the three key foundation themes of connection, productivity and performance.

ISSUE 2 : Evolving Leadership Styles

The Symptoms: 

– concerns that your managers may not be equipped to lead through today’s uncertainty and rate of change

– the company needs to upskill its leadership group

– some leaders are struggling

Old leadership styles in this new world just don’t cut it. Leaders are having to change their approach with employees who are no longer a captured audience in the confines of their workplace. The trust issues mentioned earlier exist because mechanisms are not yet in place in most businesses to measure and manage remotely.

Whereas previously a manager could rely on their gut feel, perception, hearsay and office banter for knowing how business was going, no longer works with teams working from home.  They are now blind to the day to day minutiae they have relied on to keep their finger on the pulse.  This new situation requires a more personal approach, supported with relevant facts and figures.  

McKinsey’s recent report “Fostering Employee productivity and morale through COVID-19” (June 2020),  identifies three areas of leadership that need to be ramped up, if employee engagement is to be improved and be sustainable.  Leaders are going to have to refresh their styles and traits away from a command and control emphasis, and become more attuned to their team’s wavelengths and hone their listening skills.  Partner, Tom Welchman, highlights the workforce challenges business owners need to embrace to drive productivity, in their role of leader.

Empathy

Empathy may not be the first word which comes to mind when describing strong leaders, but in the current climate creating and sustaining a caring culture is perhaps more important than ever. Employees need leaders to lead from the front line rather than micromanage from afar.

Creating a Team of Teams

Leaders need to think about how they can change structures to work more effectively, and more quickly in response to some challenges that we’re facing.  The classic agile approach of the two-pizza rule, between 7 and 9 people in small teams is a proven method which will still work through the new communication methods on video conferencing.

Effective Communications

Increased productivity requires effective communications – a two way dialogue, not a monologue.  Business leaders may be used to pushing out information in a one way process, but now need to engage in a more personalised, two way channel of talking AND listening.  Keeping things short, simple, focusing on the facts, encouraging dialogue and making sure employees hear the truth first hand, is possibly needed now more than ever.  

“91% of employees said they’d feel more comfortable working

from home if their leader set clear expectations for

responsiveness and communication”

(Hired Inc. 2020)

Welchman summarises with a far reaching vision that “future generations are putting more and more importance on purpose and how organizations are responding. And if there’s anything we’re learning about this crisis, it’s that the legacy of actions taken today will really be in people’s minds for years to come”

The Solution: Alluxi ‘Leadership Perception Gap’ Evaluation

The power of strong, effective leadership is an undeniable contributor to an organisation’s success. Employee confidence in their leaders is a crucial factor in determining whether or not leadership is effective. All too often, company executives and employees have differing perceptions of the leadership team’s effectiveness. We call this The Leadership Perception Gap and bridging it is one of the surest ways a leadership team can improve the overall performance of the business. The following questions will enable you to determine whether or not Leadership Perception Gaps exist within your company, and the associated Leadership Perception Gap Success Guide will help you take immediate action to close the gaps you find.

ISSUE 3 : Empowering Teams to Handle the current Rate Of Change

The Symptoms:

– Difficulty making change stick

– Problems with alignment due to rapid shifts in the business

– Lack of visibility into new practices, processes and procedures the team has developed

This year has brought about massive transformation for many businesses. Covid may have helped accelerate some changes that were already being planned or talked about. Some changes may therefore be welcome – as the pandemic has forced many of us to look at new ways of working and get smarter at what we do.  However other changes may have been forced and feel more like temporary solutions while awaiting a return to greater freedom and changes in the market.

The move from work place to home, has also exacerbated and complicated matters when having to introduce changes in practices and processes.  Achieving a behaviour change working face to face with people, with the luxury of being able to interact with them is difficult enough, but to ask people to understand and implement changes remotely adds to the stress and anxiety for employees.  The sharing and collaboration when change happens in the work place is suppressed when working home alone.  It requires you to re-empower your staff – give them new permissions in ways of handling the changes they’re having to adapt to.  This adds to the pressure on the leaders and managers too.

The Solution:  Alluxi ‘Emerging Stronger’ Analysis

Examine how your team has been impacted by change and what innovations it has inspired using our EM Emerging Stronger tool.  Delve into what your organisation has learned since the onset of the pandemic, and identify: 

– New opportunities the employees see from their vantage point 

– New innovations and processes the team has developed

– Opportunities to make the organisation more efficient 

ISSUE 4 : Employee Fatigue and Slowing Innovation

The Symptoms: 

– Engagement Scores declining

– Employees not coming forward with ideas as they have previously

– Progress stalling across the organisation

– Teams losing energy

Frustrating Technology

A poll carried out by Censuswide in May 2020 showed that “Only 6% of IT Leaders believe their organisation is set up to enable maximum productivity from employees at the moment – down from the 11% who took this view pre-lockdown”.  The survey was carried out with 1000 employees as well as 750 IT & HR leaders from across large organisations.

