Tag: Leadership + Management

For some people, workplace security means being able to hang onto a job. But for business owners, it means protecting the organization from all kinds of potential threats.

When it comes to maintaining a safe, healthy, and profitable workplace, it’s important to give workplace security the big-picture attention it deserves.

What kinds of things should you be thinking about?  

Let’s start with your data

Are you aware that the average cost of a data breach globally is $3.86 million? And that’s just the average. The cost of a mega-breach can range from 40 to 300 million dollars. Yikes. That’s a huge expense, especially considering that data breaches are usually sudden and unexpected.

So while the numbers can vary greatly, the facts don’t. Lose your data and it will cost you. Investing in data security measures will help make sure this doesn’t happen. Here are a few basic things you can do to help your data stay secure:

• Educate your employees about how to create secure passwords, spot suspicious emails, and secure electronic and hard copy and data.
• Evaluate your processes for how data is handled, stored and disposed of.
• Create a strategy for how to deal with work-related technology and devices.
• Keep your software updated.
• Monitor Internet and network activities.
• Use spam and email filters.
• Consider encryption options and two-factor identification.
• Train your staff on these issues regularly.
• Offer or invest in identity theft protection.

Doing these things will require time and resources, but not doing these things could cost you far more.

Protecting your assets

We’ve established that data thieves are everywhere. But that’s not the only concern. There are still plenty of old-fashioned criminals out there who are very interested in taking your stuff. Even worse, some of them might be working for you.

Make sure you have systems in place to protect your product, inventory, and cash flow. Depending on your business, this could mean anything from investing in security guards, alarm systems, and video surveillance, to refining your inventory, accounting, auditing, and internal processes. You may also want to implement an anonymous fraud hotline where employees can report suspicious activity.

If you haven’t done a risk assessment recently, there’s no time like the present. As businesses change, so does risk. The threats you identified 10, 5, or even 2 years ago may not be the same threats you’re facing today.

Identify potential vulnerabilities, rank your priorities, and make sure you’ve got preventative and protective measures in place to address them. A trusted insurance consultant can be a very helpful advocate here.

The human side of risk

While we’re at it, let’s talk about investing in additional forms of security— for your buildings, offices, and employees.

It’s not just about protecting your assets, it’s about protecting you and your people. Putting a lock on the door and calling it safe may have worked at one time, but not anymore. Like it or not, workplace violence is on the rise, and emergency preparedness is becoming increasingly important. 

When is the last time you discussed your company-wide emergency/crisis management plan? Is it up to date? Do your employees know what to do if something happens? Is there protocol in place for how to handle a workplace incident or disaster? Are there ways to mitigate confusion, damage, and loss?

Here are some key things you can do to help keep your workplace and your staff safe.

• Always check references and encourage employees to report threatening or unusual behavior.
• Educate and train managers and staff on how to identify warning signs and how to handle potentially dangerous situations.
• Assess your security systems and protocol. How do people get in and out? Who has access? Locking doors, panic buttons, and bulletproof glass may seem like overkill, but you’ll want to look into your emergency procedures to see what seems right for your organization.
• Create emergency plans for a variety of circumstances including man-made and natural disasters. Share them with the team and practice them regularly.
• Come up with a detailed communication plan for emergency notification procedures.

If this sounds overwhelming, you may want to work with a professional consultant or organization that specializes in putting together this kind of plan. In a perfect world, you’ll never need to use it. Which is what we’re all hoping for.

But, if you do need to put an emergency plan into action, you’ll be glad you have one that’s well thought out and ready to go.

 

Photo by igorr

When you think about risk management and your business, what comes to mind? Your finances? Your building and equipment? Your insurance policy?

These things are all important and worth protecting. But managing your organizational risk is about more than dollars and stuff. It’s about managing your operations and people, too.

Risk comes in all different sizes

We’ve all seen those scary insurance commercials featuring burglars, car crashes, and destroyed buildings. If you’re a business owner, you’ve likely invested in protecting your business from these events. Which is good! But your insurance policy can only do so much. In order for your business to run as smoothly and risk-free as possible, you’ll need to think well beyond break-ins, vehicles, and natural disasters.

There are all kinds of things that can wreak havoc on your business, and most of them aren’t nearly as spectacular (or unlikely) as a tornado. The key is to break away from these standard scenarios and take a look at things from a big picture lens.

Here are two key areas that may be getting overlooked when it comes to risk assessment and reduction.

1.) Health and wellness

If you think employee health is a personal issue, you are overlooking one key thing. Unhealthy employees make for unhealthy businesses.

