Organizational Developmental: A trip to Boston pt 3

To help combat the boredom that occurs after hours during an out of state event for your employees/team it is best to research events during the date(s) of the event, retail shops or restaurants nearby, to even different mode of transportation. This information can be used for team building events, ways for the team members to blow off steam. Also, this information can be used to solidify or build relationships between managers and their team.

Nothing informs an employee that you have their best interests at heart than informing them of either the respective hotspots near the venue you are staying at, or maybe where to grab the best burger. So long as it shows that the leaders who organized the trip and event were thinking of more than just the event itself. Empathy towards the employees you dragged across state lines to even five blocks down the street goes a long way.

It builds trust, comradery and a healthy dose of positivity in an event that employees/team members could just be viewing as a necessary evil to get a couple overtime hours in order to pay off some bills. The little extras can go a long way, even if you do see an immediate return it creates an organizational culture that will expect more and do more (production wise) in the future.

Organizational Clarity: “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” article

As you see by my comment from February 10, 2017, had a definite opinion regarding Vince Cyboran’s article “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” on the Roosevelt University RU Training blog site.

“I have, at a past organization endure one of these “pep talks” experience mentioned in this blog and unfortunately, it only caused the morale of myself and my coworkers to go further south. The introduction of just the basic aspects from Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor–Model of Workplace Motivation could have changed, in my eyes, the entire organizational culture.

This post states that hygiene factors do not motivate employees but most of the organizations I have worked, believed that to motivate employees they had to offer free lunches or breakfast donuts, instead of offering raises or bonuses. The introductions of these initiatives were successful at first as most of the employees at the time thought that this was good as a reward they were going to get.

However, with a high turnover rate, there was a constant influx of new employees, plus there was a new hiring requirement in which employees needed a Bachelor’s degree to be hired. These new employees did not favor the idea of the hygiene factors being used as a substitution to monetary or professional motivation factors. Therefore, with these new employees these initiatives quickly failed, but every once in a while, management does fall back upon free lunches or breakfast donuts, as motivators.”

Unfortunately, this still occurs many times over in a lot of different organizations, what happens is that people lowered their expectations of what they desire and organizations go to the level to meet them. Usually because giving their employees with these lowered expectations is better for the organizational bottom line than anything else. Keeping an idea of your professional self-worth, keeping a positive point of view you may get more than what you deserve, and if you do not why should you accept what the organization deems is logical or worthy of you? Maybe that is not a place that you, at the end of the day, deserve to be.

Reference

Vince Cyboran (2015) “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” Roosevelt University February 16, 2015 Retrieved from:

https://rutraining.org/2015/02/16/dont-clap-throw-money-misadventures-in-employee-engagement/

Organizational Clarity: Having anonymous interactions can be a great thing when you need feedback for your organization.

Having an Online presence does give one a sense of online anonymity and gives one a sense of freedom this can enhance the interaction process between an organization and its employees by giving an open forum to discuss issues with a strong sense of truth than if the employees were asked face to face (Allen, 2011). 

One of the issues that faces the Organizational Development professional is the challenge of getting a major quantity of feedback that is mired in truth and has nothing held back. Using an unknown identity or alias for this purpose can take out the factors found in the workplace environment and the pressure to conform to socially and/or organizationally established norms.

This allows for active collaboration and the user to openly be creative in their expression upon subject matters cover during these interactions. This new Self-definition in where one can be themselves is in the end very helpful and meaningful for the OD professional with employees not hindered by necessary social graces and the fear of retaliation can get the data they so desperately need (Allen, 2011).

Employees completing anonymous surveys or using anonymous aliases on Organizational forums can expose issues that deal with possible unknown problems with productivity to inter-office lapses of communication between departments that are not uncovered for the fear of being ousted as a trouble maker by management or a snitch by fellow coworkers.

 In all, giving employees the option to express their voice(s) collectively in an anonymous way gives them the ability to be Autonomous and shows the organization trusts them enough to go the distance in giving feedback, that was not there before (Allen, 2011). Meanwhile, it also provides a way to learn express, and gain an increased amount of data that was not an option in the traditional sense and free of the constriction of the workplace environment.

