Clients Comment on Morale-Boosting Ideas
October 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I often get ideas from clients on how they boost morale in their organizations. Here are some of their ideas along with some tidbits I’ve picked up on how to enhance your work experience to live and lead Hartfully:
- Have a mascot for the office who can wear the official badge, pin, or t-shirt of the department. This can be a stuffed animal or beanbag character. Other departments have been known to kidnap the mascot and hold them ransom for pizza or candy. Sometimes the mascot sits at the reception desk to oversee visitors – it adds some playful professionalism.
- One payroll professional wore a crown and a sash that say Payroll Queen when she personally distributed paycheck stubs to the team.
- One accounting firm offered free 15-minute seated massages during the month of April when their team was particularly overworked.
- A city recreation department’s executives hosted a breakfast cooked by them for their organization to kick off the summer staff meeting.
- Another recreation department used some of their own staff in a training film with the theme of COPS – catching frontline personnel staging bad customer service for the film. They also interviewed colleagues about what they thought was good service and the best part about the film was the bloopers and outtakes that they added to the end of the film. The audience went wild as they saw their co-workers goof up and be themselves in front of the cameras.
- The admin staff at a physics lab gets together for weekly lunches during the summer to create fresh salads made from the gardens of the workers with a recipe from an Italian grandmother.
- In similar fashion – another office hosts a cookie exchange over the holidays to expand on the variety of cookies each household offers without all the work of baking different cookies. They take it one step further and deliver extra plates of cookies to the local fire department, police station, and nursing home.
- Special Events Magazine reports that two-thirds of respondents to an online poll believe that in-person interaction tops technology as a communications tool. Some 66 percent of respondents said that technology-video conferencing, Webcasting and the like-is not as effective for communication in meetings as is in-person communication.
- Eliminating just fifteen wasted minutes each day adds up to ninety-one extra hours a year, more than two full workweeks. Organize and energize your space, your stuff, and your life to gain valuable time you can use for more fun in your life.
- Ask yourself what is the best use of your time right now and then act on it.
- Create systems that work with your preferences for sorting papers and stuff – try horizontal surfaces and vertical surfaces for storage bins.
- Look at your time you have allotted for a project and then add to it – things usually take longer than you plan.
- Put your personal and professional appointments on one calendar to avoid double-booking yourself.
- Finally, decide right now to think FAT: file, allocate (give to someone else), or toss.
- Findings in a recent USA Today article: HR experts say employees exposed to stresses such as layoffs are more likely to engage in violent behavior. Nearly 35% of workers say they’ve seen an increase in anxiety and stress-related physical ailments in their workplace in the last year. 27% report a rise in emotional problems such as insomnia and depression.
Incentive Insights
June 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
The magazine Business 2.0 conducted a reader survey of 6439 people on the single factor that most heavily influences job satisfaction which, by the way, influences life balance:
- 60.3% the work I do is interesting/engaging
- 26% size of my salary
- 7.5% getting along well with colleagues
- 6.2% getting along with my boss
- From a survey of work/life balance by careerbuilder.com; 4 out of 5 respondents expect at least some flexibility from their employer when arranging daily work schedules. Over 29% would like to be able to set their own hours, while 52% would like the ability to negotiate their own hours.
- Many organizations are offering online incentives to make it easier to administer a reward and recognition system that is fresh and timely. Here are some sites that offer the gamut of corporate gifting and incentives:
- www.wishlist.com
- Some of these sites offer just gifts while other offer value-added services such as incentive program setups and program consultants to help you launch your program or pump up your morale with their services. With some of these sites, you can let the recipients choose their incentive or gift that enhances the motivating factor.
- Don’t think incentives and rewards are important? Did you know that?
