Our New Blog: Building a Better Workplace

Hey, have you checked out our Blog posts this week on BuildingABetterWorkplace.com?

Hire better. Manage better. Keep them safe.

How To Impact Your Workplace (Video)

How Radio Makes Better Managers

Test-Drive Job Candidates

I appreciate that you have been a follower and/or subscriber to this Blog. But, this Blog will, sadly, be coming to an end in a few short weeks. We encourage you to join us in our new location at BuildingABetterWorkplace.com.

If you would like to subscribe to our NEW RSS Feed, simply click this link: http://buildingabetterworkplace.com/?feed=rss2

If you prefer to receive our posts by email, then click this link: Subscribe to Building A Better Workplace - with Kevin Burns by Email

Come on over to the new location. Things are happening there.

This Blog Is Closing

I appreciate that you have been a follower and/or subscriber to this Blog. It has been my pleasure to work for you. But as I attempt to streamline our educational component, this Blog will, sadly, be coming to an end.

As we move all of our posting to one central Blog location, BuildingABetterWorkplace.com, this Blog will cease to exist after the next 30 days.

I encourage you to join us in our new location at BuildingABetterWorkplace.com.
If you would like to subscribe to our RSS Feed, simply click this link: http://buildingabetterworkplace.com/?feed=rss2

If you prefer to receive our posts by email, then click this link: Subscribe to Building A Better Workplace - with Kevin Burns by Email

Again, thanks for the opportunity to serve you. I hope you'll join us at our new Blog location.

With gr-Attitude,
Kevin Burns

How To Make Easy Course Corrections

Back in the days before 9-11, I found myself on an overnight flight across the Atlantic Ocean to England. Seated all around me were drunken, Estonian sailors who had proceeded in 1.5 hours to drink the airplane dry of any and all alcohol. At only three hours into the eight-hour flight, I was becoming increasingly agitated by the drunken sailor next to me who insisted on practicing his 3-word English vocabulary replete with spittle, belches and the occasional waft of stomach gases.

The flight attendant, sensing my agitation, took pity on me and asked me to accompany her to the back of the plane. In the back galley, there were several seats occupied by other flight attendants and I was invited to take a seat amongst them and take a break from the beer-burpy-spittle sailor.

After about an hour of quiet, being served coffee and tea and a few munchy snacks, the Chief Flight Attendant asked if I would be interested in meeting the Captain and seeing the cockpit (remember, this was pre 9-11).

Upon opening the cockpit doors, I found the pilot and co-pilot facing one another and playing a game of cards to which the captain chuckled, "I'll bet you're wondering who's flying this thing huh?"

The captain then proceeded to show me how it all worked. To my amazement, I learned that once in the air, the computer flew the plane. The Captain pulled up our flight path on the computer screen which indicated anything but a straight line.

"At 40,000 feet, it's windy and our plane gets knocked off course all of the time," the Captain said. "The computer's job is to make a small series of corrections along the way to keep us on our course so we don't end up in Spain when we were heading for England."

This story illustrates the useful strategy of small course corrections versus the major reactive strategy of trying to recover from a serious, uncorrected error along the way. This same strategy can be applied to daily interaction and communication with employees to make small course corrections so that you don't end up in Spain when you were heading for England.

The Annual Performance Review, as many managers have explained it to me, is like ending up nowhere near where you were headed. The Annual Performance Review only allows for major corrections - the big things that went unsaid for months and were never dealt with when they should have been.

However, Tweaking™ your employees daily in simple ten-second interactions daily will give your people better feedback, better direction and build better trust culminating in better loyalty and reduced turnover.

Remember, if you prefer chaotic crisis intervention, putting out major fires and stressing yourself out in dealing with setback, by all means, stick with the Annual Performance Review of having only one discussion around each employee's performance per year. But if you want to watch your employees get better every day, watch them improve their performance, increase their engagement levels and come together as a cohesive team, then I suggest the Tweak™ Strategy for management.

Small course corrections are much easier to do but require you to pay more attention to your people.



For more information on how Kevin can help your managers get better at communicating with employees and building engagement, value and culture, check here: http://kevburns.com/speaking/tweak-a-new-management-strategy

25 Percent To Jump Ship In New Year

As you gather for your Christmas parties, (sorry, Holiday Parties - my PC vocab is underutilized), be aware that this is likely the last party for many of your staff. If the numbers are right, and they usually are pretty close, almost every survey indicates that up to 25% of employees are willing to jump ship in the New Year as soon as a better offer comes along.

Y'see, as a manager, you've been doing a terrible job of building employee loyalty. In fact, while you are in your all-too-often management meetings or locked away in your office with the door closed, your staff are whining about their jobs and how they're ready to jump ship at the first opportunity. It's probably because you don't say enough to them about how much you value their contribution.

Oh sure, you talk to them about how you fought for a raise and how your hands are tied by senior managment, but other than that, you really don't say much do you?

The truth is, although more money is always nice, it isn't the reason your people are secretly planning to leave. No, they're planning their exit strategy because they don't feel fulfilled in their work because no one tells them that their contribution is important, that the work matters or that their talent is recognized.

But you're not comfortable with that are you? That's too touchy-feely (Eew). Better to just keep it simple and throw out a few basic but non-commital platitudes in the "annual" performance review. That way, your ass is covered if they ever raise a stink about something you said that may have been heartfelt.

At this time of the year, people have gift-giving on their minds. Eyes and faceslight up when they get a gift. Think of how much your people would light up and light a fire under themselves if they got a regular gift: someone who articulates that they are appreciated.

