It’s the small things everyday that can bring down employee morale and it’s the small things everyday that can raise it as well.
When money is tight and raises are non existent or when the heavy work load seems never-ending, managers tend to forget the “basics” of management- that the supervisor’s recognition and appreciation are the key drivers for employee motivation and morale.
Morale Boosters
Here are seven quick, inexpensive things managers can do that will keep workers motivated during tough times.
1. Say thank you. Show appreciation for good work by baking a batch of cookies for the team or surprising them with pizza,, or sending them flowers, chocolate or a bunch of balloons. It shows your people that you care and appreciate them.
2. Have informal coffee talks. Pull an entire work team together to openly talk about what’s going on in the world and how it affects business. Encourage employee questions. This decreases negative rumors and also gets employees focused on work rather than on griping.
3. Surprise with spontaneous treats. Rent an ice cream cart or a popcorn machine. Take coffee and donuts to each person’s work station. How about a package of Lifesavers™ during a stressful time?
4. Offer stress relief activities. Hire a local massage school to offer free 10-minute chair massages once a week. A distinctive and fun way for a company to convey that it recognizes the rough times and it cares about their staff’s well-being.
5. Support community involvement. Provide company time for teams of employees to serve dinner at a local shelter, help build houses, adopt a family for a holiday, or collect money for a common charity. It not only serves as a motivator in that people feel they are doing something with a purpose but also creates a positive public image.
6. Make people feel valuable. Talk with key employees about the types of projects, training, or experiences they would like to have. Times may be tough for people to get jobs, but your best people are also the most marketable. One of the main reasons people leave or are unmotivated is because they don’t feel valued by their manager or company.
7. Free car washes. Express exterior car washes cost around $5 per wash. That means for $100, you can give 20 employees a shiny car every month. Or have a fund raiser for a community organization on your parking lot. They bring the people and the supplies and you pay them $5 for each car washed. This tells the employee you appreciate them and tell the community you care.
Management Success Tips:
Sometimes, simple works best. These seven morale boosters are a great way to create positive energy, develop pride and keep workers motivated during tough times.
This is all about you, me and everyone who works or has worked for someone else. Employee orientation is the most propitious time a company has for training.
It is about first impressions. The company's, not yours. That makes it a people event, not just process.
Think back to those glorious days when you were fresh, hyper-energetic (not hypo-allergenic, that’s different), sharp, and couldn’t wait to get started. Your day went down from there. You went to personnel and filled out some forms and were handed a packet. You probably received a briefing…I’m calling it a briefing because it felt like a briefing. To me, a briefing is information shoved in my mind and a presentation does it in a more subtle way. Still, the people giving the information don’t seem to care about you and sometimes share their own jaded feelings about the company even though their hearts are in the right places, do my duty and all that.
Is there no possible way of making this process more interesting? Is it about money? You could have fancier products, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It is about first impressions. The company’s, not yours. That makes it a people event, not just process.
Here’s my example of a good first impression (from the military, believe it or not). I pull into the parking lot according to the directions I have in my hand and start to pull my things out of the car. Meanwhile, a tallish, young smartly dressed young man in uniform, shoes shining, strides out to meet me at my car. He looks me in the eye the entire time as he approaches; he smiles a genuine smile, salutes and says, “Welcome to Officer Training, Sir. I’ll be your escort. You can call me, Bob. Here, let me take that for you.” Professional, friendly. I’m impressed.
Another military tale. I arrive on the bus with all the other recruits. We are all different. We have no idea what to expect…and there he is: A lone drill instructor, a Marine Master Sergeant, is centered in front of the bus as it pulls in. He makes no move to attract the attention of the driver, who stops almost precisely six feet in front of him. The drill instructor moves around to the door of the bus and stands aside so it can open, which it does almost immediately. I can see two of his cronies off to the side, ready to come in and assist if we are unable to do what is expected of us. “GET OFF THE BUS AND GET ON THE FOOTPRINTS!” There is a mad scramble and seconds later we are all standing on the footprints about to get an orientation.
I was to learn to react quickly to orders, do as I was told, learn what I needed to do to survive and help others survive.
