Providing the Right Climate for Superstar Employees
You make it, they will come. When striving to provide the right climate for superstar employees to thrive, nothing rings closer to the truth.
As discussed in our last post, it’s not just your individual workers that determine the type of employees you have. We’ve said it many times here before – “people problems” are really management problems. It’s the type of leaders and systems you have in place to manage your crews that ultimately influences the level of engagement your employees demonstrate.
It’s no surprise that the type of environment we create for our workers, including the systems and processes we choose to run our business on, as well as the principles we base our business culture around and the leaders we choose to lead our crews, plays a big role in determining the attitude and behavior of the people that work for us. It also plays a big role in determining the types of people that want to work for us. It makes logical sense. Superstar employees – the types of people who see a future with your company and who are mentally and emotionally invested in the success of your business- want to work for someone who is organized. Can you blame them?
Role of leaders:
Managers/owners –
How you and your managers behave sets the path for employee engagement.
Your employees model their behavior after their leaders so it is your job to set a good example. If you want something done a certain way or you want to follow a certain system, then you best follow it yourself and stick to it. For instance, if you decide to implement an employee incentive program based on performance measurements, then, yes, it is your job to implement the system. But it is also your job to encourage and educate your employees on how it works. You need to be fully engaged in the system for your employees to be.
Supervisors/foremen –
Just as you need to walk the walk and talk the talk, so too do your supervisors/foremen.
It’s one thing for your leaders to demand a certain level of work and that workers abide by certain ‘rules,’ but if your leaders are just dictating, or worse yet, saying one thing and doing another, your workers won’t take them seriously. If you tell your site foreman that you want him and his crew to participate in daily, scheduled meetings onsite, then you want to ensure your foremen are taking the meetings seriously and actually using the time productively. It’s not enough for your leaders to follow schedule, but then use the time to take a break or catch up on last night’s game. For your employees to take your business systems and culture seriously, they need to see your leaders taking it seriously too.
Role of systems -
Systems ensure the elimination of waste and optimal productivity. If there’s a way to do something faster, with fewer resources, it should be built into a system and your employees should be trained to follow and utilize the system. Systems not only allow for optimal productivity, but they keep your workplace organized and your employees working together.
No one wants to work in an unorganized place. The effect is cyclical – your laborers give up on ‘fly by the seat of their pants’ supervisors and supervisors give up on employees that don’t follow orders. As a result, you have a team that can’t work productively and efficiently together. To better manage and motivate your people, you need better systems.
For more details on the role of systems in building a fully engaged work post read How to Attract Better Employees with Better Systems.
Role of culture -
The culture of your business is the philosophy of your business. It’s the principles, morals, ethics, and values your company is based on – the ‘lifestyle’ of your business, if you will. Business culture has a lot to do with interpersonal relationships – how one process flows to the next and how people work together to complete the chain of processes.
To work on improving the culture of your business, you need to step away from the idea that your employees are just bad-tempered and unmotivated. Instead you need to focus on why some people are not engaged in your workplace. While sometimes it is true, the reason for their disengagement stems from nothing more than the fact that they have a bad attitude, it is still important to consider what about the workplace environment is making the person feel disengaged. Is it a lack of direction? Perhaps that particular individual would benefit from more instructions and guidance. Is it a lack of recognition? To feel like a valuable asset to your company, your workers need to be recognized and encouraged.
If it is just one employee who appears disengaged, look at holes in your hiring process and ask yourself how your hiring process allowed that individual to get hired in the first place. Was he or she expecting a different role within your company? Was he expecting more responsibility? More authority? Where did the miscommunication take place? At least this way if it is an employee’s disposition and persona that’s causing his disengagement, at least you know how to correct the loop hole in your hiring process and can prevent the situation from happening again.
Landscape Management Network is a collection of systems, tools, and training to help great contractors build and manage great businesses. Visit the LMN website.