Two thirds (66%) of the IT decision makers believe staff efficiency is currently restricted by the limitations of their IT systems.  Over half (56%) of the employees surveyed agree that serious change still needs to happen with their tech tools, for them to be more productive.  

What might surprise you is in February 36% of staff claimed that greater financial rewards were key to making them more efficient in their role, yet post lockdown this dropped to just 25%, with employees more likely to cite technology as the significant catalyst for greater productivity.    Clearly the shift to motivating and engaging staff is not money but a need for better tools to do their job.

Predictably staff frustration with workplace technology has also increased during lockdown.  Pre lockdown, one fifth (22%) of staff blamed current workplace technology for inhibiting productivity.  This figure increased to 28% by May 2020, flagging that their tech tools aren’t user friendly or simple to use.

Beyond the frustrations with the lack of technology, research has uncovered leadership concerns that enabling staff to work flexibly – whether in the office, working remotely, or even on the move – can have a negative impact.

Both HR & IT leaders believe flexible work is increasing the risk of an “always-on” culture.  Staff feel obliged to be available beyond their normal working hours, which will lead to burn out.  Those same leaders agree that improving employee engagement is key to boosting employee productivity. 

The Solution: Alluxi ‘Kickstarting Innovation’ Analysis

The whole point of having an engaged organisation is what you can do with it! The Alluxi Kickstarting Innovation Analysis will engage your employees in a new and positive way. Your leaders will be able to quickly assess and improve their innovation process with the Engagement Multiplier tool, creating structure and framework for advancing the ideas that power future growth. The message to employees is powerful – their ideas matter, and leadership wants to hear them.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE ALLUXI SOLUTIONS TO ENERGISE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT & PRODUCTIVITY

Improve your team’s productivity with the Alluxi Business Improvement Toolkit

“What gets measured improves ….

What gets measured and reported improves exponentially”

Alluxi offers a 60 minute Productivity to Profit Breakthrough session to understand your unique business frustrations and uncover where your hidden potential lies to boost productivity in your business. You’ll leave the call with clear guidance on how to address your key issues  If you would then like to delve deeper and explore the issues outlined above in greater detail:

– managing remote team

– evolving leadership styles

– supporting your team to emerge stronger and manage the rate of change

– kickstart innovation

We can design a Launchpad Workshop giving you a bespoke framework to optimise productivity and maximise the profitability of your business.  This half-day session, structured around your key challenges, will introduce you to the Alluxi concepts, and how to apply them to your own needs, tailored to your business. It also includes a benchmark engagement survey to assess the current health of your teams engagement levels, and incorporate the findings into future plans.

As the name suggests, this workshop provides a taster of what you can expect from the full suite of Alluxi Business Programmes, accelerate your Escape Velocity and enable you to reach a higher orbit in your business – lift you out of the day-to-day operations to the higher-level strategic control room of your business.

The post HOW MUCH IS LOW STAFF ENGAGEMENT COSTING YOU? appeared first on Alluxi Consulting.

A 5 week series for business leaders needing to transform their business towards the “new norm”

Challenge 5 – Maintaining Fun & Energy

How do we keep team energy high and support teamwork when working remotely, with all the negative press about the impact of COVID-19?

One of the questions in the Working From Home & Winning survey, asks employees to suggest “one way we can maintain fun and energy within our team while working from home?”

Chances are that this is more important to your employees than you think.  Work relationships are important, and those with close ties to each other may miss the routine of the office that brought them together. 

Some ideas to maintain the ‘fun’ elements of work when the team are working remotely could include: 

• Creating a slack channel, Whatsapp group or similar outlet dedicated to fun – sharing memes, stories etc.   As their leader, you have to give them permission to recreate the interactions that make their normal workplace fun.

• Start and end every meeting with everyone contributing something they’re feeling positive about (see the EPIC^TM meetings solution in the previous blog)

• Schedule in time for virtual happy hours, maybe over lunch time, or at the end of the day for trivia games, baking lessons, family hours, coffee breaks, which will create a welcome bright spot your team can enjoy.

• Pro tip – if you’re subscribed to the Engagement Multiplier, use your on-demand survey tool in your dashboard to gather ideas – you can create your own survey on any topic.

Try the Weekly Energy Sheet^TM

One clear solution to maintaining Energy in the team, is a Weekly Energy Sheet^TM to give the team a time out moment, to reflect on their week.  By creating a mechanism, for the team to regularly check in with what have been

• the highlights of their week
• their working from home Win of the week
• Gratitude call out to one of their colleagues who helped or supported them recently, and 
• Next week’s focus areas, to keep the momentum on the teams positivity and productivity.

