Leveraging Employee Knowledge | Optimizing Human Capital
Remember the telephone game that you played as a child? The game began with a clear and (usually) understandable message. By the time the message was quietly passed along to the end of the chain, the information was garbled beyond recognition and rendered virtually useless.
Now picture the same thing happening with the good ideas about your operation, because it probably is happening as you read this.
Look for a wide range of ideas. This energy and information is bound to raise your own decision-making ability, and your employees may bring up points or facts that you didn't know. Sharing ideas, facts, and points of view makes everyone more effective and more satisfied. Catch the message before it is garbled.
Use the Messenger
Contact Mercury Management to help your organization identify opportunities to capture those messages while they are fresh, and to use the messengers within you organization to produce and implement the stream of ideas that exist within. Use Mercury Management to diagnose the situation, create the communication platform and define the measurement you will use to know that your capturing the best!
Learn more about the following, click on the terms:
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Consider accessing all great ideas held in the minds of many of your employees; to do so you must consider what motivates them. The concept of motivation will define the boundaries within which employees will respond, and the threats that may pose a level of risk or dissatisfaction that is outside of their comfort zone or field of play. We must consider both sides of the coin…..what motivates and keeps the door open, and what causes “the dialog door” to slam shut.
When we lack motivation, we have less energy, are more likely to resist change, and less likely to suggest needed improvements or take that extra step to keep customers coming back. However, many elements of day-to-day life de-motivate, and may do so either intentionally or unintentionally.
Empowerment and job enrichment often produce positive results because they can increase motivation and thereby increase the two-way communication and the exchange of valuable information that may be otherwise inaccessible. Apathy and the lack of motivation are often caused by frustration and a sense of powerlessness. If we do not perceive ourselves as having power, we are likely to perceive gain to be unattainable. In particular, one must feel at least partially in control of his or her own destiny to have ownership in a change effort or new process involving risk.
Giving orders to employees in a forceful way puts distance between the manager/employer and employees. Employees may lose their motivation, enthusiasm, and initiative. A potentially catastrophic loss may result when employees understand problems in the operation and choose not to share what is known.
Actively listen to what employees have to say and take their perspectives into account. If the issue is minor, go with their opinion. If you and your employees disagree on major issues, reflect on what they're saying, share your objections and your reasons for taking alternative actions. Listen carefully to their rationale; they may have reasonable perspectives that can change your mind. The important thing is to actively listen, and let people know you're listening.
Mercury Management can help you implement this process of active listening, and transforming this information gathered into customer and shareholder value.
The organization's structure, technology, management, or culture may have directly or indirectly frustrated employees, punished them, weakened initiatives, or rewarded apathy.
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Are people rewarded or punished for being involved, taking initiative, or sharing their ideas?
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Do they have any latitude to make their own decisions, or deal with customers in their own way?
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When employees get feedback, how often is this feedback positive, and how often is this feedback is substantially negative?
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Is their sufficient support for taking initiative, including having "the tools to do the job" - including information?
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Does the employee believe that the messenger will be shot?
When an employee is de-motivated because of an event in his or her personal life, a past experience, money problems, a broken romance, or work dissatisfaction, you can still help the employee to turn away their apathy.
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Reward their initiative
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Adopting their suggestions immediately
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Link your actions to their ideas
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Ask for their opinions, and actively listen to them
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Demonstrate caring about what they think and say
If you really believe in your employees, show it because most will meet your expectations.
The self-fulfilling prophecy, which can be used to increase involvement, can also be used to increase apathy. If we have low expectations of a person, the person may act according to your expectations. In an experiment involving children, those children categorized and treated as "intelligent" had higher performance than children classified as "slow," even though there were no actual differences. Adults are just as susceptible to the expectations stated by others.
Managers may believe that they care about what people think, but may be paying lip service. An office in a small town put up a "suggestion pouch" in a prominent location. For several weeks, the pouch remained full with unread forms. Eventually, the employees convinced the manager to review the suggestions. After several weeks, ideas were posted with the manager’s reasons for not taking action. The manager felt no personal stake in the suggestions, and found it easy to rationalize not using the ideas. If you ask for ideas, deal with them quickly; and whether you accept or reject the ideas, immediately tell the employees your reasons. Otherwise, don't ask!
Other ways to create apathy:
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Ridicule the idea giver
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Attack the person instead of the idea
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Ignore the idea giver
Take control over every aspect of the business, not letting your employees make up their own mind and invent their own answers. These steps virtually ensure apathy.
What to do with the resulting involvement
Set out to make a change, diminish apathy and create an environment where employees are eager to share what they know about the operation. With voter turn-out at all-time low levels, and people often interested in turning a blind eye, a great amount of energy can be harnessed and released by squashing apathy and invigorating the organization. Having involved employees is a tremendous advantage. They may be more helpful and more willing to be flexible. The apparent intelligence and creativity of your employees may seem to rise sharply.
M² Offerings:
Interviewing Employees
Lean Operations
Diagnostics
Continuous Improvement
Activity-based costing
Process Mapping
Waste Minimization & P2
> See Services section for more
