how committed are your employees?

Note: This article was written in November 2002.

A recent survey carried out by International Survey Research revealed that "fewer than six out of ten UK employees wish to stay with their current employer or would recommend it as a good place to work". During the three year study, those organisations where their employees viewed them favourably, saw their net profit margin increase by 2.06% whilst those companies with less committed employees experienced a net profit margin fall by 1.38%.

The survey found that the four most important factors that contribute to employee commitment are:

(i) The quality of the company's leadership;
(ii) The development opportunities provided by their organisation;
(iii) The perceived level of empowerment to carry out their work effectively; and
(iv) The people management skills of their immediate supervisor.

Interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly), all four factors are driven by behaviours from the top-down. Many employees feel that the "bottom" is alienated from the "top", and yet, without the "bottom", the "top" cannot perform.

Your Four Factors

As a manager or leader, do you know how your people view each of the four factors above in your department and organisation?

How would you score yourself and your organisation in each of those areas?

How in tune are you with your people?

In the light of your answers to the above questions, what will you change about what you are doing?

Put the Horse Before the Cart

In our society, and indeed, in most organisations, there is a tendency to put the cart before the horse, when intellectually, we know that the horse must go before the cart. How does this happen? Here are 5 examples.

• Waiting to identify a gap in a person's performance instead of planning development to harness a person's strengths in the light of the individual's and the organisation's objectives
• Reducing the training budget when the going gets tough, instead of ensuring investment in personal development to fuel growth, in the knowledge that more confident people think more clearly, are more creative and make better decisions
• Waiting for someone else to approach you when they have a problem instead of checking in with them to establish what is going on
• Telling a person what they should do, instead of helping them to figure it out for themselves
• Deciding not to delegate because "it would be faster to do it myself", instead of investing training time now for freedom in the future

Adopt a "What's Right?" Approach

As we grow up, we are conditioned to look out for "What’s wrong?" and "Where’s the weakness?" We see other people’s weaknesses, and often forget about their strengths. We forget to see the best in both people and situations.

As a baby learns to walk, it receives support and encouragement regardless of his/her speed of progress. We assist them to learn at their own speed, always trusting that they will. Then as the child starts school, the emphasis shifts to noticing and identifying shortfalls, and weaknesses, and an element of "moulding to fit" begins.

As adults, we still have the same needs as young children. We thrive on acknowledgement, appreciation and encouragement to perform at our best. And in order to come up with valuable innovations and ideas, precious in today’s business and economy, we need to be able to think creatively, to be allowed to make measured mistakes and to make seemingly ridiculous suggestions.

To foster an environment that encourages this, adopt a "What’s right?" approach. Identify first what is going well. Just as every cloud has a silver lining, look first for any potential upside, and then look at what isn’t yet ideal and how that can be changed.

Consider this Principle

What we give out, we get back.

Action Points

1. Get a sense of how your people perceive you and your organisation, in terms of the four factors – leadership, development, empowerment and people management. There are many tools available to assist, such as 360-degree feedback and culture and leadership surveys. AND there is also the good "old-fashioned" way – walk about, get to know your people, and ask them. Enable your people at all levels of the organisation to have a way to contribute their ideas on how to improve things. Take their ideas on board, and implement what is appropriate. Explain why some ideas are not taken on board to assist understanding and ownership.

2. Start putting the horse before the cart.

3. Adopt a "What’s right?" approach.

Quote

"Effort is commitment to seeing a task through to the end, not just until you get tired of it" - Howard Cato

"There are four people named Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody. There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody for what Anybody could of done."

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