Office Supplies.

That was the expense account that a company my friend worked for looked at to see how the troops were doing.  If the expenses for office supplies increased significantly, they knew they had something to be concerned about.

When employees start pillaging office supplies, you know you’re in trouble.  When a weird sense of entitlement around office supplies shows up, you know the end is dangerously within sight.  Why?  Because if the office culture has gotten so petty, oppressive and passive aggressive that the only way employees can rebel (cry out in anguish) is through office supplies than “open, honest communication” is but a distant memory. An empty echo reverberating down the office halls – soon to be vacant when the economy turns around.

What’s your key indicator for employee happiness? 

Is it a measure of something negative:  Errors?  Absenteeism? Project delays?  Long bathroom breaks?  (FYI – if you are measuring this last one, you’ve already hit the bottom of the barrel because trust is SO low within the organization that you’re actually physically spending your time “watching” your employees – uh oh. )

Is it a measure of something positive:  Unsolicited customer thank yous? Above and beyond the call of duty appreciations?  Co-worker recognition? 

Within your key performance indicators for your company that you track daily/weekly – make sure you have an accurate indicator for your employee happiness.  At Choose People, on Friday’s we ask, on a scale of 1-10 how was your work week?  Anything less than a 9 and we want to know what could have made it better. 

Have a wonderful long fun filled relaxing perfect Labor Day Weekend everyone!

My friend was a principal at a local high school.

One day he witnessed a group of students on school grounds almost run over an older woman with their skateboards.

He immediately called them into his office and told them that their thoughtless behavior was completely unacceptable.  He could have said – “That’s it.  No more skateboarding on school grounds.”

Instead he asked – What are you all going to do about this?

He didn’t tell them what to do.  He asked them what they’re going to do.

They told him.  And then he said, you sit in my chair.  You all are the principal.  What do you think of what you’ve just proposed?  They acknowledged that from that perspective their response had many failings.  He said he wanted a thoughtful plan by tomorrow.

The next morning the group of skateboarders showed up with a full fledged plan of action.  They were proud of the plan.  It was a thoughtful plan that the prinicipal approved.

But even better than the plan – was it’s implementation.  Because they created the solution, the skateboarders had “bought in” and valued and followed their own rules.  They even enforced these rules with their fellow skateboarders and defended the prinicipal.

Imagine if the next time an employee makes a mistake, instead of telling them what to do, you asked them  – what are you going to do about it?

Imagine if you asked them to sit in your chair, take on your responsibilities for a moment, is what they’ve suggested sufficient?

No scolding.  No disciplining.  No top down finger wagging.  No soft “we all make mistakes, just don’t do it again.”

Instead real deal solutions created, bought into and implemented by your employees.

Old school, meet new school

This blog post is short.

The podcast I highly recommend you take the time to listen to is 1 hour.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

This is the fascinating story as told by This American Life of NUMMI - the car manufacturing plant founded between General Motors and Toyota.  Listen and you will find many valuable best practices around employee happiness and garnering bottom-line benefits and efficiencies.

Enjoy

The other day someone told me a poignant story about Horst Schulze, the original owner of the Ritz Carlton.

Schulze required that all guest complaints from all of his many locations come directly to his desk.  If he received the same complaint twice, he would investigate.

In London, he received the same complaint twice.  From two separate elderly women.  On two separate occasions. 

They were not happy with the temperature of the water for high tea.  Too cold.  And mind you, this is London – the place for high tea, where elderly women can tell you the temperature of the tea within a degree simply by using their tongue.

So Schulze did what he thought was reasonable.  He got on a plane to London and gathered together all of the employees at the hotel – every last one of them.  He then read the complaint cards and asked, Does anyone here know why the water for the tea is not the right temperature?

After a few minutes, a man in the back raised his hand.  And he said, I know exactly why the water is too cold.  A few months ago we moved the cups from this section of the kitchen to this area.  In the new area whenever the refrigerater is open the cool air flows over the cups, and makes them cold so that even if the water is the right temperature it becomes too cold as soon as it is poured into the cups.

Schulze asked everyone to grab some cups and move them back to where they used to be stacked.

Surprisingly simple.  Customer complaint resolved.  Employees included and empowered.  Company saves an inordinate amount of money and time by not guessing and implementing wrong solutions.

