Civility in the Workplace Part 2

What behaviors can be considered uncivil? 
Here are some examples:  

• Failing to acknowledge another person’s presence: Ignoring other people’s greetings and well-wishes; walking past a co-worker without so much as a nod or a greeting.
• Using abusive language: Being verbally abusive or using crude language
• Gossiping: Instigating and spreading rumors about another person, regardless of whether the “news” seems accurate or relevant to the accomplishment of the task at hand.
• Discounting an employee's contribution: Deliberately downplaying or ignoring the importance of another person’s statement or work contribution.  For instance, some members in a team may tend to cut off a person that they do not like during a brainstorming session. Taking credit --- or worse, compensation --- for work that you did not do is also an example of discounting behavior.
• Bullying and intimidating co-workers: Threatening violence against co-workers who report timesheet irregularities to management; leveraging the power of cliques in order to ostracize particular individuals.
• Sabotaging individual and company efforts: Intentionally not informing a co-worker who is competing for a promotion of the exact time a client will arrive in the building.
• Discriminating against a particular individual or group: Attacking an individual based on intrinsic characteristics such as race, gender, age, mental ability, and physical appearance.
• Practicing insensitivity against co-workers’ needs: Inability to pay attention to the feelings and needs of others, e.g. not giving a grieving co-worker time off before demanding workplace attendance. Insensitivity may also come in the form of engaging in activities distracting to co-workers, e.g. taking a cell phone call while in the middle of a meeting, not cleaning up the whiteboard as one leaves the training room, and demanding attention from subordinates outside of the prescribed working hours.
• Practicing poor etiquette in dealing with correspondence: Ignoring phone calls and emails, using company email to send private messages, and discussing individuals in mailing lists as if they are not there.

Until next time...

 




Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/

Strategic Planning: Defining the Business Environment Part 2

THE LEGACY OF OUR ORGANIZATION

Think about the following questions regarding your organization within a larger social context.

• Why does the organization exist?
• What contribution do we make to our community (society)?
• What are our most important nonfinancial objectives?
• How would you describe our current core ideology?
• What is the reputation of our organization within our industry?
• What is our reputation among our employees?
• What is our reputation within the community?

BEYOND PROFITS

We often think the purpose of most companies is to make money.

• In American society today, financial profitability is the most important measuring stick of success.
• A short-term focus on profits drives most downsizing, reengineering, cost cutting, and mergers and acquisitions.
• While these steps can make businesses more efficient in the short run, a narrow focus on profitability measures can kill the "spirit" of an organization, driving away its best people.
• Money is like food, oxygen, and water; these are not the reasons for our existence and yet, without them, we cannot exist.
• The best companies don't define their identity or legacy around making money but rather making a contribution to the good of the community or larger society of which they are a part.

  Until next time...






Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/

Keeping Score on Organizational Goals 4

Steps in Keeping Score:

1. Identify your team's most important key result areas.
2. Select units of measure in each key result area
3. Assess current performance in each key result area.
4. Set goals to make improvements.

Step 1: Identify Key Result Areas (KRA's)
The first step in scorekeeping is to identify the key result areas most important to your team.
    These are broad categories in which you want to evaluate your team's success.
    They are qualitative as opposed to quantitative.
    They should be aligned to the strategy and goals of the larger organization.
    They generally fall into one of the following four categories:
 
Quality (examples)

• Customer
• On-time delivery
• Accuracy
• Defects 

Internal operations (examples)

• Rate of production 
• Cycle time
• Employee satisfaction
• Safety

Development (examples)

• Product innovation
• Employee empowerment
• Process improvement

Finances (examples)

• Profitability
• Costs
• ROI

What are your team's most important key result areas?
 
Begin by reviewing the strategy and direction of your team as well as the goals and objectives of the larger organization of which you are a part, then talk together with your team members to identify what is working and what is not working for your team.  Next, identify the key result areas (KRA's) most important to your success.  List each key result area and then note why it is important. Click here for a template which you can use to list what is working, what is not working, and your KRA's.

Until next time...






Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/