Overcoming the Real Shortage in the Employment Market

Overcoming the Real Shortage in the Employment Market

The shortage of employees in the current labor market has been much discussed recently. Several reasons are cited for this shortage, including a lack of employees who actually want to work, the government’s generosity with unemployment and other benefits and, more recently, the pandemic. However, I would suggest one additional cause: the employers. Today’s employees want more from their work. They want appreciation, recognition and fulfillment.

The following four steps provide a road map for employers to attract and retain great employees for their organization:

  1. Discover and utilize your core values to create an intentional culture
  2. Demonstrate care for your employees
  3. Make sure employees know their work is meaningful
  4. Enable employees to measure their performance for themselves

Create an Intentional Culture

If you want to attract and retain great employees, it’s important for your business to have an intentional culture. Culture can be summarized as the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that make up the atmosphere of the work environment.  I often refer to this as the “vibe” of the business.  Every business has a culture, whether it was created intentionally or not.  

Work culture is a byproduct of a business’s core values in action. Core values are a set of vital and timeless guiding principles, principles you want everyone in your organization to demonstrate on a daily basis.

One reason core values are so important is that they help define what makes someone a great fit for your unique organization. Imagine working with people who share the same core values as you.  How great would it be if everyone in your organization used the same filters to make decisions when resolving an issue?

In the age of “The Great Resignation” and the resulting competition for employees, being crystal clear about your core values is an important step in gaining traction over other companies when hiring.  But it isn’t enough just to have core values.  The impact comes from living and breathing your core values.  Make them more than something hanging on the wall or printed on your coffee mugs.  Define them, embrace them and live them.  Use them to review, recognize and reward your employees.  Incorporate your core values into your hiring process in order to ensure you are attracting the right people into your organization.  

If you aren’t sure you have discovered or clearly defined your core values, now is the time.  The effort you put into this will pay off in the future.  As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The second-best time is today.

Core Value Discovery Process

When I’m implementing EOS, I lead my client’s leadership team through this process to discover and define their core values: 

  1. Identify top three employees.
  2. List their characteristics.
  3. arrow down list to 3 to 7 characteristics (too many and your employees may struggle to remember all of them).
  4. Walk away for 30 days to give leadership team a chance to ruminate over the list.
  5. Reconnect as a team and discuss until you all wholeheartedly agree on which characteristics are key.
  6. Clearly describe these traits and what they look like in action.
  7. Use this list to hire, fire, recognize, review and reward employees.

This process shouldn’t be rushed.  Take the time as a leadership team to make sure you have identified the right values.  And once you have, communicate them with your employees.  Communicate them frequently so your employees recognize the importance of living out these core values.  This will inspire the employees who are a great fit and put those that are not on notice that you are serious about the culture that you want to create.

Enhance Employee Engagement

Once you have clarity around which qualities make someone a great fit for your organization and you are using those to create a great culture, it’s time to shift the focus toward enhancing employee engagement.  In Patrick Lencioni’s book The Truth About Employee Engagement, originally titled The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, he says the three factors that make a job miserable are anonymity, irrelevance and immeasurement. Better employee engagement starts by eliminating these three problems.

 Anonymity

If you want your employees to be fulfilled in their work, they first need someone in authority to know, understand and appreciate what they bring to your organization. Regardless of title or pay, if this isn’t addressed, your employee will not thrive. 

 Irrelevance

Each employee also needs to know that their job matters, whether to the company, your customers or the industry. This seems so basic, but if it isn’t articulated to employees, they will not feel fulfilled. They need to see a connection between the work they are doing every day and something or someone outside of themselves. 

 Immeasurement

Employees need to be able to gauge their own performance and contribution to the work of the company, independent of the whims of a manager. This requires clearly defined standards by which to measure performance.  Imagine how an employee feels going home on a Friday knowing she had a great week. She hit her numbers and as a result is helping the company hit its numbers.

In the world of EOS, we teach our clients how to keep employees engaged by addressing each of these factors. The first step is to encourage quarterly conversations with each employee about what’s working, what’s not working, where they are excelling and where they could use some improvement.  These conversations should be relaxed, undocumented and two-way. This practice fosters a relationship with each employee so you can communicate that you value them, the impact they are having on the organization and any areas where they could improve.

