Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction ? How to Drive Business Performance Higher
Importance of Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction
Your employees have a wealth of information about what it is like to work at your company, and what your customers are telling them about your company and your competitors.
Your employees also have considerable knowledge about what can be done to improve your company’s productivity, quality, customer service, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, growth and profit, and what can be done to improve your risk profile.
Equally important, your employees know how satisfied or dissatisfied they are working at your company. They also know how engaged they are and what can be done to increase their level of engagement.
While most companies are aware of the need to take action and make improvements to become more competitive, they often miss important hidden actions that can really make a difference for customers, employees and the bottom line. That’s where employee surveys come in, uncovering the hidden information, suggestions and insight you need from across your organization.
Highly satisfied employees are more engaged in their jobs, their productivity is higher and they do more to generate profit for your company. While company financials and other “hard data” measurements are important for assessing your company’s/organization’s performance, they are missing important information, insight and perceptions that can only be gathered by directly asking your employees. Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys are the best, most cost-effective way to gather comprehensive information accurately from a large portion of your employees about how satisfied and how engaged they are, and what needs to be done to increase employee satisfaction and engagement.
Definition of Employee Engagement
An organization’s employees are engaged when employees at all levels of the organization are fully committed, involved and enthusiastic about their jobs and their organizations.
• Engaged employees are willing, able and actually do contribute to company success.
• Engaged employees regularly go the extra mile, putting effort into their work above and beyond what is expected of them. They willingly and eagerly work extra hours and focus their inspiration, energy, intelligence, skills and experience to achieve success for themselves and their organization.
• Engaged employees thrive when they are working in a positive, supportive corporate culture. Their inspiration, energy and enthusiasm in turn enhance the corporate culture.
How Engaged are your employees? How do you know?
How many of your employees are disengaged, how many are somewhat engaged and how many are highly engaged? Assessing employee engagement levels and then taking action to shift disengaged and somewhat engaged employees up the curve will significantly increase employee and company performance. Employee engagement surveys / employee satisfaction surveys measure employee satisfaction and engagement levels and provide actionable information for driving employee engagement to significantly higher levels.
Employee Engagement Surveys or Employee Satisfaction Surveys? Which is the right survey approach for your organization?
The best approach for companies and other types of organizations is to conduct surveys that include both employee engagement and employee satisfaction issues. It is possible for employees to be satisfied but not engaged, and it is also possible for employees to be engaged but not satisfied.
Surveys that include a wide range of questions about both employee satisfaction and employee engagement gather comprehensive information, opinions, perceptions and insight for assessing employee satisfaction and engagement. Dual-focused surveys identify shortfalls in employee satisfaction and employee engagement levels, and the reasons for the shortfalls. The surveys also generate extensive information, insight and suggestions for diagnosing problems across your organization and for taking action to address shortfalls in employee engagement and employee satisfaction.
So to answer the question, should you conduct an employee engagement survey or should you conduct an employee satisfaction survey, you should conduct a survey that focuses on both employee engagement and employee satisfaction.
Characteristics of Engaged Employees
Engaged employees exhibit many of the following characteristics, enabling them to achieve significantly higher personal performance levels than disengaged employees:
1. Achieve consistently high levels of performance 2. High energy and enthusiasm 3. Committed to customers and exceeding customer expectations 4. Understand the desired outcomes of their job/role 5. Professionally and emotionally committed to their job and whatever they do 6. Expect and perceive a direct connection between their effort and reward received 7. Initiate problem-solving, challenge things that need to be changed 8. Innovate and strive for process and product excellence and efficiency 9. Focused on achieving goals, committed to completing tasks and assignments 10. Expect and enjoy autonomy and the ability to make decisions when needed to do their job 11. Initiate and participate in special projects and positive things to act on 12. Expand what they do and build on it 13. Committed to the company, their group and role 14. Proactive building of supportive relationships 15. Would recommend their company, products and services 16. Attention to details 17. Typically prefer complex, challenging work (as they perceive complexity and job challenge) 18. Communicate willingly and effectively with employees at all levels 19. More likely to identify risks and take appropriate risks 20. Committed to and demonstrate personal and professional improvement 21. Proactive conflict resolution 22. They get things done!
