Financial Worries Create A Hazardous Workplace

Did you realize that the average North American worker spends about twenty hours per month worrying about finances? This statistic is concerning. That's, on average, an hour a day.

What happens when you're worrying about money? You are focused on your worries and not the task at hand. That means you are not fully present in the performance of your job; whether it be office work, driving, construction, serving your customers or attending a learning session. If you are preoccupied with your worries you are not fully aware of your surroundings. And when you're preoccupied, accidents happen.

In this still uncertain time in our economy, people are worried about finances. So much so, that they may be making decisions that could adversely affect their personal safety and security.

Here's a simple example of what happens when people start making their decisions based on a perceived lack of funds. Because money might be tight, an employee working in wintry conditions might choose to forgo purchasing winter tires this year and take a chance on the all-season radials despite the facts that all-seasons have no grip, no traction and no stopping power in temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. Add a young child in the back seat and, well, you get the picture.

There are some employees who actually have "win the lottery" as a financial strategy. I am dead serious. They believe that a windfall of money will solve all of their problems. Not true. If an employee has difficulty with the small amounts of money, they will never handle the big amounts of money. It's the reason why there are so many broke lottery winners just a year after their windfall. I will bet most of your employees are just not good with money.

So, here are five ideas to help employers get their employee's financial worries in check and get them focused back on the job:

1. Offer them the use of a financial planner. In fact, go ahead and work with a financial planning company to prepare a one-two hour session for the general staff. Then give them each an hour of work time over the next few days to meet privately with the financial planner to get started on a financial plan that will help remove some of the worry over the long-term.
2. Contract with a tire shop to provide your employees with a volume discount and offer your employees an hour or so off of work to go and get winter tires installed on their vehicles. People who feel secure driving to and from work will take that feeling of safety into the workplace.
3. Create a staff emergency fund with a maximum of whatever you feel comfortable with to help your staff with unforseen emergency funding. The emergency fund is a repayable loan over a short term. Most employees would never use it but to know that there is a safety net would reduce worry.
4. Offer to subsidize monthly passes to use public transit. Even $10 per employee helps a little but means a lot coming from their employer.
5. Create an inviting common area and encourage your people to bring their brown-bag lunches. Offer some lunchtime learning seminars around finances and budgeting and help your people acquire the skills to take control of their finances.

The Attitude of Money, Security and Safety is a necessary attitude in the workplace. Think beyond just safety. Help your people with their finances which helps the employee with developing a sense of security. Once a worker feels secure, he or she is less likely to take chances that would affect their personal safety.

The more you help your people get better with money, the less they will worry about it. What that means is that you could likely get another twenty hours per month productivity from your people by helping them with problems they don't like to talk about. Trust me on this: they will repay you with their loyalty.
--
Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email
Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns
The Official Kevin Burns YouTube Channel

When Workers Hate Their Bosses

When workers hate their bosses, you can't always openly tell. Some have disliked their bosses from Day 1. Others learn to increasingly disrespect their bosses and begin to shut down over time - eventually arriving to that point where they actually, in their minds, resign from the job. They end up doing just enough to not get fired.

Now before you go thinking that as long as they continue to do their jobs all is OK, let me clue you in. The levels of employee motivation have tangible ramifications for your organization:

• Rates of theft will rise.
• Quality of work will drop creating more defective products.
• Work accident numbers rise.
• Turnover and absenteeism both increase.
• Customer service scores drop.
• Profitability of the department drops.

If you've got any of these issues, then you've got a group of workers who have become disillusioned with their immediate boss. People who shut down like this don't have it in for the company (in most instances), they have it in for their immediate manager. It's not the corporate culture that irritates people over time, it's usually an immediate supervisor. Once an employee loses respect for their boss, good luck getting them motivated and engaged again.

Stop buying the excuses of department managers who always have an excuse for why theft is up, safety incidents are up, reports are late, turnover is high or why so many people seem to be sick. They're sick alright - sick of their boss.

