Leading Through Change

It may be a few years since the crash of 2008, but that doesn’t mean layoffs are no longer a reality. Everywhere we look there are redundancies here and downsizing measures there. Organisations are always changing, and with change comes cuts.

In times of flux, it often feels most comfortable to focus on costs because they are easier to manage and have tangible outcomes. People, on the other hand, can be more channelling. Unfortunately, losing people to save costs, and making sure those left behind stay motivated, are equally important. Many employees have friends and colleagues lose their jobs, when one day they are working right next to them, the next they’re not. Not only is this traumatic for those that leave, and need to find work elsewhere, it’s equally distressing for those left behind.

Why do those left have a rough deal?

1. Although a full role for the person made redundant may no longer exist, often there are remnants of a role that those left behind need to take on board. This means employee workloads change and often increase, and those left have to prioritise differently to adapt.

2. People feel a sense of loss for their fellow employees, and for the culture, process and role changes that come with people leaving the organisation.

3. When people join an organisation, they join a group and they feel accepted and needed by that group. When they see that group can easily expel others, they feel the psychological contract (the unwritten rule of loyalty and trust made between organisation and employee when they join) is broken. This brings unease and concern for their future and puts any trust built up over the length of their time at the organisation into jeopardy.

4. When employee's friends and colleagues are let go, people fear that if others are expendable then they may be too. Of course, this is always possible in today’s working world so we can’t eliminate such fears completely. However, we can help people to know that if they do the best they can, meet, and where possible exceed, the requirements of their role, they should stay in a positive position. 

So what can we do to cushion the blow to employees we've chosen to take us forward in our business?

Well, it's quite simple; treat people as you would want to be treated and you'd be surprised how receptive they can be, even in difficult situations.

Expecting people to carry on as normal, or even exceed expectations during layoffs, due to fear of what will happen if they don’t, could be shortsighted. It is likely to thwart their creativity and their work will suffer. Of course, you could make others redundant too but think of the costs of rehire, retraining, and adapting to culture this involves. Keeping good people is always the best option.

Communicate, set them at ease, and make them feel valued.

Take those left in your team out for lunch, talk to them, reassure them their jobs are safe. Or, if their jobs are not safe, or you're unsure at this stage, reassure them that you’re working to get as much information as you can as quickly as you can. It’s not recommended to do this in big groups otherwise employees can feel like a number rather than an individual. Aim to talk to people in small groups to ensure each and every person feels a valued member of the team.

It is also a great idea to take people out of the office because it gets them away from the stress going on in the workplace and prevents discussions from feeling so formal. It allows people to be in an environment where they can see the bigger picture, and it can dispel some of the concern and worries people have.

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I recently read a quote from True Compass that I believe drives home what an organisation should be trying to achieve after downsizing: 

“The extra attention you pay those employees left behind will pay off in reduced loss in production and a more dedicated and loyal staff. You know you have reached your goal when you consistently hear your employees say, “The Company had to make a hard, but necessary decision regarding those lay offs, and now is the time we all pull together and turn this situation around.””

Employees are human, just like you and I, and humans have feelings, emotions and needs. Making sure people know you care can do wonders for their motivation, engagement in their work and the future of your business. Get everyone moving in the same direction and you'll be surprised what you can achieve.

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Of course, there are lots of ways to lead through downsizing in organisations. Over to you! What are your thoughts on managing employee morale post redundancies in teams? I'd love to hear how you've managed similar situations, or how you might manage such issues in the future. 

Employee Engagement Means Treating People As You'd Want to Be Treated

There is a lot of advice out there telling people what to do to engage employees. It ultimately boils down to something very simple. Engagement is about treating people as you would want to be treated.  It’s nothing more complex than that.

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Don't believe me? 

Consider this scenario. 

Imagine you're the head of a department at the company you work for and one of the directors has asked you to fetch the coffee. How do you feel? Do you ask your assistant to do it or would you be quite happy to do it yourself? 

Commands get results but at what cost?

What if that same director demanded you to get the coffee, making it seem like your job would be in jeopardy if you didn't obey the rules? 

You might do it, but how would you feel afterwards? Contempt? Mistrust? Desire to leave?

Ask me nicely and I'll do it, but...

What about if the director said to you: ‘we really need help today, Jason our assistant is off sick, and someone has to get the coffee. Please, can you do it?’

Perhaps you'd feel better at being asked rather than commanded, but you might still be a bit put out. At the end of the day, it’s not your job, and there are more junior people than you who could do it in place of Jason.

What if it was part of your job?

What if you had a rota where everyone in your organisation did the coffee run once a month. The ethos being that nothing is beneath any employee whatever role they get into. It keeps you grounded.

Perhaps this would feel more comfortable because it spreads the responsibility, but maybe you'd be thinking 'why do I have to waste my valuable time doing pointless things like getting the coffee?'

What if it was the norm...

What if the CEO said to you, Jason is off, and we really need coffee, but the marketing team are in the middle of getting that roadshow finished for kick off tomorrow. I’m off to get the coffee, but I could get it done in half the time with your help. Would you mind giving me a hand? 