These four areas will bring a degree of mindfulness to each of the team, to look back and identify the positive, motivating moments rather than dwell on the negative background noise of the crisis they’re living through.

The sheet can be created electronically, and sent back to their line manager, at the end of every week.  Use the sheets to incorporate their feedback and mention the Gratitude call outs, as part of one of your EPIC^TM meetings

Working From Home & Winning Survey

Try the Working from Home & Winning Survey, to get better insight of how your team are really feeling.   The Free “Working from Home & Winning” survey gives you a quick and easy tool to get anonymous feedback from your employees working from home. It takes just 3 simple steps to set the survey up, share with your team, and receive  a summary report, in a very short space of time.   

To interpret the results of the survey, and for more detail on how to adapt the team to remote working, you can download the FREE Working From Home & Winning Success Guide How To Keep Remote Teams Connected, Proactive and Productive

Hopefully we’re all starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel & getting your business back on track.  If you need to boost your competitiveness in the market place, and would like to refresh the “way we do things”, watch out for the next series of blogs from Alluxi, bringing you the fundamentals of LEAN working. Over the coming weeks we’ll outline the 5 principles for creating superior value in your operations.  Each blog will provide practical tips, techniques and methods for you to immediately apply in your own business to boost profitability. 

Fundamental common sense ideas are often hidden amongst the trials and tribulations business owners are up against on a day to day basis.  This next LEAN series will guide you through how to re-boot your operations and cut out those loss making steps that don’t add value to your service or product, and may be eroding your profits.

The post TOP 5 LOCKDOWN CHALLENGES – Maintaining Fun & Energy appeared first on Alluxi Consulting.

A 5 week series for business leaders needing to transform their business towards the “new norm”

Challenge 4 – Effective Time Management

How do we help out team ensure they’re managing their time productively?  Establishing a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities is important to employees. My previous blog in this series, I highlighted how to use the 3x3x3 technique to keep each team member focused on their priorities on a daily basis.

Teams that work remotely, while also responding to a new business challenge, may struggle to maintain productivity.  This can prove especially frustrating for people in the roles that are interdependent on each other, and other areas of the business.

I believe the secret to productivity, regardless of the current pressures of the outside world, lies in giving employees structure, routine and focus.  They need a map to navigate the interdependencies that exist between individuals and team.  Their work routine needs to provide flexibility to make working from home really practical for both the business and its employees.  

There are many techniques that can be adopted, and continued for the future, not just during lockdown.  Here are three simple tips that are easy to implement in a short space of time.

Commit to your in-office schedule and routine

Keep regular meetings, that would normally happen in the office, on the schedule. However, don’t hesitate to bring people together for video conferences when needed, if needs must, outside of the normal meeting schedule.  Without the normal day to day interaction the team is used to when working in the same office, they may sometimes not be communicating as effectively when working remotely.  A videoconference may be needed occasionally to thrash out specific issues.

Helping employees create a workspace at home

Make sure your teams workspace in the home works for everyone they’re living with (spouse, kids etc).  Offer them ideas of how to succeed, such as:

• Working out their routine between the other people in the house, so they’re not all clashing on conference calls at the same time.
• Minimise disruptions using flexible work schedules if that’s possible.  Their work may not necessarily have to fit the 9-5 scenario.
• Agree timings and work schedules amongst everyone the employee has to share the space with.
• Introduce Do Not Disturb signs, to allow periods of concentration.

The 55-Minute Sprint Solution

One key solution which will enable the team member to break their day into small bite size, manageable tasks, is the 55 minute sprint solution.

A solid To Do list needs to be drafted at the beginning of the working day. It’s useful to put an estimated time required against each task, then block together tasks that will roughly take 55 minutes.

Set a timer, and get stuck into the work. When the alarm goes off, it’s time to take a 5-10 minute break and re-energise.  Grab a coffee, take a short walk round the garden, breath, stretch – whatever it takes, to stand up and get away from the screen, rest your eyes and switch off – just for a few minutes.  

When you get back to your desk, tick off the tasks you’ve achieved, feel good about it, then set the alarm and get stuck into the next task.  Repeat.

By the end of the day, you may be surprised at just how much you’ve managed to achieve.  As the days go by it’s worth comparing your results when you work in 55 minute sprints versus when you don’t, and see how much more productive you are.

Working From Home & Winning Survey

Try the Working from Home & Winning Survey, to get better insight of how your team are really feeling.   The Free “Working from Home & Winning” survey gives you a quick and easy tool to get anonymous feedback from your employees working from home. It takes just 3 simple steps to set the survey up, share with your team, and receive  a summary report, in a very short space of time. 