Your employees knowledge base is a tremendous resource.  Treat it as such and you will be surprised

Happy Employees=Happy Bottomline 

Here are just a few of the numbers from the research to chew on:

1) The productivity loss of 100 employees who are unhappy is $7,500 per week or $390,000 per year. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090203142512.htm

2) Research has found that happy workers are 12% more productive while unhappy workers are 10% less productive than average.  –Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School ;  http://www.guardian.co .uk/science/2010/jul/11/happy-workers-are-more-productive

3) A one-unit increase in employee satisfaction led to a 0.31-unit increase in customer satisfaction. In turn, a one-unit increase in customer satisfaction created a 0.28-unit improvement in financial performance. http://www.allbusiness.com/services/business-services-advertising/4214536-1.html

4) Happy workers are absent 28.4 percent (or 12.3 days) less for an estimated annual value of $619 per happy employee.–Kathryn Rost, PhD, of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/health/webmd/main657624.shtml

How much are your unhappy employees costing you?  Put another way, how much is your culture that may be creating unhappy employees costing you?

Here’s perhaps an even bigger cost than the ones above, try to answer this question:  

How much does it cost you, when as the leader of your company when you are distracted by one unhappy, disgruntled, scowling, frustrated employee?  (Never mind the enormous cost of the brain drain on the rest of your employees discussing the “situation.”)

There seems to be a lot of literature around how to create a flexible work environment for knowledge workers – as mentioned in my last blog there’s the ROWE (results only work environment) that has increasingly become popular where employees are encouraged to work where they want, when they want and how they want as long as they achieve results.

But how does this work for retail folks who have to be in the store for the hours that are open to the public.  Same with restaurant staff.  Hotel staff has to be coordinated as well so that there aren’t 10 people working one shift and no one working the next.  Also, as in my friend’s dry-walling business, the how of the work is often specific due to regulatory constraints.  Even when you look at literal -in manufacturing who stand at a conveyor belt – the when, where and how are very specific, and has to be.

I’ve been asking around and here’s a couple of ideas that have been passed along:

1) While some workers may not have control over the how, when and where of their work  because of the nature of the work, they can have some control over their work environment.  In one company, they have created a forum where employees’ suggestions and ideas on how to improve the work and/or the work environment are taken seriously, discussed and considered.  And then the ideas are either acted upon, altered and acted upon or employees are given a legitimate reason why the idea may not be a good fit.

2) I e-mailed ROWE about my husband and I’s moving company asking how to provide flexibility to employees that have to be at a specific house at a specific time.  Even worse, our movers don’t know if, when and how long they work the following day until the night before.  Talk about a personal scheduling nightmare (I’m a hard core planner at heart – just ask my spontaneous husband.)  Michael Barata kindly responded with some excellent questions, “Do your crews have the freedom and support to schedule how they meet the needs of the customers? Are your crews involved with how jobs get scheduled and how crews are assigned to the jobs? As for answering customer calls, would your employees be interested in call forwarding, so they would not necessarily need to be in an office, but still be available to the customer? Essentially, ask the employees their thoughts on meeting customer needs and what that may look like to them? The results = meeting customer needs.” 

I know our moving crews love their autonomy on the job – a crew goes to a customer’s home to move them and essentially they are their own boss.  They decide how to get the job done and work together to make it happen.  They have no one micromanaging them and they can completely own their results.  Granted there are specific ways to do a move, to prepare furniture etc. but they have control over the experience of the customer.

Flexibility is not autonomy.  And if I had to guess, autonomy is king.  Flexibility in schedule and location is appreciated and valued.  But autonomy gets to the guts of our sense of worth, of ownership and hence value around what we participate in, create and offer to those around us.

What do your employees have control over?  What is their impact at the end of the day?  How does who they are and what they do affect the company, co-workers and customers?  And go beyond the obvious.  Get to the heart and soul of what matters to your company and to your employees.  Flexibility – great.  Real deal “I make a difference” – gold.

I’ve noticed there seem to be two areas of thought around creating employee happiness amongst knowledge-workers:

1) Along the lines of ROWE – the Results Only Work Environment – where employees can work where they want, when they want and how they want as long as they achieve the results.  Absolute flexibility to create your schedule and accomplish your work.

2) Along the lines of the Zappos culture where camaraderie is king.  An incredible community within your company where the family “spirit” is created every day and people support one another and value each other on a level deeper than simply what they contribute to the company.