And, boy, do we get it! We are told how to stand, when to move and how not to faint. It seems like an eon of waiting before processing is ready for us. There is a thud! Then another! And another! These are people hitting the ground. Apparently, they were so anxious to please, they locked their knees, which caused them to faint from improper circulation. The other drill instructors come around now and pick them up, instructing them on how not to faint (again) while standing at attention. We are then marched off to be processed. I am impressed.
My point is that there are impressions and there are impressions. Both may work in their context. In this case, both work, believe it or not. In the first example, I was treated respectfully as an adult, equal to co-worker who had more experience (he was escorting me) and in the other I was immediately immersed into the environment I could expect. In either case, I was not lied to; I was not made to feel one way and then treated another once I settled in. In the first environment I was always treated like an “officer and a gentleman” since that was the point and the expectation of the training. It was who I was expected to be at the conclusion of my training. In the other situation, I was to learn to react quickly to orders, do as I was told, learn what I needed to do to survive and help others survive. Again, that would be my job as an enlisted Marine.
These are true stories, by the way, and I am amazed to this day, that the system works as well as it does. Now, my military days are done, but not my perception of reality and human behavior. People want to know what to expect. We tell them. We process them like the DMV. People don’t want to be treated like a number unless they are playing a number in a school play. Not even those in the military; recruits aren’t numbers, but solders, sailors, marines, airmen, coast guardsmen, etc.
My advice: treat employees as people, not numbers. Don’t make them stand on footprints if that’s not part of their job. Treat them as the successes you hired and they will be your company’s successes now. Ever watch a movie where the rough, tough, hard-to-train or teach individual how to be part of the group becomes the teacher in the end? Hollywood gets it.
The last thing I need now is someone to make me feel like an idiot; I'm trying to impress my new colleagues. And, please don't judge too soon. I may be the type to be overzealous and oversell.
Many people link their identity to their jobs. Our jobs do play a large part of who we are, but we are more. Our packets should address as personally as possible those very points and what that means to the company. Does it make sense for a company that deals with family-friendly or children-friendly products to not have family friendly programs like bring your child to work days or day care set- ups? Now, I’m not saying they have to, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to explain why not or what future plans might reflect that possibility. Is there a place for a woman to use a breast pump and store her milk until she goes home? It could mean a lot to an employee, and to think the company is aware just made her day. Just to show the company walks the walk. Mentioning family-friendly leave policies might be enough. The point is to keep the company dialogue people-centered. Nuts and bolts can come later.
I like a basic turn-over folder that tells me some specifics, especially if written by the person whose place I may be taking. If not, I really like to know who I can genuinely turn to when I need the simplest instruction. Hey, I may have missed the obvious. The last thing I need now is someone to make me feel like an idiot; I’m trying to impress my new colleagues. And, please don’t judge too soon. I may be the type to be overzealous and oversell. Give me acceptance and see if I don’t settle down. If I’m still a jerk much later, then put me in my place.
Here come some “nuts and bolts.” If all I have is a job outline, how do I start and not feel a little lost? How do I feel when those employees laugh at me rather than help me learn? Competition from Day One is not the way to start. Office politics should not play a part, yet inevitably they do. The corporate culture should support teamwork and reward helpfulness, but there are always people who feel the only way to look good is make someone else look bad or incompetent. It’s sad when incompetence comes at the cost of ignorance, but it does. Reward the helpful; it keeps down the worry of how helping and taking time away from your own job to help is a negative. On both parts.
Employee orientation is probably the most important time for training. It is when you train for the corporate culture you want to create. You can try to eliminate what you don’t want. Motivate new employees in ways that suit today’s culture. Times change faster than people do. Most of all, offer help to the new employee to feel wanted, accepted by the others in the workforce and not a threat, and impress them with your ability to see them as more than numbers.
If you were asked in a behavioral interview for examples of being a team player, what would you say?
This came up during a recent leadership coaching session with a department manager who would be adding eight new people to her team over the next several months. One of the key selection criteria is that the new hires must be team players.
Is It Me or Is It We?
Imagine a basketball team in which each player tries to take every shoot instead of passing the ball to an open player, setting screens for teammates or getting into position for the rebound. Obviously, the team would lose.