Next week’s blog will address the fifth, and final challenge of this series, and possibly the most important – Maintaining Fun & Energy.  You’ll find some great tips and guidance to keep team energy high, and support teamwork when working remotely (although it should apply equally when we’re not having to be socially distancing and back in the work place!). 

The post TOP 5 LOCKDOWN CHALLENGES – Effective Time Management appeared first on Alluxi Consulting.

In November of 1992, I was assigned to a productivity improvement programme for a small shoe manufacturer in Hungary. It was during the freezing winter months with snow drifts up to 10ft, in the middle of nowhere.

We had a team of translators channeling communications with the clients’ project team. Only one telephone line connected us to the outside world. We had no photocopiers, or printers and just a couple of very heavy laptops between us. 

The internet was still a far distant unknown called the “world wide web”.  Mobile phones were expensive and cumbersome (and we couldn’t get signal where we were anyway). The first public email – Hotmail (HTML) wouldn’t be launched for another 4 years.

Life was less complex, simple.  We achieved our project objectives.

In our now hi-tech world the Covid-19 pandemic is creating an extremely complex situation. We can, and will find ways to keep our businesses afloat.  For small firms it’s a very precarious status, which needs to be carefully managed and different scenarios mitigated for. During these lockdown weeks moving employees to remote working from home, our SME’s are in for a very bumpy ride. 

Here are some guidelines to get the best from your team whilst they’re enduring very uncertain times.

1. Reassure the team or at least be honest

The current climate is understandably causing much stress and anxiety for people worrying about their finances. The government is, thankfully, stepping up to the plate. Financial support is beginning to filter down for sick pay, salary and wage payments. Rates and tax breaks are being made available for companies, and the self-employed, throughout the UK.

Business owners need to get your contingency plans and financial forecasts urgently reviewed to keep your heads above water.  Even if it’s bad news – it’s better to be upfront and honest now, so regular communication with employees is key. Keep your teams updated with the facts, or how you’re planning to cope (or not) for the foreseeable future. At least your team can then make their own plans for themselves and their families.   Humans have an innate survival instinct, and normally common sense prevails.

2. Get priorities in Order

You may now be operating with a reduced team, if you’ve had to lay off and furlough workers. You will therefore need to identify and prioritise the critical path marketing and revenue generating activities.

If it’s not going to sell product or service, and generate an invoice, then ditch it (for now).  Call the team together on a conference call (or 6ft apart round the table) to hear their thoughts and ideas. Carefully work through and agree with them what needs to be done, who’s responsible, and by when.

3. Find a common task management tool

If you’re not already using a task management tool, Slack, Trello & Asana all have free versions. You might be subscribing to Google, Microsoft365 etc. but not really had time to get it up and working effectively. Now is a great time to learn about it’s full functionality, and get more return on your investment.  Here’s a short read blog about some software tools available, both free and paid.

4. Establish a Daily Routine

To keep people motivated establish a daily routine. A morning conference call will rally the team at the start of the day.  Hold a round robin of successes from the day before, and what each persons’ daily goals are. Discuss and help them plan their daily routines for the next few weeks. Communicate your expectations so they know they’re appreciated. Make sure they recognise their work will make a positive contribution to getting through this period.  Give everyone a clear focus and a sense of purpose, even if there isn’t a full days work to do.  Click here to see recommended task management software

 5. Encourage regular breaks

In their normal office environment, your team may not be used to sitting at a computer screen for prolonged periods. Encourage them to rest for 5 minutes every hour; to stretch, rest their eyes, grab a glass of water etc. This would be probably happen subconsciously in the office, where there are other people to interact with. But not so for remote workers, especially if the team member is home alone. 

6. Parental Responsibility

Added pressure is on parents with school aged children. Schools are now closed, and children are also having to get online for lessons. This may be causing a clash on home desktops, laptops etc. Work with those staff who have parental responsibilities to ensure they have the equipment they need to do their job.  

The business owner should make concessions for those with school aged children in the house. Parents will be trying to work from home whilst juggling home schooling. This may cause additional stress or anxiety if they feel they’re pushing their workload onto colleagues who have no children. Discuss this with the team and make sure everyone is pulling together to support each other, without any animosity.

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As a business owner, do you know from one day to the next, what your employees actually do? Can you, hand on heart, say they’ve produced a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay? Or do you have niggling doubts as to whether they’re as productive as they could be?

In the last of our series The Painful Truths, exploring the causes of low productivity for business owners, The Employee is the third factor in the equation, after The Business and The Manager.

Recent surveys have highlighted some alarming facts, which start to shape the possible causes of the biggest downturn in productivity the UK has experienced since 2008. Office workers are devout procrastinators, confirmed by a 2016 survey of full time office staff around the UK, where the average staff member admitted to wasting more than 33% of their paid hours on non-work related activities.

