Leaders face a near perfect storm today. Making sales and profit goals are tougher in the “new normal’, employee disengagement is near epic levels and Gallup research cites nearly one in three payroll dollars are lost because of disengagement.

The savvy leader begins to sort and understand what is going on in the larger economy and their own organization. One of the biggest challenges is an epic rush of resumes. Recent survey data from the Wall Street Journal, November 2009 cited nearly 87% of employees are distracted by thoughts, daydreams or plans to leave the organization. The 87% looks like this…60% actively seeking other employment, 21% networking, and 6% updating resumes. Bottomline, organizations may be about to experience a massive round of “free agency employees.”

The challenge for leaders is to reach out and engage employees… inspiring a new age of honesty and engagement. And reach out to actively disengaged employees. Often disengaged employees are fearful and they no longer trust…trust has evaporated. The loss of trust is serious and there is a cause and effect. The organization may not have met their needs.

Here are 3 tips to purge the wrong attitudes for excuses, whining and negativity.

1. “It’s the economy”, words of the employee blaming the economy. Every organization faces a tough economy. An employee who substitutes excuses for results is not a team player. The response: Discuss expectations of no tolerance for excuses. When mistakes happen, as they certainly will, the correct response is a simple “I’m sorry” and the employees adjustments if any to be sure mistakes are minimized.

2. “If only we had….” The whiner’s theme. It’s ok to find gaps and soft spots in the organization. But it serves no one to put energies into whining without smart solutions. The response: Ask that the whining to stop. Reach out and ask what could be better, what is missing? Ask employees for their personal commitment to help.

3. “Negative Nancy’ this is the naysayer, the one who loves to rain on everyone’s parade. The Response: When Negative Nancy says we “can’t”…respond… “I understand why we haven’t…tell us how we can”.

Try this as a leader. Write down all the things going on in your organization which bug you. Keep writing until you have at least a list of 20. Throw out the ones which are numbers…like sales numbers, profit…those results are simply symptoms of people issues. You want to focus on the human element. After the list of 20 personality irritants..the human things…group into patterns…keep working until you’ve sorted into a list of 3.

You’ve begun to sort and clarity…all will help you focus on the most important blockers to your organizations success. Your purpose is to clarify the 3 big blockers…the things that bug you…what does it call you to do? You may be ready for expert help to go to the next step. The next step is hard work…but the payoff is huge.

We’ve tackled big issues and big challenges and have been involved in just about every important phase of business. http://lighthouse-leadership.com By the way, do you want to learn more about creating a powerful workplace culture? If so, download our brand new free ebook Three Elegant Strategies for Your Organizations Survival Elegant Courage Jodi lead the cultural turnaround which was core to financial recovery. Mike is innovative and persistently explores new ideas.

Author: Mike Krutza
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Hybrid and Electric Cars

Just something I remembered as it becomes clear that it may not be a good thing right now (December 2009) to demotivate the very people who are expected to drag us out of the recession.

Giving a 1 percent raise boosts employee job performance by some 2 percent roughly, however offering that same money in the form of a bonus that is strongly linked to a job well done seems to improve job performance by almost 20 percent, finds a 2007 Cornell study on the relationship between pay and performance.

“I looked at both how much people are paid and also how pay increases and bonuses are given,” said Michael Sturman, associate professor at Cornel University

Often companies presume to motivate their employees through pay packages, including annual increases (USA aka – rises), bonuses and performance related pay. Very few employers (and 1st world governments) today really know how efficient the various mainstream incentives are.
Research done in 2007 by Michael Sturman from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, exposes some accepted business myths – it shows that, how employees are paid, is at least as critical (if not more) than how much they are paid when it comes to improving employee performance.

Sturman’s study established, like many other studies before, that employees were more likely to push themselves if they were paid above market rates.

He found that smaller pay increases were more effective than equal-sized or even bigger bonuses in improving performance and retention. Regular employees perceived increases in their salary as more advantageous in the long-term, and therefore more important.  (Everybody knows that !-) don’t they? )

But here is the most interesting bit – despite the above clearly obvious findings , Sturman conversely found that when financial rewards were linked with performance, bonuses were much more effective than pay rises in improving employee effectiveness. This goes a long way to show that employees were more likely to see performance-related bonuses as special – ‘a gift for the gifted’ – and therefore worth going beyond the call of duty for.

A problem for companies (and governments) is that despite the findings that show (non performance-linked) salary increases are reasonably effective in inspiring employees into action, bonuses are far more economical simply because they don’t carry an expectation that carries over into following years.

So what IS the most cost-efficient way to motivate employees?

After a series of experiments, Sturman established that management who tied extra bonuses closely to an individual’s performance, could tentatively see an overall 16 percent increase in employee motivation. Substantial increases in performance could therefore be achieved without technically increasing the payroll budget.

Now here is the truly interesting bit – increasing the average annual salary from 2 percent to 3 percent would really only improve overall performance by an average of 2.2 percent, which is still a good thing, however it comes at substantial cost to the company.  BUT, if that raise was combined with changes and how bonuses are allocated, the overall rise in performance could be as much as 19 percent! In a weird (and wonderful) kind of way; bonuses pay for themselves and deliver a premium reward to everyone, however annual pay increases come at a cost to everyone; employees and shareholders and citizens.

If I may be permitted one thought for our governments and leaders to mull over and consider in our journey toward Christmas, Hanukkah and onward to another exciting year on our fabulous planet

“Power is about what you can control, Freedom is about what you can unleash”

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