Unless you’ve just woken up from a 10 year sleep, it won’t come as
any surprise that workers are fed up with their employers. Workers
across the board share this feeling.
Mercer, the global HR consulting firm, found that nearly one third (32 percent) of American workers are considering leaving their organization,
that’s a 40 percent increase since 2005. As bad as that sounds, another
21 percent says they are not looking to leave but are dissatisfied with
current working conditions. That means that more than half of all
employees (53 percent) have mentally checked out of work. That raises a
question I asked several years ago to a group of business owners: “How
many unemployed people do you have on your payroll?”
The numbers can be staggering and the root cause in many cases can be traced back to managers and supervisors.
Many
supervisors possess sufficient skills to handle day-to-day production
activities. Unfortunately few are true people managers – those managers
and leaders who understand the motivational challenges that derail many
workers. Even more troubling is how few are trained to avoid such traps
in advance.
The failure to appreciate and understand what
motivates workers is the weak link that leaves organizations vulnerable
to employee burnout, disengagement, and employee turnover. Teaching
supervisors how to manage and motivate effectively is both the
prevention and the cure for controlling the spread of what I have called
the Attitude Virus.
Just
as the government funds the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
whose experts tackle health issues among the general population,
businesses need Centers for Attitude Improvement and Employee
Engagement, staffed with experts who tackle motivational issues in the
workplace.
What follows are four steps that an organization can follow to immunize the workplace and end bad attitudes:
- Diagnose. Recognize that there is an attitude
problem. This requires an honest assessment of the organization from
top-down, then extending out to your vendors, suppliers and customers.
Acknowledge any underlying causes of the Attitude Virus and take
responsibility for removing them. - Assess. Select and promote only supervisors who
have the skills or potential to manage, and provide the tools and
training they need to detect a contagious worker or new hire, before
their “bad attitude disease” leeches the morale and motivation from the
healthy workers. Effective supervisors hold the keys to employee
retention and profitability. - Treat. Take responsibility for upgrading the skills
of your first line of defense, the frontline supervisors and managers,
who battle such “infections” and “exposures” on a daily basis. Develop
and train supervisors to have the skills to “quarantine” or treat
infected workers and coach them back to health. The Virus is mutating
almost daily, and continuous learning is crucial. - Monitor, monitor, monitor. Just as attending a diet
class and waiting for the pounds to drop off is ludicrous, providing
skills training without reinforcement, feedback and re-testing is
equally bad. Identify the skills that differentiate your highly
effective managers from the average performers, develop training that is
specific and responsive to those specific skills, and provide ongoing
feedback and post-assessment to monitor progress and ensure protection.
Now is the time to attack the Attitude Virus and immunize your
organization. Companies that are Attitude Virus-free will continue to
grow and prosper, because they know how to select positive workers and
quarantine their infected employees (either nurture and rehabilitate
them back to health or “delete” them before they infect other workers.)
A work culture clean and free of the Attitude Virus is rewarded with a
healthy bottom line, high rates of employee retention, and continuous
productivity improvements.