But there will be no gift come the New Year. No, your lump of coal will be to train their replacement in the New Year. And when that person leaves, then you will do it again, and again and blame it all on a lack of employee engagement. It's always easier to blame turnover on "problem" or "issue" employees.

But Employee Engagement isn't the problem. Management enagagement is the problem. Employees will engage in direct proportion to their direct manager's engagement of them. Without engagement, their is no employee loyalty.

Stop looking for tips and tricks to fix your people. They don't work long-term. What works is honesty. Talk to them. Appreciate them. Be grateful for their work. That's how you keep them. All it takes is a little humility. But that seems to be the problem doesn't it? You think being humble equates to weakness. Not much wonder they're leaving you.

--

For more information on how Kevin can help your managers get better at communicating with employees and building engagement, value and culture, check here: http://kevburns.com/speaking/tweak-a-new-management-strategy

Why HR And Management Are To Blame

Below is an excerpt from Kevin's forthcoming book, Tweak™ - Building A Better Workplace In 10 Seconds Or Less!

--

Ultimately, every organization having difficulty with turnover, staff retention, customer retention and recruiting can point their fingers and blame one of two things within their organization: Human Resources (the people they hire) and Management (how they manage them). That's it. Simple. It's either Management or HR to blame for where your company is today.

Are you employing the same kinds of people you did 20 years ago? Are you managing the same staff you did 20 years ago? Are you using the same technology from 20 years ago? Overwhelmingly the answer is "NO."

So why are you hiring the same way you did 20 years ago and still using outdated management practices? The truth is, both conventional (what we've come to know as conventional) Management practices and conventional Human Resources practices are out of date. What ultimately holds almost every organization back is the people they hire and how they're managed. And what propels and organization forward is exactly the same: the people they hire and how they're managed.

Knowing this, why do you think so little effort is spent by organizations in training managers to a level of excellence and/or deploying a forward-thinking and highly-motivated staff of recruiters to go out and steal the best talent in the market?

Is it because companies are happy with mediocrity: a middle-of-the-pack performance? Or is it because that's what everyone else is doing? We don't think companies are "happy" with being in the middle of the pack - that's just where they end up when they follow someone else's model for management and HR.

Not everyone can be a Google or a Starbucks or a Netflix: industry/market leaders. Once your industry has a leader, everyone else automatically becomes a follower. Following another company's management practices or their hiring practices or their training practices will only make you a shadow of what they are. That is no way to ever achieve market-leader status nor is it any way to ever be top-of-the-heap when it comes to attracting the best talent, the best ideas and the best managers.

When companies pay big money for expertise from outside resources, they had better be getting ideas and strategies that weren't even thought of 20 years ago. I know professional "speakers" that if they were to open a book written in the last five years, they would have to scrap everything they're currently preaching because it's old, outdated and just doesn't work anymore. Consultants offering up the same ideas they offered to clients twenty years ago shouldn't be rewarded for not being current. Management trainers who regurgitate old concepts built on hierarchy, bureaucracy, planning and control should refund their paychecks. Google did not achieve market-leader status by doing what everyone else is doing.

This is a new time, a new market, with new faces employing new ideas, new concepts and new values. And the changes are only going to get bigger and faster. In fact, in the year 2015, seventy-five percent of your workforce is going to be either over age 50 or under age 30. That means you are more likely to see seventy year-olds working alongside twenty year-olds. Are your managers prepared to manage a 50-year age disparity? If you think you can manage a Gen Y the same way you've managed a Baby Boomer, because you've always managed that way, you're sadly mistaken. You will not be ready and your company will suffer as a result.

For more on Kevin's Tweak™ Management program, check out http://kevburns.com/speaking/tweak-a-new-management-strategy
--
Like this post? Pass it on.

Or better yet, Invite Kevin to address this issue live at your next meeting.

And join us on Facebook

Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert – Management Consultant – Keynote Speaker

Nine-Minute Seminar On Future Workplaces

I have just posted a new mini-seminar on where workplaces are headed over the next three years. It addresses the challenges in management, generations and hiring. Take nine minutes out for yourself today and view the mini-seminar.

What The Future Holds - A Mini-Seminar

- Like this post? Pass it on.
Or better yet, Invite Kevin to address this issue live at your next meeting.
And join us on Facebook
Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert – Management Consultant – Keynote Speaker

Closing Time And Employee Engagement

"We're closing in five minutes!!!!"

How many times have you been told that by "customer service" personnel (yes I used quotations on purpose)?

I have even been yelled at upon entering the store twenty-five minutes before closing. What does that say about the staff? Worse yet, what does that say about management that lets staff get away with, in essence, saying, "your needs are less important than me getting out of here so hurry up Buster."

While looking at expensive dishes in a small, Independant store, I was approached hurriedly by the sales clerk who seemed impatient that we were still in the store so close to closing time.

Exasperated she exclaimed, " we are closing in like two minutes."

I immediately shot back, "we'll leave then" looking her square in the eye.

She backpedaled making some lame apology. Too late. I didn't want to buy here anymore.

The evidence in retail establishments is staggering but this happens in every organization: people who don't want to start something that they know they can't finish before closing time. Clock watchers are time-thieves. They cost your organization money and productivity and take a big bite out of a culture that claims to be customer-focused.

How your people handle the end of the day is more tell-tale than how they handle the start of the day - especially around engagement.

If you, as a customer, get the warning that they will soon be closing, walk away. You deserve to be treated better. Besides, there's a huge difference between locking the doors and being "closed."


- Like this post? Pass it on.
Or better yet, Invite Kevin to address this issue live at your next meeting.
And join us on Facebook
Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert - Management Consultant - Keynote Speaker