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10 Keys to Workplace Excellence
February 27, 2009
What does it take to create a workplace that breathes engagement?
By Peter Stark
No matter how troubling the times are, the bottom line rules business and motivated employees move the bottom line.
Why? Motivated employees improve your product and your service, they want to come to work. Even better, their positive attitude is contagious. These workers achieve results, which earns money for your company. Furthermore, they want to stay with you because they feel fulfilled in their work. You are their employer of choice. Employees with an above-average attitude toward their work will generate higher customer satisfaction, higher productivity and higher profits for their organizations.
Companies with higher morale—more than 70 percent—outperformed those in the same industries by 11.3 percent. It's clear that maintaining a vital, engaged workforce has a significant impact on the bottom line.
How do you keep an employee engaged when they've watched their 401(k) or IRA accounts decrease by 50 percent or more in a few short months? When they've watched co-workers leave with pink slips in hand?
10 Keys to Workplace Excellence
What can you do to create a workplace where all of your employees are fully engaged? Our extensive research based on surveying over 100,000 managers and employees from hundreds of organizations around the world has uncovered the 10 Keys to Workplace Excellence that we find being implemented in the best-of-the-best (those in the top quartile) organizations. We know what their leaders do to engage employees.
1. Provide a Compelling, Positive Vision with Clear Goals. Our research has clearly shown that there are two major problems in organizations that score low in this area. First, some organizations do not have a clear vision of where they are heading, and second, some organizations state a vision, but do not live the vision or bring it to reality. What the best-of-the-best organizations do differently than others is ensure that they possess a compelling, positive vision, known by every employee, along with goals and the company's future direction.
2. Communicate the Right Stuff at the Right Time. Best-of-the-best leaders make an effort to seek out the thoughts and opinions of employees. They expect employees to think and make decisions that improve the company. And they are in the habit of seeking the thoughts and opinions of employees prior to making changes that impact their work.
3. Select the Right People for the Right Job. When your organization acquires a reputation for workplace excellence, you tend to attract a higher caliber candidate to interview. If your organization has a reputation for hiring those people, you are not going to take on a mediocre or poor candidate. Like the best-of-the-best organizations, you would rather wait and re-post the job than give the position to a candidate who is not a fit.
4. Remember, We're on the Same Team. When it comes to organizational success, individuals cannot win without a team. To consistently win, you need both great players and great teamwork. It is important that each team member take responsibility, be accountable, and produce extraordinary results so the team can win.
5. Encourage Cool Stuff, Continuous Improvement and Innovation. "Cool Stuff" is creating new products, processes, or services; or solving significant organizational or industry problems—anything other than performing the day-to-day components of the job can fall into the category of "cool stuff." We know that organizations are able to achieve what they value, expect and recognize.
6. Recognize and Reward Excellent Performance. Does your organization reward employees who are mediocre or poor performers? Distribute bonuses solely based on the number of years of service to your organization? If you want your organization to be included in the best-of-the-best benchmark, you must answer the last two questions with an emphatic "NO." When every employee receives the same reward, or when rewards are not linked directly to performance and results, it is almost guaranteed to lead to lower morale.
7. Demand Accountability. Performance management is handled very differently in the best-of-the-best organizations in three distinct areas. First, they are better at clearly defining what is expected from employees. Second, they excel in the area of giving employees feedback regarding their performance. And third, they are better at holding all members of the team accountable to performance standards. Employees need to see the target they are trying to hit.
8. Ensure that Every Employee Learns and Grows. Best-of-the-best organizations succeed at creating an environment where employees want to work for them in the future by providing useful training and learning opportunities. People who feel well trained and are confident that the organization will provide them with future opportunity, will most likely want to stay with their current organization.
9. Problems are "No Problem." The best-of-the-best do a particularly better job of communicating that management wants employees to solve problems. They are also quicker to resolve conflict (people problems) in their organizations. Conflict causes people to be sidetracked by peripheral issues rather than staying focused on achieving the mission, vision, and goals of the organization.
10. Everyone Understands It's All About the Customer. Almost all employees say their organizations place a high value on customer service. What is important is that 94 percent of the people working for the best-of-the-best say their organizations place a high value on exceeding customer expectations. Supporting their employees allows them to provide customers with the quality service they desire.
When we talk about these 10 keys, invariably someone asks, "Where's the money? Isn't wage or salary one of the key differentiators between the best-of-the-best organizations and the rest of the pack?" The answer is a little bit of yes—and a lot of no.
There is only a 5.9 percentage point difference between best-of-the-best companies and the rest when it comes to employee compensation. The reason is simple. To hire and retain an employee, all organizations need to pay a competitive wage.
The average amount of wage increase employees receive upon leaving your organization is only approximately six percent. The real reason employees leave is because they do not love their jobs or feel a strong relationship with their bosses. When they love their jobs and have a strong effective working relationship with their managers, it takes significantly more than six percent to get people to jump ship.
Your organization can be one of the best-of-the-best. Start with a compelling, positive vision that can be reached by defining clear and concrete goals. Add in an ongoing attitude that more communication to employees is better, and hire and train the people who are receptive to communication and achieving the company vision. Foster teamwork, both within your own department and with other departments.
Move forward with large quantities of encouragement to improve the product, service, and the organization. Hold people accountable and continually recognize excellent performance. Offer the training and opportunities people need to perform well, and make sure they have the resources to provide customer service that generates customer satisfaction.
Peter Stark is president of the Peter Barron Stark Companies (www.pbsconsulting.com). His firm builds organizations where employees love to come to work and customers love to do business. They offer a complete range of services including employee opinion surveys, customer service surveys, leadership training, negotiation skills training and management consulting. He is the author of ENGAGED! How Leaders Build Organizations Where Employers Love to Come to Work, available at Amazon.com. He can be reached at 877.727.6468 or peter@pbsconsulting.com.
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