More Broken Windows Management Tips (4)

 

 

 

More Broken Windows Management Tips (4)   By Dr. Tom DePaoli   See my book Broken Windows Management on Amazon for more information. Gauging Employee Morale. One of the stories that I remember about employee morale being so low was when I was a department head in a warehouse in California. They were experiencing a colder than normal January in the warehouse, which was not heated. On my own initiative I want out and got jackets, that we're going to be discarded anyway, and gave them to the employees that worked in the warehouse. The reaction to this was incredible. After this, I could do no wrong and they would do almost anything I asked. The sad part about this story is that this one little gesture showed a complete lack of good employee morale in this warehouse. This story just reinforces the broken windows management principle, that fixing things, and making work hygiene better impresses employees more than anything.

Get People to Clean Up. One of the ways you can get employees involved in improving the quality of their work life and hygiene factors is to get them involved in cleaning up the work area and keeping it clean. Don't be cheap. Buy them the very best cleaning tools and resources to help them in this cleaning process. Set your housekeeping standards high and enforce them. Make sure it's known that you will not tolerate sloppy work areas with poor housekeeping.

Go to Bat for Your Employees When They Are in Trouble. Every one of your employees will have a personal issue that impacts their work performance. One of the ways to cement their trust in you is to help them get through these personal crises, and do everything that you can to make sure that they continue to be productive employees. This may mean sacrificing on your part but it will pay off in the long run and build up the employees' faith in you and the organization.

Instant Gratification Works. Most employees would rather have their problems solved as soon as possible. Instead many of the problems are significantly ignored by management. This exacerbates the situation. Employees expect to be cared for, and things that do not seem to be serious to upper management, are critical to many employees. Ignore them and you will not get much creativity out of them. In fact, you will not get much of anything out of them except skepticism.

Keep Score as If Your Life Depended on It. When you do make improvements to the employees lives and processes make sure you keep metrics to show the before and the after results. Use photographs and videos to show the progress that you have made to their work. Do not be afraid to go out and see if there are even better ways that you can improve the quality of their work life. Benchmark with other companies and other organizations to see if they have come up with an even better way to make sure that employee’s complaints are fixed immediately.

Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon.  He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children.

https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli    = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page

http://www.apollosolutions.us  = website of Apollo Solutions his business

drtombooks.com  = more information on Dr. Tom’s books

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/  = LinkedIn home page

 

 

 

Contact Dr. Tom = thomasdepaoli@yahoo.com drtombooks.com for newsletter sign up https://drtombooks.com/contact/ My Books link: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-DePaoli/e/B003XSV1IQ