Yet, there are people at work who say they are a team player but in reality, they focus primarily on their own needs and ignore the needs of the team. Hopefully you’re not one of them. Here are easy, effective ways to show that you are a team player:
Include everyone on the team in the information loop so people will feel part of the team.
Don’t hog the limelight. When you get a compliment, acknowledge the team’s effort.
Volunteer to take the minutes at meetings rather than sit back and let others do it.
Be the first to chip in to move the filing cabinet or get doughnut or make the coffee.
List things you wish others would do for you and then start doing them for others.
Check the comments or decisions you’re about to make for their effect on others.
Express your appreciation when someone stops and helps you with a problem.
Listens and respond positively to other’s ideas even if you don’t agree.
Be on the lookout to provide assistance to others when they need it.
Attend team social events and be social.
Career Success Tip
Managers look for people they can count on, whether that means taking initiative, being accountable or collaborating with others. You want your manager to see you as both a productive employee as well as a team player.
Readers, how have you been a team player? What other examples have you seen?
A reader asked if we “have any examples of good “get or give” policies for a non profit board.”
I like wording similar to: “It is the policy and practice of the Board of Trustees of (name of the NPO) that each Board Member shall make an annual (cash) contribution to this organization in an amount that would represent the best of his/her ability to give.”
• Where I believe strongly that no organization can ask others to give if the
Board Members of that NPO have not given to the best of their individual
abilities; and,
• Where Board Members are (and should be) recruited based on those skills,
experiences, and perceptions/attitudes that they’ll bring to that role to help
advance the NPO’s mission; and,
• Where every Trustee should, to the best of his/her ability, participate in
the process of identifying potential (major) donors, not every trustee can
be a good solicitor.
• Therefore, not every trustee should be required to “get.”
Even though having a Board comprised solely of major donors and effective fundraisers would be a (tongue-in-cheek) tough situation to live with, Board responsibilities extend far beyond just providing funding.
That old expression about Board Members having to “Give, Get or Get Off” is obsolete. And, not only that, it can be counter-productive, even destructive.
People with the “right stuff” to be Board Members, can’t always be major donors and/or “getters.” You can’t define a good Board Member just based on the size of his/her portfolio or that of his/her contacts/friends/etc.
When it comes to raising the big bucks, you can always (hopefully) create a volunteer cadre/council/board/committee the purpose of which is to function in that capacity. Board Members with the “right stuff” aren’t always easy to find.
(See: Leadership For A Major Gifts Program:Part 1 & Part 2
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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.
Have you considered a career in Public Relations? These basics may help.
Significant Points
Although employment is projected to grow much faster than average, keen competition is expected for entry-level jobs.
Opportunities should be best for college graduates who combine a degree in public relations, journalism, or another communications-related field with a public relations internship or other related work experience.
Strong communication skills are essential.
Public Relations Job Duties
Public relations specialists handle organizational functions, such as media, community, consumer, industry, and governmental relations; political campaigns; interest-group representation; conflict mediation; and employee and investor relations. Public relations specialists must understand the attitudes and concerns of community, consumer, employee, and public interest groups to establish and maintain cooperative relationships between them and representatives from print and broadcast journalism.
Public relations specialists draft press releases and contact people in the media who might print or broadcast their material. Many radio or television special reports, newspaper stories, and magazine articles start at the desks of public relations specialists. Sometimes, the subject of a press release is an organization and its policies toward employees or its role in the community. For example, a press release might describe a public issue, such as health, energy, or the environment, and what an organization does to advance that issue.
Public relations specialists also arrange and conduct programs to maintain contact between organization representatives and the public. For example, public relations specialists set up speaking engagements and prepare speeches for officials. These media specialists represent employers at community projects; make film, slide, and other visual presentations for meetings and school assemblies; and plan conventions.
Employment
Public relations specialists hold about 275,200 jobs in the U.S. They are concentrated in service-providing industries, such as advertising and related services; healthcare and social assistance; educational services; and government. Others work for communications firms, financial institutions, and government agencies.
