The latest draft (beta 1.6) of the Happy Manifesto can be downloaded from here. Here is the manifesto, the key 9 points:
1. Trust Your People
Step out of approval. Instead pre-approve and focus on supporting your people.
2. Make Your People Feel Good
Make this the focus of management
3. Give Freedom within Clear Guidelines
People want to know what is expected of them. But they want freedom to find the best way to achieve their goals..
4. Be Open and Transparent
More information means more people can take responsibility
5. Recruit for Attitude, Train for Skill
6. Celebrate Mistakes
Create a truly no-blame culture
7. Community: Create Mutual Benefit
Have a positive impact on the world and build your organisation too
8. Love Work, Get a Life
The world, and your job, needs you well rested, well nourished and well supported.
9. Select Managers Who are Good at Managing
Make sure your people are supported by somebody who is good at doing that, and find other routes for those whose strengths are elsewhere. Even better, allow people to choose their managers.
Thoughts, comments, feedback, additional suggestions welcome.
Showing posts with label great workplace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great workplace. Show all posts
Friday, 5 November 2010
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Staff Surveys, Recruitment and Retention
Written for The People Bulletin:
Nandos, the popular restaurant chain, some years ago carried out research into what were the key factors that explained why sales at some of their restaurants grew faster than at others. After detailed analysis they found one factor stood out above all others in explaining the difference. This was how happy the staff were, as measured in the annual staff survey. In response they changed their bonus system, so that 50% of each manager’s bonus became based solely on those staff survey results.
So do you know what your staff think of working for you?
It gave a powerful message to managers that the root of success laid in happy and motivated staff and also of the importance of bothering to find out how they felt. In these challenging times it is more important than ever to create great working environments, where people feel valued. When we work with organisations to improve their workplace, our first step is generally a staff survey, plus interviews with employees, to find out how people feel at that particular moment in time. In particular, the results can show what needs to change to keep people, and thus improve retention.
It’s not just about pay
Managers are often in denial about staff dis-satisfaction and assume that people leave for jobs with better pay or prospects. Indeed research published in the Harvard Management Update[i] found 88% of managers believe this. But research among the people who leave jobs indicates the opposite is true[ii]. The Saratoga Institute[iii] followed up 19,500 people who had left jobs in 18 different organisations and found that only 12% left for better pay or prospects.
The other 88% left due to factors related to the job, the manager, the culture or the work environment. If we assume this may be true of your organisation too, and many of those are people you want to keep, then you need to be working out what in your organisational culture is driving people away.
There is really only one way to find that out, and that is to ask your employees. What do they like about working for your organisation? What don’t they like and could cause them to leave?
Our own back yard
At Happy we have been carrying out staff surveys and upward appraisals for over a decade and I am pleased to say that they are now very positive. But it hasn’t always been that way. One of the first appraisals I received was truly shocking. I hadn’t seen it coming. I thought I was doing a great job of representing the company, networking and bringing in business. My staff agreed. But they also told me that, back at the office, I wasn’t listening well, wasn’t appreciating the work people did and wasn’t engaging enough – and that this was important to them.
My response was to put myself on monthly appraisal. I was determined to change and I figured it was no good waiting six months or a year for feedback. As I responded to the feedback, steadily my ratings improved. It was a crucial period for me and I believe the growth we’ve had since then wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t done those surveys and I hadn’t made those changes to my behaviour.
We are very proud of the fact that Happy was this year rated the best company in the UK for staff health and well-being, and has been rated in the top 20 workplaces in the UK for the last four years by the Great Place to Work Institute.[iv]
I know that upward appraisals are controversial in some organisations. But my view is to not have them is unfair. How can you be sure how you are doing as a manager if you don’t get clear feedback from those you manage? How can you improve and develop without that?
Staff surveys, whether they are about the company as a whole or appraisals of individual or collective management, are essential if you truly want to create a great place to work through more than guesswork. And, providing you phrase it to get the positive as well as the negative, you may even be pleasantly surprised by some of the results.
Free staff survey
You can create your own staff survey using easy-to-use software like www.surveymonkey.com (just $200 a year for as many online surveys as you want to create) or use the free staff survey at the Happy People web site: register at http://www.happy-people.co.uk/resources/resources/free-staff-survey/, get your staff to complete it and receive a full report, including benchmarking information.