This blatant admission of time wasting could be costing your business as much as £11.5k per time waster per year (based on current UK average salary of £28,000 and E’er on costs). If you could recuperate just half of that by improving productivity, with 10 employees on your payroll, that could improve your bottom line by nearly £50k a year.

Pull your socks up: a case of woolly management

The sad fact is that, thanks to weak management skills, which we explored in the second article, The Employee has two fundamental dilemmas:

1. They don’t know what is expected of them, and ipso facto
2. They don’t know whether they’re productive or not

If the prevailing management style in your business measures performance once or twice a year through the (dreaded) Performance Appraisal, and for the other 50 weeks of the year employees are told to “pull your socks up,” or “you’ll have to do better than that” by their poorly trained managers; then it’s hardly surprising they’re setting their own sights and deciding for themselves how far up their socks need to be pulled!

Align your employees to your business goals

The solution lies in setting clear expectations, and engaging with each employee, individually, to ensure they have a thorough understanding of the standards of work required. I previously mentioned setting Key Performance Indicators. For your employees these will probably be non-financial measurements, and normally need to quantify the volume of work required, within defined time frames, and with clear quality guidelines. All of these parameters will form part of the Management Control Systems driven from the top, and aligned right down to the staff on the front line, to ensure your whole organisation is working towards common goals. Everyone should understand what good productivity levels are for their own job role.

Energised teams go from Productivity to Profit

Once you’ve got the numbers working, your employees will be much more focused, and probably feel a lot more motivated, with greater job satisfaction. Working in an environment of ambiguity and uncertainty is never comfortable for anyone, but with a focus on objective, fair and factual management; crystal clear targets and expectations, fluid dialogue and communication, you’ll start to see a marked improvement in productivity which can only reflect positively on your profit margins.

This is the last in the three-part series of The Great British Productivity Swindle: The Painful Truths, and in summary here are the key drivers to move your organisation’s productivity to the next level:

The Business

• Design and implement robust Management Control Systems
• Define solid Key Performance Indicators and productivity measuring mechanisms

The Manager

• Communicate the standards of work expected from the Manager and their Team, required to meet the business goals
• Develop your Managers people skills in communication and delegation through CPD and Training

The Employee

• Ensure each employee knows exactly what is expected of them in measurable terms
• Achieve greater employee engagement and job satisfaction by training them in how to achieve great productivity in their role

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Productivity means higher output using your current resources, or achieving the same level of sales with less resource.

Tyranny went out with the dark ages, and controlling by intimidation is no longer an option.  One consideration often overlooked is the office atmosphere.  Management styles, and the working environment strongly influence how people perform. Bullying and harassment in the workplace, whether by managers or colleagues of individuals, are key causes of grievances. This leads to demotivation and ultimately will cost you time and energy repairing, whilst the work suffers.

By getting to know the staff individually, understanding their personalities and characteristics a little, and knowing when they’re having good or bad days and why, will help keep a check on any unpleasantness that may be going on.  Maintaining staff morale will also reflect on how they deal with your clients and customers.

Being aware of your own behavior around staff is essential.  Some individuals are intimidated by boisterous banter, swearing and raised voices all of which are inevitable when the pressure is on in any environment, but in the professional work place a Manager should lay down some ground rules as to what is acceptable, and more importantly what is not.  Make sure all the employees understand that they are each responsible for ensuring the working atmosphere is congenial to maximizing performance.

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Productivity means higher output using your current resources, or achieving the same level of sales with less resource.

Staff wellbeing and comfort is not just about the importance of ergonomics.  Yes, its critical (and a Health & Safety requirement) to prevent injury by ensuring that workstations are properly positioned, the correct operator chairs are provided to workers sitting at computers all day long etc.  These are small things that do require some money to be spent getting right, but isn’t it worth it if it reduces absences by demotivated staff or, worse, the personal injury claims from not looking after staff wellbeing.

Workers are far more likely to turn up on time and do a decent days work, if their comfort needs have been met.  Staff eating areas and toilets may sound petty, but if they have somewhere clean, comfortable and inviting to break away from their work stations or offices, their performance will be higher.  If employees prefer to leave site to get away from grotty work places, you will lose an extra fifteen minutes to half an hour of their work time, when they start leaving early, or getting back late from their breaks.

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Productivity means higher output using your current resources, or achieving the same level of sales with less resource.

Many companies often consider Training and Development a luxury rather than a necessity.  Managers perceive they don’t have time to train subordinates; it’s quicker to do it themselves, and lets them feel they’re staying in control. Not training staff properly only serves to demoralize them and probably increases staff turnover, thereby continually costing the company money in recruitment and induction.

