How to Make Your Employees Feel Appreciated

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The need for making your employees feel valued and appreciated should not complicate the way you interact with them.

Those who find meaning and fulfilment in the eight or nine hours a day they spend with you will typically perform better and stick around for longer. Not only will it benefit your organisation on a financial level by reducing absence and boosting engagement, it will increase the chances of your employees living fulfilled lives.

That is why, if you’re interested in building a team of productive employees within the company, then making said employees feel valued is perhaps a manager’s most important job.

Feeling valued and appreciated at work is something we all need in order to do our best, whether we admit it or not. Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project, said in an article in Harvard Business Review, “The struggle to feel valued is one of the most insidious and least acknowledged issues in organizations. Most employees are expected to check their feelings at the door when they get to work. But try as we might, we can’t.”

In one study published by Harvard Medical School, helping employees feel valued was shown to have a dramatic impact on their performance. Researchers randomly divided people into two fundraising groups who were both tasked with making phone calls to seek donations. The first group made these calls each day as normal; the second group got a pep talk from an executive to let them know how grateful she was for their hard work.

Any guesses on which group completed more calls?

The group of fundraisers who listened to the pep talk completed 50% more phone calls than the group who carried out their work normally. The only difference was a little show of appreciation.

Starting with these 3 strategies will ensure you build a solid foundation for your organisation’s employee experience, so employees will know that they really are valued (and it’s not just lip service).

1. Be Willful in your Everyday Conversations

Employees and managers alike are often instilled with the idea that “everyone is replaceable.” But it has been revealed that a big part of feeling valued occurs when employees are aware that they add something to the company that no one else can.

To effectively transmit this, think about how you approach everyday conversations with your employees. When you assign a new task, for example, go beyond the basic “Here’s the contact info for your next design client,” and reiterate why you truly value someone’s work: “You did a great job on that presentation last week. We have a new client who seems nit-picky, and since your work is detail-oriented, I think you’re the only one for the job.”

Or, as you start giving people more challenging work, clearly acknowledge what you’re doing and why: “You really nailed your presentation during the team meeting last week, so I think you can handle a monthly client presentation with some of our big accounts.” The more you recognize your employees’ specific contributions to the team, the more valuable they’ll feel.

2. Show Them that Others Need Them as well

While recognition can serve as a great motivator, it can also become a little routine when it always comes from a direct manager.

I’m not saying that you should ever hesitate to reward your employees for a job well done, of course. But, do remember that feedback from others can pack a little more punch—and show your team that they’re not only appreciated by you, but also by clients, co-workers, and even executives.

As a manager, pay attention when a client sends you an email to share the amazing experience she had with an employee or when someone from another department lets you know “Roy helped me find the number I need—he’s terrific!” Then, share it. Whether you do it privately or in public, you’ll let your employees know that they’re making an impact on clients and coworkers—and they’ll be reminded just how important their work is.

3. Challenge Them Professionally

Every job comes with less-than-glamorous responsibilities. But it’s important to balance out that grunt work with challenging assignments, too. When you only give out repetitive tasks (or tasks beneath someone’s skill level), you’re conveying that you don’t really need his or her specific, individual talents.

On the other hand, when you assign an employee a challenging task and actually put your trust in him or her to see it through, what you’re saying is, “I know you’re capable of this, and I trust you to do a great job.”

So, it has been discovered that it’s important to consistently find new ways to challenge your employees—whether that means developing new projects specifically for their talents or just being more aware of what each person does best and assigning tasks accordingly. As a manager you must also carefully select employees for the task of training new hires—giving people this responsibility conveys that you not only think they’re doing a good job in their everyday work, but that you want incoming employees to develop their same habits, skills, and attitude.

There is a real value in providing companies with the tools to carry out regular organisational assessments and this is where Great People Inside comes to your aid. Our online platform offers the best solutions and tools for your company to thrive in every type of industry and any possible situation your organisation may find itself. In terms of lowering your employee turnover rates, we recommend our GR8 Full Spectrum assessment for hiring and 360° Survey for retention. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/employees-feel-valued-at-work/

https://www.perkbox.com/uk/resources/library/interactive-10-ways-to-make-your-employees-feel-loved

https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/12/27/how-to-make-employees-feel-valued/

Small Habits that Will Lead You to Success

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Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur, a career professional, a student or even unemployed, your habits are either empowering you to achieve and succeed, or deterring and holding you back. For most of us, we’re limited by our habits. We have habits that hold us back and can’t seem to quit. But for others, who possess a repertoire of really good habits, success and goal achievement is more automatic and easily realized. The truth? The state and quality of your life is a direct reflection of the habits that you possess. Good habits are going to propel you forward while those pesky bad habits are going to hold you back. But if you’re serious about success and want to get ahead in life, these are some of the best habits that you can harbour. Focus on these, and watch your life blossom while you realize the fruits of your labour.

