Give them credit
February 5th, 2010 by Caroline HoenkWe’ve all heard the news – employees hate their jobs, their companies, their work. In fact, according to a recent survey by The Conference Board (which was highlighted in this CNN piece), 55% of workers are unsatisfied with their jobs. And, 25% said they don’t plan to be at their current jobs a year from now.
If you’re an employer, this should obviously cause you some concern – and if you’re smart, you’ll adopt some strategies designed to re-engage your workforce. Because we all know (or at least, hope) that someday soon, this recession will end and new job opportunities will start to emerge. And then, employees will have choices again about where they want to work.
That said, this doesn’t mean you should totally discount your employees’ enthusiasm for your business or their desire to help make things better.
Case in point: I recently had a chance to work with a client that has not just survived, but actually thrived in the economic downturn. But, the road hasn’t been easy – there’s been a fair amount of change and uncertainty. As a result, the company’s leadership decided to create a new internal brand in an effort to excite and inspire employees and also to give them a shared sense of purpose – a clearly outlined destination for the company.
As part of the rollout, we held a meeting with what I’ll call “everyday employees” – the ones who see customers and sell products. These folks are relatively removed from the proverbial “table” and don’t have a ton of authority in terms of the company’s destination. Here’s what happened when presented with the concept: everyone got excited. They told us how motivating it was and said they couldn’t wait to learn more. What we heard was that they had been looking for this sort of rally cry to get behind and were ready to hit the ground running.
This was a bit of an unexpected outcome. Collectively, we had worried that employees wouldn’t willingly adopt this new internal brand or believe in its ability to help unite the company. Some of the more senior executives were worried they couldn’t credibly talk about this destination because it was aspirational – it didn’t reflect the current reality.
If I had to guess, I’d wager that this sort of debate is happening all across corporate America. Executives are worried that employees are frustrated, upset or burned out. And that very well might be true. But, what I learned is that while the inclination might be to just go radio silent for a while (out of a feeling that you’ve lost the “permission to speak”), often what employees are craving is something that reignites their spark and reinvigorates their work.
Our client was willing to keep charging forward and engaging with their employees, and they’ve now they’ve given their workforce the morale boost they were craving.
So, give your team a little credit. At the end of the day, many employees WANT to be engaged, they WANT to be a part of something and they WANT to make a difference. Sometimes they just need you to help them see how.








