February 2020

How Personal Problems of Employees Gets in The Way Of Organizational Performance

Feb 25, 2020 Comments

The personal problems of employees can affect the performance of the department and the organization and cause great headaches to the manager.

Just this past week four of my clients spoke to me about personal problems that employees were having and how it impacted them and their business. All are small business owners, but personal problems of employees can affect all size businesses as it disrupts productivity in the department and affects the whole team as others will need to compensate if the person in question is absent.

One of my clients had a call from the wife of his salesman and she asked him why he was having the salesman go out of town every Thursday on a special project. The business owner replied that he wasn’t, and they quickly deduced that the salesman was having an affair.

The salesman was cheating on his wife but also on the business as he was lying about his whereabouts and of course this was also affecting his performance and productivity.

Course of Action

To affectively deal with personal employee problems there are two things you can do. One is prevention and the other is being effective in the way you respond to the situation.

Prevention

Preventing employees from having personal problems that affect their work order may sound impossible because you don’t have control of the decisions that people make. But you can influence them through the way you lead and manage them and as in all my videos on the best leadership style, I suggest a coaching style of leadership.

By meeting with employees one on one regularly and having them set and meet specific goals for self improvement, you are coaching them to be responsible and accountable. This teaches people to be honest and more mature. It also makes them think more clearly about the choices they make at work and in life and how it affects those around them.

Therefore, personal and leadership development for business owners and mangers is crucial as you need to walk the talk and be an example for others to follow.

You can follow my process for setting performance agreements with employees to learn how to drive great responsibility and accountability using a coaching approach. The basis of this is setting win win agreements with each employee.

Dealing with the Problem

In the example of the salesman who is cheating on his wife and lying to his employer the way to deal with the situation is to first decide if you want to keep the employee. If so, you need to confront him and set an agreement in writing to meet certain performance commitments and then meet up regularly to monitor his progress. The agreement should include a penalty should the commitments not be reached.

Further Prevention

If you are monitoring employee performance on a regular basis you should sense if there is a problem that might be impacting their performance. Obviously meeting with them to discuss the issue is needed, but you can also start to attract new employees should you need to replace the individual.

You can post jobs for free or set aside a small budget to keep new applications coming in on a regular basis. I also suggest building your employee rating online by having happy employees rate your company on job posting sites like Indeed and on Google. This way your free posting would attract more candidates on an ongoing basis.

Improve the Quantity of Job Applicants to a Job Posting

Feb 18, 2020 Comments

The more applicants you have for a job posting the more choice of candidates you can select to proceed through the selection process. You want your job posting to standout from the crowd especially if it’s a popular and competitive job category.

Job title

The job title is what people see first when they see you listing so make the job title highly appealing. I recently posted a job on Indeed for a client and did an A/B test by posting the job two ways.

One of the jobs was posted with the title Operations Support Specialist along with the text and job description provided by my client. The other posting was titled Operations Support Specialist Great Career Opportunity and I wrote a new text to describe the job along with just a few of the main tasks. I wrote this version with specific copy to sell the appeal of the job and the company (see the copy at the bottom of this page)

Results

Within a few hours of posting both versions of the job the one with Great Career Opportunity received six resumes whereas the other had none. So how you title and describe the job is crucial to how people perceive the opportunity and are motivated to apply.

Revisions

I continued to revise the job posting based on feedback of the quality of the resumes received by the hiring manager who was doing the screening. I decided to add the words Customer Service to attract people with that experience as the job did in fact require customer service experience and know-how.

Even later I modified the title again but kept the words customer service and all postings with those words did very well. From the larger quantities received the manager found good candidates to start with short phone interviews and then moved forward with in person interviews.

Salary posting

I find that when a job is posted with a competitive salary range it drives up applies. Anyone looking for a better salary will want to apply if the job appeals to them so making it clear in the posting will also boost the response.

Hiring and selecting the right employee for the job and company is an extremely important step in building a strong and successful team and organization.

Sample job posting

If operations and customer service is the type of work you love and you have experience with inventory management, then this position is a dream job come true. You will work as part of a great team of professionals serving the best companies in the telecom industry. This is a steady path and secure field of work that is poised for even greater growth over the next five to ten years.

