Читать книгу Recognizing and Engaging Employees For Dummies - Нельсон Боб - Страница 5

In This Chapter

▶ Encouraging employees to take initiative

▶ Increasing employee autonomy

▶ Focusing on career growth and development

By being proactive, positive, focused, and forward-looking, managers can engage and inspire employees – and employees can inspire and engage themselves and their coworkers – in practical ways that yield real results and allow their companies to become stronger, more profitable, and more competitive in even the most difficult marketplace.

Taking control of their circumstances helps employees take control of their jobs – and their lives – and makes positive things happen. Companies that have had increasing engagement scores over the last decade have revealed a short list of key variables attributing to those results, and this chapter focuses on those variables. Here, I show you how to create a framework for managing employees in positive and practical ways to overcome negative times and circumstances. I offer a strategy, a process, and key factors critical to success for you, all supported with examples, techniques, and case studies of how other managers have succeeded in fostering more engaged employees.

Creating a Clear and Compelling Direction

All performance starts with clear goals and expectations. The starting point of any effort to improve or sustain employee engagement is giving employees a clear and compelling vision. If employees don’t know (or aren’t inspired by) what the organization is doing, they find summoning up the motivation to succeed more difficult. Frances Hesselbein, president of the Leader to Leader Institute, once put it this way: “No matter what business you’re in, everyone in the organization needs to know why.”

People who perform well feel good about themselves. When employees reach or surpass personal or company goals, their level of engagement is typically at its highest, which then affects other areas of performance. If this spills over to better delivery of customer service or higher-quality products and services, that can then, in turn, have a direct impact on the loyalty of customers.

Assessing employees’ understanding of your organization’s mission and purpose

Ask employees what the mission and purpose of the organization is. If they don’t know, or if you get a different answer from each person you ask, chances are things have drifted or perhaps haven’t been clear for some time. Use this opportunity to revisit your purpose.

To gain clarity about the organization’s mission, management guru Peter Drucker suggests that you ask these five questions to get at the core of your business:

✔ What is our mission?

✔ Who is our customer?

✔ What does the customer value?

✔ What are our results?

✔ What is our plan?

Clarifying your vision (and revisiting this process periodically) is useful for deciding what’s most important for the organization to focus on to be successful. In addition, the result needs to be compelling enough to inspire everyone. “A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more,” says Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. From that vision, you can shape your unique competitive advantage, those aspects that you have to offer your customers that your competition does not. This advantage represents your strengths in the marketplace that you most need to capitalize on to be successful.

Modifying strategies to meet goals

After you clarify your vision for your group and start to revitalize your goals, you should analyze what’s currently working and what’s not working for the business. For example, established customers may be cutting back on using the services of your firm, but what new clients have recently started to invest with you? What do those new clients have in common, and how can you approach similar clients in the marketplace? Changing times call for changing strategies to meet your company’s goals. Engage employees’ help by seeking their input and ideas for improving business operations, saving money, or better serving your customers.

A company adapts to changing times

My spouse worked for a computer equipment and software company based in San Diego that saw its future orders drop significantly when customers no longer had the funds to purchase capital equipment. The firm laid off about 10 percent of its employees and froze salaries, but company leaders knew that these decisions offered only a short-term fix for a declining cash flow. Top management got together with the firm’s sales representatives and brainstormed what could be done to address the situation, as well as what the competition was doing in response to the situation. Here’s what they came up with:

✔ Changing the pricing model to include new options for payment that didn’t require the customer to make an expensive upfront purchase of equipment

✔ Offering a new, software-only solution that allowed customers to run needed applications on computers they already owned or on equipment they wanted to purchase from other vendors

✔ Financing the purchase of its customers’ equipment so that the customers didn’t have to initially tap into resources from their capital budgets

✔ Targeting new markets, such as the federal government (which had more available funds), which the company had never focused on before

All these changes required everyone in the organization to help think through implications for the business and make adjustments accordingly. The result was that the firm was able to get new clients who took them up on their new offerings. Overall, the approach helped the firm generate new sales revenue from new clients in a difficult financial time.