 

Keep in mind that several studies suggest that habits account for nearly half of all of our actions. From what we think, to what we say and what we do are controlled by the habits that we possess. So, the more that you can focus on improving your habits, the better you’ll be at doing things like growing your business, achieving your goals, getting a great degree, losing weight or even making an abundant amount of money.

Of course, this isn’t just about building the good habits, but also about disrupting your bad habits. Disruption is how you block the electrical impulses to continually wield those bad habits. It takes some conscious training and persistent application to do this, but there are a few strategies you can implement to disrupt your bad habits.

Many habits we do without thinking, such as brushing our teeth or saying Please and Thank you, or putting our seat belts when we get in the car, these are good positive habits that free our minds to think on more critical matters during the day.

Why bad habits?

Usually, it is because we want the immediate gratification of our base instincts and desires. Many times we act without thinking, overcome by emotion, and irrationally lead by our weaknesses rather than our strengths.

The problem is that when we indulge in these bad habits, they seem to multiply over time, and the results are a disaster. Some bad habits are so small that we think them inconsequential and not necessary. The truth is that even the slightest change in our daily routines can change the outcomes dramatically.

Small habits have a way to grow until they are tough to change and can take us far away from our desired goals. They become big trees that are extremely difficult to uproot.

With that in mind, consider these five steps for getting started:

Initiate a ‘ridiculously small’ micro habit

It usually takes my workshop participants between three and eight tries before they come up with something sufficiently small enough to be considered a micro habit. When I tell them reading for an hour each night is too large, they then change to reading for 45 minutes, then 30 minutes, and so on. Finally, I tell them, “You will know you’ve truly reached the level of a micro habit, when you say, ‘That’s so ridiculously small, it’s not worth doing’” — in this case reading only one paragraph each night. In our coaching groups, participants only get credit for achieving the minimum bar, not going beyond it. Aim for small.

Repeat Repeat Repeat

The benefit of micro habits is that you should be able to perform it with minimal effort every day. It’s important to execute on a new ritual daily so it becomes second nature, and if it’s small enough, you won’t be as tempted to defer your task from one day to the next. However, no matter the size of the task, it’s easy to get distracted, make excuses, or forget. Perform your new action at the same time as (or right before) an action you do without thinking. Need to read a paragraph each night? You can do that while brushing your teeth.

Follow your progress closely

As the saying goes, “What gets measured, gets done.” Again, if your measurement process is elaborate, you’re less likely to complete it. Write down the desired action and under each date, simply list a ‘Y’ or ‘N’ to indicate if you completed the task. People discover surprising benefits to the Yes List, including detecting patterns when they’re likely to advance or regress in their efforts.

Maintain the rhythm

It’s hard to think small to begin with; it’s even harder to stay small. For example, let’s say Jake’s micro habit was to do 2 push-ups a day. After earning 10 Y’s in a row on his Yes List, Jake was eager to do more. For the next two days, he did five push-ups, soon pushing up the number to 10 and then adding a 20-minute workout after. The sad result? Within two months, Jake would give up exercising due to the simple fact that he had enlarged his goals unrealistically fast. You have to stick with your original micro habit long enough when you feel bored with it for at least 2 weeks in a row. Then increase it only by about 10%.

Accountability is key

It might sound strange to enlist a partner to monitor your daily reading of one paragraph or doing two push-ups. But having people support you and hold you accountable can cement new behaviours, and it helps them in return. The leadership program mentioned above has a peer group meeting every other week, and participants send a report of their micro habits weekly, updating the group on progress by stating how many days of the week they performed it. When you want to change behaviour, jumping headlong into a major goal with both feet is often a waste of time. Instead, make tiny, incremental adjustments until they are part of your muscle memory. By starting small, you can attain big results.