Reference

Allen, M. W. (2011). Michael Allen's 2012 e-learning annual (Vol. 54). John Wiley & Sons.

Merry Christmas from the Organizational Clarity!

Merry Christmas to all my readers now being a Christian holiday this is not celebrated by all, so I want to say a Happy Holidays to everyone else of different faiths and including those who are atheists, it is proper even in the workplace to remember that individuals have differences while working for a common goal within an organization.  It is very important to remain cultural diverse and tolerant in the workplace as most organizations want to expand to global audiences so although it is second nature in America, UK and other such nations to wish everyone a Merry Christmas we must be mindful of those of separate faith who share our organizational ties and our joy during the holiday season, but may not celebrate all of the holidays we do.

To do those who do not celebrate Christmas we wish them a Happy Holidays to show we too can be of great cheer, humility, and understanding by recognizing these differences in faith and although this is a great opportunity to build morale we must trend with wisdom. In other words, we must do onto to others as we would like done onto us, and respect their beliefs, respect in an organization and to others outside of the workplace goes along way and as Organizational Development professionals we must strive to be examples to others regarding this approach.

It can be as simple as giving secular Holiday cards to limiting decorations in the office to those who celebrate the season but also be inclusive enough to add everyone to a Secret Santa list. Although this may seem too “PC” when others go the distance for us, to respect our beliefs and basically do something nice for us, we remember it. All we can do as OD professionals is make sure everyone in the organization commits to replicating this same policy of being thought of others during this holiday season. And that in itself can be the best thing when bringing joy to the world, and boosting morale within an organization.

Thank you for reading and have a great holiday season!

Employees going Berserk at a Holiday Party: something for the Organizational Development Professional to consider.

I read an article regarding a fight at a company Christmas party at a high-end restaurant in New York, it is interesting how this sometimes occurs in during these events. As an Organizational Development (OD) professional one must think of such occurrences or keep them in the back of your head as you plan morale building or holiday events.

Usually, issues like this happen when alcohol is involved so having a boring, non-alcoholic party may not be on the top of anyone’s list as fun, but it saves the organization from bad press such as this. As an organization one cannot condone violence in the workplace or outside of it at company functions, therefore limiting alcohol, unfortunately. must be a possibility that the OD specialist must recommend to their clients.

At least it gets the professional in the clear of any blowback if a client rejects such a suggestion and this type of event occurs at the event the OD professional has created. What are your thoughts?

Here is the hyperlink to the article from the New York Post I mentioned above:

http://nypost.com/2016/12/17/ex-goldman-guy-went-beserk-at-holiday-party-punched-exec-in-the-face-suit/

Special event? Time for Morale boosting!

When dealing with Organization Development it is important to keep those people within the organization or working with you on a special project energized and motivated to keep productivity at levels that you can gain the highest ROI (return on Investment) rate possible.  Yes, you will always have certain managers who will state that having a job should be motivation enough, but for the majority of workers out there that is not enough. Working on assigned teams or in a profession with high specialization there is a need to work upon morale to keep these individuals motivated, doing the same tasks with the same people day in, day out, becomes repetitive. So there is a requirement to liven things up, to break the monotony of the every day for one’s team, to keep innovation and productivity at acceptable or even extended levels.

Special events are a great time to break things up,when it comes to “special events” most commonly in organizations we were are talking about holidays. These are times in which employees, people can be highly emotional and be disrupted from their usual performance due to personal issues outside of the workplace. Now, when I state this I mean it can range from either clinical depression to something we all might think as minor as buying the right Christmas toy for a nephew. In either case, the stressors are there to throw the “monkey wrench” into any project manager’s schedule, or organizations plans to end a quarter well.