- 46% of employees leaving a company do so because they feel unappreciated
- 61% said their bosses don’t place much importance on them as people
- 88% said they do not receive enough acknowledgment for their work
- Think again about your organization – what gets rewarded, gets repeated
High Fives to Improve Your Workplace
May 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Giving you high-fives with helpful tips in groups of five to handle issues, improve motivation, and inspire your team to get-along and get going. With that, here are several topics with their top five lists:
A helpful tip for managers when confronted with a problem involving people is to ask “why” at least five times in a non-confrontational way such as “Help me understand what happened” instead of “What happened here?” Generally asking “why” five times takes you down the path of:
- blame
- excuse
- symptom
- cause
- root cause
By digging down a little deeper, you can get past the blame and excuses and focus on the root cause of the problem instead of a surface issue.
- A study by U-inspire, Inc which revealed the top five motivating methods of over 250 major companies:
- communication
- growth
- respect
- leadership
- compensation
One of the major findings in the study was the need for organizations to develop a mission statement what conveys the goals of the company and to implement multiple levels of employee recognition programs.
* In the book Clash of the Generations at Work by Ron Zemke, Claire Raines, and Bob Filipczak, they give a simple 5-point ACORN model for managing and motivating across the generations:
- Accommodate differences
- Create workplace choices
- Operate with sophisticated management style
- Respect competence and initiative
- Nourish retention
* In keeping with the theme of fives in this post, think of yourself as a 5-pointed star. To keep your star shining brightly, follow these five easy tips from Sharing Ideas Magazine:
- Take care of your inner self and outer body.
- Shepherd thoughts that enter your mind.
- Care for your emotions and relationships with loving-kindness.
- Be on-purpose in how you invest, give, and spend your money.
- Be forgiving and grateful for the unlimited spirit of love that keeps you energized to serve others.
Inspiration and Incentives that Work to Improve Work
February 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
According to CCH, Inc. – an HR research firm, the Unscheduled Absence Survey found the number of employees missing work for personal reasons has increased to 21% from 11% last year. Of the 333 human resources executives surveyed, personal illness was cited 33%, with 67% absent due to personal reasons resulting in a cost of $789 million.
The study found that an increase in morale significantly lowers the number of absentees. Organizations with good overall morale has a 1.9% absentee rate while others averaged 2.4%. The more options employees have, the better the morale and the lower the absentee rate. Two of the major things to do this are provide more flexible time off and offer more work/life programs such as childcare, working from home or compressed work weeks.
The top four most cited incentives to keep workers working for you according to a survey of 352 employers by the American Management Association:
- Sending employees to conferences and training
- Tuition reimbursement
- Skills training
- Pay for performance
A “new” way to recognize employees: ask them to participate in an important project they might not otherwise work on. Using involvement to reward workers tells them that you value their performance and it provides you with a pool of creative thinkers.
Beat the turnover odds: in the fast food industry with turnover rates close to 100%, one owner explains his staff longevity of 8-10 years at a Chick-Fil-A is due to his treating them like customers and greeting them daily, talking to them throughout the day, and saying good-bye when they leave. Talking to them -what a concept!
When the economic times are tough – it’s time to energize employees and make sure you hold on to your top talent. Here are some hints to keep them around:
* Celebrate all the victories, no matter how small
* Look for other incentives besides money – ask them
* Consider changing some work hours – be flexible
* Take more time for personal connections at work
* Don’t focus on the negatives, keep the talk positive
* If business is slow – take the time to do foundational things and create new programs or write personal
notes to staff thanking them for their work – do the things that you normally wouldn’t have time to do
* Keep networking in your industry – invite a colleague
* Create a terrific atmosphere in the break room or the bathrooms to make people feel as if they matter – take care of your team by taking care of their space
What Energizes a Workplace and a Workforce, Anyway? The Softer Side of Leadership
July 29, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I began studying what energizes individuals about 30 years ago and it morphed into researching what energizes organizations in the 1990’s. It was fascinating to me how some people had so much energy to burn and others seemed drained much of the time. The same with organizations. Some seemed to have an engaged and excited workforce powered on their own “esteem engines” and others needed the command control to keep them producing out of fear and threat of paycheck revocation.