Act quickly when you see the signs.
--
Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email
Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns
The Official Kevin Burns YouTube Channel

Separating Greatness From Mediocrity

There is always some Tipping Point (as Malcolm Gladwell would have explained) that separates a mediocre performance from a great performance. That tipping point is usually found in the amount of effort one person makes to be head-and-shoulders better than his or her competitors.

Having an attitude of greatness means that you are willing to practice, learn and be better than anyone else in your field. If you're in sales, it's in how you shut the TV off at night and apply yourself to be better than your competitor by reading a chapter in a book or spending some time doing research on your prospects in preparation for tomorrow's meeting. In management, it's in researching new communication or management strategies that make you better than the other managers. In customer service, it's in spending a little time online learning how your competitors are serving differently than you and doing something about it.

But greatness isn't just for the corporate world. No, greatness can be found anywhere. What separates great from mediocre is going one step beyond what others are willing to do.

This video illustrates greatness in juggling. Now before you poo-poo the whole juggling thing, watch the video. After watching you'll agree, every other juggler seems mediocre next to this German construction worker.

(Note: the guy in the video should have worn a hard hat during this. Safety is an attitude too - one that greatness can also apply to.)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyYRfNoZKcA

--
Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email
Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns
The Official Kevin Burns YouTube Channel

Sex and Drugs and Money

Baby Boomers did not have their acquired wealth handed to them by their parents (for the most part) - as many Gen Y have had happen. In making that claim, I am neither condemning nor applauding that fact. Also, this post is NOT a rash generalization but is based on fact that Gen Y is perhaps the wealthiest of all of the generations in history by transference - it being handed over without effort.

Where did the money come from though? How did Boomers become wealthy enough to just start handing it over to their kids without the same questions being asked that the parents of Boomers would have asked? I don't believe that in the vast majority of cases, this conversation has ever taken place between Boomer parent and Gen Y child. The child has simply come to expect that there is always money and that their having lots of it whenever they need it is a right.

If you were blessed enough to always have money with no history to give you context of how it may have been acquired, could you truly understand how some people are poor or homeless? Would the belief not be that poverty is simply some abject result of unemployment?

Since Gen Y was, for the most part, raised in an environment of always having money (or the illusion of it in order for parents to not be embarrassed by their financial situation), many Gen Y have not had the discussions of their own parent's history of family finances. I believe that not having that conversation between parent and child withholds one of life's greatest lessons on the difference between rights and privileges - a discussion far beyond just money.

Without historical context, the child becomes defenseless against the realities of life because he or she does not possess the attitude of money, security and safety which would shield them from fluctuating markets, tenuous employment and/or being chosen for promotion within their chosen career. It also leaves them somewhat defenseless in recessionary times, market downturns and in their ability to plan for their financial future (although many parents have introduced their children to financial planners but without first establishing how the money comes to be in the first place).

In the same way a parent would have a serious discussion about sex or drugs, a parent needs to explain their own history around money and family finances and how their familial financial situation came to be. They need to discuss their own first jobs, their bad bosses, their glee at receiving their first paycheck and the lessons learned about money over a lifetime.

However, let's make sure that there is not too much time spent on the topic of how little there may have been growing up (or how they had to walk 40 miles to school uphill both ways in 5 feet of snow in pajamas while walking barefoot because the newspaper that normally served as shoes couldn't be delivered due to the snowstorm) and instead plant the seed of how one earns one's wealth. It is imperative that parents explain to their children that wealth is not a right but a privilege. As soon as children and young adults begin to treat money as a commodity in which they earn as opposed to one in which they are entitled to, they will not only set themselves up for greatness in the area of money, but also in developing an Attitude of Gratitude, an Attitude of Service, an Attitude of Resilience, an Attitude of Leadership, an Attitude of Connectedness and an Instigational Attitude - the other six attitudes in the 7 Attitudes to Greatness.

Oh, by the way, this topic was inspired by a Monty Python sketch, The Four Yorkshiremen. Watch it and then have a REAL discussion with your kids about how you grew up. I'll bet they have no idea.