Another way EOS companies keep their employees engaged is by ensuring that every employee has at least one quantifiable “measurable” to track every week.  This measurable is activity-based and should be meaningful to both the employee and the company.  For individuals in a sales position, finding something to measure is pretty easy.  How many sales calls did you make? Or how many demos did you complete?  
 
But as you dig further into the organization, finding appropriate measurables may require more thought.  I recommend starting with what someone in each role is accountable for, then identifying measurables that are linked to the outcomes for that role.  
 
Companies are successful when all the employees are rowing in the same direction, not just the owner(s) or leadership team. The result is a thriving work culture that not only draws great employees but also helps the business gain traction together toward a shared vision.

When your company intentionally addresses the three causes of a miserable job, it has an immediate and obvious impact on your workforce.  Your employees come to work knowing they are valued, that their work matters and that they are succeeding.  This easily translates to higher retention and a happier workforce, which in turn improves productivity.  And a company that has fulfilled, engaged employees will have an easier time attracting more of the right type of employee.  

It is that easy – but it requires a commitment.  

If you are committed to getting each member of your team engaged and working toward achieving your vision, but you need some help getting started, then let’s chat.

Fall Chicks

Fall Chicks

After erecting a chicken coop we inherited from a professional structural engineer, I was so excited. This coop is built so well and is perfect for three hens who have the opportunity to free range. But as you know, free ranging is not a viable option when you also have two well-trained hunting dogs. So I stared at this beautiful coop and thought, what are we going to do with it?

And then I had this moment of clarity. We could add siding to the coop, turning the entire structure into the coop, and then build onto it with a fence that allowed the chickens to roam around outside. I hurried back to the house to share my moment of brilliance with my husband. Who, as I found out, was way ahead of me on that thought.

Perfect: we were aligned on the vision. Now we could get to work. I started looking for siding and getting ready to make this vision a reality. Of course, as often happens, he wasn’t too keen on this idea…yet.

The fact is, the end of the summer is not the right time to start raising fryers. This is typically done in the spring. And turkeys take 14 to 25 weeks to mature, so, working backwards from Thanksgiving, we’d want to start turkeys sometime in June. We were late to the fryer and turkey party.

But not all was lost. We just needed to make a plan to get us ready for spring chicks. So we started to develop our one-year plan. This included modifying the coop, adding fencing around the coop so the birds could roam, researching the type of chickens and turkeys we wanted, and learning methods for processing the birds.

In other words, there’s plenty to do in this upcoming year. We just needed to get clarity around what to work on when and who was going to do the work.

I will say that we enjoyed the process as we talked through ideas, debated some approaches and set a budget for all the work. In the end, we were both really pumped about what this next year could bring us.

Planning for raising chickens is similar to setting a one-year plan for a business. As a leadership team, my clients work together discussing and debating the most important things they need to accomplish in the upcoming year. Some of them, not unlike me, want to jump in and get started right away. And some of the ideas can be started immediately. However, there are some things that require planning before getting started.

As I watched a leadership team set their one-year plan a few weeks ago, I noticed they kept circling around their ideas until slowly they narrowed down a few goals. And then they debated, quite passionately at times, what they could realistically accomplish in the upcoming year. They whittled down their list to a set of five goals that everyone was excited about. This was their third annual plan, and the visionary said it was the best one-year plan they had ever set. The goals were concise, achievable and, in his mind, the most important things the organization needed to address.

Do you have a one-year plan that your leadership is working toward? Is your leadership team united around this plan? Did they participate in setting it, or did you develop it in a vacuum? Allowing the team to participate in setting a one-year plan means they are much more likely to be willing to do the hard work to achieve it. As we move into the last quarter of the year, if you need help setting an exciting and compelling one-year plan, I’m just an email away.

Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch?

Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch?

Have you ever heard the phrase “One bad apple spoils the bunch”?  Have you ever thought about why that is?  I mean, if all the other apples are fine, why does one ruin it?  Is this some extension of entropy, where the tendency of the universe moves toward disorder? I think about entropy a lot, especially when looking at my desk or my closet, and sadly I would say that both of those “systems” are constantly moving toward disorder.  But I digress.