The cost of absenteeism is often measured in sick days, but the hidden costs of presenteeism are harder to measure. Because of this, employers may tend to ignore the issue, but presenteeism can have a HUGE impact on your business.

Research by Global Corporate Challenge revealed that while employees reported being absent from work an average of 4 days per year, they also admitted to being unproductive on the job for an average of 57.5 days per year. That’s nearly three months! Or the equivalent of your entire staff working at 75% of their capacity at all times. Ouch. 

But there is hope. The study also showed that presenteeism has an advantage over absenteeism when it comes to fixes.

Employees who participated in a comprehensive health program experienced improvements in sleep, stress levels, and overall happiness. Workers who participated in the program were shown to be happier, more relaxed, and yes, more productive at work. These employees (and employers) gained back the equivalent of ten days of lost time.

Building a healthy workplace means buying into a healthy culture and taking care of your employees. Some quick ways to do that include:

• Valuing your employees as people first
• Offering flexible schedules and paid time off
• Managing workloads appropriately
• Providing market value wages and compensation
• Investing in ergonomic office equipment
• Encouraging healthy behaviors via gym memberships, fitness classes, etc.
• Participating in community giving and other charitable activities
• Giving people access to help and support through Employee Assistance Programs, financial education, and employee benefits

You may also want to consider investing in organization-wide training and resources regarding drug testing, substance abuse, and treatment programs.

While these things may not automatically jump to mind when you think risk management, committing to a healthy workplace can be a huge factor in helping you maintain a healthy bottom line.

2.) Safety

OSHA says you must provide a safe working environment for your employees and you’ve likely done some work to make sure those boxes are checked. But when’s the last time you conducted a safety audit? Or asked your employees about what kinds of potential hazards or unsafe practices they see happening around them?

It could be something as simple as adhering that file cabinet to the wall or taping down that loose power cord. Or, it could be something that’s been baked into your organization over time: A pace of work that is unsustainable, hours and schedules that lead to exhausted, mistake-prone staff, or turning a blind eye to unsafe procedures.

If you haven’t built a culture of safety in your company, here are a few ways to start making it happen:

• Keep your workplace and equipment clean, functional, and clutter free
• Create an environment that welcomes safety communication and incident reporting
• Form a safety committee dedicated to identifying and fixing potential issues
• Conduct relevant, up to date, and interactive safety trainings for your team
• Reward your team for safe behaviors and hold people accountable for unsafe conduct
• Don’t just talk about safety. Invest in the equipment, processes, and measures you need to put in place to keep employees safe

Providing a safe work place doesn’t mean slapping up an OSHA poster and calling it good.

Really committing to safety won’t just reduce the possibility of loss due to workplace injuries, accidents, fines, and lawsuits. It will also show your employees that you care.

And that can go a long way toward building a better business.

 

Photo by Luca Bertolli

Everyone wants to get paid for the value they deliver, but some businesses are their own worst enemies in this regard. 

The way companies deliver products and services is based on many factors, including industry standards, how businesses operate, and the current state of the market. At some point, phrases like “free!” and “value-added” (AKA free!) became all the rage.

A free or value-added service is one given to clients to create the perception of additional value. In many industries, this has become an important component of competitive sales. There was a time when everyone was on a level playing field in terms of the products they offered and the rates they charged. But when some businesses start giving away their services, the whole dynamic gets thrown off. And everyone loses.

It sounds like a great idea 

But does it really do what we want it to do?

Many companies have bet heavily on the fact that if they offer a certain service for free, customers will not only use it, but that they will understand the true value of it. A second wager is that eventually, these same customers will come to love the service so much that they will be willing to pay for it— or buy up. 

Unfortunately, what many have learned is that it’s way too easy to train people to pay nothing. And that when the personal or business investment is zero, the perceived value is often zero as well.

Therein lies the problem

Businesses spend a lot of time designing services that are appealing and useful to their customers. But how can anyone see the value in something they’re getting if the person giving it away doesn’t even value it?

And yet we’ve taught ourselves to not talk about the money and time and effort and manpower that goes into providing those services. What’s more, by giving these things away, even on a temporary basis, we’ve taught our customers to expect that everything we do for them should be for free.

By not placing a dollar value on our value-added or free services, we are getting exactly what we’re charging. Nothing.

How can we change it?

It all starts by changing your own mindset. Stop de-valuing and commoditizing your services. Instead, focus on how you help clients achieve results— and the financial benefits of doing so. 