[i] ‘The keys to retaining your best managers in a tight job market’, Marie Gendron, Harvard Management Update June 1998. Obtainable directly from Harvard Business Publishing
[ii] The 7 hidden reasons employees leave by Leigh Branham in association with the Saratoga Institute, published by the American Management Association, 2005
[iii] A human capital measurement service part of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Details can be viewed at http://www.pwc.com/extweb/service.nsf/docid/de40ffb0d40981d385256f17005397cd
[iv] www.greatplacetowork.co.uk
Nandos, the popular restaurant chain, some years ago carried out research into what were the key factors that explained why sales at some of their restaurants grew faster than at others. After detailed analysis they found one factor stood out above all others in explaining the difference. This was how happy the staff were, as measured in the annual staff survey. In response they changed their bonus system, so that 50% of each manager’s bonus became based solely on those staff survey results.
So do you know what your staff think of working for you?
It gave a powerful message to managers that the root of success laid in happy and motivated staff and also of the importance of bothering to find out how they felt. In these challenging times it is more important than ever to create great working environments, where people feel valued. When we work with organisations to improve their workplace, our first step is generally a staff survey, plus interviews with employees, to find out how people feel at that particular moment in time. In particular, the results can show what needs to change to keep people, and thus improve retention.
It’s not just about pay
Managers are often in denial about staff dis-satisfaction and assume that people leave for jobs with better pay or prospects. Indeed research published in the Harvard Management Update[i] found 88% of managers believe this. But research among the people who leave jobs indicates the opposite is true[ii]. The Saratoga Institute[iii] followed up 19,500 people who had left jobs in 18 different organisations and found that only 12% left for better pay or prospects.
The other 88% left due to factors related to the job, the manager, the culture or the work environment. If we assume this may be true of your organisation too, and many of those are people you want to keep, then you need to be working out what in your organisational culture is driving people away.
There is really only one way to find that out, and that is to ask your employees. What do they like about working for your organisation? What don’t they like and could cause them to leave?
Our own back yard
At Happy we have been carrying out staff surveys and upward appraisals for over a decade and I am pleased to say that they are now very positive. But it hasn’t always been that way. One of the first appraisals I received was truly shocking. I hadn’t seen it coming. I thought I was doing a great job of representing the company, networking and bringing in business. My staff agreed. But they also told me that, back at the office, I wasn’t listening well, wasn’t appreciating the work people did and wasn’t engaging enough – and that this was important to them.
My response was to put myself on monthly appraisal. I was determined to change and I figured it was no good waiting six months or a year for feedback. As I responded to the feedback, steadily my ratings improved. It was a crucial period for me and I believe the growth we’ve had since then wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t done those surveys and I hadn’t made those changes to my behaviour.
We are very proud of the fact that Happy was this year rated the best company in the UK for staff health and well-being, and has been rated in the top 20 workplaces in the UK for the last four years by the Great Place to Work Institute.[iv]
I know that upward appraisals are controversial in some organisations. But my view is to not have them is unfair. How can you be sure how you are doing as a manager if you don’t get clear feedback from those you manage? How can you improve and develop without that?
Staff surveys, whether they are about the company as a whole or appraisals of individual or collective management, are essential if you truly want to create a great place to work through more than guesswork. And, providing you phrase it to get the positive as well as the negative, you may even be pleasantly surprised by some of the results.
Free staff survey
You can create your own staff survey using easy-to-use software like www.surveymonkey.com (just $200 a year for as many online surveys as you want to create) or use the free staff survey at the Happy People web site: register at http://www.happy-people.co.uk/resources/resources/free-staff-survey/, get your staff to complete it and receive a full report, including benchmarking information.
[i] ‘The keys to retaining your best managers in a tight job market’, Marie Gendron, Harvard Management Update June 1998. Obtainable directly from Harvard Business Publishing
[ii] The 7 hidden reasons employees leave by Leigh Branham in association with the Saratoga Institute, published by the American Management Association, 2005
[iii] A human capital measurement service part of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Details can be viewed at http://www.pwc.com/extweb/service.nsf/docid/de40ffb0d40981d385256f17005397cd
[iv] www.greatplacetowork.co.uk
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