Employee Retention - Building Commitment

A committed employee is extraordinarily valuable. You can gain staff commitment by meeting people’s key needs: paying attention to people at all levels; trusting and being trusted; tolerating individuality; and creating a blame-free, can-do culture. But why go through all these? What is the importance of gaining trust and commitment? It all goes down to the fact that when a company gains the trust and commitment of their employees they establish employee retention. And employ...

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employee retention strategy,employee retention program,employee retention survey,employee retention plan,employee retention research,ways to improve employee retention,employee retention idea

Article Body:

A committed employee is extraordinarily valuable. You can gain staff commitment by meeting people’s key needs: paying attention to people at all levels; trusting and being trusted; tolerating individuality; and creating a blame-free, can-do culture. But why go through all these? What is the importance of gaining trust and commitment? It all goes down to the fact that when a company gains the trust and commitment of their employees they establish employee retention. And employee retention is vital in establishing a firm foundation as the company proliferates and achieves their goals.

1. What Is Employee Retention?

Basically, employee retention is all about encouraging the people to commit themselves throughout in the company. Through employee retention, the company is able to lessen the additional expenses of hiring and training new people and at the same time build trust and commitment within coworkers, the result of which is happier, harder working employees.

2. The Basics Of Gaining Trust

The quality and style of leadership are major factors in gaining employees’ trust and commitment, thereby, initiating employee retention in the long run. Clear decision-making should be coupled with a mutual and emphatic approach. This entails taking people into your confidence and clearly and honestly valuing their contributions. In turn, you gain employee retention.

As the boss, you should also

- Make yourself as visible as possible
- Show yourself to be approachable
- Always be willing to listen to others
- Never ask an employee to do something you would not be willing to do yourself
- Learn to trust those who work for you - trust is a two-way street

3. Sense Of Ownership In The Organization

A company can gain trust and commitment and expand their shareholders at the same time by offering employees the opportunity to purchase shares in the company, or better yet, implement a rewards program where shares in the company are offered instead of monies. By letting them feel that they will realize that the success of the company is their success as well, and its downfall is their failure too.

4. Pride

If your employee takes pride in being a part of the organization or the company, chances are that employee will surely stay for good. Employee retention is achievable when the employee feels good about the work, loves the company, knows that they are in good hands, and takes pride in their work.

3. Willingness To Work Long Hours

If you are able to encourage your employees to work long hours without having to mandate them or push them, chances are you are establishing a good sense of employee retention. This just goes to show that the employee is more than willing to commit longer hours of work not because of the overtime pay but the fulfilment that he or she wants to achieve.

4. Holding Personal Values Consistent With The Organization

If your employees continue to take part in the company’s values and moral standards and incorporate these things within their own system, this goes to show that they are committed to the company and that they are willing to be a part of the group for as long as it exists. That is a clear manifestation of employee retention.

5. Creating A Strong Sense Of Team Spirit

Employee retention can be achieved if you know how to foster a sense of team spirit. If this is achieved, you can be assured that your employees will serve best for the interest of the group and their individual satisfaction as well. Corporate events and challenges between departments (or even between store locations) are examples of how you can foster team spirit.

6. Commitment

Commitment is the highest form of employee retention. If your employee is already committed to the company by expressing his or her desire to uplift the status of the organization, to boost productivity, and to refurbish mistakes and failures then you can be sure that the employee will stay for good.

Keep in mind that when employee retention is achieved, the company should, in turn, keep that retention as well by remunerating effectively and expressing appreciation through employee recognition. If this is all incorporated, then, a harmonious relationship between the employee and the company is at hand.

Business card’s Enduring Commercial Commitment

Business cards are not just tiny pieces of paper. Size does not matter, that is. This is because tiny things may mean a lot.

Keywords:

business cards printing

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Business cards are not just tiny pieces of paper. Size does not matter, that is. This is because tiny things may mean a lot.

Handing of business cards is common to the business world. You can see businessmen exchange business cards after meeting. You can even see the act when you walk across the streets. Business cards are so tiny that they are pretty accessible. They are not as big and as heavy as other promotional tools. Hence, they are easy to carry and distribute. Aside from this reason why do you think are they trusted by businessmen and the common people alike?

The reason is that they have already gauged its effectiveness when it comes to giving vital information. A business card can convey a message of enduring commitment to your business venture. The presentation, information and the totality of the business card can very well give an impression of dedication and passion. This is the reason why business card printing must be trusted only to the reliable printers who are skilled and reputable.

Personalization is a key factor that can make business cards a powerful marketing tool. With it, you are given a broader horizon and a wider leeway in connection with your brochure printing needs. You can make use of your own design as well as texts and incorporate it with your company logo and name to make it appear more personal and warm. The more you are perceived personal by your potential customers, the more they will trust you. This is because you create an atmosphere of friendliness and comfort and they, in turn, develop trust and confidence in you.