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How do you feel? Motivated to get the job done? Happy to help? Inspired by the down to earth nature of your CEO? I know I'd be all of those things. 

Why does it work?

Sadly in today's working world senior employees who are prepared to muck in with anything that needs doing are hard to come by. Fortunately, these types of managers are on the rise but there is still a long way to go.

Luckily people are beginning to recognise that managers who get involved in the everyday running of the business have more engaged employees. People feel connected to the leadership, and because they see senior people getting involved they are more likely to do the same themselves when faced with a similar situation. The senior folk set the example for how others will be treated. 

Suddenly fetching the coffee doesn’t seem like such a big deal does it...

Listen to Your People and Save Your Business

This morning, to get a little light relief from ironing out the finer details of wedding planning, I decided to watch one of my favourite work-related shows, Undercover Boss. 

I've watched this show many times and each time I am amazed at how surprised the big boss is by their findings. So much so that it reminds me of why I started out in business on my own in the first place; my goal has always been and always will be:

'Give everyone in your organisation a voice. Only then will you get the best from your people.'

This week the focus of the show was Tower Hamlets Council and it saw the Chief Executive (CE) going undercover to work as one of the frontline workers. As the CE quoted: 

"Working undercover on the frontline you see it as it is rather than how they want you to see it. People put on a show when they know you are a more senior person."

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Council workers perform many essential services for the residents in a borough; from pest control and waste management to child protection services, from libraries and doctors surgeries to meals on wheels. However, many of these services have suffered in recent years due to budget cuts and massive strains on resources. 

Budget cuts are no new thing to local councils in the UK, and they are always fraught with dispute and despair whenever they arise. Unfortunately, they are often necessary; the real problems arise when the wrong cuts are made. 

One of the stops for the CE this week was accompanying a female care worker who'd been delivering meals on wheels to elderly patients for 33 years. She was an inspiration, showing the utmost care, respect and genuine concern for each and every patient she visited. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the time she spent with her elderly clients was cut dramatically to meet demand for services. 

The CE recognised that the situation visibly pained the long-standing worker, and he noted that she did her best to arrange her deliveries to spend the longest time possible with the people who needed her most. His revelation was: 

“’Meals on Wheels’ is more than just delivering a meal and walking away.” 

To address the issue, the CE asked the care worker to join a new committee he had designed to ensure the care of clients was of top priority. He told the care worker that her insight was vital to making the project a success. 

We always need budget cuts; change occurs in organisations and money is frequently required elsewhere to meet the current internal or external needs of the company - it's a fact of life. However, by making blind choices about changes required in organisations without speaking to the frontline workers first, senior leaders are bound to make incorrect decisions. 

The most important thing to recognise in any organisation is the need to understand the consequences of our actions. Yes, we are running businesses, but in many cases, we are also providing services to those who need it most. 

There are too many companies that operate without talking to the people on the shop floor. In some ways, this is helpful because it takes the emotion out of business and allows us to make strong financial decisions, but is that what business should really be about? Are we saying, as a race, we value financial gain more than the needs of our own? 

Business is more than making money; business is about people. 

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The Purpose of Purpose

The pieces of your employee engagement jigsaw puzzle can seem too edgy, have too many holes, or like bits of undistinguishable sky. If this is you, you're not alone.

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Many organisations realise they need to 'do HR differently' but often aren't sure what this means or exactly what is required to take them to a new reality.

Employee engagement - in theory - is really quite simple:

1. Performance Management (or 'Feedback and Reward' as I like to call it)
It's exactly what is says on my aptly named tin. Do your people receive enough feedback about their work - and by this I don't mean annual or by-annual reviews, I mean ongoing daily conversations about what is going well and what could be done differently. Do they receive the appropriate reward for the work they do? That's not just an annual salary and a bonus, that's recognition for good work in the form of non-monetary and/or monetary reward.

2. Leadership & Management 
Two very different things - naturally with some overlap - but both equally important. Do you people receive appropriate leadership and management?

Leadership is about inspiring your people to join you on an organisation journey. Building an empire around you that helps you to achieve the broader organisational goals while you continue to energise and support your people to deliver.

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Management is distinct from leadership in that it requires a more hands on role. Managers get into deeper detail about what to do and how to do it, in purpose of the broader organisational goals.

3. Trusted to take risks
To grow any organisation people need to take risks. Sometimes they pay off sometimes they don't. It's the chance we have to take to develop new products, services and ways of working. It's how we grow. Unfortunately, many people in organisations don't feel they can take those risks without reprimand if they go wrong.

It is important to develop a culture where people feel they can have a voice to say what they think. Whether that be about new ideas and processes or about the way the organisation is currently run; there is little room for growth if people can't speak out.

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4. Belief in the organisation
Would you fight for something you didn't believe in? I wouldn't. In fact, I'd probably fight for the opposite. If your people don't believe in what your organisation does, they will not have its best interests at heart. People need to believe in what the organisation stands for and feel that they can work each day towards achieving those goals.