Training staff allows Managers to move forward with their own, often more proactive, tasks and responsibilities.  In turn staff feel more involved and more capable, which in turn feeds their sense of self-fulfillment – think Maslow.  Properly trained staff will make fewer errors, reducing rework, and if focused on the desired outcomes and overall objectives of their job role, and how this fits into the overall business strategies, may also offer ideas and suggestions to continually improve.

Naturally they’ll then go on to do more work, which, so long as it adds value will feed their productivity, that of their team and ultimately the whole business.   If the Manager continues with formal and systematic follow up review meetings, the employee will continue to learn and develop further, potentially becoming a candidate for promotion, thereby maintaining the skills and capabilities invested in that person inside the organization rather than losing them to the competitors.

Download the free Book

My book “20 Ways to Be More Productive” offers easy tips, case studies and ways you can improve productivity and save money in every aspect of your business.

Click here to download and receive the PDF to your inbox right now.

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The essential guide to Starting Up & Growing your Business

Barrier 6 – People & Change

Do you feel like you’re walking on egg shells when trying to encourage your staff to change their working practices and behaviours?  Does their productivity drop when pushed out of their comfort zones as your company moves to the next stage of growth?

People are the key asset in every business, and you cannot grow your business without the help of others.  Continuing to run things as a small business as you get bigger doesn’t work.  In the first article of my series Conquering Barriers to Business Growth – You, The Owner I touched on the importance of learning to delegate, and not meddling in the detail or trying to solve other people’s problems for them.

The thought of delegating to your staff, especially if they’re new to the business, can be scary.  The fear of losing control of the detail is the key factor that normally keeps you meddling in the operational minutiae that you should be confident to leave to your employees.

Delegation, however, is not the only art you need to master when building your first team of employees.  There are many factors that you have to carefully think through and manage.   Here are four ways to help you form a successful and productive team to build your business on.

Company Culture

This may sound wishy washy, but culture and wellbeing in the workplace is fast becoming recognized as the key influencing factor in successful businesses which, lets face it, should come as no surprise given that a business is only as good as its People.

In a global survey carried out in 2015 by Deloittes, 87% of organisations responded that their number one challenges are employee engagement and culture issues.  They summarized that “organisations must begin to hold leaders accountable for building a strong and enduring culture, listening to feedback, and engaging and retaining their teams”.

As part of your business development consider how you want your business to be perceived as an Employer – what will your staff say about your business to their network of contacts, friends and even your clients?  The culture you want can only come from you at the top, and be filtered down – lead by example.

The most successful businesses outperforming their peers, and most likely to beat their competition in attracting and retaining top talent, are creating cultures defined by

• meaningful work
• deep employee engagement
• job and organisational fit
• strong leadership

Clearly define your core values, and communicate them regularly to your team so they become part of their everyday work ethic.  Everyone in the business should share a common goal and understand how their role affects the business and it’s results.

Friendly or Formal?

On a more tangible level, another key factor for small business owners is formalizing the employee/employer relationship.  Many micro and small businesses start off with best friends, family members, or casual labour helping out in the business, with no formal terms, conditions or contract of employment.

This may suffice to a point, but if you are serious about growing your business you will have to formalize these unspoken agreements, not only to reduce the risk to your business but also to enhance the relationship on both sides.  Giving your staff, at the very least (and it is actually a legal requirement) a formal contract of employment and a well-designed job description, shows your commitment to both them and your business.  It will create a sense of clarity, permanency and should result in greater engagement from your staff.

Formalising the working relationship doesn’t have to jeopardize the friendship between you and your staff.  If anything it should strengthen the confidence between you, eliminating any ambiguity or future misunderstandings.  It will also enhance the professionalism of your business, providing a sound commercial foundation to drive the business forward.

Reward to Retain

Once you have formalized your team, the last thing you want is to lose them after a few months and have to start again.  The Institute of Leadership & Management (iLM) have published survey results claiming that 37% of UK workers were hoping to leave their job inside 12 months, and a quarter of those cited their main reason as being underappreciated by their current employer.

Motivation and reward are vital for staff retention, and it doesn’t have to be costly.  Financial reward is not the only way to build loyalty from your staff.  Sometimes positive feedback, and where necessary give corrective advice, is all it takes to make someone feel appreciated.  Other workers are happy so long as the work is interesting, satisfying and helps them develop.

As the business owner, set out your goals for achieving employee engagement by examining the challenges they face and helping them overcome those.  Rewarding people by helping them develop is also beneficial to the business.  You can consider initiatives that

• challenge and stretch your employees, giving them more responsibility
• give constructive feedback on a regular basis
• link long term development to the short and long term needs of the business, and make this connection visible and clear for the team to understand
• celebrate successes – even small ones, but be spontaneous now and again

Systems & Structure

The last factor is how you organise your business.  When moving through the start-up to first growth phase a lot of change can take place in a very short space of time, which can be daunting for you as the owner let alone the staff being carried along with you.  There is always a need to be flexible and fluid, but in order to stay in control of your business growth you must put systems and processes in place.  Providing structure to their working day, week or month helps your employees feel stable in what can otherwise be overwhelming state of constant change.