Public relations specialists are concentrated in large cities, where press services and other communications facilities are readily available and where many businesses and trade associations have their headquarters. Many public relations consulting firms, for example, are in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. There is a trend, however, toward public relations jobs to be dispersed throughout the Nation, closer to clients.
The recent emergence of social media in the public relations is expected to increase job growth as well. Many public relations firms are expanding their use of these tools, and specialists with skills in them will be needed.
Public Relations Wages
Median annual wages for salaried public relations specialists were $51,280 (in May 2008, the latest date for which information was vailable). The middle 50 percent earned between $38,400 and $71,670; the lowest 10 percent earned less than $30,140, and the top 10 percent earned more than $97,910. Median annual wages in the industries employing the largest numbers of public relations specialists were:
Management of companies and enterprises
$55,530
Business, professional, labor, political, and similar organizations
55,460
Advertising, public relations and related services
Ms. Chapman’s new book has a name change! The Net-Powered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com
I’ve been thinking this week about the idea of integrity and values. I had dinner recently with a man who is starting a new business. The man had successfully owned a previous company. He worked long hours to grow and then sell that company for a large profit. He’s basing the new company on a different set of values than before. This time around he wants the company’s central mission to be about helping his employees succeed so they can profit from their labor. He deliberately wants to start the new company as an employee stock-owned company.
There are numerous non-market values that you can run your businesses by and still be successful as a business. Values such as harmony, balance, integrity, consideration for others, and honesty can all be brought into a successful business.
What values do you bring to your business and work with others?
Wikipedia offers this definition of Mensch:
(Yiddish: מענטש mentsh; from German: Mensch, for “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”.[1] … mensch is “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.”[2]
How are you showing up at work? What is the best you strive to be at work?
In his poem “If”, Rudyard Kipling wrote that :
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
….. you can be a man – or in a more inclusive language – a Mensch- someone with heart and integrity.
Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” The paperback version is available on Amazon. Note: the pdf version of Path for Greatness is available for download from her website. ALSO, Linda’s new book, “Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand” is now available on her website.
Increasing demands. Limited resources. Out of sorts co-workers feeling the pinch. Negativity that abounds. It feels like stress is at an all time high. And it’s not as if demands on the home-front, or any other front have eased up to make room for the added stress of the workplace.
Work is the place God continues to use to transform me into the woman of God He’s calling me to be.
My name is Shari Harris. I’m the author of Walking in Faith Stories of Hope and Encouragement for the Workplace (2011). My book is a collection of faith at work stories chronicling my faith journey. God has called me to share my faith at work and to share my stories with you in hopes of encouraging you.
It’s not easy for any one of us. We need to encourage each other, and one way we can do this is to have real conversations about work and how challenging it can be. In the call to share God has asked me to be real and share my heart with you.
Hopefully my book will not only encourage you in your faith and in bringing it work, but it will shed light into the creepy corners of bringing our feelings and our whole-self to work with us when we go. My hope is that in being vulnerable with my life, that you will have the courage then in turn to be the same, giving others freedom to be themselves at work. I’d like to think we can inspire each other to have the hard conversations about work and in doing so help each other. Above all, I want you to know that you are not alone. We all struggle. We all struggle in our workplaces.
We can tend to rush through our days, one task after another with an end never in sight, forgetting what is really important.
My mother passed way last December after a four and one half year courageous battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (perhaps better known as ALS). This disease robs the body of every function, from eating to walking, until it finally reaches the lungs. My family and I learned a lot as we journeyed the path with her.
Work doesn’t even hit the top ten priorities in life when I line it up with things like faith, family, friends, good health, etc. Yet, we need to be there to make a living to support ourselves and our families, right? Indeed, we do. We just need not fall into the trap of putting work first and getting out-of-balance by spending an extreme amount of time at work.
In my book, Walking in Faith Stories of Hope and Encouragement for the Workplace, I talk about “the busiest girl in the office.” We all know the woman or man who is so self-absorbed in his or her work that they have no time to connect with work neighbors, the person who wears their “busyness” like a lapel pin, boosting of how important their work makes them. It seems as though we’ve come to accept “too busy” as an excuse for innumerable transgressions. Have you ever heard a person with a last breath lament they didn’t spend enough time at work? Probably not.
