Peak Productivity: The Five Must-Haves (Wendy Samson and Curt Swenson, 2016)
What do workplace environments need to provide in order to ensure peak productivity? What environmental elements recruit and retain highly engaged employees? An on-line article by the Huffington Post.com (2016), recently reported on a survey put out by Google to all of its employees, asking them to identify the five traits that an employee must possess to be successful. In doing so, the survey also identified the following five “must-have” elements that employers should strive to offer in a workplace environment in order to raise the productivity bar for any organization.
Psychological Safety –
Team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.
Dependability –
Team members get things done on time and meet the organizations’ high bar of excellence.
Structure and Clarity –
Team members have clear roles, plans and goals that align with their organizational mission.
Situations may change, but leadership messages and behaviors stay consistent.
Meaning –
Work is personally important to the team members themselves.
Impact –
Team members know that their contribution matters to others and that their work has impact beyond the four walls of their office or organization.
Though many ideas may immediately come to mind on how a business or organization can ensure the first four elements, the fifth element – labeled impact, can often seem unattainable to service industry workers or those on a production line. Honestly, how can any leader or employee, no matter how inspirational, turn a position that is perceived as monotonous, boring or mundane into an activity that actually impacts others?
On a daily basis, FutureSYNC International has the opportunity to come alongside many of our partner organizations who are doing just that. Just a few of their ideas include:
1.Sharing information and stories about who, what and how the world uses their product or services, (e.g. employees might be surprised to know that the heater that they just made or to which they contributed a vital component, saved soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan).
2.Offering opportunities and incentivizing employees who participate in community events and charitable efforts while acting as a representative of that organization to the public, (e.g. the impact of walking alongside a child who has survived cancer in a walk-a-thon to raise money for the hospital that helped to heal them.)
3.Dedicating time in morning meetings to highlight an employee’s “discretionary efforts”, going above and beyond for a customer and seeing that the customer was visibly impacted.
4.Acknowledging the link between a monotonous function and the overall quality of a product or service, (e.g. the person who cleans up the bodily fluid spills in a hospital is consistently reminded that they are ultimately preserving each patient’s health and well-being).
Please contact FutureSYNC International’s consultants at (406) 254-2326 to learn more ways of recruiting, engaging and retaining good employees and customers.