So, if one bad apple can spoil a bunch, could one good apple improve a spoiled bunch?  Or put another way, could one human-friendly chicken improve a flock of human-scared chickens?

Yep, I just used entropy to talk about chickens.  Didn’t think I could do that, did you?  Anyway, here’s what is happening.  As I’ve mentioned, I recently inherited three very sweet, human-raised chickens.  Whenever I come up to the coop, they come running up to me.  They get so close to me that I have almost stepped on them multiple times.

As you may recall, that is not the case with the chickens I raised myself.  I walk into the coop and they scatter, some of them squawking bloody murder.  I look at them and under my breath whisper, “Drama Queen Chickens.”

But since I have brought those three friendly chickens into the flock, my hens come running up to greet me alongside the three I inherited.  It almost seems like their fear of me is starting to subside.  I keep wondering if these three sweet hens are having a positive impact on my flock.

And then I started to think about my clients.  Could one good hire transform a group of under-performing employees? How many Right People (people who fit the culture and consistently demonstrate the company’s core values) does it take to truly create a great culture?  What is the tipping point where this change happens, if you don’t have it now?  I think it depends on the organization, but the ultimate goal is to get to the point where 100% of your people are Right People in the Right Seat.

I don’t have a single client who doesn’t have a Wrong Person somewhere in the organization. When these people issues come up, I will ask the leadership team three questions: Do you want to Coach Them Up? Coach Them Out? Or Live With It?

It really is that simple.  But if you choose to live with it, you could lose some of the Right People you already have, those who want to work for a company that sticks by its core values.

Recently, I had a client who filled a vacant leadership position with someone with a strong background in her field.  Previously, the leadership team depended on the president to make most of the decisions, and while their performance was adequate (or marginal) it was not sustainable for growth.  This new person came into the leadership team with a sense of ownership, focus and energy.  She challenged everyone with her questions, owned her mistakes when she was wrong and put an incredible amount of energy into her department.  Once the team got over the initial shock of working with someone with so much energy, they started to see what ownership looked like in action. In six short months, other members of the leadership team realized the importance of accountability and began to own their own seats.  Finally, the few that resisted realized they had to decide: own their seat or leave.  One year after the new hire came onto the leadership team, the entire team dynamics had changed.  Collectively, the focus became performance, improvement and productivity, and the president began supporting his team members rather than directing them.

If you aren’t happy with the performance of your leadership team, or your organization, I’d encourage you to look at introducing some good apples into your bushel.  You may be surprised at what an impact they can have on your entire organization.  Need help taking that step? Send me an email! I’ll walk you through the process.

I Can’t Draw!

I Can’t Draw!

If you have spent much time with me, you will know that I love to create things, but I’m not too artistic.  I have this mental picture of what I want to draw, but when it comes to creating that picture with a brush, pen, or Apple Pencil, what actually is formed is very different from what I see in my mind.

When I started thinking about getting chickens, I knew I needed a chicken coop. I was advised not to purchase a coop as they tend not to hold up.  So, during the pandemic shutdown, I realized it was time to build my coop.  The rest of the details that would take us from building a coop to actually getting farm-fresh eggs were a bit fuzzy to me (my husband would probably say they were very fuzzy).  But I didn’t care, I was ready to start that journey.

The reality is that it took me a lot longer than I expected to reach a point where I had the whole Chicken Mama thing figured out.  It seemed like a constant learning process, starting with the fact that chickens can fly (hence the phrase “the chickens flew the coop”).  For the first year or so, I never knew what to expect when I went to the coop, but I knew it wasn’t going to be predictable.

Over time, my husband and I began to come to agreement on what we were trying to achieve.  Yes, the initial goal was to have farm-fresh eggs, but, ultimately, we realized we had a real opportunity to use our property for more than an egg-making adventure.  We agreed to stick to animals that can fly, including fryers (chickens you can eat) and turkeys. And just recently he added the idea of ducks?!?

So we know where we are going long-term, but we need a pathway to get there.  And that is where drawing comes in.  What should Marlee Acres look like three years from now on our way to achieving our 10-year target? We need additional coops for the different chickens and turkeys, we need the skills to kill and prep our birds, we need the time to focus on all these birds and, ideally, we will have dogs that won’t chase and kill our chickens.  In other words, my picture needs to be a bit less fuzzy and much more crystal clear.