Performance Metrics of Employee Satisfaction Surveys, Employee Engagement Surveys and Employee Opinion Surveys
Employee Satisfaction Surveys and Employee Engagement Surveys should be customized to meet your organization’s special needs. The surveys should include sections and questions that gather information, perceptions and insight about both employee engagement and employee satisfaction issues. Following are some of the measurements included in Employee Satisfaction Surveys and Employee Engagement Surveys:
1. Having resources needed to do the job 2. Confidence in management’s ability to lead the company 3. Clarity and effectiveness of communications within and across organizational units 4. Management’s availability and openness to upward communications 5. Teamwork effectiveness 6. Demonstrating integrity 7. Encouragement for innovation 8. Consideration given to ideas and suggestions 9. Empowerment to make decisions 10. Commitment and effectiveness of diversity initiatives 11. Maintaining balance between work and personal life 12. Respect for and from manager/supervisor manager 13. Manager understanding what motivates employees 14. Fair treatment from manager/supervisor 15. Recognition from manager/supervisor 16. Commitment to quality excellence and customer service 17. Communication of performance expectations 18. Performance evaluation and feedback effectiveness 19. Effectiveness of training and mentoring 20. Effectiveness of recruiting, hiring and on-boarding processes 21. Opportunities for development and growth 22. Satisfaction with career prospects within the company 23. Satisfaction with compensation and benefits 24. Commitment to work at the company for the foreseeable future 25. Pride in working for the organization 26. Understanding of the company’s direction, mission, vision and values 27. Willingness to recommend the company as a good place to work
Benefits of Employee Satisfaction Surveys, Employee Engagement Surveys and Employee Opinion Surveys
Employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys generate significant bottom-line benefits and a very strong payback when action is taken based on the survey findings. The survey benefits include:
1. Increase employee engagement and performance 2. Increase employee satisfaction, employee loyalty and employee productivity 3. Identify hidden problems, opportunities and possible solutions 4. Create a roadmap for making breakthrough improvements 5. Focus managers’ energies on areas with the highest priority and the largest payback 6. Execute more effectively 7. Identify internal communications problems, a significant cause of dissatisfaction and poor performance 8. Strengthen the culture of collaboration and change 9. Reduce costly employee turnover 10. Enhance your “employer of choice” reputation 11. Avoid costly abuse law suits 12. Facilitate innovation and smart risk-taking 13. Reduce the People Performance Gap, the costly gap in performance between the most and least effective people performing each job in your company
Summary – Achieving Significant Gains in Employee and Business Performance
Companies and other types of organizations have a very significant opportunity to increase their bottom-line performance by increasing employee satisfaction and employee engagement. Conducting surveys that focus on both employee satisfaction and employee engagement and then taking action based on the survey findings is a highly effective way to achieve significantly higher
Improving Employee Retention
Improving Employee Retention
Overview
A focus on mutual respect between employees and supervisors, appropriate pay, benefits and rewards, as well as recognition of performance excellence, are key ingredients of an effective employee retention program. The importance of putting such actions into practice generally is well understood by most managers, but actually doing them takes time, so they are often left for another day. However, the payoff of focusing on employee retention—in terms of increased performance, productivity, employee morale and quality of work, plus a reduction in both turnover and employee-related problems—is well worth the investment of time and financial resources. The bottom line is that the organization will retain talented and motivated employees who truly want to be a part of the company and who are focused on making a contribution to the organization’s overall success. See, Retaining Talent: A Guide to Analyzing and Managing Employee Turnover.
Business Case
Notwithstanding extremely adverse economic conditions, one of the most critical issues that organizations perennially face is how to retain the employees they want to keep. Even in the midst of a deep recession, companies must anticipate impending shortages of overall talent as well as a shortfall of employees with the specialized competencies needed to stay ahead of the competition. Organizations that systematically manage employee retention—both in good times and bad—will stand a greater chance of weathering such shortages. See, Thought Leaders Focus on Finding, Keeping Talent.
A focus on reducing turnover makes sense for three key reasons:
It is costly.
It affects the performance of an organization.
It may become increasingly difficult to manage as the availability of skilled employees decreases in the future.
Direct replacement costs can reach as high as 50% to 60% of an employee’s annual salary, with total costs ranging from 90% to 200% of annual salary. See, Retaining Talent: A Guide to Analyzing and Managing Employee TurnoverandCost of Turnover. Examples include turnover costs of 2,000 for a journeyman machinist, 3,000 for an HR manager at an automotive manufacturer and 0,000 for an accounting professional. See, Retaining Intellectual Capital in the 21st Century. In addition to the obvious direct costs (e.g., accrued paid time offand replacement costs), there are numerous indirect costs (e.g., disruptions to team-based work, lost clients, decreases in overall service or product quality, etc.).