Opening Lines of Communication

People want to know more than just the information necessary to do the work they’re assigned; they also want to know what their coworkers are doing and how the organization is doing. To keep your workforce engaged, communicate information to employees about the organization’s mission and purpose, its products and services, its strategies for success in the marketplace, and even what’s going on with the competition.

In my research, the highest-ranking variable that 95 percent of employees want most from their managers is direct, open, and honest communication. Also, the Families and Work Institute in New York did a study – the National Study of the Changing Workplace – that revealed the importance of nonmonetary factors on employees’ choice of their current employers. The top-ranked item on the list was “open communication.”

Good information, bad information, or no information?

Employees want and need to know what’s going on within the organization, even if the information isn’t always positive. There’s nothing wrong with being honest with employees when the firm is struggling; doing so can lead to increased teamwork and dedication, especially if the bad news is also an opportunity to brainstorm and communicate with employees about ideas and plans for turning things around. Bringing employees into the loop can instill a greater sense of involvement and responsibility, which ultimately leads to increased feelings of value and trust among employees.

I remember working with a defense contractor that was very guarded about sharing information with its employees. Everything was on a need-to-know basis. I asked for the rationale behind this practice and discovered that managers believed that if they told their employees something and it changed or turned out to be wrong, they, the managers, would look bad. I suggested that they give their employees that context and see if they still wanted to hear the latest information, even if it may change. Of course, they (the employees) all did.

Simply telling employees what’s going on in the organization and providing them with the information they need to most effectively do their jobs is motivating. In addition, every time you communicate, you have a chance to recognize employees. Exchanging praise and recognition in newsletters, posting an “applause” bulletin board on the company’s intranet, and commenting in meetings are just a few possibilities for formalizing communication about employee recognition.

Employing direct, two-way communication

Feedback sessions, departmental meetings, or companywide gatherings should ideally serve two purposes: to provide information and to gather feedback. To maximize employee engagement, keeping employees abreast of and asking their opinions about management’s goals and ensuing plans is imperative. Something as simple as a companywide meeting during which you present the state of the organization to all employees can make a world of difference in easing employee tensions and fears.

When discussing major issues like organizational changes, always host a dialogue rather than a lecture, and encourage questions. And if any key updates are going to be shared publicly outside of the organization (for example, in a press release), make sure you tell your internal employees first and invite feedback. Your employees have to feel as though they have the freedom to express their fears and concerns and the chance to receive honest and informative responses.

Exploring communication techniques

Methods for communicating with employees vary depending upon the situation. Group settings require different interaction than one-on-one communication. Following are some suggestions for how to best communicate with individuals and groups.

Individuals

Here are some techniques for effectively communicating with an individual employee:

✔ Engage in periodic one-on-one meetings with each employee.

✔ Offer personal support and reassurances, especially for your most valued employees.

✔ Provide open-door accessibility to management.

✔ Invite employees to write anonymous letters to top management about their concerns.

Groups

Here are some communication techniques you can try to keep information flowing in groups:

✔ Conduct town hall meetings.

✔ Host CEO-led breakfasts and/or brown bag lunches.

✔ Maintain a 24-hour “news desk” on the company intranet.

✔ Provide periodic state-of-the-union updates on the business.

✔ Be open and honest in explaining the situation and challenges going forward.

✔ Take questions in advance of a meeting or allow them to be written on index cards, anonymously.

✔ Record meetings and distribute the proceedings to those who are unable to attend.

✔ Set up a blog site for your CEO, especially if you have satellite offices and/or your employees travel regularly. Doing so enables even distant employees to receive immediate feedback around key issues and updates.

Communicating bad news and dealing with rumors

One of the most common errors many organizations and managers make is not sharing adequate information with employees. In some instances, top management doesn’t share information because they’re uncertain themselves about something. In other instances, managers feel that sharing information with employees may undermine their own power and job status. So management tries to “protect” employees from fears regarding the potential of job loss or frustration related to the ability of senior management to effectively handle a pending crisis.

