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Customer Relations: August 2010 Archives
I'm a stickler when it comes to attendance, and my students and former staff are well aware of how irritated I get when someone is late, wants to leave early, or doesn't show up without notice.
I think it is very important to start people on the right foot by being rigid with your attendance policy. Once employees or students feel you are lax in allowing lateness or frequent unexplained absenteeism to occur, your place of business or classroom will suffer.
Common courtesy around attendance involves informing those who you are reporting late to or not reporting to at all of your situation. I have had several people in both my academic career and professional career who have been late or absent a few times, but there is always a legitimate reason, and they always let me know ahead of time. As well, I have statistical evidence that shows that those who do not give notice of their lateness or absenteeism end up leaving school, failing courses, losing their job, or having further problems at work than the absenteeism.
What strategies have you employed in the workplace or classroom to prevent these situations from becoming problems? I'll share more, as well as reader feedback, in a future column.
On August 12th, I posted a column asking the following questions. Here is feedback from readers, as well as some ideas from me.
What activities do you involve your team in during non-peak hours? How can your team be managed more effectively to prevent productivity lapses? I'll share some best practices from readers on a future post.
"I use non-peak hours to do continual training and role plays of customer service scenarios..."
"During non-peak times, I find that these are the best times to hold informal one-on-ones with my staff."
"I find that my staff is even more productive when its slow. They realize that to fill the sales floor and to keep it neat at slow times makes it much easier to sell and merchandise all day long."
Some of things I have found work effectively include
- splitting up employee's hour long breaks into half hours to take advantage of the slow time to get breaks over with
- holding meetings with the staff on the floor.
- refocusing on the core principles of the company/day by interacting with the staff and going over the daily/weekly/monthly goals
How about respect? Sometimes people are just looking for recognition of their efforts through respecting their time and brain. People want to know that their reputation doesn't need to be proven time and time again. As well, many people long for and deserve the faith in them that comes with having been there before and having been successful at whatever you have thrown at them in the past.
Lastly, trust. Trust and respect pretty much go hand in hand, but continuing to trust people with more and more responsibility or freedom helps grow relationships where there may not be opportunity for advancement. When employees feel that they can still grow even if their title doesn't change, they are willing to stick around for other opportunities that may arrive.
Improve your ART-work, and you will see just how incredible your workplace can continue to become.
There are times you feel that you need another
voice to calm your storm and no voice is to be found, and it is during
these times that the solution is to take a deep breath and realize that
you alone can conquer any storm.
At work, we often face stressful situations that require an outside voice or colleague to assist us with our decision making. Many times, there may not be anyone around to make the difficult call that has fallen into our laps. At these times, it is almost fate that we are alone in our decision making, and it is during times like this we can find our greatest strengths amongst are loneliness.
Next time you are faced with a crisis at work, think about what you would do if there was no one else to turn to, and before you reach out to others for an opinion or support, see if you can solve the issue on your own. You will find that very often, there is no customer, employee, or vendor or any other person who you aren't able to deal with effectively.
I always marvel at the surprise or lack of awareness when people run into me or others when it is out of context or out of the normal routine. When people see me at the gym, walking around town, or in a public place, I often notice them, but they don't notice me (and as I joke with whoever I am with at the time, it's not like I am very inconspicuous).
When you run into employees or employers in a public place where they aren't engaged in private dialogue, sitting at dinner, or giving off social cues that indicate that they don't want to be bothered, it's polite and normal to say hello and go about your business.
In the workplace, I think there often is the fear that we are invading people's privacy by saying hello to them when they are out in public, but the opposite often occurs; if we can't feel comfortable saying hello to someone in an unexpected moment, than how should we feel on a daily basis when we see those people at the office?
Some of the greatest waste in organizations comes during non-peak hour employment periods. In retail, especially, certain times of the day require minimal staffing and maximum productivity.
Effective operations will do their best to monitor sales per labor hour or similar metrics to determine optimum coverage at optimum times. However, some organizations need to manage their workforce through times that may not be consistently off-peak by using them to prepare for the peak periods.
What activities do you involve your team in during non-peak hours? How can your team be managed more effectively to prevent productivity lapses? I'll share some best practices from readers on a future post.
Today I present to you the first post in a series I call "Driving and HR". One can learn a lot by looking at situations on the road and how they can translate and correlate into dealing with situations in HR and your career.
Left turn lanes have always amazed me in terms of how people don't seem to understand how to use them properly. I notice how often people make left turns either pull over to the right to make a left turn, or wait until the car coming towards them in the other direction has completely passed.
Let's look at situation 1 - cars that pull over to the right to turn to the left to prevent others from passing them on the right. Left turns can be challenging, and so can crossing over to the other side of the table when in a discussion about something new. The worst thing one can do is to block others from intervening (or in the case of driving, blocking others from passing). In order to truly reach over to the other side in the debate at work, all parties need to be involved to make the discussion clear and make all issues come out on the table.
Situation 2 - when people wait until the other car has completely passed, they delay the cars behind them and create a wait for themselves when they could easily continue moving. Similarly, in the workplace, sometimes people wait until they have left a job before pursuing a new one, or wait until an adversary leaves before making changes that need to take place. Both situations in HR create difficulty; in the former, people don't discover new opportunities that may exist at their current work location, and in the latter, people miss out on opportunities to learn from those who are going to be leaving soon.
So next time you are out driving, think about these two situations, and how you can both drive better and learn from them to give your new perspective on HR and Careers.
I've attended a few concerts this summer at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) and one at the Comcast Theatre (formerly the Meadows) in Connecticut, and have found the experiences to me amazing. What has appealed the most is the bands who really seem to understand the value of fan interaction.
The bands who have done the best at this this summer (Goo Goo Dolls, Maroon 5, Tim McGraw, Counting Crows, NOTAR, Augustana) have either provided a new spin on old material or have interacted with the fans in some way. The ones who haven't done so well (a couple of the opening acts that I can't remember, and Guster) have either insulted the fans with comments like "I wish you guys would get out of your seats" or by not bothering to introduce themselves or their music.
As it applies to the workplace, these concert experiences provide the following points to illustrate how to best understand your audience (either your customers or your employees) in the workplace. If you are able to make every day a new and exciting experience and interact with your staff in unique ways, you can make the same old song and dance seem interesting. However, if you come to work just expecting your staff to appreciate you or ignore the obvious, you are doomed to having animosity and resentment rear their ugly head.
So take it from this summer's top performers - if you reach out and slap a few hands, talk to your audience, and make people feel like you aren't "phoning it in", you can have people come to work and stay there, customers repeatedly frequent your establishment, and always leave them guessing and wanting more.
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