Turnover costs can have a significant negative impact on a company’s performance. One study estimated that turnover-related costs represent more than 12% of pre-tax income for the average company and nearly 40% for companies at the 75th percentile for turnover rate. See, Driving the Bottom Line. However, not all turnover is harmful—it may, instead, generate some important benefits to the organization (e.g., the new replacement hire may turn out to be more productive or skilled than the previous employee). See, What Types of Skilled Workers Is Your Organization Concerned About Retaining: A SHRM Poll.
Drivers of Employee Retention and Turnover
Devising effective employee retention strategies requires organizations to understand both why employees leave organizations and why they stay. See, What Do Employees Want, Not Always What HR Thinks.
SHRM members who wish to receive additional information and resources on this topic via a one-time e-mail message may go to SHRM’s Express Request service and select any of the following key terms: Reasons for Turnover; Employee Engagement.
Why employees leave
Employees leave organizations for all sorts of reasons—some find a different job, some go back to school, and some follow a spouse who has been transferred to a different location. Some retire, get angry about some work-related or personal issue and quit on impulse, while others simply decide they no longer need a job (these categories of departure are referred to as “voluntary turnover”). Still others get fired or laid off by the organization (referred to as “involuntary turnover”). See, Employee Turnover: Analyzing Employee Movement Out of the Organization.
Generally, an individual will stay with an organization as long as the inducements it offers (i.e., pay, good working conditions and developmental opportunities) are equal to or greater than the contributions (e.g., time and effort) required of the person by the organization. These judgments are affected both by the individual’s desire to leave the organization as well as the ease with which he or she could depart.
Studies have shown that employees typically follow four primary paths to turnover, each of which has different implications for an organization. These include:
Employee dissatisfaction. Attack this with traditional retention strategies such as monitoring workplace attitudes and managing the drivers of turnover. See, More Than Money Motivates Employees.
Better alternatives: Ensure that the organization is competitive in terms of rewards, developmental opportunities and the quality of the work environment. Be prepared to deal with external offers for valued employees. See, SHRM Poll: Many Managers Will Bolt for the Right Offer.
Following a plan: Some employees may have a predetermined plan to quit (e.g., if their spouse becomes pregnant, if they get a better job, if they are accepted into a degree program, etc.). However, increasing rewards tied to tenure may alter the plans of some employees. For example, if a company is seeing exits based on family-related plans, adding a more generous maternity and family-friendly policy may help to reduce the impact.
Leaving without a plan: Employees sometimes leave on impulse, without any plan for the future. Generally, this is the result of a negative response to a specific action (e.g., being passed over for a promotion, difficulties with a supervisor, etc.). Analyze the types and frequencies of work-related issues that are driving employees to leave. Provide training to minimize prevalent negative interactions (e.g., harassment, bullying or unfair and inconsistent treatment) and provide support mechanisms to deal with those problems (e.g., conflict resolutionprocedures, alternative work schedulesoremployee assistance programs).
Additional predictors of turnover that merit careful attention include:
Organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
quality of the employee-supervisor relationship.
Role clarity.
Job design.
Workgroup cohesion.
Why employees stay
As important as it is to understand the reasons that drive employees to leave an organization, it is just as important to understand why valuable employees stay. Some recent studies have suggested that employees become embedded in their jobs and their communities. As they participate in their professional and community life, they develop a web of connections and relationships, both on and off the job. Leaving a job would require severing or rearranging these social and value networks. Thus, the more embedded employees are in an organization, the more likely they are to stay. Companies can increase an employee’s embeddedness by Read more
Conducting an Employee Satisfaction Survey or Employee Engagement Survey: 21 Reasons to Do It Now
Why Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction are Really Important to Your Bottom Line:
Employee compensation is likely the number one or number two cost category at your organization. In a highly competitive world with continuous pressure on profit margins and the need to increase employee productivity and contain costs, anything your organization can do to get more done with the employees you have produces an immediate payback. If you can get more done with fewer employees, that is even better, especially if you can drive up sales and increase customer service and quality while containing employee costs.
Fortunately, your employees have the answers. They know what it’s like to work at your company, what your customers are telling them about your company, and about your competition. You just need to ask your employees and they will tell you. They will also tell you how dissatisfied or satisfied they are working at your company, and how engaged they are and what can be done to increase their level of engagement.
