Employees Uncomfortable Talking To Bosses

Quite an interesting article..

This was published under Human Resources Online:

By: Lee Xieli, Singapore

WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

US – The lack of effective communication between senior management and their workforce has resulted in employees feeling uncomfortable in sharing their ideas on innovation with bosses.

According to the first Workplace Communications Impact Survey of 1,168 employees by Yammer, companies still have a long way to go in improving their internal communication and collaboration programmes. Only 8% of respondents said their company is extremely effective at sharing business goals, timelines and plans internally.

A majority added that they felt uncomfortable sharing ideas or feedback with their managers or senior-ranking executives. Yet three in five employees were comfortable sharing ideas and feedback with their peers or colleagues.

Worryingly, respondents preferred using emails (74%) and phone (61%) to communicate with their bosses even though it was difficult to work effectively with these methods. Only 31% will schedule face-to-face meetings and 53% will engage in unplanned conversations.  

Slightly more than a third said the lack of communication has a significant impact on their work productivity as they do not feel valued by their employer. Three in 10 felt they do not have all the information needed to do their jobs well while long, ineffective meetings are another drain on productivity for 22%.

Furthermore, close to a fifth said their companies are poor at recognising and rewarding employees who come up with ideas on improving the organisation. Only 8% felt their suggestions for innovation were being recognised.

The lack of connection between bosses and their teams may result in the differences in the level of respect respondents have for the people they work with. More than half said they respect their co-workers while only 39% respect their managers. Respondents also deemed their peers (29%) as better mentors than their bosses (19%).

“It is clear that fostering a sense of community among co-workers is key to success,” David Sacks, CEO of business social networking tool Yammer, said. “But even more so is providing managers a chance to interact with their employees on a daily basis and build more of an open, authentic connection.”

When Silence Haunts The Workplace

Found this another very interesting article.. 

When Silence Haunts The Workplace

By: Lee Xieli, Singapore

Published: 23 hours 20 min ago

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Singapore - When employees choose to remain quiet out of fear or for the wrong reasons, the silence can lead to disastrous outcomes for the organisation.

With Asians renowned for being more reserved than other cultures, an unwillingness to encourage employees to address issues out loud can lead to a breakdown in the company. 

When Yee Ping Yi came onboard as CEO of CPF Board in January this year, he asked the HR function for the government agency to organise a series of chats with employees.

Derek Tan, chief human resource officer at CPF Board, said Yee then would sit in and "just listen" to the employees without any HR representative present. While Tan was initially worried about the silence, he realised the CEO was setting the tone for the organisation's senior management.

Speaking at an event organised by consulting firm True North Leadership Asia yesterday, Tan said "his silence speaks volume". His leadership style has helped shift the way managers hold meetings with their teams in the company.

According to Tan, listening to employees is twice as important when you're a leader because if no one dares to speak up, it means they deem the corporate culture unsafe.

Neo Boon Sim, director of HR development division in Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), concurs. He further highlights the "importance of breaking the silence and encouraging a culture of openness within the organisation".

"I don't think we have a big problem [at MAS] in the sense that people don't dare to speak up or there is a culture of fear," Neo said. "We might have that sort of environment in the past but it was about 15 years ago during the previous management style."

MAS has since then deliberately moved away from that. The HR function at MAS has been conducting in-house "Generative conversations" training programmes for every level of the organisation for the past three years. Neo said the training is designed to "help people break gridlocks in meetings and help them see each other's perspective".

A "Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution" study conducted by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group found that a lack of "crucial conversations" can result in a 85% failure rate for projects. There have also been instances where team members refuse to speak up when they run into issues. More than half had employees who rather wait for someone else to broach the subject.

It found that leaders who conduct effective discussions are 50% to 70% more likely to achieve their projects objectives - within budget, on schedule, meeting quality standards and with intact team morale.

Yet those who do run into problems do not confront or resolve them. Out of half who do so, only 17% were able to air their concerns. The survey found that many managers (88%) lack the skills to provide leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through to completion.

Five Tips For Retaining Top Sales Staff

I found this very interesting article talking about retaining top staff - sales - but I guess this maybe applicable for other areas of work as well...

RETENTION

Singapore - How much does it cost to lose a high performing employee? When you take into account their salary, benefits, orientation, training, and administration, it can be very costly.

How much does it cost to lose a top sales professional? When you add up the potential lost revenue, market share and profitability the individual can bring in on top of the usual expenses, the costs - including turnover and rehiring - could be immeasurable.

Tom Abbott, sales manager and trainer at Soho Sales Coaching, shares five tips to help HR professionals retain sales professionals:

Having strong sales leaders

Sales professionals are looking to their managers for guidance, direction, and leadership. What is the vision for the department or organisation? What are the objectives as far as sales volume, sales revenue, profitability, return-on-investment, market penetration, and market share?

Leaders must share their vision with their teams and encourage them to contribute so they can take ownership of the organisational vision. Great sales leaders focus on the "what" (vision and objectives) and leave the "how" (tactics and implementation) to their sales teams.

Improving compensation plans

When it comes to establishing compensation plans, most organisations look at either fixed salary, commission, or combination plans. Sometimes it helps to differentiate between existing accounts and new accounts. It's important to compare the value of each sales dollar produced from existing accounts to new accounts. You can also look at the effort needed to maintain existing customers versus acquiring new customers.

Organisations are beginning to move away from fixed prize giveaways and gift cards, and moving toward online points-based compensation and incentives catalogues. These catalogues could include tickets to concerts and sporting events, travel packages and even products on commerce websites.

Investing in professional development

While all sales professionals must be oriented with your products and services, you may consider providing further development activities to those who have been with you at least one year. These individuals tend to be highly motivated top performers who want to learn.

You could invest by encouraging them to use your products and services, going on plant tours to see how the products they are selling are being produced, talking to teams from other departments. It also pays to let them listen to customer feedback, read trade and technical publications, as well as go for internal and external sales training.

Assessing productivity and profitability

Sales professionals want to be assessed according to clearly defined objectives. Performance can be measured by incorporating quantitative and qualitative criteria.

Quantitative criteria include: sales volume in dollars or units, growth over previous years, new accounts, and profitability. Qualitative criteria includes: attitude, product knowledge, communication skills, customer feedback, selling skills, and personal initiative.

Automating your sales force

Sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) software helps your sales professionals track information such as: number of calls per day, time spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call, ratio of orders to calls, number of new customers per period, and number of lost customers per period.

SFA and CRM tools are easy-to-use and provide a real-time view of sales performance and compensation. In addition, they can provide calculations of projected commissions from converting leads to opportunities. Compensation management software and commission tracking software can also integrate with CRM tools such as Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and Salesforce.com. These tools are much more versatile than spreadsheets for organising information and help to further incentivise sales professionals.