Motivated people more productive than disengaged employees. 

Employee engagement programs, talent management, retention strategies,  performance management frameworks, rewards and recognition programs; these are all great tools. However many businesses fail to make sustainable, positive changes in their people’s level of motivation.

Why? It could be for a number of reasons, two of which are:

1. Difference in values
2. Gap between business direction and people activity.

One area of reduced performance comes not from ‘bad’ employees, but unclear expectations or a difference in values. Often performance disagreements are the result of mis-aligned (ie different) business and personal values.

ORGANISATIONAL VALUES 

Values represent the core priorities in the organisations culture. They include what drives your business decisions and priorities, and how you act within your business. As the owner, Director, or a Manager in the organisation, you are clearly aware of the organisational values and how you should behave in order to achieve acceptable business outcomes. This is sometimes so with our frontline employees. They can be focussed more on operational, day to day activities, and less so with strategic direction.

PERSONAL VALUES

Conflicts develop when our personal values are not aligned with the business values. If business values determine what we (employees, Managers, Directors, Owners) should be doing, our personal values determine HOW we are going to do it.

AGREED VALUES

I recall working with a large organisation who implemented the company-wide values program. Through workshops, screen savers, mouse pads, on-line learning modules, key rings, and even included in the performance review as KPIs – They wanted to reinforce the expected values of the organisation.

The EXPRESSED Organisational Values:

• Respect
• Trust
• Integrity
• Teamwork
• Accountability
• Responsibility

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE LIST?

Nothing, on the surface.

However employees were unaware of the process involved to develop the values, and even though they recognised the benefits of behaving according to organisational wide values, they felt forced into submission. In an environment where a manger could show a lack of integrity (eg through failure to stick to his/her word) said manager could reduce an employee’s performance rating for failure to be ‘part of the team’, thus eroding trust.

WHAT WE PERMIT WE PROMOTE

If we are not having honest, truthful conversations with our people, we promote an environment of mistrust. When we ignore suggestions and idea’s of our employees, we are telling them we are closed to new ideas.

ORGANISATION-WIDE BEHAVIOURS

If you want your business to be an employer of choice, a place where people are lined up waiting to be employed by your brand, it’s no great leap to recognise that your leadership team, be it 2 or 20, must display the personal values of the company through their behaviour, before you can even begin to roll out the expectations to your people.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your companies values behaviour.

Be truthful

When it comes to performance issues, are you discussing issues with the other person within 24hours? Are you approaching the person in a friendly, non-threatening way?

Trust people you work with

Are you willing to trust one of your team to complete a task, even if you see them encountering challenges, or do you jump in and fix the problem yourself?

Coach unselfishly

Do you, as a manager, blur the lines between manager, coach and mentor. Do you know when to direct, when to sit on the sidelines and cheer, or when to just listen?

Be open to new ideas, regardless of their origin

Do you respond to suggestions from your team openly? Do you put aside traditional biases and listen with an open mind?

Be innovative and supportive

There are long debates about what you need to foster innovation, however it can be a simple as being open to new ideas. When you do this, your employees feel safe to propose idea’s that might be unpopular, or even when they could be wrong

Give credit where it’s due

Reward programs cost employers millions of dollars every year, yet many employees are motivated by recognition of their efforts. Do you recognise your employee’s efforts in a timely manner, or do you wait until a performance review to tell them “Great Job”, and then bring them back to reality by following up with where they didn’t perform this month?

Have pride in your organisation

Are your team aware that they need to feel proud of the products and services your company offers?

Put the interests of others before yourself

Do your team members cheer for another person’s success or the group’s success, even when it appears that there is nothing in it for them?

This is a snapshot of what would be involved to develop an agreed level of company wide values to increase higher levels of engagement and employee satisfaction. By focussing on the behaviours that drive agreed values, innovative teams focussed on achieving the organisations vision through alignment of their personal and organisational values will lead to significant increases in revenue and profit.

If you’d like to find out more about what high performing organisations are doing to improve employee performance, Register now for the workshop “Square Watermelons & Employee Performance – The top 5 attributes of high performing organisations”