Your employees also know what needs to be done to increase your company’s customer service levels, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, productivity, quality and profit, and what can be done to reduce potentially costly risks.
While most companies are aware of the need to take action and make improvements to become more competitive, they often miss important hidden actions that can really make a difference for customers, employees and the bottom line. That’s where employee surveys come in, uncovering the hidden information, suggestions and insight you need from across your organization.
Highly satisfied employees are more engaged in their jobs, their productivity is higher and they do more to generate profit for your company. Company financials and other “hard data” measurements are missing important information and insight that can only be gathered by directly asking your employees. Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys are the best, most cost-effective way to gather comprehensive information accurately from a large portion of your employees about how satisfied and how engaged they are, and what needs to be done to increase employee satisfaction and engagement.
Employee Engagement Definition
Your employees are engaged when they are fully committed, involved and enthusiastic about their jobs, your organization and your customers.
· Your engaged employees are able, willing and actually do contribute more to your organization’s success.
· Engaged employees regularly put effort into their work above and beyond what is expected of them. They go the extra mile. They eagerly and willingly work longer hours and focus their energy, inspiration, skills, intelligence and experience on achieving success for themselves and your company.
· Your engaged employees thrive when they are working in a supportive company culture. Their energy. inspiration and enthusiasm enhance your company’s culture.
Are your employees really engaged? How do you know?:
How many of your company’s employees are highly engaged, how many are somewhat engaged and how many are disengaged? Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys measure employee satisfaction and engagement levels and provide actionable information for driving employee engagement to significantly higher levels. Assessing employee engagement levels and then taking action to Read more
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT ? A TOOL TO IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY
Introduction
In a highly competitive market for both customers and talented staff, employee engagement is the current Holy Grail. Many companies realize that maximum productivity doesn’t come from just a “satisfied” or “happy” employee. They know that the most productive and loyal employee is known as an engaged employee.
Employees are engaged when many different levels of employees are feeling fully involved and enthusiastic about their jobs and their organizations. Engagement is the willingness and ability to contribute to company success the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, in the form of extra time, brainpower and energy” according to a Towers Perrin study.
Engagement at work was conceptualized by Kahn, (1990) as the ‘harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles. In engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. The second related construct to engagement in organizational behavior is the notion of flow advanced by Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990). Csikzentmihalyi (1975) defines flow as the ‘holistic sensation’ that, people feel when they act with total involvement. Flow is the state in which there is little distinction between the self and environment. When individuals are in Flow State little conscious control is necessary for their actions.
An organization’s productivity is not only measured in terms of profit, new products, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction, but also in terms of employee engagement. Employees are said to be engaged, when there is a positive attitude towards the work and also a high degree of commitment. An organization’s capacity to manage employee engagement is closely related to its ability to achieve high performance levels and superior business results.
Employee engagement is the thus the level of commitment and involvement an employee has towards their organization and its values. An engaged employee is aware of business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization. The organization must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between employer and employee.’ Thus Employee engagement is a barometer that determines the association of a person with the organization.
Engagement is most closely associated with the existing construction of job involvement (Brown 1996) and flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Job involvement is defined as ‘the degree to which the job situation is central to the person and his or her identity (Lawler & Hall, 1970). Kanungo (1982) maintained that job involvement is a ‘Cognitive or belief state of Psychological identification. Job involvement is thought to depend on both need saliency and the potential of a job to satisfy these needs. Thus job involvement results form a cognitive judgment about the needs satisfying abilities of the job. Jobs in this view are tied to one’s self image. Engagement differs from job in as it is concerned more with how the individual employees his/her self during the performance of his / her job. Furthermore engagement entails the active use of emotions. Finally engagement may be thought of as an antecedent to job involvement in that individuals who experience deep engagement in their roles should come to identify with their jobs.
When Kahn talked about employee engagement he has given important to all three aspects physically, cognitively and emotionally. Whereas in job satisfaction importance has been more given to cognitive side.
HR practitioners believe that the engagement challenge has a lot to do with how employee feels about the about work experience and how he or she is treated in the organization. It has a lot to do with emotions which are fundamentally related to drive bottom line success in a company. There will always be people who never give their best efforts no matter how hard HR and line managers try to engage them. “But for the most part employees want to commit to companies because doing so satisfies a powerful and a basic need in connect with and contribute to something significant”.
