As 2010 planning initiatives focus on strategies that will prepare companies to return to growth, leaders are looking for new ways to engage critical talent who execute key business priorities. The reason? Research by CLC Genesee, the HR consulting and employee survey division of The Corporate Executive Board (CEB), shows that companies with highly engaged employees demonstrate a 3-year revenue growth of 20.1%, compared to the 8.9% their industry peers will average. They also establish a 3-year EBITDA growth that is three times higher than their industry peers. What’s more, CLC Genesee research shows that shifting an individual employee from low engagement to high engagement can increase discretionary effort level by 60%, improve employee performance by up to 20%, and significantly reduce recruitment costs.

To achieve high levels of employee engagement, you need to first understand what they are thinking. One way to do this is to collect employee feedback through regular employee surveys. However, successful companies don’t just rely on surveys as an event, but also steadily maintain communications and actions throughout the year to continually involve employees in driving positive change. One progressive and admired company leading the way is Google.

Google firmly believes that feedback and discussion are an important part of doing business, and finds avenues for “Googlers” (as Google employees are called) to not just raise problems but help solve them. Google’s annual survey is critical in gathering employee feedback on what is working well and what can be improved. Beyond the survey, Google uses a variety of regular feedback channels to encourage employee involvement and leverage its philosophy that more minds on an important issue are better than one.

Strategy 1: Create a two-way dialogue on the most important issues on people’s minds.
Open dialogue between employees and leaders has always been an important part of Google’s business operations. Every Friday, Google holds a forum called “Thank goodness it’s Friday” (TGIF) to have an active conversation and answer questions ranging from product decisions and external news to internal people-related policies and decisions. This program initially started small with a few employees asking the founders questions on a Friday afternoon. As it evolved, TGIF now occurs almost every Friday, and the notes are distributed broadly across the company. Googlers use Google Moderator, an online tool to submit and vote on questions, and the top-voted questions are directly answered by Google’s founders and executives. TGIF also includes live questions. High levels of employee and executive participation in TGIF contribute greatly to the culture of transparency and create a more intimate atmosphere despite the company’s size of 20,000 employees.

Strategy 2: Engage employees in solving problems, not just raising them.
Google encourages employees to attend problem-solving sessions designed to resolve business challenges. Appropriately called “Fixits,” these sessions can invite a specific group of employees or be open to anyone. One recent Fixit addressed particular concerns regarding career development in a growing business unit. For one week, suggestions for how to improve career development were collected via Moderator. Googlers submitted 51 ideas, in total receiving 5,615 votes, and the best three ideas were implemented. As employees were involved in the solutions, satisfaction in many areas in the annual employee survey improved one year later, including double-digit increases in the favorability scores on two career development items.

As demonstrated by CLC Genesee research, increasing employee engagement has clear business benefits. Following the lead of companies such as Google, organizations can creatively find new ways to encourage and collect employee input on important issues to achieve measurable business outcomes. It’s not about making employees feel involved; it’s actually involving them. The result is more informed leaders, more engaged employees, and ultimately better decisions for a stronger business.

From http://www.executiveboard.com/businessweek/bw-week41.html Used with permission.

Need More Help in this Area? 5 Questions Every Leader Must Ask is a terrific tool for involving employees in problem solving. Using the proven model in this program, even the most inexperienced manager can generate great ideas and effective solutions in a team setting.

Organizations have been through a lot these past few years.  A certain amount of fatigue/disenchantment/frustration is normal. BUT, left unaddressed, these things can multiply and create a widespread epidemic of negativity.  The Negativity Self-Evaluation tool below can help assess where attitudes might be slipping towards the negative.  The debriefing information that follows provides steps for formulating an Attitude Adjustment Action Plan.

Negativity Self-Evaluation

Where do you rate on the negativity scale? Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 for each question, and try to be honest with your answers.

   1                     2                        3                           4                          5
Never             Seldom             Sometimes                 Often                    Always
                                                                                                                                                                                                   

1. Do you come into your workplace feeling enthusiastic and confident?                 _____
2. Do you focus on your goals even when you’re having a bad day?                        _____
3. Do you look for positive solutions when things don’t go your way at work?          _____
4. Do you set a good example for co-workers?                                                     _____
5. Do you communicate well with your colleagues?                                               _____
6. Do co-workers feel they can come to you for help?                                            _____
7. Are you satisfied with the quality of work you do?                                              _____
8. Do you find healthy ways to relieve stress?                                                       _____
9. Do you collaborate with others to meet the team’s and your goals?                     _____
10. Are you open to changes in your routine or environment?                                  _____
                                                                                                                Total  _____

Scoring
If your total is under 25, you are highly susceptible to negativity and may be affecting others with your attitude.  Continue to evaluate your performance on the job.  If you can’t break the pattern of negativity, ask for outside help from a supervisor, a friend or Human Resources.

If your total is between 25-35, you’re on the borderline; you can fall victim to negativity, particularly during stressful times.  When feeling pressured, give yourself a negativity “spot check”.  Ask yourself if your work is up to par, if you are snapping easily, or whether your co-workers are acting differently towards you.  These could all be signs that you need to take a deep breath and re-evaluate your attitude.

If your total is over 35, you probably don’t succumb to negativity often.  But, you may not be completely immune to it.  Think about how you interact with colleagues, especially when you’re stressed. People probably look to you as a model for positive behavior, so make sure stress doesn’t get the best of you.  And, if you see others inciting a climate of negativity, try to help the person(s) find a positive solution or encourage them to seek assistance.