Whether you are a doctor, engineer, lawyer or a business company indulged in products and services, you must put special consideration to your business card printing needs. Big companies all over the globe do that. It is one of the factors why they stay on top.

With the latest breakthroughs, business cards these days can now be printed on top quality biodegradable paper with the use of exquisite colors. These two enhances graphics, shadowing, bleeds and the overall quality of the business cards. These cards are the fulcrum that fetches the customers to your commerce, make sure that you take advantage of the fulcrum to create bonds and confidences.

Gaining Commitment Or Compliance From Your Team? Some guidelines for team decision making

Ever thought about the best way of gaining commitment from your team? Try changing the method of decision making to suit the situation. This article suggests some simple, yet effective steps to take.

Keywords:

Motivated employees and employee feedback, team meetings, decision making, group decision making

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Copyright 2006 The National Learning Institute

Rob worked as a qualified, but junior physiotherapist in a busy hospital. He along with three of his colleagues were asked by their manager to discuss amongst themselves how they would like their rosters to be organised (i.e. who would do what shifts etc.) and put forward their proposal. Rob and his colleagues were very happy with their final choices as they had considered all of their personal and professional needs and felt that their decision was the best for all. A day before the new rosters were to start, Rob found out by rumour during his lunch break that their roster recommendations were not to be implemented. Worse still, the rosters decided on by their manager did not suit any of the four. This decision by their manager resulted in a severe lowering of morale within the team and created a culture of mistrust with management. In future, they would be very wary of any suggestion from management.

Ever been a member of a work team where the manager threw a difficult problem over to the team to solve only to see the manager implement a completely different decision to that of the team? If the implemented solution affected the ongoing congruence and cohesiveness of the team, how did this make you feel? Why does this happen and is it a legitimate management strategy for group decision making?

Often this occurs because the manager does not understand the importance and nature of group decision making within teams. It can also occur because of the manager’s feeling of comfort with one particular style of group decision making irrespective of the circumstances or context of the problem.

Decision making within groups ranges on a continuum from “by the leader with little or no discussion” through to “complete consensus”. Here are the stages along that continuum:

• By the leader with little or no discussion

• By the leader following group consultation

• By an “expert” (either within the group or advice received by the group)

• Averaging (e.g. using a mathematical process to assess options, then averaging)

• By a minority (can be through personal or positional power)

• By majority vote

• Consensus

Surprisingly, each has its place and can be a very successful method. As a manager, the method of group decision making you decide on, depends on whether you want commitment or compliance from your team. Of the seven methods, only “consensus” is most likely to produce commitment to the team decision. Using the other six methods will bring compliance (because you are the manager). Commitment will then depend on:

• How well you are perceived as a leader

• How effective (for all concerned) is the final decision

Much has been written by managerial experts about the “appropriateness” for managers to use consensus decision making in order to build staff morale. This is also supported by the study of jury decision making where it has been found that juries required to make unanimous decisions consider the evidence more carefully and thoroughly and report higher levels of juror confidence in the ultimate decision, than juries operating a majority verdict system (American Judicature Society http://www.ajs.org/jc/juries/jc_decision_research.asp)

Managers should also consider that although it generally takes a lot longer, consensus more often comes up with a better result. Again in the legal system, a recent study of the difference between judges’ opinions of the outcome of 48 trials (ranging from a day to five weeks duration) and the ultimate outcome decided by the actual juries using the consensus method, resulted in only three differences. (Law Reform Commission of NSW http://www.ajs.org/jc/juries/jc_decision_research.asp)

However, if you do not need commitment, but merely compliance, then it can be legitimate and effective to choose a method other than consensus. Sometimes this may be necessary because of time, context or other pressures. For example, it would be inappropriate (and quite hazardous) for an army officer to hold a group consensus meeting with the troops on how to hold back the imminent approach of the enemy!

Irrespective of which decision making approach you adopt, the most critical point for managers to remember is:

“Always inform your team beforehand how the decision will be made.”

For example, if you decide that in a particular case, this is your decision to make but you would like the input of your team in order to make an informed decision (by the leader following group consultation), say so. You will find that if you do this on all occasions, then the team will become more involved (and ultimately committed) to both the decision making process and the decisions themselves.

You should also consider what your preferred style of group decision making is and most importantly, how appropriate is it for the current situation. Think for a moment about the last 5 or 6 meetings you have run with your team where there was a critical decision to make. What style of decision making as a leader did you adopt? What style do you feel most comfortable with? My suggestion is to read the list again prior to each team meeting and decide at the outset what method you will adopt for this decision. This will prevent you from becoming locked into your natural or preferred method.

Above all, having decided on a method for this decision, stick with it. In the case of Rob’s manager (whom I mentioned at the start of this article), we can all probably see that she adopted consensus as the most appropriate and effective method, but then changed her mind after the event. Initial commitment was certainly lost, grudging compliance was gained and my bet is that staff morale would be very low for some time to come.