Going back full circle to the beginning and my point about learning to delegate, this is made so much easier if you have mapped the work flows, written the manuals and procedures and set out your expectations clearly.  Creating systems, within which people should work, from giving them a simple daily task list, to more sophisticated control mechanisms defining the indicators against which their progress will be measured and managed, is essential.  Without these your employees have little or no understanding of what is expected of them, and delegating to them will create you more problems than it resolves.

In summary your business is only as good as the quality of the people you recruit , and they can only be as effective as the tools and training you provide them with to do their jobs well.  Get your team recruited, trained and bought in to your company culture from the beginning and you’ll reap the rewards very quickly.

Next Week

Barrier 7 – Managing the Money! –  In the last of this series of Conquering Barriers to Growth, we look at how the lack of financial strategy and poor control leads to a downfall.  We’ve all heard that Cash is King, yet 50% of small firms have no financial budgeting process or sufficient controls to ensure a secure level of liquidity.

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This series of the 7 Point Plan to Perfecting Business Performance has taken you on a journey towards improving productivity in the work place, by building the relationships with the people that shape your organization.  We’ve looked at

Point 1 –  Work Flow & Job Design

Point 2 – Preparing your Managers to Manage

Point 3 – Bridging the Us & Them Gap

Point 4 – Crystal Clear Rights & Responsibilities

Point 5 – Fairness in the Workplace

Point 6 – Giving your staff a voice

In this, the final Point 7 of the series, and a particularly poignant topic at Christmas time, we bring all of this together with some insights as to the value of building Trust in the working relationships between employees and you, the employer.

How often have we heard the phrase that a business is only as good as the people that run it.  Your employees are your single most important, and probably most expensive asset.  If you’re going to achieve the best from your team, then Trust has to be established and nurtured.

Bleak Mid Winter

Relationships are at the heart of life – even work life, and trust keeps relationships healthy.  The one key factor that either builds on or erodes that trust is individual behaviour.

Remember the saying – there is no “I” in “team”.  Where trust is lacking in a team, or manager-subordinate relationship, the consequences result in inordinate levels of energy being spent in playing politics, resisting the inappropriate behaviour traits, resisting meetings and not giving or asking for support.

This ultimately causes a breakdown in the relationship, performance suffers, and productivity goes out the window.  I could continue, but before I end up sounding like an Agony Aunt, here are examples of behaviours that contribute to mistrust – that “empty stocking” feeling.

• The owner or senior management failing to keep promises
• Micro-managing and failing to delegate
• You say one thing and do another
• Failing to share critical information
• Resorting to blame and making scapegoats of your colleagues, rather than admitting to mistakes
• Excuse sarcasm, put-down humour and off-putting remarks as “good for the group”
• Refuse to consider the idea of constructive conflict, and avoid conflict at all costs
• Consistently high-jack team meetings by straying off topic
• Not following through with agreed decisions
• Acting on perception, assumption, gossip or gut feel rather than objective facts and figures.

The list goes on but I’m sure you’re starting to get the gist by now.  You may be surprised at some of these being basically human traits and weaknesses, but they make the difference between people believing in you and wanting to work with you, or raising the barriers to healthy working practices.

O’ Come All Ye Faithful

High trust is built on honest human traits such as integrity and humility.  These are the characteristics that will make subordinates, co-workers and colleagues gravitate towards you, and want to be part of your team.  Communication, an over-used word, yet under-utilised commodity, should be easy and effortless.  When trust is low, communication can be exhausting, time and energy consuming.

ACAS provide some extremely useful guidance on how to build and maintain trust.  They identify three top tips for bringing a trusting environment to life

Open, Honest and Sharing

Sharing as much information with employees as soon as you can, including bad or difficult news, makes the relationship much easier.  People hate being kept in the dark.  Just because a topic may be difficult to say, doesn’t make it confidential.  Holding those awkward and sometimes difficult conversations comes with the territory of leadership and management.  Don’t avoid it.

Walk the Floor

The way leaders and managers choose to lead will influence relationships and levels of trust.   Employees want to be seen and be heard, and studies prove that those leaders and managers who get out into the workplace, walk the floor, deliver regular face to face briefings all enhance employee engagement and trust.  Think of the total employee respect (not to mention publicity) Richard Branson achieved by dressing up as a (female) Air Stewardess serving drinks to passengers on one of his trans Atlantic flights.