Debrief – The Attitude Adjustment Plan
Here are several good steps to take whenever you feel yourself becoming negative. (If you’re a manager or co-worker who needs to point out negativity in another person, see the special Note at the bottom.)

Take responsibility for your attitude and acknowledge the difficulties your negativity is causing.
Without an honest acceptance of the responsibility for and impact of your attitude, there is no motivation to change.  

Practice “responding” rather than “reacting” to situations.
A reaction is often an instinctive, unproductive way of dealing with difficulties (negative people often “react” by blaming others for problems without seeing the part they’ve played in creating the problem).  On the other hand, a response requires thoughtful consideration of:
      - how can I take control of the situation vs. being a victim of the situation?
      - what productive strategies and actions can I take?

Attempt to identify underlying causes for the negative attitude.
Try to uncover some of the reasons behind what you’re feeling. Is there a higher amount of stress than usual in the workplace?  Are there unresolved issues with co-workers?  Have you been feeling undervalued or overworked? Could family problems, debt, or illness be a factor? 

Address the situations that cause stress.
Once you see what is causing the problem, try to find a workable solution and look for ways to prevent similar situations in the future. If need be, talk it over with another person.  It’s amazing how an outside perspective can shed light on things.  If there are conflicts you don’t feel comfortable handling on your own, ask a supervisor or HR person for assistance.

Note:  If you are in a position of pointing out another person’s attitude problem, make sure you do these things in addition to suggesting the actions listed above:
     - discuss the problem in private
     - begin by giving positive feedback
     - handle emotionally charged subjects with sensitivity
     - focus on performance, not personality

Based on material in the Leader’s Guide for The Attitude Virus: Curing Negativity in the Workplace.
© CRM Learning.

Need help in this area? Bad attitudes in the workplace can spread like a virus and infect everyone in the whole organization. With CRM’s The Attitude Virus program, help employees learn to spot unproductive attitudes in themselves and others, and counteract them with positive behavior.

Despite all we’ve heard recently about the differences between the four generations in the workplace, a new book flies in the face of the conventional wisdom on the subject. Jennifer Deal’s research shows that regardless of age, we all want the same things: respect, trustworthy leaders, and opportunities to grow. (And nobody likes change.)

The conventional wisdom about generational differences in the workplace is mostly wrong, according to a new book by Jennifer J. Deal, a research scientist with the Center for Creative Leadership.

The shorthand used to describe the four generations that now make up our nation’s workforce goes something like this:

    • The Silent Generation (born before 1946) values hard work
    • Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) value loyalty
    • Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980) value work-life balance
    • Generation Y (the generation just entering the workforce, also known as Millennials) values innovation
       and change.

Or, in terms of negative stereotypes, the Silents are fossilized, the Boomers are narcissistic, the Gen Xers are slackers, and the Gen Yers/Millennials are even more narcissistic than the Boomers.

Not so, says Deal. She argues that the generations now of working age value essentially the same things. Her findings, based on seven years of research in which she surveyed more than 3,000 corporate leaders, are presented in her new book, Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young & Old Can Find Common Ground (Jossey-Bass).

“Our research shows that when you hold the stereotypes up to the light, they don’t cast much of a shadow,” says Deal. “Everyone wants to be able to trust their supervisors, no one really likes change, we all like feedback, and the number of hours you put in at work depends more on your level in the organization than on your age.”

Clearly, people of different ages see the world in different ways. But Deal says that’s not the primary reason for generational conflict. The conflict has less to do with age or generational differences than it does with clout – who has it and who wants it. “The so-called generation gap is, in large part, the result of miscommunication and misunderstanding, fueled by common insecurities and the desire for clout,” says Deal.

Summary of Deal’s Findings

• All generations have similar values. For example, family tops the list for all of the generations. The most striking result of the research, Deal says, is how similar the generations are in the values that matter most.
• Everyone wants respect. Everyone wants respect, but the generations don’t define it in the same way. In the study, older individuals talked about respect in terms of “giving my opinions the weight I believe they deserve,” while younger respondents characterized respect as “listen to me, pay attention to what I have to say.”
• Leaders must be trustworthy. Different generations do not have notably different expectations of their leaders. Above all else, people of all generations want leaders they can trust.
• Nobody likes change. The stereotype is that older people resist change while younger people embrace it. These assumptions don’t stand up under the research, which found that people from all generations are uncomfortable with change. Resistance to change has nothing to do with age; it has to do with how much you stand to gain or lose as a result of the change.
• Loyalty depends on context. It is said that younger generations are not as loyal to their organizations as older workers. But the research shows, for example, that the amount of time a worker puts in each day has more to do with his or her level in the organization than with age. The higher the level, the more hours worked.
• Everyone wants to learn. Learning and development were among the issues brought up most frequently by people of all generations. Everyone wants to learn and to ensure they have the training to do their job well.
• Everyone likes feedback. According to the research, everyone wants to know how they are doing and to learn how they can do better.

For additional information, visit the Center for Creative Leadership Website at www.ccl.org

Article by: The Canadian Management Centre, a highly recommended provider of business development courses and marketing seminars. Canadian Management Centre is a leader in professional development with accounting courses in Ottawa.

Need more help in this area? Please Respect My Generation lets you examine the different world-views and life experiences of the 5 generations now in the workplace, while highlighting the strengths of each group.  Viewers see how to focus on finding common ground, respecting one another and striving for cross-generational collaboration.