I’m probably most excited about having been able to dedicate my book to my mother. She always encouraged me. My mom always believed in me. My plan is to donate a portion of the proceeds to ALS research.
I’d encourage you to take a look at your work life through another lens today – through the lens of what the Word of God teaches, and ask yourself if you are walking in love in the workplace or if you need to think again about bringing Christ to work with you. It will make a big difference in our day. It will make a big difference in you. It may not be an easy walk, but nothing really worthwhile is. You can be confident that God is faithful and He is your constant companion.
Bringing God to work with you is the antidote to struggling at work.
Shari writes, speaks, and teaches passionately on faith in the workplace. Shari’s life was changed when a coworker shared her faith at work. In the years since, God has used the workplace to bless, inspire, encourage, and mold Shari into the woman of strong faith she is today. God has given Shari passion and compassion to help and encourage others in the workplace.
People are hungry for authenticity and God is calling us to be honest—with Him, with ourselves and with each other. We all struggle. We are all challenged.
Last week’s blog described the information you need to develop a pricing strategy. Today we’ll talk about several kinds of pricing strategies that are commonly utilized. Continue reading “Pricing Strategies (Part 2)”
If you think that people online give to your organization only through your web donation form, you’re missing significant slices of the online giving pie. See the chart below to see how big those missing slices can be.
I recently studied 701 gifts that a nonprofit client received in 2010. All were made by visitors to their web site. However, less than two-thirds of those gifts (64%) actually came in via the web form.
24% of the gifts came in via the nonprofit’s PayPal account.
There are 85 million PayPal accounts in the US and they exist for only one reason – so people can spend money, online. Don’t you want to make it convenient for those active web users? They’re already comfortable with PayPal, and they can make a gift to you easily and quickly, without having to enter a credit card number online.
(I also think that people are more willing to spend money from their PayPal account than from their credit card or checking account.)
10% came in via the mail…
…on forms printed from the web site. These are people who don’t trust the web at all, or who had trouble using your web form (no web donation process works 100% of the time).
The smallest slice (two percent) came in via Amazon’s payment system.
Amazon lets nonprofits establish a vendor account, and donors can use their Amazon one-click process to make a gift to the nonprofit. Again, it’s convenient for the donor.
Figure 1: Percentage of online donations by channel
There has been a shift with this nonprofit in recent years. The mail used to account for a higher percentage, and PayPal a lower percentage. Times change, and your donors’ online donation preferences will, too.
Neither Amazon nor PayPal take a cut of the donation. That is much different than what your online credit card merchant takes, so the net to you is pretty much the same. (You need to negotiate rates based on your volume, average gift amount, and security measures).
Online check payments – those made online directly from the donor’s checking account – will increase in popularity, particularly as people seek to avoid credit card interest rates, and as such payments are more often used for online bill paying in general.
So, if you only have a web form, you might be missing more than one third of the gifts people are willing to give you.
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Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page
The Center for Disease Control’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” campaign has been a major success, with its creatively designed badge (seen below) popping up on sites across the Web.
Perhaps motivated by the fact that many members of the public pay little heed to standard preparedness advice involving crises like floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes, the CDC launched the attention-grabbing zombie campaign, which attracted a flood of visitors to its Emergency Preparedness and Response website.
It’s the more mundane crises that truly pose a threat though, and for those, as with the zombie apocalypse, it’s crisis prevention planning that will ensure your business survives.
If you choose to ignore it you could get lucky…but it only takes one look at the headlines of this past year to see what the cost is for being wrong. Besides, in most cases, the cost of the entire crisis prevention process is a minute fraction of the losses that could be incurred as a result of facing crises with inadequate preparation.
Nearly as bad as not having one at all, a common mistake is to overlook the plan in the heat of the moment. For example, it’s a frequent cause of crisis to have the wrong person make what become public statements simply because that’s who the press chose to brace in the company parking lot.
Crisis simulations help greatly to expose weakness and find solutions as well, and can be scaled from a pen and paper exercise to full-on walkthroughs complete with local officials and business associates.
Whatever your business, create a crisis prevention plan will allow you to keep working while you resolve the crisis, test it, and follow through when the time comes.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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