• If you’re still using the term value-added, stop. Replace the idea of free services with the idea that you offer relevant and valuable solutions. Convey this message to your clients and, more importantly, believe it yourself.

• Understand how your customers can benefit when your products and services are used properly. Know what results can be achieved, how to achieve them, and what they mean financially.

• Only offer the solutions that make sense. Just because you’ve got twelve different products doesn’t mean everybody needs them. Don’t overwhelm customers with unnecessary information. Focus on delivering relevant information and results.

• Educate your prospects AND clients about your offerings. A customer who doesn’t know how to use what you’ve sold them won’t get the results they need. Or the results you promised. And that isn’t going help either one of you.

• Be upfront about the real costs of what you’re providing. What does it cost today? What will it cost next month? Next year? Hidden costs are frustrating, as are pricing models that increase over time. These scenarios are perfect breeding grounds for skepticism, misunderstandings, and unhappy surprises.

You wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t have something valuable to offer. But you won’t stay in business if you keep giving it away.

It’s time to recognize that value yourself, communicate it to your customers, and yes—charge people accordingly.

 

Photo by Olena Yakobchuk

When you think of companies with great culture and high engagement rates, what comes to mind? Free snacks? A relaxed dress code? Dogs in the office?

It’s true that these things can definitely help create an environment where employees are excited about coming to work. But to maintain high levels of employee satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement requires more than that.

In order to cultivate true engagement, you’ll need provide your employees with things like inspired leadership, sense of purpose, and a connection to something bigger.

Oh, and specific performance objectives.

Performance objectives? Really?

Yes, really. Without performance objectives, your team is merely showing up and completing tasks. And what’s inspiring about that?

Performance objectives can be that critical link connecting your employees not only to their work, but also to each other and, most importantly, to your organizational mission and vision. But in order for performance objectives to work their magic, they have to be designed and used properly. And this is where many businesses and managers get it wrong.

How to define them

We’re not just talking random numbers and metrics here. Performance objectives need to help employees understand why their work matters, how it affects the rest of the organization, and where it fits into the big-picture vision.

When choosing your indicators, look at each role and choose a few critical functions that must be done well in order for your employee and your business to be successful. After you’ve selected them, put them in context for each person so they understand why these things are so important, and how valuable their role is to the department, the company, and the overall vision. This is how you connect them to the work, the team, and the mission.

How to measure them

In order for performance objectives to be properly measured, there needs to be a well-defined scale, and a mutual understanding of what outcomes are reflected at each level.

When establishing your measurement scale, it is important that “satisfactory” isn’t the top category. Meeting expectations should be the midline, with room above and below to identify how individuals may be exceeding expectations or failing to meet them.

Here’s a quick example:

Measurement scale:

5 – Far exceeds expectations

4 – Exceeds expectations

3 – Meets expectations

2 – Falls short of expectations

1 – Falls critically short of expectations

This kind of scale not only measures the level of performance, it also provides room for growth, fluctuation, and improvement.

It also provides room for honesty. If you’ve got an employee who consistently gets all fives on their reviews, it means one of two things:

1. This person has outgrown their job and needs a promotion.
2. You’re lying.

Okay, we’ll say that in a nicer way. You’re not being entirely accurate or honest with your evaluation.

Maybe you hate confrontation. Or maybe you just really like this person. Or maybe you just don’t know how to offer constructive criticism and feedback. Either way, it’s a problem. Your performance objectives must be evaluated truthfully and correctly. If they aren’t, you’re missing out on the opportunity for valuable employee feedback and development.

You could also be setting yourself up for an HR nightmare. Need to fire someone for poor performance? It’s pretty difficult if they’ve collected a file full of great reviews.

How to use them

That said, far too many businesses use performance measurements solely to punish employees. This is one of the quickest ways to create a disengaged workforce.

Let’s review what performance objectives should and shouldn’t be.

Performance objectives should:

• Help employees be more productive and successful
• Help the organization meet its goals and achieve its mission
• Empower individuals and teams to take ownership of their work
• Create a clear and mutual understanding of roles and expectations
• Provide a solid framework for feedback, training, recognition, and rewards

Performance objectives should not:

• Simply be used to determine job titles and compensation structures
• Be a punitive tool to point out where people aren’t meeting standard
• Exist as a system for grading or ranking individual employees and teams

Using your performance management system to connect your employees to the organization, the work, and the vision will help get everybody where they want to go.

Not only will it enhance performance, communication, and trust, it will draw your employees in rather than pushing them away. And put everyone on the path toward better engagement.

 

Photo by belchonock