There is a real value in providing companies with the tools to carry out regular organisational assessments and this is where Great People Inside comes to your aid. Our online platform offers the best solutions and tools for your company to thrive in every type of industry and any possible situation your organisation may find itself. In terms of lowering your employee turnover rates, we recommend our GR8 Full Spectrum assessment for hiring and 360° Survey for retention. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/20-daily-habits-practiced-by-highly-successful-people.html

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/297331

https://hbr.org/2020/01/to-achieve-big-goals-start-with-small-habits

Forging the Perfect Productivity Workflow for You

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The average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, and if you don’t learn to organise them, they have the potential to destroy your productivity.

When you allow the flurry of thoughts to run through your head, your mind becomes disorganised, and the more you ponder on intrusive thoughts, the more power you give them.

In a recent study conducted at the National Institute, in the United States, it was found that allowing your mind to be disorganised doesn’t just feel bad, it’s also actually bad for you. A disorganised mind leads to high stress, chronic negativity and impulsivity. These states inhibit productivity and contribute to a plethora of health problems such as weight gain, heart disease, sleep problems and migraine headaches just to name a few. Edward Hallowell, a therapist who helps people deal with their disorganised minds, describes the process that goes on inside this type of mind: “He makes impulsive judgments, angrily rushing to bring closure. He is robbed of his flexibility, his sense of humour, and his ability to deal with the unknown. He forgets the big picture and the goals and values he stands for. He loses his creativity and his ability to change plans.”

On the other hand, an organised mind simply falls into a state of flow. Flow is a state of balance where you really feel that you are immersed in your work, completely free from distractions. Recent research has shown that people working in a state of flow are five times more productive than the rest.

Step 1: Take Control Of Your Emotions

While it’s impossible to control how things make you feel, you have complete control over how you react to your emotions. First, you need to be honest with yourself about what you are feeling and why you are feeling it. From that point on, it is much easier to channel the emotion into producing the behaviour that you want. The key is to identify and label your emotions as you experience them. Associating words with what you are feeling makes the emotion tangible and less mysterious. This helps you relax, figure out what is behind your emotion and move forward.

Step 2: Sustain Your Focus

We all know that frustrating feeling of sitting down to tackle something important, only to quickly lose focus when we expected to dive right into the task. It takes time for your mind to become fully absorbed in an activity. Studies have shown that it takes five to 20 minutes before people start to focus. If you can force yourself to persist in the activity in spite of any distractions for 20 minutes, the chances are much higher that you will be able to sustain your focus and find a state of flow. The best way to do this is to put away or turn off all of your typical distractions (phones, email, social media), then keep an eye on the clock until you’ve done nothing but your task for a good 20 minutes, even if you aren’t getting much done.

Step 3: Take Breaks

Our brains and bodies simply aren’t wired for prolonged periods of work. While it might seem as though sitting at your desk for eight hours straight is the best way to get all of your work done, this can work against you. Research has shown that the most productive work cycle tends to be 52 minutes of uninterrupted work, followed by 17-minute breaks. While it probably isn’t realistic to structure your schedule this rigidly, for most people, the battle is won by just remembering to take breaks. Just be certain to pepper several short breaks throughout your day.

Step 4: Shift Sets

Once you’ve taken a break, you must shift your focus back to your task. No matter how ‘in the zone’ you were before taking a break, you’ll sometimes find that you’re back to square one when it comes to focusing. To do a proper set shift, you have to reorganise your thoughts by following steps one through four above, especially if you’re having trouble diving back into the task. You’ll discover that getting back into flow quickly after a break is very doable, but it must be done purposefully.

Remember that ‘flow friendly’ environments are not just a matter of mindful team management. Remember to exercise the state of being immersed in a given activity to improve your productivity and general well-being.

Want to get more inventive and satisfied with your work? Get engaged in things you like, meditate and train your ability to focus. Stay mentally active – sitting in front of the TV may not be the best start. Last and foremost, learn how to prioritise, even if you plan your activities outside the working hours.

