If employees stay when they find their work enjoyable,
what can you do to help your employees enjoy themselves more?
1. Hire the right person for the job. Choosing
the right person makes everything so much easier. If you hire someone
who is not suited for the position, it is only a matter of time
before the ax must fall. And the longer that time extends, the more
problems will occur. Get the right person first!
2. Communicate openly with your employees.
The means is up to you and corporate culture. For example, Outback,
a successful chain of steakhouses, doesn't use written evaluations
of their employees. The company expects its managers to communicate
with staff at the beginning and end of each shift with a face-to-face
meeting.
3. Give recognition for a job well done.
The people who work for you want to be "caught" doing
something right! And they want to be recognized when they've put
in a long week or month. If you don't recognize his or her value,
someone else soon will!
4. Deliver your own happy management style.
A manager's attitude is the number one reason employees enjoy their
jobs. The manager sets the tone for the whole business. So enjoy
your work.
5. Treat everybody equally and consistently.
When it comes to showing your happiness, don't show favoritism.
The dishwasher and the man who owns 16 shopping malls both deserve
your full honesty, your full respect, your full attention.
6. Listen and then implement your changes.
Nobody likes to work for a place when his input is not sought or
is ignored, or simply makes no difference. Whenever somebody is
talking, the person is giving you feedback, in one form or another,
about the business. Listen and be willing to take suggestions and
then implement those suggestions if they are good ones.
7. Reward longevity. The longer an employee
stays with a company, growing professionally with the company, the
more valuable that person is to the organization. Show your long-term
employees that you recognize their worth.
8. Provide strong and ongoing training. The
lack of training is probably the leading factor in 50 percent of
the turnover in the first 30 days of employment. All employees deserve
the opportunity of good training. So train your employees completely
and perpetually. Without such training, they are less than they
might be, encountering hurdles they need not encounter, carrying
baggage that slows them down.
9. Expect only the best from your employees
— and let them know your expectations. When you communicate
high standards and give your people the tool to meet such standards,
you're building the business on a solid foundation. Your best employees
excel under such standards. They want and need high expectations
to hold their interests.
10. Don't overpromise and underdeliver.
If you're not sure of something — some reward, some promotion,
or perhaps a work schedule — suggest it as possibility, rather
than imply its certainty.
11. Let employees feel they are an important
part of the company. In previous decades, an employee was often
"kept in line" by the manager's suggesting, openly or
subtly, that the employee was expendable. Sure, it works, for a
bit. But it's a shallow, short-term, unhappy management strategy.
Today's employees are not easily bullied by threats of firing. They
know other work is available to them.
12. Promote from within and make that fact
known. People like to know the advancement potential of their
good work.
13. Fire employees when necessary. No one
wants to work with a jerk, a sexist, a know-it-all, or someone who
talks on the phone all day while he or she does all the work. You'll
lose your good people if you don't get rid of your bad ones.
14. Educate and challenge your employees.
Every worker — consciously or subconsciously — wants to
grow, to be challenged (even if only in figuring out how to make
the job easier). Those jobs that continue to provide new experiences,
new heights to climb, new arenas to master, are those jobs that
will keep the worker around.
15. Provide strong, positive leadership.
Most people want guidance and direction — a captain to lead
them to a worthy destination.
Excerpted, by permission of the publisher, from Now Hiring by
Steve Lauer and B. Jack Gebhardt. Published by AMACOM, a division
of American Management Association.
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