Employees aren’t looking for a sugar-coated delivery of information. The best way to explain the state of an organization is in a clear, concise, and honest manner. If sales are declining at a rapid or steady pace, every member of the staff has to know. Sharing this information inspires in all employees the collective ownership of the organization’s performance. From frontline staff to mid- and upper-level management, everyone shares a portion of the responsibility for an organization’s revenue, performance, and future.

By including each employee in an honest, behind-the-scenes look at the fiscal landscape of an organization and the approach or plan to resolve the crisis, you send the underlying message that every single person is a critical part of the whole. That, in turn, creates a greater sense of accountability. Feeling as though they’re part of the solution rather than being left in the dark gives employees the confidence they need to buckle down and do their part to pull the organization through a time of crisis.

Open lines of communication across the company can end one of the most detrimental viruses spread throughout an organization: rumors. It’s human nature to believe negative statements of supposed fact rather than positive ones. Because most rumors breed negativity, it’s crucial to stop them at the source, even openly asking employees about rumors they have heard. Merely talking to employees can ease uncertainty and let them know that you’re there to provide information, not keep it from them.

Involving Employees and Encouraging Initiative

When you arm employees with more frequent and relevant information, they’re more likely to act on that information in ways that can best help the organization. Honest and open communication shows that you as a manager have both trust and respect for your employees. You can build on that foundation by explicitly requesting and encouraging your employees to get involved in helping the company. This alone can lead to profound results, from improved daily operations to a better bottom line.

According to a survey I conducted of employees in a variety of industries, 92 percent of employees want their managers to ask for their opinions and ideas at work, and more than 89 percent want their managers to involve them in decisions that are made at work. This section explores ways for you to become a more engaged manager with engaged employees who share their ideas and opinions and have some input in decision-making.

Guiding employee focus

Today’s managers are discovering that they have to create an environment that encourages employees to contribute their best ideas and work, to help seek out new opportunities, such as new sources of revenue, and to overcome obstacles facing the company, such as cutting costs, wherever possible. Workers are discovering that, if they expect to survive the constant waves of change sweeping across the global business marketplace as well as hold onto their current jobs, they have to join with other employees to contribute to their organizations in ways that they’ve never before been called upon to do.

Managers need to discuss the following topics with their employees:

✔ Employee impact: Are employees aware of how they impact the company’s bottom line, that is, how their jobs financially impact the organization?

Revenue-generating ideas: How can the company generate additional income? Whether it’s new fees, cross-selling, or up-selling, what new ideas could be tried?

✔ Cost-savings suggestions: How can costs be trimmed, delayed, or eliminated? Which expenses are critical and which are optional and could at least be cut temporarily?

✔ Process improvements: What steps in the organization’s processes can be streamlined, saving time, resources, and money along the way?

✔ Customer needs and requests: How can employees help others in the company who are focused on customer needs and requests? How can customers’ needs be further explored?

✔ New products or services: What ideas exist for new products or services? How could those ideas be better developed and implemented?

✔ Morale and teambuilding: Who is interested in helping to improve employee teamwork and morale? How can this be done at little cost?

✔ Virtual employees: How can virtual employees be better utilized by and integrated into the organization?

Asking employees for their input and ideas

I have yet to see an organization that doesn’t have an open door policy, in which employees are encouraged to speak to their managers about any concerns, ideas, or suggestions they have. In practice, however, this policy doesn’t always work very well if, at the point of interaction, one’s manager is not receptive to the input.

Soliciting ideas needs to be a constant, ongoing strategy. Conducting employee surveys and asking staff questions in a meeting is a start, but to maximize buy-in and motivation, you need to challenge your employees to identify ways to improve on an ongoing basis. Employee engagement should be both a philosophy and a practice. Employees need to understand that you need their efforts now more than ever before, and then you need to create new mechanisms that inspire their ongoing involvement to improve.