This leads nicely to my last but most definitely not least point. In fact, without this all of your efforts will fall over:

5. A sense of purpose
Answer the simple question, why do you go to work every day?
If the answer is anything other than 'because you care about the work you do for the organisation you do it for', your sense of purpose is not aligned to the organisation and they are not getting the best from you.

Think about it. Most of the people who answer this question would say they work to make money; to feed their family, to pay for their weekly night out on the tiles, to pay the rent. And rightly so, that is one of the main reasons we work, but what if the people in your organisation actually wanted to be there because they cared about what happened to the company. Do you think you would get different behaviours from your people? Would they be more likely to put in that extra effort for no overtime payment? Would they be likely to take better care of your equipment and offices? Would they be keen to grow and develop personally to assist in the growth of the business? Probably. Of course, we don't want to exhaust people, people can only give so much so there has to be give and take, but getting that relationship right can take your business from good to great.

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Creating a sense of purpose that everyone in your organisation can buy into isn't easy. You need to dig deep to find the real, heartfelt reason you exist. All organisations exist to make money; that's a given. What you need to find is what is really at the heart of what you are trying to achieve. That's purpose. If you can get your people to join you on that journey - supported by the four other pieces of the engagement jigsaw - you'll be on your way to happy people, happy business and organisational growth.

Managers, are you really getting the most from your people?

As a manager, it is very tempting to ignore requests for change from employees; these requests often mean spending large chunks of money on a new process or system, or a request for a salary increase. What we often fail to see, is that even just by listening to someone and showing your empathy and understanding, but often doing little to change the situation, can help. 

Listen to your people

Ultimately, it is likely that your teams know more about their working challenges than you do, due to the simple fact that they work with the challenges on a daily basis. Listening to your people is vital. Sadly, this is often ignored, especially when it comes to large scale change across organisations. 

There is a well known psychological study which led to what we know today as the Hawthorne Effect. This phenomenon occurs when people improve their behaviour or productivity output due to the simple fact there has been a change in their working environment, whether or not the change results in an improvement to their working conditions. 

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This change can be as minor as being observed for a short period. Of course, we can't observe everyone all of the time, and we wouldn't want to because the effect would wear off, but by showing people you care, they will respond accordingly. The key is sincerity. 

Granted, this is a temporary measure, but it shows the potential positive impact of creating an environment of listening, sharing and displaying genuine concern for one another in the workplace. It also provides you with vital insight into the workings of you teams; you never know when this information might be useful. 

The crux of this is that people want to feel like they matter. Employees want to feel they are part of something important and without them the end goal wouldn't be as possible. But in order to bring people with you on your journey, you need to understand their motivations for work. 

Understanding your people

Knowing your people is the key to a happy workforce. In our modern world of non-traditional male and female roles, and the widespread introduction of flexible working, you are very behind the times if you are not sensitive to the work / life balance needs of your people. 

I recently spoke to a friend of mine and she relayed to me the challenges she could see across her national team, and that she knew she could help to make changes to ensure the team operated more efficiently. However, she is also the mother of a young child and was concerned to speak up at the fear that she may have to travel extensively and work long hours to achieve her goal. 

This fear factor is exactly what we should be trying to eliminate if we want a successful business. The environment we should be creating is an open forum for ideas and discussion and the opportunity for people to take calculated risks. 

The lack of this in the workplace, again comes back to our fear of spending; if people are allowed to have ideas, it often means spending and change. But, by talking together about reaching a larger purpose or goal, the smaller things become easier to achieve because they are in service of a bigger purpose. You become more creative, more resourceful as a team and can get things moving in the right direction - together.  

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It is sad that people have less passion for their work because they don't want to travel or leave work late instead opting to be at home with their child; but why wouldn't they?? It's normal to want a work / life balance. But whilst at work, we are not getting the best from our teams because they don't want to rock the boat and put themselves in a difficult position. We need to get the best from our people to get the best out of our business. 

There is another common principle used in psychology called the psychological contract. This is an unwritten contract between you and your people; an expectation of how you will both behave during your contract together. By being mindful of what your employees want, expect and need from you, you will get more back from them.

Here are some tips to help you do that:

1. Talk to people - find out their honest career goals - what do they really want out of their career and what work / life balance do they want. Give a little back to your employees, and they will give you more. 

2. Be flexible with hours. If someone needs to leave at 4.30pm to collect their child from school - let them do it. You've likely lost their engagement for the last hour of that day anyway because they are thinking about where they would rather be and should be - with their family. Even if they are only there for six hours a day, but they are happier and more motivated, you will get more from them than you would in their normal eight hours.

3. Provide people with the best resources to get the job done. Don't just say - it's too expensive to send you to X so you can't visit that team or take that course. Ensure you talk freely with them to come up with an affordable but effective option for making the job possible. You will get more from people if you work WITH them, not against them.

Being a manager is a tough job, but it can be made much easier if you have happy and effective employees. Take some of these tips on board, and you will be surprised at what can be achieved.