Relationships Part 2: Employee
Relationships and Profitability
My most recent column showed how your
company’s ability to create good
relationships, with employees and with
strategic partners, has a major impact
on profitability. In this column, we
will outline three steps to build good
relationships with employees. Then you
can control whether relationships with
most employees are positive or negative,
i.e., sources of mutual benefit or
mutual loss. In the next column, we will
consider the corporate capabilities
required to form successful alliances
with strategic partners.
Step One - To build mutual benefit,
start with your needs: Flight
attendants always remind you to put on
your own oxygen mask first, then your
child’s. Otherwise, you may pass out and
be useless to your child. Likewise, you
cannot create good conditions for
employees unless your needs are handled
first. Therefore, before you begin to
recruit, invest enough time to envision
what you really want and need from a
particular position. Many employers only
give this step hasty attention.
Suppose that you want a secretary.
Because this is a familiar term, you may
assume that you know what you want this
person to do. You may forget that
secretaries do many different things,
only some of which are important to you.
You may want someone whose vision of the
secretarial role is quite different from
yours. Mutual disappointment is sure to
follow.
To avoid that danger, take a little time
to identify the duties of this
particular secretarial position. Will
your secretary prepare internal
documents for your consumption or
documents that need to be flashy for
customers? How much interaction with the
public will there be? How much will you
want your secretary to control access to
you without alienating people? Will you
want this person to do research on the
Internet?
Some of the key abilities will be
technical, i.e., facility with word
processing. Other skills fall into the
category of emotional intelligence,
i.e., tact, poise, and communication. Be
sure to consider both areas. If
possible, get others to help you list
important skills. For this example,
consult your former secretary, other
secretaries in the organization, and
people who may have reason to interact
frequently with your secretary. By
thinking through the actual tasks you
need your secretary to do, you will
identify the essential skills a
candidate needs in order to be
successful.
Step Two - Recruit patiently, with
full disclosure: A professional had
to replace his office manager of 18
years, someone upon whom he had become
highly reliant. He made two mistakes.
First, out of anxiety, he made an
impulsive hiring decision. Three months
later, he had to fill the position again
because of a bad fit between the
person’s skills and the demands of the
job.
His second mistake was that he did not
share all of the challenges of the job
with the first replacement. Because he
did not want to scare her away, he did
not discuss how difficult it would be
for anyone to step into the shoes of the
former office manager, who was held in
high regard by everyone in the office.
Had he been more forthcoming, the young
woman might have recognized that she was
not old enough to have the personal
maturity required. She might have saved
them both some time. Fortunately, in his
next attempt, he took his time, better
understood his needs, talked candidly
about both the positives and
difficulties of the job, and found
someone who worked out extremely well.
Step Three - Meet the employee’s
reasonable expectations, wants, and
needs: Prudent disclosure (Step Two)
will help you manage employee
expectations. Also be careful about
promises you make. If you promise “rapid
advancement” as a way of luring a
candidate into accepting your job offer,
and then you do not deliver, you have
poisoned your relationship.
Research from the Gallup Organization
gives employers essential knowledge
about how to create great relationships
with employees. Gallup studied 80,000
managers and one million of their
supervisees over twenty-five years.
Gallup discovered that while job
candidates choose to join companies,
perhaps because of reputation or the
compensation package, it is the behavior
of managers that determines whether or
not employees stay. Thus, the ability of
your managers to create good
relationships controls whether you
retain talented employees or have to
spend extra money on recruitment and
retraining.
The management behaviors Gallup found to
be essential for good relationships
involve helping employees succeed,
creating the recognition that their job
matters, providing opportunities to
learn and grow, and personal acceptance.
To help create success, managers can:
-
tell employees clearly what is
expected, i.e., tell them how to
succeed
-
provide the materials and equipment
needed to succeed; don’t
inadvertently set them up to fail
-
give employees tasks that tap into
their best skills
-
recognize employees for good work;
then they know that their boss knows
that they are successful
Three supervisory behaviors help
employees recognize their importance:
-
give employees reason to believe
that their opinions count
-
help workers understand the ways in
which the company’s mission or
purpose matters
-
create an atmosphere in which
workers are dedicated to quality
People want to grow their skills, today
more than ever. To tap into this need,
managers can:
Finally, most employees do not want to
work in an impersonal setting. They want
to feel that someone at work cares about
them as a person. Managers need to find
something in each employee to care
about. Otherwise, the relationship is
doomed. Second, they can encourage an
atmosphere of internal collaboration
which, in turn, creates a foundation for
mutual acceptance among employees.
Dana C. Ackley, Ph.D., is founder and
CEO of EQ Leader, Inc., which helps
companies perform at their peak through
emotional intelligence. He can be
reached at (540) 774-1927, or by e-mail
at
dana.ackley@eqleader.net.