Would you like more ideas from your employees? I’m convinced that every employee has at least one $50,000 idea – if you can only find a way to get it out! Yet most companies do little, if anything, to get ideas from their employees. Or if they do decide to take action, it’s in the form of a suggestion box that’s placed in the lunchroom with (for some reason) a lock on it. The first dozen or so employees who submit suggestions, if they hear back at all, often receive a form letter months later that more or less states, “Here’s why we’re not using your silly idea … .” The result? The suggestion program grinds to a halt. In fact, I recently heard of one company that ended its dead suggestion program because, the company announced, the company had gotten all the ideas. How convenient.

They don’t feel that’s the case at AT&T Universal Card Services in Jacksonville, Florida, where the company gets some 1,200 ideas per month from employees. They don’t feel that way at Valeo, either. In a recent year, the French automaker received 250,000 ideas for improvement from employees.

Taking initiative at Boardroom, Inc

Boardroom, Inc., a newsletter and book publisher based in Greenwich, Connecticut, expects every employee – from receptionist to chairman – to submit at least two ideas each week for improvements. Initially established to encourage cost-savings, the Boardroom, Inc., program is called “I Power,” and the company credits the suggestion program with a five-fold increase in its revenues as well as untold benefit to the morale, energy, and retention of its employees. Each employee is asked to turn in two suggestions each week; these suggestions are evaluated the same week by an employee volunteer. For many of the suggestions, the evaluator says, “What a great idea!” and returns the idea to the person who suggested it with the implicit permission to proceed to implement the idea.

As Martin Edelston, chairman and CEO of Boardroom says, “Sometimes the best idea can come from the newest, least experienced person on your staff.” Like the hourly paid shipping clerk who suggested that the company consider trimming the paper size of one of its books to get under the 4-pound rate and save some postage. The company made the change and did, indeed, save postage: a half a million dollars the first year and several years since. Explains Marty, “I had been working in mail-order for over 20 years and never realized there was a 4-pound shipping rate. But the person who was doing the job knew it, as do most employees know how their jobs can be improved.”

The first year of the program, suggestions were limited to one’s own job until employees got the idea that the intention was less to complain about things than to try to think how things could be improved. The company now even has group meetings just to brainstorm and share ideas about specific issues or functions in the company.

And the benefits of the suggestions are not limited to saving money. Says Antoinette Baugh, director of personnel, “People love working here because they know they can be a part of a system where they can make a contribution.” Adds Lisa Castonguay, renewals and billing manager, “My first couple of weeks, I was kind of taken aback because everyone was smiling and everyone was open.” She recalls her first day of work when she was pulled into a group meeting and, within 30 minutes of walking in the front door, was asked, “What do you think we should do about this problem?”

Lisa almost fell on the floor. Why? Because she had just come from a company where she had worked for eight years, and no one had ever asked her for her opinion about anything. After she got over the initial shock, she realized that having her opinions and ideas sought after and valued by those she worked with felt pretty good. As a result, she wanted to think of even more ways to help the company.

The impact is both positive and contagious. “People became agents of their own change,” says Marty. “There’s so much inside all of us, and we don’t even know it’s there until someone asks about it. And in the process, it just builds and builds.” Adds Brian Kurtz, vice president of marketing, “It’s a constant flow of communication. People are not sitting in a cubicle, totally insulated from one another.”

Involving employees in decision-making

When employees believe they have a hand in decision-making, companywide buy-in and participation is much easier to obtain. If the general consensus among staff is that decisions will be made with or without their input, the likelihood of anyone providing open and honest feedback is quite small. Asking employees for their input shows that you respect and trust them, and it likely increases the quality of the decisions being made.

Ultimately, the responsibility for any decisions that are made remains with the manager, so collecting input from employees doesn’t mean you’re obligated to use what’s shared in every instance.

No one knows how to better do a job than the person who is currently doing that job, so starting there makes sense. For example, if a reporting process is ineffective or costly, talk to the individual responsible for managing the process. Take the example of a receptionist at Champion Solutions Group in Florida, who received expense reports from field sales representatives via overnight delivery. When the company implemented her suggestion that the reports be faxed instead of shipped, it saw a 40 percent reduction in postage costs – and led company leaders to seek the advice of employees for other ways to realize cost savings.

