Do They Really Care?

If you're not a nonprofit, how many of your employees would come to work if you weren't paying them?  I say nonprofit because it's relatively easy to see how a person might want to come to work to save starving children, feed homeless people, or raise money to cure a frightening disease. But if you're just selling plastic cups, software for insurance companies, or industrial lighting, it doesn't seem like it would be as easy to get workers excited about their jobs. How do you know if your workforce is there because they have to be, and would/will leave the first chance they get, and does it matter?

Training, sometimes viewed by employees as part of the reason they dread work (more boredom sitting in class, after all), offers some hope. One of the reasons work gets depressing is there doesn't seem to be any point to it. The employee feels like a cog in a piece of machinery, but doesn't know what the machinery does. Is it a robot, a cotton gin, a fancy lawn mower, who knows?  They know what they, as the cog, are responsible for, but have no idea what the end goal is. Most of your workers--you have to hope--understand what your company does (what you manufacture, sell, offer to clients), but how many understand your current business strategy, and the role they play in achieving it?  Letting them in on more of your big picture plan than they've ever been privy to in the past is risky, some argue. What about strategic confidentiality?  One of them could blab, or accidentally let slip, a key piece of your plan to a friend who happens to have a brother who works as an executive for a top competitor. That could happen, but maybe your trainers and instructional designers can work with management to figure out how to share just enough information to create an engaging curriculum.

In leadership development seminars, for instance, try to incorporate as much real world relevancy to business case studies as possible. If you have a class in which teams compete to win market share in simulated companies, see how much of your own company's goals you can use to make the "game" more relevant. For those working on the front lines, would it be possible to explain why you're suddenly discontinuing a piece of merchandise, expanding another, or branching out to reach a new demographic of customers?  Despite the popular desire to appear evolved, I wonder how many companies still just give marching orders to entry-level, customer-facing workers as if they were a little army of wind-up dolls? 

It's easy to give yourself over to a daily winding-up, and then relax while your handlers gently push you in the right direction, but it's kind of boring. I'm a big lover of the ways of the lazy (I happen to belong to that noble tribe, The Lazy People), but even a devotee to the couch has to step back (or stand up) and ask to be challenged a little more. Your employees may be busy--running this way and that for nine hours a day; or rarely able to turn their head away from their computer screen, but that doesn't mean they're engaged in their work. It just means they know they have a pile of tasks to get through in the next several hours before they begin to sputter and wind down.

If you give them more details on where you're headed maybe they'll be more energetic about following you, more productive along the way, and more empowered. You may find, shockingly, the morning wind-up sessions aren't necessary. They're self-propelled, no batteries or assembly required.

How self-empowered is your workforce?  Do you let them in on enough business strategy to inspire them to greatness, or at least long-lasting productivity?

Comments

[Scott Trunkett]

Very important leadership concept here.

Empowering your people with the vision of your organization, and inviting them to participate with meaning in the big picture is the best possible way to draw out and capitalize on their passion!

In a day where "Work-Life Balance" has become an over used buzzword, truly GREAT organizations seek to INTEGRATE the personal lives of their workforce into the business/work life.

By intentionally creating passion for the business in the hearts of your employees, they will willingly embrace their jobs as part of their lives...never to again sing the tunes, "I don't like Mondays," or "Everybody's workin' for the weekend."

SHARE your vision, and your passion, with your people, and they will blossom into the fully engaged team players that create greatness in an organization!