Involve and Collaborate with Employees

As I explained in my previous blog, listening to, and collaboration with, employees towards problem solving ensures the organisation finds the best way forward, as well as gaining the commitment of your people.  Asking the workforce what options there are, implementing their suggestions and providing feed back on the decisions taken, are critical to establish and maintain trust – with the added bonus along the way of finding better and smarter ways of working.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

And don’t forget, after all the effort, hard work and probably a few bumps along the way, the best way you can demonstrate your trust and thanks to your teams is with a little thanks at Christmas.  No matter how small or inexpensive, recognition and gratitude go a long way towards maintaining the relationship.

H.A.P.P.Y

Have A Productive Profitable Year – Happy Christmas to Everyone.

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How often do you have a problem that lands on your desk, and you feel you have to come up with the solution? Do you ever wonder where your next inspirational idea is going to come from or how you’re going to get your employees performing better? Have you ever thought of asking them?

Some of the most inspirational and innovative ideas that have produced significant profit improvements in the organisations I’ve consulted to around the globe, came from the front line workers and managers. Why? Because we asked them. Businesses need to open up conduits for giving employees a voice in how things can improve, as you never know where the next bright idea could be lurking.

The European Company Survey* of over 30,000 businesses suggested that those who scored high in performance and wellbeing, displayed the important characteristic of having extensive practices for direct employee participation, supporting the notion that ‘win-win’ arrangements need to include measures to enable optimal use of employees tacit knowledge.

Organisations that fell into the “Interactive & Involving” category showed a combination of workplace practices, including joint decision-making on daily tasks and direct participation by employees. It was found that in 40% of business employees make decisions jointly with managers, but only by themselves in 6% of cases. Are we stifling the knowledge and potential we have in our workforce?

The Welding Line

The Employee Voice can make a big difference to the bottom line. In my e-book, “20 Ways to be More Productive” I highlight the benefit of working and consulting with the employees in one case study of The Welding Line.

Whilst consulting in the USA to a small robotic welding plant producing truck cabins, the main causes of low output were poor quality welding, dings and dents in the body work as the cabs came off the end of the line. The line ran at a speed of 6 minutes per cycle, with a dozen work stations each having to weld different sections of the cab on the line and, if this didn’t require the full 6 minutes, turn to back up tasks behind the line.

Some workstations, however, were hard pushed to get all their work done during the six minutes – hence the resulting rejections, whilst others only had 2-3 minutes of welding to do and would then be left waiting for the next cycle. This normally resulted in 32 – 34 cabs finally passing QC inspection by the end of the day, with many cabs having to be recycled back through the process with the consequent material wastage and rework costs.

The Operations Manager worked tirelessly to find solutions to improve their output, as it was hugely affecting their profit margins. After much observation, and consultation with the welders themselves, he had a real light bulb, out of the box, moment. Popular belief in improving productivity is generally to speed things up – do things more quickly. By talking with the line crew, however, it became obvious that the solution was to SLOW the line down – almost double – to 11 minutes.

The benefits of this allowed the operators’ workload at each station to be more evenly distributed, and each task being allocated more time to complete the work to a higher quality. With much analysis and calculation, and carefully implementing the re-designed workflows, the outcome was an average of 54 cabs (56% more) passing the quality inspections daily.

The company profited to the tune of more than £500,000 annually as a direct result of giving the employees the chance to voice their opinions, and show their knowledge.

The Moral of the Story

I could wax lyrically through many more cases, where giving employees the opportunity to be involved in the business decisions and problems has bourne fruit. The moral of the story is much quicker though.

As a leader or manager in your business you need to place as much emphasis on LISTENING as talking. Strong leaders will seek views, take into account what they hear from their staff, and communicate regularly about employees’ contribution in the workplace and driving the organization forward.

Communicating with employees and allowing them to have their say is advantageous, especially during times of change. It can help to ensure that innovative approaches are not overlooked, and can also help maintain good work place relationships, during and after the change process.

At the end of the day, if you were given the opportunity to shape your own working environment you’d be much more likely to buy into it wouldn’t you. It’s the same with your employees – if they’ve had a hand in designing it, it’s much harder for them to wriggle out of, or reject the change.

They will take more pride in their work knowing they’ve been listened to and their ideas incorporated. Then you just have to share with them in the success it brings to your business.

Next Time …….

Point 7 of The 7 Point Plan to Perfecting Business Performance

All I want for Christmas is TRUST? A natural progression from giving your employees a voice, and directly linked to employee engagement, is the prized commodity of Trust. Without trust, it’s difficult to resolve conflicts, build a team, and empower your workforce. Just in time for Christmas, the final blog in this series of perfecting business performance, will bring you some insight as to how to embed high trust levels throughout your organisation.

FURTHER READING

For further reading about some of the references in my blog, and to help you and your Managers, I can thoroughly recommend the following:

*Third European Company Survey 2015 – Workplace practices: Patterns, performance & wellbeing.

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