Employees who offer solutions that result in cost savings need to be recognized for their efforts, especially if you want them to repeat that behavior or if you want to inspire others to do likewise. Incentives, such as bonuses, trips, or gift cards, not only reward the employee, but they also inspire others to develop cost-saving ideas of their own. Make the process fun and rewarding. Hold contests, departmental competitions, or other organized events to increase employee involvement and interaction. Ask employees for their buy-in on the type of incentives they value; they may want an extra vacation day or time to volunteer at a favorite charity.

Support for change can’t be acquired without involving employees, so you need to ensure that you give employees the opportunity to be involved in the decision-making process. Some simple ways to include employees follow:

✔ Asking employees for their opinions on various matters of importance to the department

✔ Inviting employees to actively participate in setting objectives and revising goals for the department

✔ Establishing task forces made up of employees whose objective is to identify better ways to work

I worked with an organization whose employees are highly engaged in achieving the firm’s goals on a daily basis. They do this through “huddles.” During the first 10 to 15 minutes of every morning’s work group, each employee-owner describes his or her number one priority for that day and any barriers he or she faces in achieving that priority. Everyone in the huddle votes on the top priority and then the group’s manager passes the agreed-upon top priority to the next level up which has a second-level huddle that immediately follows the first huddle. At the second-level huddle, the process repeats, along with a review of the previous day’s metrics. The manager groups can choose to resolve any or all the barriers that arise and then they, too, vote on the number one priority to be passed on to the executive team for its meeting, which is up next. On Fridays, all groups take a break from their normal “meeting rhythm,” as they call it, and ask for “IQs,” that is, ideas or questions, that every employee has for achieving that quarter’s overarching goals. As a result, the organization was perhaps the best I’ve ever experienced at systematically achieving its quarterly goals, quarter after quarter!

Increasing Employee Autonomy, Flexibility, and Support

If you’re effective at getting employees to take more initiative, you have to provide them greater autonomy, flexibility, and support to help them succeed. All employees need to have a say in how they do their work to make it more meaningful. After you enlist your employees to make suggestions and improvements, you need to encourage them to run with their ideas, take responsibility, and champion those ideas to completion. Allow employees to approach anyone they need for help, give them the authority to make decisions or use resources, and permit them to take the actions that are necessary to get the work done.

In my research on employee preferences at work, “autonomy and authority” and “flexibility of working hours” were two of the top motivators for today’s employees. To the extent that you, the manager, or the organization is able to provide those motivators for employees, their morale and performance will be positively – and significantly – impacted, and they’ll do their best work possible.

Giving employees autonomy

No one likes to be micromanaged. The vast majority of employees would prefer to determine how they work best. In other words, they’d prefer to be assigned a task and allowed the freedom to develop a work plan that suits them. As a manager then, focus on the end result and allow your employees to put their own imprint on the job – to decide how best to achieve the result. Take it a step further by allowing employees to pick and choose the projects and responsibilities they can work on as a reward for having previously done a great job.

Here is where truly knowing your employees becomes important: Understanding their strengths and weaknesses allows you to properly assign projects and tasks, making suggestions for assignments that you know the employee would likely value and helping that employee develop new skills in the process.

Allowing flexible work schedules

Based on my research, the majority of employees cite increased flexibility in employee work schedules as a top motivator. Furthermore, depending upon the type of work, a flexible schedule can also increase the efficiency of getting the work done.

Technology has opened up new possibilities for how employees work. Gone are the days when communication was limited to fax and phone lines or face-to-face meetings. These days, some businesses operate entirely on a virtual platform with employees scattered throughout the country or world. Although not every company is able to operate this way, a large percentage of jobs can be done outside the traditional 9 to 5 office schedule. As a result, in recent years, many companies have experimented with flexible schedules or telecommuting options. Consider these statistics:

✔ Forty percent of current workers work remotely.

