Executives and employees must cooperate for a successful business.
Employee involvement can supplement strong corporate cultures to develop innovative organizations. The organization's values and involvement practices. Structural equation analysis indicate that effective involvement – measured by the use of employee problem solving groups, cooperative interaction, and employee influence – was a critical mediating mechanism between people-oriented values and firm performance. These results suggest the complex challenge of developing a successful organization and guides for making an organization both value-driven and productive.
participation - interaction - effectiveness
Corporate Executives and employees cooperation, harmony and caring will accomplish corporate environment responsibility, energy efficiency and prosperity of the company
In order for a business to be successful in its goals and services, produce substantial net earnings and growth, it is imperative that all employees of the company from the executives down the ladder to all employees – that cooperation and harmony exists among everyone.
All personal egos should be put aside for the good of the company, responding to questions and requests should be responded to in a timely manor. Ignoring a co-worker will only frustrate the situation and cause harm to morale within the company, which affect the business performance.
Co-operation and trust must of course flow in both directions.
Stress.
Stress, whether caused by on-the-job or external factors, is a major contributor to workplace poor performance. Naturally, the causes of stress vary greatly among organizations. Following is a list of stress related issues the assessment team should review.
Does the work environment emphasize common goals and cooperation or competition? When employees must carry out tedious and boring tasks, does management address the effect the repetition of this type of work may have on morale? Does the company offer employee-friendly schedules, such as flexible days off?
Are employees well suited to the job and adequately compensated for their skill level and market segment? Are they treated professionally?
Do employees have reasonable work accommodations or must they tolerate noise, bad air, cramped quarters, poor equipment, and other irritants?
Do employees have concerns about job security? Are they given support through programs such as employee assistance, counseling, and stress management programs?
Supervisory competence.
In most of America
Unfortunately, many more employees assume supervisory positions without the benefit of such training. This situation is particularly true in operations that require minimal skills, such as fast-food establishments, warehousing, packaging and distribution, and nontechnical assembly lines. Assessors should identify these deficiencies. For example, do they have communication and conflict resolution skills? Is there a clear chain of communication in the event of a problem; for example, is there an 800 number an employee can call to report workplace concerns? The following are some issues that require examination:
- Communications skills including the ability to speak the language of the supervised employees
- Awareness of cultural and ethnic differences
- Competence in stress management
- Competence in effective conflict resolution
- Ability to carry out objective performance evaluations
Training.
Task-related training improves productivity and employee job satisfaction. The complexity of today’s working environment requires a host of employment-related instructions. Employees have to have at least a working knowledge of many of the laws affecting the organization or industry. What is and what is not permissible is frequently a mystery to employees and only clarification in the classroom will remedy the situation.
Trends.
Trends are frequently important indicators of how well or how poorly a company manages its work force. Trends in absenteeism, tardiness, accident rates, volunteerism, and attendance at company functions identify strengths or weaknesses in employee morale, loyalty, and job satisfaction.
The assessor should not only compare the organization’s current performance to its past performance but also the organization’s own performance to that of other businesses of similar type, size and employee demographics.
Among the indicators that should be examined are productivity; employee turnover (including reasons given by the employees); terminations for cause, suspensions, and other disciplinary actions; absenteeism and the reasons given; on-the-job accidents and their causes; other security and safety issues; employee complaints about working conditions; lawsuits filed against the company by employees, clients, and others (and reasons).
Gathering the data.
An accurate assessment of the work environment cannot be made without candid input from employees at all levels. Unfortunately, employees may be reluctant to speak honestly for fear of reprisal.
For the assessment to succeed, senior management must communicate to each employee that total honesty during the interview is not only desirable but also essential. A management style that makes staff worry about "informers" is counterproductive. Employees must further be assured that comments will be given in confidence and with anonymity. Findings will not be associated with any one employee’s remarks. Employees must never face repercussions for voicing their opinions.
The assessor may choose to select employees at random for face-to-face interviews or use other criteria for the selection process, such as employee suggestions, performance evaluations, or absentee and sick-leave records.
These interviews demand exceptional skills on the part of the assessor. The assessor should have basic investigative skills. For example, he or she should be able to put the interviewee at ease, ask open-ended questions, and convey to the interviewee that the interviewer relates to their concerns.
If the work force includes significant numbers of non-English speaking employees, an assessor with at least a working knowledge of such languages should conduct the interviews. Coworkers should never be used as interpreters. Where translations are needed, an interpreter from a professional translation service should be retained.
The interview is not intended to be highly structured. The assessor should encourage the employee to comment on any work-related topic. If the employee needs some guidance, however, the assessor may address any or all of the following issues:
- Working conditions
- Coworkers and supervisors
- Corporate culture
- Management style
- Quality of supervision
- Policies and regulations
- Training
Final report.
Experienced assessors perform their task with a minimal amount of disruption to the company’s daily operations. When they have completed their work, they should provide a report to management containing a detailed discussion of their findings, including distinctions between factual determinations (such as whether alarms work), and alleged but unsubstantiated deficiencies. For example, during employee interviews, several employees may say that the only way to get promoted is by drinking with the boss and his buddies, claiming essentially that it’s just an old-boy network. That assertion may or may not be true. The assessor should attempt to verify the allegation and should note his or her findings in the final report.
The primary purpose of the assessment is to identify conditions as they are, not to make recommendations. Therefore, unless requested by management, the assessor should leave the choice of solutions to the executive committee. If solutions are requested the assessment team should place the recommendations in a separate section of the final report apart from the findings regarding existing conditions.
The assessor’s report should contain an executive summary giving senior management a concise overview of the findings. The report should then address each item examined and the findings in detail.
Management’s perception of the workplace can be far from reality even in the best of organizations. By obtaining a thorough workplace assessment before taking action, the executive committee is more likely to succeed in its efforts to prevent incidents of workplace violence.
You must serve as an example in implementing energy efficiency.
ReplyDeleteI think if corporate America is serious about energy conservation; it must start with people at the top and roll down from there to the rest of the executives and employees.
In order to accomplish such an important mission as energy conservation every executive and employee has to believe that what he is doing is the right thing.
They must practice the same attitude at home and implement energy conservation at home. This attitude will carry on to the workplace.
First thing that must be done is, each employee should be asked what has he/she done in their own lives to conserve energy, and than if the answer is positive advance the initiative from there, if not an education process must be implemented to drive the process home once this process has been achieved, it will be easier to get everyone to participate in energy conservation.
The motive and behavior has to come from within each individual person – it must become part of a routine practice – it must become a way of life – reducing waste in any form.
In today’s rising cost of energy – conservation must become a national theme.
Jay Draiman, Energy Analyst