Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
MANAGEMENT
BY QUINT STUDER / ILLUSTRATION BY ILANA KOHN
YOU’VE HEARD THE EXPRESSION “Save for a rainy day”? Well, get out your umbrellas, because it’s pouring. Recession-wracked companies are in the middle of a storm and leaders are asking their employees to make big sacrifices: long hours, stressful workloads, maybe even less pay.
If you’ve made regular “deposits” into your employees’ emotional bank accounts— consistently treating them right and helping them do their best work—you’re prepared. It’s “withdrawal” time and there’s enough goodwill in those accounts to keep everybody happy. If you haven’t taken the time to build positive, productive, trust-based relationships, you could be feeling some pain.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to start building emotional capital with your employees. Keeping their approval costs very little and yields fantastic ROI. Here’s how:
• Diagnose employee satisfaction—and act on the results. Use a proven, respected assessment tool to determine where your problems lie. (It’s important to take this step first so you can be certain to focus on the right issues.) Then, commit to solving them. Many companies do the first part, but it’s the last part that seals the deal.
• Find out what works and make it work for you. You may find that one department manager in particular got great communication scores, for example. Reward her—and apply her practices throughout the organization.
• Announce that you’re making changes. Tell employees specifically what you are going to fix. Expect skepticism, but don’t permit cynicism.
• Go for “quick wins” to establish credibility. Just making sure employees have the tools they need, for example—by updating technology, fixing faulty equipment or re-stocking supplies—can show them you care about their concerns. Quick wins don’t have to cost big bucks.
• “Round” relentlessly. Take an hour a day to touch base with employees, make a personal connection, recognize successes, find out what’s going well and determine what improvements can be made.
• Tell employees the hard truth. Let’s say you know that part of your organization is going to be outsourced, or that benefit cuts are coming. You should tell your employees the minute the decision is final. If you don’t, they might think that you knew all along—and much trust will be lost.
Withdrawals from emotional bank accounts are weightier than deposits. Great leaders do everything they can to make more of the latter. Because when the next rainy day comes, employees will give you the benefit of the doubt—and their goodwill will keep you dry.
Quint Studer is the founder of Studer Group and the author of Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top.