--
Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email

Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns

Time Management Is A Symptom

How long would you let a workmate pop headache pills for a recurring headache before you said something? Three days? A week? A month? How long would you let it go before you offered your opinion that there's a bigger underlying problem in which he or she should really see a doctor?

Treating a symptom with a few pills doesn't resolve a problem. But that's exactly how most organizations operate: they treat the symptom and not the root cause.

Time management is a symptom. It is not a strategy for addressing a root cause. When an employee is consistently late in meeting deadlines, seems to have a procrastination problem or doesn't seem very organized then the standard thinking is to enroll the employee in a time management program to solve their time management issue. But in actual fact, time management isn't the issue. Self-discipline and attitude are the issues and no amount of time management training will solve it. Why? Because the concept of time management is based on the premise that all people have good self-discipline and strong work-ethic. But if they don't, time management doesn't work.

What if the problem isn't time management, just poor personal management based on a poor self-image? Treating that with Time Management would be a monumental waste of time.

Time management is a symptom of a larger problem. If you want the symptom to go away you treat the root cause. The root cause is usually attitude. And here's how you overcome a time management symptom. You're going to need to address three specific attitudes: an attitude of leadership, an attitude of resilience and an attitude of money, security and safety.

Adopting an attitude of leadership doesn't mean that you have to be in management. It means that you simply have to have enough self-confidence to be able to take control of your own responsibilities. That's part of an attitude of leadership.

An attitude of resilience says that whatever you're facing right now you are able to handle whatever is in front of you no matter what. It's an attitude of resilience that gets you through the tough times and allows you to feel more control and feel less overwhelmed.

An attitude of money, security and safety allows you to feel safe and secure in the performance of your duties. When you feel safe and secure in your abilities you feel less overwhelmed, less stressed and more in control.

Allow people to feel that they have control over a situation and they will rise to an occasion. Time management won't be necessary. Besides, if time management really worked, you would have solved all of your problems years ago.

Time management is a symptom -- attitude is the root cause. Work on attitude and time management solves itself.

--
Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email

Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns

Attitude One of Seven

Attitude one of seven is the Attitude of Money, Security and Safety.

Don't you feel safe when you've got a few extra bucks (ideally anywhere from 3-12 months) set aside? How much better are you able to do your job knowing that your job is not tenuous? Do you feel secure about your contribution to your workplace and know that your contribution will be traded off with fairly good job-security?

To know that the your finances are in order, that your basic needs of food and shelter are well looked after, doesn't that bring a sense of relief? It's amazing how much more you can accomplish when you don't feel that downward pressure of out-of-control finances and uncertainty. To know all is well in your world allows your focus to be clearer.

This is the Attitude of Money, Security and Safety. When you have a steady stream of money (or a guaranteed source of it = regular paycheck) and are living within your means, there is a great sense of security that comes with that. You are secure in knowing that should something tragic befall you, you'd be OK at least in the short-term. Knowing that, there is a sense of safety for yourself and your family. Once you have that sense of safety, you will not find yourself taking stupid risks - you will still risk but it is likely to be calculated enough to the point that you wouldn't impact yourself beyond your financial cushion.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: If you're not feeling safe and secure in your world, then money is likely the issue. You have not given yourself a cushion should something happen. Go to work there first. Build your cushion. Give yourself some peace of mind, security and safety. The person who has the Attitude of Money, Security and Safety will outperform all others and likely attract better results.

If you or any of the people in your organization don't have this attitude nailed down, your corporate performance is going to suffer, morale will decline, worry and fear will permeate the organization and your people will be looking for new jobs at every opportunity - hoping the grass is greener somewhere else. Help your people develop the Attitude of Money, Security and Safety and you will have a healthier organization for it.

The Attitude of Money, Security and Safety is the first of the seven attitudes in my forthcoming book, Your Attitude Sucks - Fixing What's Wrong With Corporate America.