Archive: Jul 2013

  1. How Can Involvement Help Tackle Absenteeism?

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    Did you know;

     

    –       The average UK worker has 10 days of ‘unscheduled absences’ each year

    –       The average cost per worker for employers is £673 (CIPD Report)

     

    Now consider this:

     

    –       The average ‘engaged’ employee takes 2/3 ‘unscheduled absences each year

     

    I’ll let you do the maths.

     

    Put simply; these figures suggest that companies who are able to create an involved workforce stand to save a considerable amount of money and lost productivity based on attendance figures alone!

     

    It’s no secret that absenteeism is a major drain on company resources across the country. Every day that one of your team is ‘off sick’, you are losing money and wasting valuable time. Unfortunately, although many companies recognise that they need to tackle this problem, most approach it in completely the wrong way.

     

    Tackling Absenteeism

     

    There are two possible approaches to tackling absenteeism. The most common approach is to enforce attendance.

     

    Although this can be very effective in curing the symptom and delivering short-term results, unfortunately this approach is only likely to drive the employee in question to further disengage with their job and colleagues.

     

    The second approach is to increase the autonomy and responsibility of your workforce. Though it may seem counter intuitive, team members who have more control over how and where they work are far more likely to take responsibility and get involved with what they are doing.

     

    Clearly, this second option will work better with some team members than others. To ensure that you aren’t left with an empty office and a whole team ‘working from home’, you will need to build in some ‘outer limits’. If you feel that an employee is taking advantage of the flexibility and control you’ve given them, you need to have effective, productive systems in place to correct the problem.

     

    As a manager, you should never approach absenteeism as a distinct problem. If someone is sick, they should be able to stay at home. However, if they are taking additional ‘sick’ days to avoid coming into work, there are clearly much deeper problems that need to be addressed in the most productive way possible.

    The answer? Increase involvement!

     

    Are you struggling with high absenteeism in your organisation? Looking for a solution? Why not get in touch and find out how we can help?

     

     

  2. Involvement – The Key to Continuous Improvement

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    When we design a change programme we focus on a single objective. This objective might be to design the visual identity of the company, or maybe define the company’s core vision and values. We then use this objective to showcase the value and methodology of true involvement.

     

    The purpose of these change programmes isn’t to fulfil this particular objective – though this is an important component – rather, we hope that through this exercise we are able to lay the foundations for a culture of continuous improvement.

     

    Continuous Improvement Requires Involvement

     

    In order to ensure continuous improvement within your organisation, you need to tick a number of boxes.

     

    First, you need to know where you are going and be able to communicate this to your entire team. If you are a leader within your organisation, the clarity of your vision and direction is the most influential factor in determining whether your workforce will be able to innovate and improve.

     

    Once you are clear about your collective vision, you then need to determine your reason for getting there? No, making more money doesn’t cut it here. You need a reason that’s going to motivate and drive your team forward over a period of years, not weeks.

     

    Next, you need a practical and clear method for achieving your vision. Don’t panic, you don’t have to come up with all the answers yourself, this is the whole point of having an involved team!

     

    This brings us on to the final, crucial point. Each of the previous objectives could be achieved by a good leader with a moderately engaged workforce. The trouble is, by leaving it there you will inevitably have your work cut out keeping your team motivated and striving for improvement. It will feel like an uphill struggle.

     

    Perhaps the most important factor is cultivating your team’s desire to improve. It’s this desire that defines the difference between simple engagement and true involvement. When your team wants to solve problems, come up with new ideas and achieve your common goal, that’s when you’ve achieved something of real value.

     

    When your team shares your desire to reach your goal, when it becomes their goal, your job as a leader and manager gets much simpler. You won’t have to keep motivating your staff. You won’t have to keep them on track. You wont have to force innovations and brainstorming. It’ll all just happen!

     

    These four key components for continuous development are all also core characteristics of the involved team member. Put very simply, the only way to achieve this state of continuous improvement within your organisation is to cultivate an involved workforce.

     

    Would you like to see continuous improvement just happen in your company? Why not give us a call to see how we can help you make it a reality.

     

     

     

  3. What’s Your Delegation Style?

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    Ownership is the key to involvement.

     

    When we teach involvement we do so through trying to get team members to take ownership of initiatives. Through this, we hope that team members start taking ownership of the company aims, objectives and vision.

     

    So, your aims and expectations as a leader are that each member of your team will take ownership of company initiatives and own the same vision and drive as you.

     

    Sounds like a lot to ask of an employee, right?

     

    Develop ‘Future Owners’

     

    To achieve this level of involvement from each member of your team, your management style needs to reflect the value each of them hold for your organisation. You can’t expect an employee who has low responsibility and limited autonomy to get fully involved with their work.

     

    Delegation is usually seen as a way of freeing up your time to focus on more important things. Instead, how about thinking of it from the other side? Delegation gives you an opportunity to develop your team. If you delegate tasks based on ‘what would benefit ‘team member A’ most?’ rather than, ‘what don’t I have time to do?’ you’ll start to increase productivity, ownership and involvement across the board.

     

    Thoughtful delegation is the only way to encourage and cultivate ownership within a team. If you are trying to cultivate this ownership, you need to start treating each of your team members as possible future owners of your organisation. With this mind set, you will start delegating tasks that will cultivate responsibility, accountability and ownership. Even if that team member leaves two years later, the process itself will have ensured that, for those two years, they were fully involved with their work.

     

    How many possible future owners have you got in your team? Do you delegate with this in mind?

     

    Well, maybe you should start….

  4. The Role of Internal Communications (in 140 characters or less)

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    During our session at the recent Melcrum Live event, we asked teams to tweet their description of the role of IC, as an analogy.

    In no order of preference, here’s an unedited list of what they came up with:

    • – Banana
    • – IC is like Viagra it engages people and ultimately leads to better performance!
    • – IC is the golden thread that holds the fabric of an organisation together
    • – In IC we have to be like a chameleon. Always adapting to the situation
    • – We’re the Master Chef of comms
    • – We’re the pit crew supporting everything, to make sure the companies going in the right direction
    • – IC is an iceberg – many orgs only want to see a tiny part of what we can do; there’s lots more underneath!
    • – Collaborative counseling coaching comms conduit (concise)
    • – We are flight attendants guiding, advising and reassuring our people
    • – We are the bluetac, stretched, pulled, making messages stick, bonding people, flexible shape changers
    • – Internal Comms is an evolving and changing profession – we are moving from creators to curators
    • – Hopefully IC not like a swan: all graceful elegance on the surface, but paddling like feck underneath 🙂
    • – The thread that stitches the business patchwork together
    • – We are the invisible glue that binds the business together.
    • – IC is the light at the end of the tunnel
    • – The grease and the glue
    • – The yellow brick road…it takes brains, heart and courage to follow it
    • – The grit in the oyster
    • – IC is a honeybee; focused, organised, connecting & delivering messages. Integral to all. Without us, nothing else works.

     

    Send us a tweet if you can build on these @involve_uk.

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