In many cases celebrating special events by an organization can bring a welcomed distraction to these special events, and lighten the mood in the workplace. In fact, throwing Halloween parties or allowing decorations in the workplace can brighten the office as well as fight the woes of the season or day. I speak from experience working in Retail to the Education-Corporate arenas there are different ways organizations celebrate special events. In the Retail arena it is a time to exploit the holiday or special event to make money which is the goal of most organizations, however the employee’s well-being at this time is not taken into account. In the Education-Corporate arena, employee well-being and engaging the employee on some level occurs during the holidays or the special event in some way, shape or form.

Focusing on the Corporate arena, the organization that allows the employees to decorate their cubicles may seem like an action that will have the least likely impact. However, it has been my experience that decorating cubicles, does, in fact increases employee engagement with one another and in fact does lighten the mood in the office especially when the organization is facing the crunch of meeting goals or its projections for a productive fourth quarter.

Building morale increase the likelihood of decreasing employee turnover rates, in the example, I am using many employees have been with the organization for more than four to five years. Servicing students in any regard can be taxing especially when lining up organizational year end budgets and goals with financial aid year deadlines assigned by the federal government are never in line. Why? Because in this case, the deadlines that each of these internal and external stakeholders had in mind are never parallel or congruent with one another making pleasing each group a challenge for the average employee. This added stress mixed with the monotony of the doing the same tasks day in day out very taxing and stressful. Therefore, when these employees have the chance to say participate in Halloween costume or decoration contests the morale and the productive of these employee increases. Not only due to a change in routine but a focus upon the employee.

We as individuals do not befriend or fall in love with other individuals outside of our families for example because they are there… but because they focus attention on us. Thereby the same concept is in play here, by putting a spotlight upon the employee, in turn, gives them a sense of importance to the organization. The organization reaps the benefits of this simple engagement in terms of productivity, the spotlight boosts the morale of the employees, and it is a win-win situation for all.  In the example I mentioned, employees were falling over backward to complete their tasks for the day, just so they could decorate their cubicles or assists others of their team to create theme based setups for Halloween. Individual employees who usually you could not pry two words out of were discussing multiple ideas of how to decorate their cubicles, win office contests, and even discuss what plans they had for that day!

This built a sense of synergy amongst them, and in which lead to an increase in their communication skills, and discussion of how to solve issues that they faced throughout the day, in a more effective manner, through the increase of all-round information sharing that happened as a result.  My point is if you want increases in innovation, communication, and productivity look to special events and/or holidays as ways to bolster your attempt. Having something that most individuals are geared up to participate in is the most effective way implement any program that will produce the results that you want to achieve and give the employees something to look forward to.

Quick question: Has there been a time, that you have participated at a special event at work and morale has improved at least for a short time? For example, around Halloween or St. Patrick’s day?

Cultural Intelligence: Why we try to include different cultures in the workplace.

The reason why we celebrate different cultures upon this blog is not only to be thoughtful of others but to also be inclusive than exclusive, to understand others as we want to be understood. There is a thing called Cultural Intelligence that is taught in the field of Organization Development specifically, with Coaching or Executive Coaching. Basically, we used this term in business, academia, etc., to gauge the individual, or organizational ability to work, function and communicate across different cultures.

As organizations and individuals thanks to the internet, have increased their global connective abilities the idea of cultures interacting has become more of a reality than ever before. In past history, such connections would be utter fantasy, trade routes of the British Empire in the early 1700’s to 1800’s were established to reach other cultures and to combine those cultures with their own.

Of course, this has been the technique of every empire through history, never have we have been able to effectively to measure the exposure of the impact of different cultures upon the individual through this communication. Organizational Development through its practices and techniques tries to measure and increase the effectiveness of the organization’s and individual’s cultural intelligence.

Through such posts is a way to show or to acknowledge other cultures, to educate those who may find difficulty in being accepted or for those who have a desperate need to learn more about other cultures they are in immediate contact with. Thus, these posts are merely educational tools so that we all can gain tolerance and increase our Cultural intelligence, information that now has a focus and an explanation of how it can be applied. This is something that is usually not found on the internet, hopefully, posts such as this will be effective in its purpose.