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This Month's topic: Staff Satisfaction
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| This Month's Topic: Staff Satisfaction |
Each month, this area provides with a
number of my favorite and most helpful sites regarding the topic of the month.
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Management
Tip of the Month
Each issue, I start with a discussion
of my management perspective on the month's topic, and give you a few hands-on
ideas to consider.
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Recommended Publications
Here, I provide you with my
recommendations on the materials available that can help you
become more mission-capable in the area of Staff Satisfaction.
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Technology
I provide you with some good ideas for
uses of tech to better your organization in the area of Staff Satisfaction
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Marketing
Tip
So much to say, so little space to say
it.....
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Next
Issue
In May, we'll examine an issue that is very important, and far, far too common: Boards Who Cross the Policy vs. Management Line.
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Websites of the
Month
Here are my recommendations for websites of interest
on this month's topic, Staff Satisfaction.
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Top
Management Tip of the Month
Staff Satisfaction
"Your organization needs your good staff more
than your good staff needs your organization." This has been one of my
management maxims since my days as an Executive Director.
Today, execs are faced with significant problems regarding employees,
including increasing rates of burnout, the retirement of Boomer
employees, younger employees with crushing college or grad school debt,
and the relentless pressure to lower admin costs which increases the
workload on administrative and management staff.
All of these factors increase the need to keep a pulse on your employee
satisfaction. This term, which comes from the for-profit HR world,
encompasses both morale and job satisfaction. Looked at over time, it
gives managers a great way to keep on top of trends in their employees,
get ahead of problems that employees may not be willing to surface
directly, and show management's desire to create and maintain and
rewarding workplace.
As you'll see in the Marketing Tip below, surveys, focus groups, and
informal discussions are the techniques of finding out how your staff
feel, but the commitment to ask and to then listen starts at the top in
the management ranks. The management team must be consistently
concerned with employee happiness if it is truly committed to high
quality mission provision. Why? Because happier employees lead directly
to happier customers. Just look at Derek Allen's book (noted below) to
see the research on this area.
I spend a heck of a lot of time on planes and in hotels. When airline
employee morale drops (just after a bankruptcy, for example) the
attitude of EVERYONE on the airplane drops. Why? Because the flight
crews are unhappy and it shows. This gets everyone down. Think about
it. Most of the organizations in the nonprofit world are designed to
help people, thus your customers come in the door needing something. If
they find an unhappy workplace, with surly, sad, or bitter employees,
they may well not return, or at the least will tell others about the
attitude in your organization.
Finding out about staff opinions takes time, patience and is at least
somewhat costly. But better staff morale makes you more mission
capable, not less. It's a good mission investment.
If
you found this hint helpful, there are lots more management, marketing, and
technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
And, remember to take a look at the
Mission-Based Management
Blog.
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Top
Print Resources
My recommendations for texts on improving Staff Satisfaction
are shown below. said.
Linking Customer and Employee Satisfaction with the Bottom Line, by Derek Allen
Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment: How to Improve Productivity, Quality and Employee Satisfaction, by William Byham
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Top
Technology Tip
Can tech help you improve staff satisfaction?
One of the key ways that research shows that staff are happier is when
they are more engaged in what's going on. Thus, the transparency we've
talked about in past issues is crucial to keeping staff abreast of
what's happening, and tech can help with that.
Make sure you have a staff-only section of your website: this
passworded area can contain minutes from board and committee meetings,
minutes of senior staff meetings, copies of your strategic and
marketing plans, copies of your current budget, and anything else that
will help staff keep current.
Make sure you have an online (and off line) place for suggestions. One
organization wrote me recently to note that they had tried something
new in terms of revising their mission. The organization has 130 staff
in 12 different locations across a wide geographical area. They decided
to see what staff would do if they all had access to their mission
statement on a wiki, a website that lets everyone amend or edit a
document. If you haven't seen a wiki, go to http://wikipedia.org/ or look at http://www.wikispaces.com/
The organization posted the current mission statement, asked for input,
and noted that a shorter statement was best. They then let the staff
work on the mission statement for 10 days. The results were a much more
focused statement and much more discussion about the mission within the
organization. People felt engaged and had ownership.
You may also want to do your staff surveying online through services like SurveyMonkey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
A second key use of technology is to assist in another area that staff
want: education and growth. The explosion of online training (some
good, some not so good) has allowed employees learn more from work or
home in areas that previously would have required days gone from work
and travel expenses. Check to see if there are online courses in areas
that would help your organization. Talk to your trade organization,
your local community college or university, your United Way, or
your closest MSO about options and even scholarships.
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
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Top
Training Schedule for Peter Brinckerhoff
Below you'll see the date, location, and topics
of public training I'm scheduled to do in the next few months. For more
information on a particular speaking engagement, get in touch with the contact
person listed in the right hand column, or
email me.
For more information on my availability throughout
the next 12-18 months, available topics, sample agendas, and fees go to
www.missionbased.com/training.htm
Marketing Tip
Staff Satisfaction
This is, of course, a marketing issue! If you need
your good staff more than they need you, you have to know what they
want, how happy they are, and monitor trends. This is also a place
where many, many CEO's make the classic marketing mistake of saying
"I've been around this market for 20 years. I know what they want. I
don't need to waste the time or money to ask."
BIG mistake. You probably DO know 70%, maybe 80% of what your staff
wants, but until you ask, you can't know that constantly moving last
20%. For example, if I asked 10 execs what their staff wanted most, 9
would almost certainly say "Money". In fact, in the research on this
issue, money is FOURTH, not first in the list of things nonprofit staff
want more of. And the first three are cheaper!
So make sure you ask. Ask in surveys, ask in focus groups, ask in staff
meetings. Remember, as a supervisor you are there to support the people
you supervise. To do that you have to ask what they need and want to do
their jobs. And, while the act of asking staff will make them
temporarily happier, you need to listen to their ideas, and take credit
for listening: tell them directly whenever you implement one of their
suggestions!
For some tips on Surveying, go to:
www.missionbased.com/marketing_ideas.htm#surveys
For some tips on better focus groups, go to:
www.missionbased.com/marketing_ideas.htm#focusgroups
If you want to see more about this in detail, take
a look at more about my book
Mission-Based Marketing; Second
Edition
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
Back to
Top
Future Topics for
The Mission-Based Management Newsletter....
| May |
Boards Who Cross the
Policy/Management Line |
| June |
Employee Rewards |
| July |
Saying "No" to Community Needs |
| August |
Board and non-CEO Relations |
| September |
Executive Transition |
| October |
Advocacy |
| Send me
your topic suggestions at peter@missionbased.com |
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You asked, so here they are:
Past Single-Topic Issues of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter...
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Copyright 2006,
Corporate Alternatives, inc.
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