Passionate employees produce better results. The best way to spark passion in your people is to demonstrate your own passion, but you needn’t be a cheerleader. Here are three ways to authentically show your enthusiasm and inspire others:
Focus on the positive. Employees know when a leader truly cares about a company or a project. Passionate leaders can’t help but talk about what’s working well and try to find ways to fix what isn’t.
Don’t ignore the negative. Passionate leaders aren’t all about sunny skies — they address negatives in a realistic way and help people solve problems.
Set high expectations. This doesn’t mean unattainable workloads. Passionate leaders should inspire and challenge people to do their best, without overloading them.
For more information see Harvard Business Press Review
Are you, your employees and managers feeling battered, unsettled and unhappy?
Workers are being asked to do so much more with less time to complete the tasks. Many employees face the threats of their work hours being reduced, pay cuts, benefit cuts, or even layoffs. These factors can contribute to employee burnout. How is your company struggling to maintain morale? Is your company keeping employees motivated during one of the worst motivating times in recent history due to the financial crises across the world?
Despite these workplace distractions, you need your employees will remain productive. Are you keeping your managers focused on growing your business? How do you keep doing business in such an unusual business climate?
The major key is to recognize the early warning signs of declining motivation and plummeting morale, then respond quickly with practical solutions to help your employees and your business bounce back. Have you thought of ways to succeed at this?
Employee loyalty is at an all time low and even if your workforce is loyal and motivated, how do you sustain it? Any qualified owner or manager will tell you that morale can crash from one month to the next.
How do great companies create strong morale and reap the benefits of breakthrough productivity, high product quality, world-class customer service and low turnover?
Is it primarily driven by market success? No.
High salaries? No.
A single charismatic leader? No.
There is not a simple shortcut or solution to achieving high morale and avoiding burnout. And usually one person cannot always make it happen by themselves. Companies with fabulous morale do a whole lot of things right from the beginning. There are many simple tasks that can be done to keep your employees more content so that they perform a better outcome at their position. Lean thinking is not about just cutting expenses. What are you doing for your employees or even yourself to stay motivated if you are a one person company?
Lean is about having a drive for simplicity and the power of knowledge.
One of the biggest areas that is forgotten in Lean is respect for people. If a company has properly trained individuals they can in many cases help your facility make a profit. Laying people off and eliminating jobs is not lean. The company may not have as much in salaries, yet they are losing the knowledge their employees have which could make a difference in their success. Lean is about thinking for the long-term, not the short-term.
People are not a liability that accounting professionals tries to impose on a business. Employees that are properly trained, supported, and acknowledged for their value in the company are an asset. Knowledge, and experience cannot be measured on a accounting balance sheet. Employees are worth far more than what we pay for a simple pair of hands.
With this downturn in the economy all businesses should look at Toyota. They have not downsized any one in their fleet of employees. They are making a profit. When we do not use the talents of the staff we have, companies are bound to not be at their top best.