In both environments employees can have autonomy over how they get their work done.

In both environments employees can achieve results.

However ROWE offers flexibility in one’s schedule while Camaraderie facilitates a strong sense of community with others.

So two interesting questions pop up:

1) Would employees rather have flexibility in their schedule or a “real deal” community of coworkers that they feel connected with?

2) Can you have both?  And if so, how?

Would love to hear your thoughts and opinions!

We is the word you want to hear when you are interviewing someone.  You want them to see themselves as having been part of a team.  You want them to give credit to those who helped them get to where they are.  If all you hear is “I” statements you may have found yourself a prima-donna. 

“Me” is also another one to avoid.  You don’t need an opera singer.  You need a chorus that sounds good together.  So yes, that means avoid the superstars who always want the limelight on them, no matter how good their voice is, no matter how much experience they have.  They’re hard to resist.  They’re shiny and everything.  I know.   I’ve hired one before and regretted it, so did the rest of my team since they’re the ones who suffered.

We is the word you want to hear in the halls of your organization.  Togetherness.  Camaraderie.  Identification with the greater group.  Teamwork.  United.  If all you hear is “they” in the cooler conversations then you’ve got separation anxiety.  And chances are “I” is on the other side of that conversation.  Who are the “I”s in your organization?  Are they interested in becoming part of “We?”  If not, your organization will always be out of tune, the music won’t flow and your rhythm will be off.  And you know what that means – bad dancing.  Bad performance.

Think of a stunning a cappella group like this one:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NEU6Xf7lM where all the individuals magically come together to create a thing of beauty, of joy, of success.

Friday morning I drove by 100 people on the other side of the highway sitting in their crawling cars impatiently wondering why there was so much traffic.  Is it an accident?  Is it construction?  At least half of them were late to an appointment.  And most of them were frustrated.  Quite a few were wondering if they should be trying to find an exit to go a different route. 

Having been on the other side, I could see why they were all stuck.

There was an accident.

Oh and then there were the people who compounded the loss of time, the increase in frustration by driving by slowly, craning their necks to see the carnage.

Why would I write about this?

All sorts of “accidents” occur in a company simply because it’s part of being in business and working with people.  Customer accidents.  Management accidents.  Cash Flow accidents.  Product or service accidents.  Vendor accidents.  And the all-encompassing crash pile up of people issue accidents. 

How quickly do you address these accidents?  How many people are craning their necks trying to see why the company’s not moving forward?  How many are looking at going an alternative route?  How many are distracted by the drama?  How many hours of employee brilliance and efficiency go wasted on a pile up?  You’re very lucky if it’s only half an hour for each employee.

Of course we try to do all we can to avoid these accidents, and to make sure we learn from them, but regardless there will always be a few unknown crashes waiting in the wings for the right circumstances. 

Accidents are a given.  How quickly you communicate them, address them and resolve them is not.

Eeewwww.  Grooosss.  (Never mind the fuzzy green moldy stuff, how about seepage of who knows what dripping between the racks.)

Yeah, I’ve seen those office fridges.  Dare I say, way back in the day when I was young and reckless, I even contributed to those fridges.

And I’ve seen the clean tidy ones.

The office cultural value that seems to stand out the most on this one is simple respect for ones co-workers (and company resources.)  But mind you, you can have a clean office fridge and if there’s always the complaint that someone’s “coveted brought from home beverage of choice” has gone missing, you still have the issue of respect, and perhaps a klepto in your mist.   Then there’s the guy who takes up a whole shelf, all by himself.  Office fridge manners speak more to one’s innate character than you would think.

And I get it, not all of us are clean freaks.  But I bet we all want respect and our brown paper bag not to stick to the shelf.

It’s a small thing.  A detail really in the scheme of an entire office.  But it says a lot.  Is the fridge treated as a shared space for all to benefit from where everyone who uses it does their part (think baseline teamwork and consideration here.)  Or is it an abused space that simply fills a need (says – I’m here for the paycheck) and where leftovers go unchecked for far too long.

And for those of you who have janitorial service who throws out anything that’s left in on Fridays and wipes the weekly goo off the shelves, I must ask, are you missing out on a key indicator of your employee culture?

Oh and don’t get me started on dirty dishes in the office sink…