You can show off your skills in operations by managing all aspects of product returns (RMA’s) for the company. You will assist the pre-sales team in managing product evaluation and deepen your knowledge of operations through learning advanced use of the Oracle ERP data base system.

Managing all product returns (from customers and manufacturers) is a vital part of inventory management and you will work closely with the operations manager to assure that this crucial operation is done accurately.

You will be provided with all the training you need to build on your skills and experience with inventory management.

Your strength is attention to detail, and this will enable you to produce high quality work that will be recognized and appreciated by your manager and team members.

Your experience in operations and your education has given you the skill set you need to excel and grow in this position.

The company offers competitive benefits such as group insurance, performance bonus and the salary will reflect your knowledge and experience.

Have Employees Take More Responsibility and Initiative

Feb 11, 2020 Comments

Some people tend to take more responsibility and initiative than others. There are two reasons for this. One is related to the human type and the other to their level of personal growth.

In the middle of the five levels of personal growth is the Conformist level. At this level people tend to play it safe and follow the rules. This is good for jobs that require a lot of repetitive tasks or to continuously meet pre-determined standards.

But if we want more autonomous employees who once experienced on the job have the confidence to make their own decisions then we need to do three things to encourage more responsible behavior.

Ask questions rather than giving answers. When an employee comes to you for a decision or so solve a problem ask them what they think they should do. They usually know the answer but might me afraid to make a mistake. Reinforce their idea and let them act. Follow-up and see how they did and give positive feedback. You can also use a past example to remind them of how a similar decision was made in the past.
Set a performance improvement goal. Always have an employee work on one or two personal performance improvement goals. One could be skill related and the other a behavior. This gives you the opportunity to have them grow beyond the Conformist level of development and to reinforce their growth and success.
Have them participate in team problem solving sessions. Use team brainstorming to address problems or improvement initiatives and make sure all employees contribute their ideas. This way they become comfortable with taking risk and thinking creatively in a controlled environment.

Acting on these three guidelines will build more responsible and autonomous employees that will lead to more time for the leader to think and work strategically.

The Levels of Growth and How it Impacts Human Behaviour & Performance

Feb 04, 2020 Comments

A person’s level of growth will have a direct impact on how they take responsibility and perform on the job. This is related to the dimensions of life and the maturity of an individual that I discussed in my last article and video.

This approach to understanding human behaviour and performance what is taught by Dr. Michael Durst in his training Programs Management by Responsibility and Personal Responsibility In Developing Excellence Pride.

There are five levels of personal growth As explained by Dr. Durst. The levels are:

Unconscious
Self-protective
Conformist
Achievement
Responsible

At the lower levels people have a hard time functioning and responding well to situations and this affects the dimensions of life. For example, if someone is unconscious about their health and and not taking responsibility for themselves, they will have difficulty functioning in all the dimensions and experience a lot of stress and anxiety.

At any time, someone can go from the responsible level to the self-protective level in reaction to a person or situation. This would make sense when we are threatened but these situations are rare. A responsible person may become self-protective when in a conflict with someone but will quickly realize the destructiveness of this to the relationship and will take responsible action to resolve the conflict.

In the same situation someone who functions a lot at the self-protective level will tend to withdraw and blame the other person and feel victimized.

Many people spend a lot of their lives at the conformist level, wanting to fit in, be liked and accepted by others and follow the rules. The problem here is an avoidance of risk and change, tending rather to play safe. The main problem is a lack of initiative and problem solving.

The achievement level person is highly competitive and gets their self-esteem from their accomplishments and what they acquire.

As we grow and learn to take more responsibility for our lives, we can function at higher levels in all the dimensions of life. Therefore, continuous personal development is key to functioning at the highest level one can.

The responsible level has also been called the fully developed human being, the self-actualized and the self-realized person. At this level of development people function extremely well in all the dimensions of life. For an organization to grown and develop it must hire and develop people that assume full responsibility for themselves.

Change in organizations due to external circumstances requires a more agile and flexible workforce who can be empowered to solve problems autonomously and practice continuous improvement. This can only be accomplished by hiring and developing responsible, fully functioning employees.

Here is a good resource for personal development and self-awareness.

Monthly Archives: February 2020