✔ Eighty-six percent of employees today report that they wish they had more time to spend with their families.

✔ In the last five years, nearly 30 percent of workers have voluntarily made career changes that resulted in a salary reduction in an effort to lead a more balanced life.

✔ Almost 50 percent of employees value the option of flexible or work- from-home hours.

✔ Fifty-four percent of employees appreciate the option to leave work early to tend to family or child issues.

✔ A large percentage of workers would take a reduction in pay if doing so allowed them to have more time for personal interests or to spend more time with family.

Having a sense of balance between the personal and professional parts of their lives is very important to today’s employees. Your company can help employees achieve greater flexibility and greater balance by implementing policies that promote life outside of the workplace. Here are some suggestions:

✔ Letting employees work alternate hours (arriving early and leaving early or vice versa)

✔ Offering four-day work weeks, in which longer hours are worked on fewer days

✔ Letting employees telecommute and work from remote locations

✔ Offering job-sharing options, where two or more employees split a job

✔ Allowing an employee to leave work early or to take time off to compensate for extra hours worked

Many companies have found that offering employees the options of working a flexible schedule or telecommuting increases morale and productivity. For some employees, the attraction is less time spent each week in a car and savings on gas or mileage. Others may enjoy reducing childcare expenses or simply having the opportunity to spend more time with their children. Whatever the motivation, employees appreciate the option of being able to have some control over their own schedules and, as a result, feel as though the company has their best interests in mind.

I once managed a work group that experimented with having employees work from home on certain projects. Those who worked at home logged their hours and were available as needed to discuss work issues. Not counting the commute time that was saved, employees were found to be twice as efficient in what work they accomplished. With less socializing and fewer interruptions, the employees were better able to focus on the work at hand. I’ve heard of similar findings in other studies conducted since then.

Providing managerial accessibility and support

When employees are encouraged to have more autonomy, independence, and flexibility in their jobs, they need your support; however, in one survey conducted by Gallup, 66 percent of respondents said their managers had asked them to get involved in decision-making, but only 14 percent felt they’d been empowered to make those decisions.

In most cases, giving employees the autonomy and authority to act in the best interests of the organization and offering words of encouragement and praise along the way works wonders. Encouraging employees to pursue their ideas and supporting them in that process are also important for yielding positive results in the workplace.

Here are some guidelines for building rapport with and supporting your employees:

✔ Take time with employees. It all comes back to communication: Getting out and talking to employees, spending time with frontline staff, and making an effort to truly listen to employees can open your eyes to seemingly small accomplishments that would otherwise go unnoticed. No matter how small, the roles and responsibilities of every employee are a critical factor in the overall success of an organization.

✔ Ask employees what they want and/or need. Don’t assume you or your management team knows automatically. For employees that have been with you several years, don’t assume what they wanted five years ago is still the same; encourage open and honest dialogue.

✔ Be available for questions from employees. Managers have to be available and approachable to get employees to talk with them. Whether that means dropping into the break room, holding “office hours,” or having a beer with the team after work or to celebrate finishing a project – face time is critical. I know of one manufacturing plant that even invested in an electronic deli type of sign that said, “Now serving number … ” Employees who wanted face time with a visiting executive got a number and made their way to the main office as that number got close to being called.

✔ Show understanding and empathy. It’s important for all employees to feel that their managers are on their side, rooting for their success and seeking to help them succeed in any way possible. When employees face life changes, tragedies, or circumstances that demand more of their time than usual, employees need to feel comfortable discussing their situation with their managers or employers. If they’re met with understanding and a willingness to help, they won’t ever forget it. And the happier and more stable your employees, the better your business fares.

Best, Best and Krieger – a large law firm in Southern California – promotes an open door policy wherein anyone who has questions or concerns regarding personal or professional security is free to discuss those worries with the firm’s managing partner. Employees are facing some very real fears, and ignoring these can only make them worse.