Definition:
Employee Engagement
“The state of emotional and intellectual commitment of a person,
group or organization to the entity with whom they are employed.”
Source: Hewitt
“Engagement is not about “WHAT” our people do.
It is the driver of “HOW” they do it and “WHO” they do it for.”
Source: Hewitt
A positive attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its values. An engaged employee works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organization. The organization must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between employer and employee.
Why Employee engagement?
Conditions that prevent employee engagement seldom alleviate themselves. They should be assessed and addressed as soon as possible. Left to multiply, negative employee satisfaction issues can result in:
* Higher employee turnover – Employees leave, taking their reservoir of knowledge and experience to another workplace.
* Diminished performance – Competency of the workforce is reduced, at least for short term, until new employees are trained .
* Lost training investment – Time and money invested in training and development programs for departing workers is wasted.
* Lower morale – Remaining employees can be overburdened with new duties, in addition the unresolved issues that already prevent their full engagement. To counter the above problems, the firm must take relevant steps to engage their employees in the work.
Four dimentions of employees engagement:
What do I get?
When employee’s needs are met, the positive emotions that result encourage employees to look beyond the work in front of them and to care about the overall welfare of the business. More importantly, it’s hard to create passionate, engaged customers without passionate, engaged employees.
What do I give?
Managers can influence employees’ most basic needs by setting clear expectations and providing needed resources.
Personally, managers can create meaningful relationships within workgroups and position employees so that they can do what they do best.
Professionally, managers can provide challenging work and opportunities to learn, grow, and make significant contributions.
Do I belong?
Primarily it is important that the employees have to recognize their contribution towards the growth of the organization which leads to the growth of the employees in the organization. They must know about the objectives, vision and mission of the enterprise.
How can we grow?
Work units that follow these dimensions of engagement perform at a much higher level than work units that fail to meet them. Everyone in the organization should ready to accept the opportunities and challenge the threats faced by the organization. And it is important to know about the strength and weakness of the organization.
Engagement Drivers:
Organizations that believe in increasing employee engagement levels focus on
1. Culture: It consists of a foundation of Read more
Closing the Employee Performance Gap: Boosting Competitiveness & Profit
Creating an environment where there is no place to hide poor performance:
After many years of reengineering, downsizing and the use of endless performance enhancement initiatives, most businesses are still inefficient. One of the most effective ways to increase business performance and profit is to increase the performance of employees, from the lowest levels of the organization to senior management, and little has been done in this area. Raising the level of performance of the weakest performers in each job category can have a dramatic impact on the profit of any company. While many companies are rightfully focusing on technology and strategic solutions to expand profit margins, other opportunities to increase staff performance are frequently overlooked.
Employees are the most important asset of any organization. Fielding a winning team is critical to the ability of any company to compete effectively and to thrive, and top performing employees are the foundation of winning teams.
The Employee Performance Gap:
Employee satisfaction survey and employee engagement survey comments received from employees at all levels of organizations include complaints about some employees that are minimally productive and other employees that are disruptive.
There is a huge gap in performance between the strongest and weakest employees performing the same or similar jobs in most organizations. We call this performance differential the Employee Performance Gap. The Employee Performance Gap is typically 25%-100% in simple jobs and as much as 500%-1,000% in complex and high-responsibility positions requiring broader and higher-level skills. To illustrate this point, the Chief Information Officer of a leading company told us that “my best programmers produce ten times as much code, of better quality, than my least-effective keepers.” He then added “there is little correlation between what our programmers produce and what they are paid.” Closing the Employee Performance Gap can provide breakthrough increases in profit at most companies, even if their profit is already at all-time high levels.
Managers and the strongest employees often spend much of their time fixing problems caused by the weakest performers. This creates an enormous drag on organizational performance and serves to de-motivate top performers, a situation few organizations can afford to tolerate.
An effective way to assess and identify employee performance gap issues is to conduct an employee survey. Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys measure how engaged and satisfied employees are, and identify what needs to be done to increase employee satisfaction and engagement. Employees that are more engaged and satisfied work harder and smarter, they get more work done and their enthusiasm rubs off on other employees.