There is a real value in providing companies with the tools to carry out regular organisational assessments and this is where Great People Inside comes to your aid. Our online platform offers the best solutions and tools for your company to thrive in every type of industry and any possible situation your organisation may find itself. In terms of lowering your employee turnover rates, we recommend our GR8 Full Spectrum assessment for hiring and 360° Survey for retention. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://hbr.org/2020/01/create-a-productivity-workflow-that-works-for-you

https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2016/04/19/5-ways-to-experience-flow-and-get-crazy-productive/#6b413b474e70

https://www.getresponse.com/blog/go-with-the-flow-and-pump-up-your-creative-productivity

Burnout Speaks Volumes about the Workplace not the People

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There is a tendency to think of burnout as an individual problem, that can be solved by doing yoga, better breathing techniques, practising resilience and the list goes on and on. But the evidence is mounting that by simply applying your very own ‘band-aid’ solutions to a fast-paced work environment can actually be detrimental to your health. Given the fact that ‘burnout’ is now officially recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO), the responsibility for managing it has shifted away from the individual and towards the organisation. Leaders and managers beware, it’s about time you start building a burnout prevention strategy.

The Emotional and Financial Toll

When Stanford researchers looked into how workplace stress affects health costs and mortality in the United States, their foundings were incredible: a net spend of nearly $190 billion (close to 8% of healthcare cases) and nearly 120,000 deaths each year. Worldwide, 615 million suffer from depression and anxiety and, according to a recent WHO study, which roughly translates into an estimated $1 trillion loss in productivity levels.

If those statistics haven’t scared you yet, think about the fact that companies who cannot afford healthcare plans for their employees, which ultimately leads to very high turnover, low productivity. In high-pressure companies, healthcare costs are 50% higher than in any other firm. In a recent study done by the American Psychological Association (APA) has been revealed that burned-out employees are 2,6 times as likely to be looking for another job, 63% to have a sick day and 23% have more chances of visiting the emergency room.

When experts still struggle to define burnout, how can we ask the managers and leaders to prevent it?

It’s Not Me, It’s You

According to the foremost expert on burnout, Christina Maslach, social psychologist and professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, we are attacking the problem from the completely wrong angle. She is worried about the new WHO classification in the IDC11. “Categorising burnout as a disease was an attempt by the WHO to provide definitions for what is wrong with people, instead of what is wrong with companies,” she says.  “When we just look at the person, what that means is, ‘Hey we’ve got to treat that person.’ ‘You can’t work here because you’re the problem.’ ‘We have to get rid of that person.’ Then, it becomes that person’s problem, not the responsibility of the organization that employs them.”

To further prove Maslach’s point, a survey of 7,500 full-time employees done by Gallup found that the top 5 reasons for burnout are:

  1. Unfair treatment at work
  2. Unmanageable workload
  3. Lack of role clarity
  4. Lack of communication and support from their manager
  5. Unreasonable time pressure

The list above clearly demonstrates that the root causes of burnout do not necessarily lie with the individual and that they can be averted — if leadership would start their prevention strategies much faster along the way.

 

Ask Better Questions

When investing in burnout prevention strategies, it’s best to narrow the company’s efforts down to small, micro-pilots, which mean a lower budget and less risk. It is recommended to start with 1 or 2 departments or teams and asking one simple question: If we had this much budget and could spend it on X many items in our department, what would be the first priority? Have the people vote anonymously then share the data with all of them. Discuss what was prioritised and why and start working down the list. Employees may not have the perfect solution, but they can most certainly tell you what isn’t working — and that is often the most invaluable data.

Organisations have a chance, right now, to fix this type of thing. Burnout is preventable. It requires good organisational culture, better data, asking more timely and relevant questions, smarter (more micro) budgeting, and ensuring that wellness offerings are included as part of your well-being strategy. Keep the yoga, the resilience training, and the mindfulness classes — they are all terrific tools for optimizing mental health and managing stress. But, when it comes to employee burnout, remember — it’s on you leaders, not them.

 

There is a real value in providing companies with the tools to carry out regular organisational assessments and this is where Great People Inside comes to your aid. Our online platform offers the best solutions and tools for your company to thrive in every type of industry and any possible situation your organisation may find itself. In terms of lowering your employee turnover rates, we recommend our GR8 Full Spectrum assessment for hiring and 360° Survey for retention. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com/managing-workplace-issues/burnout-response

https://hbr.org/2019/12/burnout-is-about-your-workplace-not-your-people

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/who-recognizes-workplace-burnout-as-an-occupational-phenomenon.html