At the recent HR Florida Conference, the Keynote speaker Dan Pink suggested to the audience that they should read The Progress Principle by Teresa Amberlie.As I write this post I have read the first 160 pages of her book and it has made me think about some of the situations I have been in during my work career.
Back in the late 1970's we worked in the recruiting industry in which a manager told the recruiters in the firm that if they had any business ethics they were working for the wrong firm. For many of the recruiters it did not seem to think anything was wrong with the view.
In the 1980's we worked for a real estate broker who had the operating philosophy that the firm's managers were supposed to serve at the needs of the agents rather than the firm's clients.
In the early 2000's we worked in the retail field as an area corporate sales manager with no reports. If we had a client request we used to have to funnel it through a local store. On several different occasions the store felt that the corporate orders took a back seat to the other business. The regional sales manager rode rough shod over the area sales managers who were managers in name only. They had no one reporting to them per se. To add to this the regional managers expected a whole team conference call for an hour every Monday and an hour one on one call every Friday. We also were required to submit a weekly call log of everything we had done during the week.
I am not trying to give you a mini resume, but rather to point out that what we as managers do has a direct return on the productivity of our organization. Give them the impression that it is my way or no way and you imbed the belief that there is no reason for the employee to go out of their way to improve the business. Give them the impression that their ideas are of no value and we lose engage employees. Give them the belief that the voice of the customer is secondary in nature and we develop employees who do not believe in excellent customer service.
As human resource professionals and managers we are the organizational canary. We are the ones, who in our daily dealings with the rank and file, can observe managers who do not recognize the value of the organization's ran and file. We are the ones who can help the organization develop engaged employees who are working in a business environment that excels and exceeds everyone's expectations.
Your organization's business environment is predicted on how the inner work life is for your employees. Do we respect their contribution or do we feel they are there to take up space and go through the basics of running the organization. You decide what environment is present for your human capital assets.
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