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6 Strategies to Develop a Loyal Workforce

When we ask managers how they know that certain employees are not loyal to them, we are sometimes intrigued–and dismayed–with their definition of loyalty.

For some managers, if an employee questions what the manager is doing or trying to accomplish, the manager sees that questioning as obvious evidence of a lack of loyalty. For other managers, if the employee speaks the truth, and the truth is not what the manager cares to promote throughout the organization, the manager perceives that honest communication as showing a lack of loyalty. In another instance, a manager is actually asking employees to lie. The employees who would not lie were described as not being team players. Other managers try to instill fear or use threats in their attempts to breed a loyal workforce. In still another instance, a manager was perplexed that the employee was not loyal because the employee had been given “gifts” along with a promotion and a “big” raise.

Continue reading “Loyalty-Based Leadership” »

What Separates the Best-of-the-Best Organizations From the Worst-of-the-Worst?

For 20 years, Peter Barron Stark Companies has been a leader in conducting annual employee opinion surveys. We have surveyed over 250 organizations, and our PBS Best-of-the-Best benchmarks (those who rank in the top 25 percent in our employee opinion surveys) are based on nearly 100,000 employees’ opinions. In a recent statistical correlation study, we made some exciting discoveries we are proud to report for the first time. We have identified the specific areas you need to focus on to achieve the same standard of excellence as the Best-of-the-Best organizations—and we have learned the one thing that all organizations in the lowest quartile, the Worst-of-the Worst, have in common—the one area in which your organization must never compromise: Supervision. The higher quality of supervisor or leader that you have, the higher your organizational results and engagement scores will be. (See the Eleven Stupid Things that Managers Do to Mess Up Workplace Excellence.) Although the Best-of-the-Best companies score better on almost every question of the survey, the following categories were unique and statistically significant.

Continue reading “How to Become an Employer of Choice” »

This blog entry has been adapted from The Quest for Workplace Excellence newsletter(sign up here)

As a leader, you have the ultimate responsibility for your behavior. You are the role model for your team. You are the only person who decides if you will act ethically. When it comes to honesty, respect, fairness, and especially safety, there is no off season.

Being ethical (or unethical) is reflected in everything we do. As a leader, our choices affect not only ourselves, but those working around us as well. It’s easy to make excuses for ourselves and be blinded by our own biases, but our customers, employees and peers are trusting that we are honest and fair individuals. There is no better time than now to re-examine habits and make sure that they are in alignment with this vision.

Continue reading “Leadership Ethics: Do you Walk your Talk?” »

The text below is taken from SHRM’s blog entry, Employee Engagement Marathon – Monday Recap, written by David Bowles

A San Diego local, Peter has an impressive resume and clearly lots of experience. He is also a talented and funny speaker who had a full house in the palm of his hands.

His speech was based on what appears to be his proprietary database of 250 companies employing 100,000 people, and which he leverages to make statements about the top 10 factors which bring about employee engagement. He does this by analyzing the top 25% of his database to see what secrets he can wring out of the data.

He started out by looking at the leader vs. manager question, something which our Wednesday speaker, Marcus Buckingham, has also done. Peter doesn’t take the Buckingham approach of splitting these jobs into quite different categories, he sees leaders as a higher level of manager whose qualities lead people to follow them, that being the crucial difference.

Continue reading “Synopsis of Peter Stark’s “Engaged!” Presentation at SHRM10” »