Spring has sprung here in North Carolina and the trees, flowers and bushes are all in full bloom. We hope that you're enjoying the beauty of spring in your neighborhood. In this month's issue of Leveling Up, we continue our discussion about the importance of employee engagement.

In our lead article, we lay out a method of examining what a reduction of employee engagement might be costing your organization.

Then we move into an overview of how to address performance gaps in your workforce.

We hope you'll find these insights useful in creating success in your organization!

 

Enjoy!!

Joy

The Cost of the Status Quo

By Joy Stroud Ruhmann

 

The phrase the status quo originated in Latin, in the early 1800's, to mean the "state in which." In today's language, we think of it as the current state of affairs, a situation in which things remain unchanged. In my work, I often encounter employees who think things will never change. I've even been told in no uncertain terms, "Lady, you're just wasting my time and yours."

 

Well, as an eternal optimist, who is extremely pragmatic and focused on creating better outcomes, I refuse to believe that things "can never change." In fact, change is constant and inevitable. It's happening whether you're proactively managing it or sitting idly by while it happens haphazardly.

 

Companies that stick their heads in the sands, focus on doing it the way it's always been done, hoping that everyone will adopt to whatever changes are necessary, are the ones dealing with the crisis in engagement identified in the recent Gallop organization poll.

 

When we work with this type of organization we find that communication has suffered and employees aren't clear on where their responsibilities begin and end. The result is a sense of job insecurity that results in silo building that leads to us vs them mentality, a lack of teamwork and an environment where productivity suffers or turnover becomes a problem.

 

That's leads us to addressing the cost of the status quo.  Many executives are aware of the cost of turnover but they don't focus on the on-going costs associated with not dealing with issues that affect employee morale and engagement.

 

When employee morale suffers, motivation starts to suffer, then effectiveness starts to suffer and ultimately productivity goes down. To make matters worse, when morale suffers, those employees impacted the most, often initiate pity parties, where they recruit other employees to join them.

 

That's when your hidden cost starts to increase. We've found that when things progress to this level and competent employees are no longer motivated that you can easily estimate what this is costing you in lost salaries and benefits.

 

For the purpose of our example, let's take an organization with 100 employees. Let's assume that 30% of these employees are caught up in unproductive thinking and activities that are reducing their effectiveness on the job. And let's further assume that their loss in effectiveness means they are only working at 70% of their capacity. Provided below is our formula for calculating what this might be costing this organization:

 

Total Number of employees	100
Those not working to their full effectiveness	30
Average salary of these employees	$3,000
Estimated monthly compensation for these employees ($3,000 x 30)	$90,000
Percent of lost effectiveness (100% - 70%)	30%
Monthly estimate of salary received but not earned	$27,000

 

For our fictional company, that equates to $324,000 in annual salary expense that they're not receiving full benefit for. For a company this size, no matter what line of business you're in, this represents a significant drag on earnings.

 

Our clients have found that the investment necessary to address these issues is significantly less that the cost of their lost productivity, resulting in a positive return not only financially but also in employee engagement, satisfaction and retention.

 

For a more detail explanation of the cost of the status quo, click on this link to check out our slide share presentation: The Financial Impact of a Loss of Employee Engagement.

 

Joy Stroud Ruhmann, President of Level Up Leadership, works with organizations to implement cultural transformation and strategy execution tools to achieve sustainable, long-lasting results. Visit

www.levelupleadership.com for more information.

Determining and Improving Performance Gaps

By Tammy A.S. Kohl

 

Human capital is a top priority in today's organizations.

 

In fact many organizations are faced with the reality that they need to get more results through smaller and perhaps more fragmented teams. As your employees have added and shifted roles, positions, and responsibilities, how do you know you have the right people in the right positions in order to maximize your organization's efforts and outcomes?

 

The reality is, in some cases you do have the right team members in right places, and in some cases you probably guessed wrong, as we all have. Companies forced to reorganize made quick decisions resulting in people landing in the wrong roles. Likewise, companies that have experienced intense growth have ended up with similar results. Diagnostic assessments can help you to determine performance gaps and help your company to effectively understand and align the talents, behaviors, and motivators of every employee. Having the right employee in the right position is as critical to the individual's success as it is to the success of the company.

 

The first step in bridging performance gaps is for management to be committed to a people development process for employees. It should be based on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to do their jobs successfully. If the size of the organization is large enough it can be HR implemented, but the objectives and strategies of developing employees and how those employees are going to help drive results needs to be driven by management.

 

After the commitment is in place and the objectives have been identified, diagnostic assessments can help specifically and individually determine performance gaps, as developmental issues will be employee specific. Assessments can also be the secret tool for creating skill development as well attitudinal and behavioral improvement while eliminating resistance to change.

 

When working with clients, we focus diagnostically on the whole person as defined by these three key areas:

• WHAT natural talents do your employees possess? How do they make decisions and interact with the world around them, as well as how do they perceive themselves?


• WHY are your employees motivated to use their natural talents, based on their personal motivators and drivers? Everyone has their own unique mix of personal drivers and motivators that help guide them toward success. Understanding what really drives a person is a crucial part of success.


• HOW do your employees prefer to use their natural talents, based on their preferred behavioral style? Since each individual has their own unique preferences and habits for how they like to behave, this understanding is crucial when working with team members, as a leader or manager, or in an environment that requires conflict resolution.

Establishing new behaviors requires the employee feel able to adopt the behavior and feel comfortable doing so. A well-designed people development process focused on objectives using diagnostic assessments drives long-term change. We consistently see 80-100% in adaptable change after the completion of a development process with sustainable results that remain a year later. To learn how to achieve these types of sustainable results for your business visit www.levelupleadership.com.

 

Thanks for reading! Hope you have enjoyed the newsletter. Please feel free to forward this along to a friend or a college who you think would enjoy it as well!