Yearly Archives: 2014

Are Happy And Engaged Employees More Productive?

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Last week I attended the C2MTL event on creativity and commerce in Montréal. This event was packed full of information, education and entertainment on innovative ways to do business. There were great speakers from all over the world and many spoke about how to use the latest information technologies to better plan and manage businesses and organizations.

c2mtl-1070Two of the speakers spoke about the importance of company culture and values towards creating not only a fun and happy workplace, but also how it impacted the performance and bottom-line of the company.

The first was Tony Hsieh of Zappos. One of Tony’s most important values is to have fun at work. In fact. He sold his first business LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million mainly he claims because it was no longer fun going to work. He obviously has changed that Zappos and fun is a core value that all employees embrace. But of course fun is not enough to make a profitable business and their other values reflect more the focus on the customer. Zappos are famous for their customer service and Tony claims this flows out of the values of the company.

Here’s a video of the employees talking about the company and its values.

Here is an interview with Tony Hsieh by Barbara Walters

Ray Davis is the CEO of Umpqua Bank and he also spoke about the importance of company culture, values and connection with the community. After all Umpqua Bank is a community bank with a strong focus on being different, and providing a unique customer service experience.

Umpqua Bank is clearly a bank like no other on the planet and it plainly shows how stepping out of the ordinary can produce extraordinary results.

Here is the Umpqua Bank video

Here is a video of Jeanne Bliss interviewing Ray Davis, CEO of Umpqua Bank

In this article from the New York Times titled, “Why do you Hate Work?” , there is clear evidence based on studies that employee engagement has a tremendous impact on organizational performance and business results. Happy employees are more engaged employees and this article and the studies referred to clearly indicate there is great room for improvement.

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Maximizing Your Return on Training and Development of Employees

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Training and development is an essential element of organizational performance. Often, though training does not produce the expected results, which means improved performance of the employee on the job. This is especially true for behavioral skills, which is often harder to change and to measure.

Three steps to success

There are three things management needs to do in order to ensure that the desired results is achieved from the training of employees.

The first thing is to clarify expectations by setting goals and defining what the expected outcome of the training will be. This needs to be communicated to those receiving the training so they understand what is expected of them, as well as the benefits to both the organization and themselves.

The training program.

Training works best when it is spaced over time, rather than a one day a workshop. This approach allows both the trainer and the trainee to adjust themselves to sure that they will meet the expectations and goals the training program and of the organization.

Follow-up plan.

The third component of a successful training program is to plan a follow-up schedule in order to measure if the desired skills and behaviors are being applied on the job. Follow-up plan should include measurement of results that are linked to the original objectives of the training program.

Management needs to communicate the follow-up schedule with the employee and set specific goals to be achieved within that timeframe.

By following the simple plan of setting goals and expectations for the training, monitoring the progress of the training and then putting in place a follow-up system, you can ensure that your training program will produce the desired results.

Training and development of employees for improved performance

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It’s extremely important for business owners and leaders to recognize the importance of training and development of their employees and to take a proactive approach.

Every company has competition, whether local or global. Even if you don’t have competition because your product is so unique and new, you are probably competing with yourself and against time and money. You can only develop a product so long before you run out of both.

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Training and development is more important than ever for your organization to stay competitive and survive. Training and development challenges employees to grow and improve. We all have untapped potential that is waiting to be unleashed, and this can be directed towards activities that will have a high impact on the performance of the organization.

Employees who do not receive training and development may become resistant to change and become stagnant. This can really have a negative impact on performance since technology is driving so many changes in work methods.

Being Proactive

Taking a proactive approach to employee training and development is best done by first setting goals for the organization and department. This will help you to determine where current skill levels of employees may be challenged towards achieving these goals and thus you can develop a training plan for the department an individual.

Hard and Soft Skills

When developing a training plan is important to look at the total person. We often breaks skills and to types, hard and soft. Hard skills are those that permit us to complete a task or activity, such as running a computer program operating machine, etc. A soft skill is a behavior that determines how an employee will approach a task and interact with others. This is often neglected when looking at training needs, but is extremely important for employee and team performance.

Teamworkoffice group in discussion

If you want to develop teamwork in your organization and department people must learn specific interpersonal skills so that discussions can take place on how to improve things towards goal achievement. Highly evolved teams can become autonomous in problem-solving, and continuously improving work processes on their own.

Ch49 CutoverOne good example are the telephone companies here in Canada. Over the years, most of them have trained their employees on better customer service habits and on selling. I’ve noticed when calling the administrative department about a billing issue that the person handling my issue always try to upsell me to an additional service. This is obviously a behavior that was learned from a proactive organization.

We’ve all had the experience of going into a store or restaurant and were served by staff members. The other ones who create a better customer experience by how they treat you the customer. Of course hiring the right person with the right attitude and personality is fundamental, but training people on the operations and how you expect them to behave is equally as important.

Aging Workforce

older workerAs the working population gets older is extremely important for organizations to continuously train and develop their employees in order for people to remain flexible, open positive and creative. This will allow the organization to meet its growth objectives and retain skilled talent.

Initiative

One of the key benefits from the training and development of employees is increased self-confidence and self-esteem. When people feel they are better equipped to tackle new tasks and use more of their abilities, they feel more confident.

People with higher self-confidence and self-esteem take more risks, make more decisions and solve problems on their own. This leads to greater initiative and thus saves the manager time to focus on growth and improvement opportunities.

Stephen Goldberg

The 4 Stages of Learning to Develop a New Skill or Behaviour

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Learning a new skill or making a change in behavior as a result of a training workshop or learning program does not happen just from your participation in the activity.

Real learning happens when the desired outcome of the training actually manifests itself in the performance of your activities or of the way you behave.

Unconscious Incompetence

To achieve real change requires that we go through four stages of learning. The first stage is making us aware of what we don’t already know. This is called the unconscious incompetence stage. We must first become aware of the things we need to learn and what we don’t already know in order to be open to the new material and to make the effort to put it into practice.

Conscious Incompetence

This leads us to the next level of learning, which is called conscious incompetence. Now we know what we didn’t know and are more open to learning, but we still cannot perform the new skill or behavior.

Conscious Competence

Once we start putting the skill or behavior into practice through guided instruction, we now go through the next stage of learning, which is conscious competence. This means that we can perform the skill or behavior, but we need to be thinking of what we’re doing and still be guided and corrected.

Unconscious Competence

The more we practiced the new skill or behavior. We gradually become better at it until it is fully learned and we reach the next stage, which is called unconscious competence. This is the goal of every training program were ultimately the new skill or behavior becomes a habit and second nature. We no longer need to think about how to perform each step we just do it naturally.

A good analogy is learning how to drive a car. The first step was to learn the theory behind driving in a classroom before we even went out on the road. The next step was to get behind the wheel with an instructor and to learn the different controls and operations.

Once we were comfortable with that, we started to practice driving perhaps in a parking lot and slowly went out on the road with the instructor who gave us feedback and made corrections.

As we practiced more and more we became confident based on the results and the feedback from the instructor until the point that we were doing things automatically.

When you drive to work next time, look at the faces of people driving the other cars. Most of the time people are thinking about something other than driving the car itself, but we all somehow show up to work safely. This is a good example of unconscious competence.

This process is more difficult for a behavioral change as compared to learning a mechanical skill, such as learning to operate a computer program or machine. A behavioral change is linked to beliefs and attitudes and thus requires greater awareness of your thoughts and reactions to people and situations in order to consciously put into practice the new behaviors.

Stephen Goldberg

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