Closing the Employee Performance Gap enables organizations to get more done with fewer staff and to significantly improve quality and customer service. For many companies, the bottom line impact of the Employee Performance Gap is huge. Ineffective sales calls translate into lost opportunities. Based on a wide range of consulting reviews, we have found that twenty to thirty percent of a company’s staff cost, including management and employees, is spent fixing things, performing rework, correcting errors and handling customer complaints because something wasn’t done right the first time. Most of this excess staff cost is due to errors produced by employee. Even when the cause of a problem can be traced to a failure in technology, there is a great likelihood that an error, lack of action or poor judgment on the part of employee caused the technology to fail.
Picking a Winning Team:
Imagine ten kids coming together to play a sport, any sport. The kids know each other and have played together many times before. Is there ever a question about who the captains will be? Of course not, the two best players will be the captains and everyone knows who they are. When it comes to picking the teams, about the only thing that isn’t known is which captain will get to pick first. Once the coin is tossed, it is clear as to which person will be chosen first, second and so on down to the tenth player. Some of the kids may not like the order in which they are chosen, but they all know the selection process and accept that they are picked based on their relative ability and value to the team. Depending on the particular players, there usually is a wide range of ability and performance on each of the chosen teams.
Now let’s think about the teams that come together to make up our companies. A team may have seven accounting clerks, twelve engineers, five cashiers, fifty customer service representatives, nine computer programmers, eight sales employee, twenty-six manufacturing specialists, eleven bond traders or any number of employee performing similar jobs. If the teams have worked together for a while, the team members all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as whom the top, middle and bottom performers are.
As in sports, corporate managers and team leaders should have a clear understanding of the relative performance of each of their players. While some corporate managers know the performance of each of their employee, many do not accurately measure and assess the performance of their team members. Of equal importance, those managers who have performance measurements often avoid or have difficulty using measurements as a tool for increasing the performance of their employee.
All managers should ask themselves every day, is my team a winning team and do I have the right players, playing at peak performance to win? If the answer to these questions is no, or I’m not sure, what can be done to increase performance of employee and create a winning team?
Closing the Employee Performance Gap:
There are a number of actions that can be taken to identify and close the Employee Performance Gap. The most important step comes first, understanding that the Employee Performance Gap exists and that management can take action to close the gap. Following are fifteen action steps that managers can take to quantify and close the Employee Performance Gap:
1. Identify the success factors and desired results for each position.
2. Establish and communicate meaningful standards of performance excellence. The standards should guide behavior to achieve desired results. Communicating effectively with customers is not a performance standard. Establishing a goal of 98% customer satisfaction as a result of effective communications and other positive behavior/actions is the kind of meaningful, measurable standard we are talking about.
3. Measure staff performance based on the performance standards.
4. Share the results of the ongoing performance measurements with staff on a frequent and consistent basis and use the measurement results to define the areas of performance that need improvement.
5. Conduct employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys and take action based on the survey results.
6. Provide positive leadership and management. Many employees perform poorly at least in part because they report to weak or abusive managers. Consider conducting leadership surveys. Leadership assessment surveys are 360 surveys that provide feedback to many of your company’s leaders, managers and supervisors at the same time. It is a highly effective way to identify strong and weak managers and to identify what needs to be done to strengthen managers and significantly reduce your company’s employee performance gap.
7. Design jobs to be broad and flexible. This will help facilitate teamwork and enable you to get more done with fewer employees.
8. Provide training to ensure that all team members have the required skill sets to succeed.
9. Make it clear to the staff that individual performance and teamwork is critical to the success of the team and the company.
10. Before hiring, promoting or transferring staff, make sure there is a high probability they can succeed with a reasonable amount of training.
11. Tie compensation closely to performance.
12. Place employees first, customers second and shareholders third. Satisfied, competent staff will ensure that customers and shareholders are taken care of.
13. Strengthen the recruiting and hiring process to increase the odds of hiring strong performers.
14. Use a defined probationary period (typically 90 days) to evaluate new hires and cull out the weak performers before they become permanent fixtures. Many companies have probationary periods; few use them.
15. Start now to identify the weakest half of your staff and to increase their performance. Some employee will respond well to clear expectations and feedback on their performance. Others will need more training. A few individuals may need to be prodded occasionally to keep their performance on track. There are some employee that will not bring their performance up to the required level, period, no matter what is done to help them. Following your company’s performance management process, do everything possible as quickly as you can to eliminate the marginal performers from your organization. Replace them only if you really have to.
16.Establish clear priorities and eliminate inappropriate conflict from the work place. Do everything possible to eliminate competing agendas.
Management’s Role:
In employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys managers frequently comment on their difficulty in finding the
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