✔ Support employees when they make mistakes. Employees need their manager’s support more than ever when they (the employees) make mistakes. Finding fault and openly criticizing employees is easy – sometimes even in front of their peers. But if you take that approach, your employees will lose a degree of self-esteem and a willingness to act independently – and you may never get those attributes back again.

To help employees sustain necessary levels of motivation, work with them to identify potential barriers to their success. Don’t simply assume that there are no obstacles or that all the obstacles are evident. Look to employees for guidance and input, and allow them to point out barriers to accomplishing a task, completing a project, or merely going about their daily duties.

Establishing effective lines of communication that involve and support all employees is especially imperative if managerial or other staff changes occur – new managers are put in place, project groups are reassigned, departments are downsized, and so on. No matter how small the changes, employees will feel as though they’ve lost some sort of control over their situation.

Regardless of the approaches you ultimately decide to take in your efforts to increase employee engagement, remember the following points:

✔ Encouraging initiative starts with taking initiative. Everyone has an idea that can improve his or her job, department, or even the company overall. Find a way to get those ideas out! Do something different, experiment and learn along the way.

✔ Set up a system for eliciting employee ideas and fostering employee engagement that is simple, doable, and fun. If the suggestion program becomes a boring burden, it isn’t likely to continue for long.

✔ Stick with it. The best idea may not always be the first one, but the process of valuing your employees’ ideas will lead to more and better ideas.

Investing in people at Edward Jones

Edward Jones makes every effort to make its employees feel valued, and the results are evident in the longevity and positive attitude of the company’s employees. A survey of Edward Jones employees conducted by Fortune magazine revealed that 96 percent of its employees considered the company a friendly place to work, and more than 89 percent felt that managers followed through on what they said or promised. But the most telling statistic is that 83 percent of employees have every intention of working at Edward Jones until they retire.

The vast majority of employees cited their reason for holding the company in such high regard as a sense of truly being cared for. And even though the company has grown rapidly over the years, the culture has remained the same. Employees who have been with the company for decades felt as though principles and values remained intact throughout all of the growing pains.

The personal and professional growth of the company’s employees is of utmost importance to managers at Edward Jones. Employees are encouraged to explore new opportunities within the company, which combats the threat of employees becoming bored and looking for new experiences outside the company. Some employees are asked to directly lead or participate in new ventures, ranging from moving within the office in which they’re based to traveling overseas to launch new departments, projects, or offices. The philosophy behind this practice is centered on Edward Jones’ culture, which strives to develop initiative and drive in all employees. Employees are given the autonomy to forge ahead with new roles or projects they identify, assuming the fit is right. If the employee is lacking in a few key areas, he or she is provided the training necessary to effectively move into the desired role.

Continuing to Focus on Career Growth and Development

Managers need to support their employees in learning new skills and allow them to participate in special assignments, problem-oriented initiatives, and various other activities that expand the employees’ knowledge and expertise. They should develop yearly and/or project-specific learning goals with each employee and discuss what was learned, either at the end of the year or in the debriefing of the completed project. Periodically, managers should also hold career development discussions with each employee, perhaps as part of his or her annual performance review, to discuss career options and potential career paths that are available to each employee.

Taking stock in your employees

If you haven’t already done so, take time to meet with each employee to discuss his or her job interests and ambitions and create an “inventory of readiness” for your staff. Ask questions such as the following:

✔ Who has skills that aren’t currently being utilized in the department?

✔ Who is interested in learning more about other areas of the business, its clients, processes, products, or services?

✔ Who wants to get into a management position some day?

✔ What does everyone want to be doing five years from now?

With this initial baseline of information about your team, you can evaluate who might fit emerging needs, tapping the hidden talents of all employees and expanding traditional roles to help move the organization forward.

Linking needs with employee interests

Although development opportunities are traditional motivators to most employees, during crunch times, such opportunities take on a new sense of urgency. When a needed position is frozen or another position is terminated, how can the work that is left best get completed? When a new project emerges, who in the group is ready to help out? As organizational needs arise, ask, “Who can best benefit from that opportunity?” and approach that individual.