What Not to Say to Your Employees

By Jim Champagne

I just read an article in US News titled “7 Things Your Boss Should Never Say to You”. It was an interesting read, but at least one thing that a lot of people have been saying they hear from their boss lately was not included. That is “be happy you have a job”. While many people feel happy to have a job, the statement should not be used as a way of making employees do more with less support. In a previous blog I addressed the fact that many of the best employees are frustrated by the lack of opportunity, this kind of statement will certainly not help with retaining a company’s best employees. This is a time when saying the right things as a boss will not only garner respect from your current employees, but will give your company the best opportunity to thrive and grow as the economy rebounds.

Writing a Mission Statement

By Jim Champagne

Mission statements should be written by either the owner of the company or senior management. Mission statements should not be a series of vague proclamations about how you want to help customers or treat people well. These are all expected and requited for entering the game. This would be like an airline saying their mission is to get you to your destination safely. Mission statements should also have clear concise and attainable goals that can be understood by the organization and can be acted upon by employees. Things like, “Our goal is to produce the highest quality tools and become the leading distributor in the automotive repair industry” is a pretty specific mission.

It is also critical that each person in the company knows the mission statement and understands how his or her job fits into the company’s mission. For example, the line employee who is responsible for maintaining the machine that puts the bolt in the adjustable pliers knows that if they are not torqued properly they might fail. While this might not be exactly how pliers are manufactured, the point is that each employee considers the ramifications of what they do every day and how it either helps or hinders the company from achieving its mission.

Achievement Resources specializes in organizational development including employee training and development, executive and management coaching and training, assessments and organizational consulting.

Mission Statement

By Jim Champagne

The definition of a mission statement in Wikipedia is as follows; “A mission statement is a formal short written statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a sense of direction, and guide decision-making.”

While you would think that every company would have a mission statement that is understood by all its employees, you would be surprised how many don’t even have one. Without a mission statement how will a company know if they are on the right track. Additionally, how can a company expect all of its employees to work toward a common goal if they don’t know what the goal is? If you don’t have a mission statement, now is the time to create one. If every employee in your company doesn’t know what it is, now is the time to tell them what it is and help them understand how what they do every day impacts the mission statement. Good communication in the work place is critical and there is nothing more critical than having an organization with a single focus on achieving the vision of management.

Retaining Top Performers

By Jim Champagne

When the economy finally does turn around and the job market starts to free up expect the pent up frustration of people stuck in the same rut at work to lead to a cascade of job seekers. Not in recent history have so many people been so frustrated by the opportunities available to them in their current jobs. For those who still have jobs, they have experienced fewer opportunities, more responsibility and lower financial rewards. I have repeatedly heard from many people that as soon as there are opportunities they are going to look hard and won’t look back. This turmoil doesn’t need to happen at your company however. For companies with a more entrepreneurial mindset, not only can they retain their best performers, but they can begin to attract the best of the new crop of job seekers. Companies that foster environments that lend themselves to the sharing of ideas while empowering employees stand the best chance of coming out ahead.

Find out how our team of professionals can help you develop winning strategies that will allow your company to become a leader in the new millennium.

Customer Service

By Jim Champagne

While we all know that great customer service can mean the difference between a happy customer and a disgruntled one, what’s also important is to look at what a customer will give to get great service. In a study done by Forrester Consulting, they looked at the relationship between customer service and price. In every industry they looked at from Banks to Hotels to Manufactures, good customer service was overwhelmingly ranked ahead of price. While this may not surprise everyone the study also found that less than half of all respondents said they were satisfied with customer service departments. It also showed that 84% of people said that customer service was an important factor in continuing to do business with a company.

These statistics all point to the fact that good customer service is still a great strategic advantage for companies and that the companies that focus the most energy on it will come out ahead. One of my former employer's that is already noted for its good customer service is putting all its energy to put additional distance between themselves and the competition.

How can you improve your customer service and increase your profit margin? Achievement Resources has years of experience and proven tactics to help you.

Hiring in a Recovery Environment

By Jim Champagne

First of all I hope I am not jumping the gun by using the word “recovery” in the title of this blog. Well if you are one of the companies that are hiring, congratulations. While it may seem that the abundance of eligible resources will make it easier to find the right person for your company, think again. This can often be the most challenging time to find the perfect person to fill one of your open positions. First of all you will be flooded with resumes and once you are finished sorting through the litany of people who just blast out their resumes, you are left with a sub group of potential candidates. There are a couple of things to consider as you narrow down your search. First of all do you know what talents and skills it really takes for a person to succeed at this role? Analyzing the talents of the people that have already succeeded in the role will help tremendously. The next problem is how can you be sure that the person you are considering wasn’t someone else’s problem and that they were finally able to solve it when they layed them off? Also how can you be sure that they really have the core talents it takes to succeed in the role you have open?

These problems can be solved by having a profile of what a successful person looks like for specific roles in your company. Secondly you are allowed to ask probative questions during the interview that will root out people that were other company’s problems. And lastly you can uncover the person’s talents and match them to your opening by doing a pre-hire assessment on them. While this may seem like a lot of work, it is much less work and much less costly than going through the same process in another couple of months.

Addition by Subtraction

By Jim Champagne

I read an article this week titled “The Secret to Having Happy Employees”. I began reading expecting the standard message about how to treat your employees well and they will flourish. While treating your employees well is a part of the big picture to a happy workforce, it’s not then entire story. The article goes on to describe what one manager did to make his employees happy. He said “I fired the unhappy ones”. While that may shock some people, it sometimes has its place.

I can relate to this article as it happened almost the exact same way when I took on my first real management role. When I first took over the group I met with all of my new team and talked openly about my goals and listened to their concerns, frustrations and hopes for the group. I heard a similar theme from many of the people in the group in that one particular person was not pulling their own weight and it was dragging everyone down. While that was far from being the only problem, it was certainly high on everyone’s mind. I went about trying to identify everyone’s strengths and put the one person everyone was complaining about in a role they said would allow them to do their best work. It didn’t work! I tried giving this person a couple other jobs, but none of them worked out either. I finally came to the conclusion that this person was in the wrong job at the wrong company and that nothing I could do would make them happy. Shortly thereafter I spoke to the person and offered to help them find another job and let them go. The group immediately realized I was listening to them and that I cared about building a team of high performing people. After that they really began to gel as a team.

This taught me a valuable lesson about building teams. As with any professional sports team where one negative person can have a destructive impact on the cohesion of the group, the same negative impact can happen with any company.

Assessment tools can really help you understand peoples talents and can be a key piece to building high performing teams.