Don't Take Your Employees for Granted

It’s been a stressful and scary time out in the professional world, and senior management has had the upper hand over their staffs for the past few years. Some unethical people in power have taken despicable advantage of employees fearful about job security - demanding more productivity and longer hours without additional compensation. “You are lucky to have this job”, is the thinly veiled message from the dude with the cattle prod at your back.

Many corporations have been managing through bad times. There has been serious pressure from low business levels, plunging profits, the need to cut expenses, and noise from unhappy shareholders. If this reality is properly communicated to employees in the form of actions necessary to keep the organization financially viable (and jobs on the payroll), most workers will rally and paddle in tandem with management to weather the storm. They don’t need to be threatened or abused, and they mustn’t be taken for granted.

Better days are coming, slowly but surely. Imagine what will happen as the tumultuous tides recede and your employees have a chance to contemplate their hard-won survival…

• There will be resentful people that will hold a grudge for how they were treated during bad times. The next perceived loss suffered at the hand of the corporation may be the last straw. (Remember the guy in the movie Office Space who set fire to the place because they took his stapler away from him?)

• Some talented individuals have been tolerating abuse just until the job market opens up, and they have an opportunity to go somewhere they will be appreciated and well compensated. That’s the bitch about taking advantage of the passing fears of your employees.

• Training and development of employees is widely abandoned when funding is scarce. If you lose critical resources you have been relying on, do you have anyone prepared to step up to the plate and complete critical projects in progress?

Take a good look around at your team. Are they listless, exhausted, and shell-shocked? Do they show signs of being disengaged, unmotivated, or even angry? You’d better be talking with them, thanking them sincerely and repeatedly for their efforts, supporting them through this recovery period, and helping plan their career development. If you take them for granted much longer, they may just be ready to move on. Opportunity is burgeoning in 2011.

Your Professional Tagline

When we wrote Guiding Principles for Haropulos Bailey Consulting, it seemed natural to also develop a tagline as part of our brand identity. We chose “Creative, Practical Collaboration” as a shorthand way to communicate what we have to offer our clients.

Here’s your task: If you were to add a tagline to your resume, what would it be? Boiling down your best attributes into three words, which words do you feel would be most representative of your characteristics? You have inherent strengths to market to an employer. With what words can you best reflect values important to you? Can just three words effectively express your professional essence?

The value of this task is for you to revisit your resume and ensure that the content of the tagline you develop is included in your resume or cover letter. I don’t mean to literally feature your three-word tagline! But it’s vital for you to communicate those attributes that reflect your strengths and values as part of your professional profile. Your best match with a company will be with an organization and hiring manager that has complementary views; one that values similar characteristics.

Here are a few descriptive words to get you thinking. Please share your new tagline with us as a comment to this posting, and help inspire others.

Business Processes vs. Technology

I was around in the early 1980’s, the olden-days when computers were introduced to the desktops of corporate workers. My memory of the immediate and dramatic boost in our productivity is still clear. Instead of writing functional specifications for system design on yellow legal pads and walking them over to the word processing department (an iterative process until the document was finalized), we could digitize our specifications ourselves – literally saving days at a time. I also remember when we first got email in our office! This was a time when the introduction of almost any technology rocked our world and changed all of our business processes for the better.

Thirty years later, the cycles for introduction of new technology are so quick that Best Buy now has a “buy back” program to protect consumers afraid to buy something today that will be outdated tomorrow. At its worst, American society is an embarrassing collection of gadget freaks, blithely strewing capital into the marketplace to acquire the latest and greatest voice-activated-touch-screen- application-rich-LED-bright-mind-numbing-mesmerizing collection of microchips and memory to come on the market.

Don’t get me wrong – I love technology. Specifically, I love TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS; or the best tool for a purpose. If the purpose is strictly entertainment – that’s cool. But if the goal is to more efficiently conduct business – that’s another thing entirely. Before spending beaucoup bucks on the coolest new technology, someone (I hope) is going to want to understand the business case behind the purchase.

Management should be relentlessly exploring possibilities for optimizing their business processes. Often, improvement can be achieved without requiring changes to technology. But when a great new technology comes along, it’s a good time to think creatively about processes and determine whether they could be streamlined in a measurable way by applying innovation and new tools.

Purchases of new technology solutions should be subjected to a cost/benefit analysis. Think and plan first – then buy. Why, exactly, do your employees NEED to discard their Blackberries in favor of iPhones? What legitimate business will they conduct using an iPhone that they couldn’t do with their Blackberry? Do your executives truly need a smart phone, an iPad, a laptop/netbook computer, AND a desktop computer? Shouldn’t it be more about the software than the hardware sometimes?

Next time you plan to purchase expensive new technology, challenge yourself to deliver a lasting improvement to business processes as part of your implementation.

Accomplishment Beats Anxiety

I am a Master Procrastinator, a trait which I manage to balance by being also being the Get-It-Done Queen. This unholy marriage of characteristics occasionally generates stress, but it also gets my blood pumping! Over time, I have learned specific techniques that help me conquer unpleasant or difficult tasks in a systematic way.

1. MAKE A “TO DO” LIST. Getting all that stuff in your head documented helps convert vague worry into concrete action.

2. CATEGORIZE AND PRIORITIZE what you need to accomplish. Push aside those items that don’t need attention right now, and bump the critical things to the top of the list.

3. IDENTIFY DEPENDENCIES. “I have to complete Item C before I can do Item D.”

4. CREATE A DETAILED OUTLINE OR PLAN for any complex items, breaking them down into smaller tasks. This step is important to help you avoid being overwhelmed with any single challenge.

5. ASSIGN DUE DATES to major milestones. Be realistic but also aggressive.

6. RECRUIT RESOURCES to assist you, if needed.

7. KNOCK OFF SOME LOW-HANGING FRUIT. There may be a few really easy/quick things on your list, like making a phone call or scheduling a meeting. Do a few of those right off the bat, to get you kick-started and give you a sense of accomplishment.

8. REVIEW YOUR PLAN DAILY to stay focused. Make sure you are continually making some forward progress.

9. UPDATE YOUR PLAN STATUS REGULARLY. It will help to see concrete evidence that you are making progress.

Are you facing something today that you are dreading? Diffuse the effect worry has over you by defining your tasks and tackling them head on. Accomplishment triumphs over Anxiety.