When I read about the enormous undertaking of one of Gallup’s largest and longest undertakings studying employee engagement; it proved what I had been seeing first-hand in consulting with companies around the world. A mere 30 % of employees in America feel actively engaged at work. And now their 21013 version of the study found that around the world it falls to just 13%. Their study goes on to report that 55% are disengaged and 20% are actively disengaged and doing things to sabotage the effort. So instead of work being an enthusiastic expression of our gifts and talents; it would seem that it is anything but for most employees.
Last fall, interested in what makes employees satisfied, energized and productive; the Harvard Business Review conducted a survey of more than 12,000 mostly white-collar employees across a broad range of companies and industries and results were remarkably similar across all populations.
Employees are vastly more satisfied and productive, when 4of their core needs are met:
- Physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work
- Emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions
- Mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and define when and where they get their work done
- Spiritual, by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work
The more effectively leaders and organizations support employees in meeting these 4 core needs, the more likely they experience engagement, loyalty, job satisfaction and positive energy at work, and the lower their perceived levels of stress. When employees have one need met, compared with none, all of their performance variables improve. The more needs that are met, the more positive the impact.
Employee engagement that includes involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy has been found to improve performance. Something we know in our gut and something Gallup once again proved to be true. Gallup found that companies in the top quartile for engaged employees, compared with the bottom quartile, had 22 % higher profitability and 10% higher customer ratings. The way we feel at work is critical to how we perform.
The following is an excerpt from a report of that study:
Renewal: Employees who take a break every 90 minutes report a 30 percent higher level of focus than those who take 0-1 during the day. They also report a nearly 50 percent greater capacity to think creatively and a 46% higher level of health and well-being. The more hours people work beyond 40 — and the more continuously they work — the worse they feel, and the less engaged they become. By contrast, feeling encouraged by one’s supervisor to take breaks increases by nearly 100 % people’s likelihood to stay with any given company, and also doubles their sense of health and well-being.
Value: Feeling cared for by one’s supervisor has a more significant impact on people’s sense of trust and safety than any other behavior by a leader. Employees who say they have more supportive supervisors are 1.3 times as likely to stay with the organization and are 67% more engaged.
Focus: Only 20% of respondents said they were able to focus on one task at a time at work, but those who could were 50% more engaged. Similarly, only one-third of respondents said they were able to effectively prioritize their tasks, but those who did were 1.6 times better able to focus on one thing at a time.
Purpose: Employees who derive meaning and significance from their work were more than three times as likely to stay with their organizations — the highest single impact of any variable in our survey. These employees also reported 1.7 times higher job satisfaction and they were 1.4 times more engaged at work.
Leaders must embrace the softer side of business and know that how employees feel is as important as what they know and what they can do. If they don’t feel like doing it, they won’t. If they don’t feel valued, they walk. If they don’t feel respected, they leave or call in sick. If they don’t feel inspired and energized and feel like they matter; they won’t produce. Leaders much pay attention to what was previously thought of as soft skills and ensure they ask employees what would make them feel more energized, more cared for and what would improve their quality of life at work.
Other things I’ve seen client companies do is to create fitness facilities and nap rooms, and to provide healthy, high-quality food for free, or at subsidized prices, offer dry cleaning pick-up or car detailing in the workplace. Others offer Fed-ex and UPS delivery and drop off for employees and promise not to make meetings more than 90 minutes tops. Still others have bowls of M&M’s next to the coffee pots in the break rooms. What can you do as a leader to embrace the softer side of the workplace and energize your employees? It starts with a simple question of asking them what they want out of the relationship with their job and what do they need to feel better about working there. Baked goods is always a good start.
The energy of leaders is contagious. When leaders explicitly encourage employees to work in more sustainable ways and model that behavior; their employees are substantially more engaged, more focused, and more likely to stay at the company, according to the Harvard Business Review. Start inquiring now before you lose more employees to someplace that cares more about them, shows them they are concerned with how they feel and shows how they value them on many levels.