This is the same process I take my clients through as we develop their three-year picture.  I like to ask them, Are you ready to start drawing? Then we go to work creating a picture of what their organization will look like on the way to achieving their 10-year target.  This is where we get specific about what they will achieve in the next three years.

Drawing this picture is beneficial because if everyone on the leadership team can see the same thing, the chances of achieving it are so much greater.

During this exercise, I encourage the team to consider all aspects of the business, including their role, the size of the organization, the work being done, the locations and their reputation in the marketplace.

With one of my clients, after we drew the picture, I asked if everyone could see it, and someone said, “No, some parts are still fuzzy.”  The leadership team kept working on their drawing until they could all see it and were excited to be a part of it.

This isn’t an exercise in which you want to just go along to get along with everyone on the leadership team.  If everyone on your team can’t answer “Heck Yes” to the question “Can you see it?” we haven’t done our best work.

When you nail it, the excitement in the room is amazing! And people are excited to get to work achieving the picture you’ve drawn.

If you look at your three-year picture and can’t say “Heck Yes” – email me.  I might not be much of an artist, but I can help you and your leadership team draw an exciting, compelling picture of the future of your company.

But, Where Are We Going?

But, Where Are We Going?

Where will we be 10 years from now?, I asked my husband.  It’s a question we discuss frequently.  We are no longer spring chickens (well, I still think I am), and defining what is important in life seems to be a consistent theme in our discussions of the future.

But I also know myself, and the status quo is not something I feel compelled to accept.  So the question I keep asking is, “What’s next?”  Now that we are clear on our core focus – sticking to animals that fly – it is time to focus on where we are going long-term.

We recently inherited three new chickens and a totally awesome coop built by a professional structural engineer.  Those chickens are so sweet – they were clearly raised by a devoted chicken mama and are comfortable around humans and dogs.  Last week, one of them actually took some food right out of my hand – something my chickens would never do.  And the little sounds they make when I walk up to them are absolutely adorable.

The acquisition of the new coop has allowed us to move the timeline for fryers and turkeys forward, but that still doesn’t answer the question of where we are going long-term.

As we talk through this, we get excited about what the possibilities could be for our property.  Fresh eggs, homegrown chickens in the freezer, serving farm-raised turkey at Thanksgiving.  And that’s how we arrived at our 10-year target: “The Best Place for Chickens to Flock West of the Mississippi.”  Oh, man, I can’t wait to have T-shirts made up.

The 10-year target (a key component of the vision of your organization) is the one, long-range, overarching, energizing goal that everyone in your company is working toward.  It doesn’t have to be 10 years – it could be 5 or 30 years, but regardless of timeframe, it’s critical that this target involves everyone and is energizing.

In Ben Hardy’s most recent book, “10x Is Easier than 2x,” he writes that when you expand your mind to encompass what you could actually achieve if you dream big, you can’t then shrink the mind back down to its original state.  He argues that shifting your mindset to make the biggest imaginable changes is easier than making incremental improvements to achieve 2x results.  And this mindset shift allows you (or your team) to reach beyond what is currently in front of you.

In a recent EOS session with a new client, we started to talk through the 10-year target.  I shared some examples from other EOS clients, including some inspiring targets from my own clients. The response from my new client was, “Wow, I need to think bigger and beyond myself. My goal for this business isn’t nearly large enough.”

In talking about the 10-year target with another client, the owner said, “I want to be a $1 billion company!”  And the CFO asked, “Why? You don’t even care about money.”  The owner’s response was that he wanted “unlimited resources to build cool s**t.”  The team loved that idea, and so does the rest of the company.

So, when you think about where you want your business to be 10 years from now, what comes to mind?  Are you thinking beyond making money? Are you focusing on the impact your business could have in your industry?  In your community?  On your employees and their families?

I want to encourage you to dream big!  Even if you fall a little short of your 10-year target, you will be so much closer to what you really want than you would if you just focused on incremental improvement.  Need help clarifying your long-term target? Send me an email – I can help you achieve what you really want from your business.