ONYX GLOBAL HR

I decided to write this article because I’m sick and tired of always pursuing the elusive ‘American Dream’ only to find an empty feeling of achievement at the end of the chase. Many of us spend the vast majority of our time seeking material riches and, as such, make many mistakes along life’s journey. Even though we all agree we can’t take it with us we keep killing ourselves trying to get it (no pun intended).

I have spent much of my career as a Human Resources executive coaching and counseling others on the best course to take to maximize their careers or their performance in a particular job. I rarely failed to feel after most of those sessions as if had only shared half of the story. Sure, I was pretty good at what I did ‘technically speaking’. Most of the time I gave really good advice and I even shared the latest process or tool or technique to maximize results! (At least I thought I did.) I received a lot of recognition over the years for being a wise counselor. But…I didn’t give them “…the rest of the story…” as Paul Harvey used to say.

We spent most of our time talking about a person’s dreams for success in career and material terms when, in fact, we should have been exploring what it takes to be significant. Tom Brokaw the great television news icon once said, “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” I couldn’t agree more. I’ve learned my lessons over the years and I can tell you that if I had to do it all again I would have the courage to leave the comfort of the herd in terms of sticking to the same old safe advice and give my clients the best guidance.

There are two enduring principles in life to remember…especially when thinking about success. First, you have the right to choose your path to success, whatever it is. Secondly, you change your life when you change your mind. So then, all real success starts with choosing where you want to go in life (or even if you want to) and its all about your mindset. Some people say it’s your attitude that makes all the difference. The Bible states it even more clearly; “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”

The real path to success in this life is to become ‘significant’. What is ‘significance’? How is it different from ‘success’? How do significant people behave anyway? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Significance defined is…the quality of having meaning. The quality of being important, being relevant or ‘special’. Being significant means living your life in such a way as to really make an enduring impact on people, places, or things. It means that the world is a much better place because you were here. Notice I didn’t say that the world is a better place because you made a lot of money, drove the finest cars, lived in the best neighborhoods, wore the best clothes, or had the nicest watch! You might meet a lot of folks’ definition of success but there is a big something that’s missing. That said you can’t be significant unless certain things happen.

First things first…we can’t allow ourselves to be imprisoned by our unforgiveness. In my personal and professional lives I have seen people live out entire careers and go to their graves mean, bitter, nasty, and unfulfilled because they chose to withhold their forgiveness.

The fact is that we’re destroying our own destiny for greatness because we choose to be stuck in unforgiveness. One of my favorite writers (and speakers) Jim Stovall was quoted to say, “We are not punished for our unforgiveness…we are punished by it.” We punish ourselves instead of the other person when we don’t forgive and in the process never reach our personal pinnacle of achievement.

We all know someone who is a real SOB who seems to have the Midas touch when it comes to accumulating material things. We tend to scratch our head and wonder if someone has God held hostage (after all, this is the ONLY plausible explanation for the bastard being as successful as he is.) However, my guarantee is that this person isn’t even close to being complete or fulfilled in his life. These are some of the most miserable folks on the planet! This isn’t how ‘significant’ people behave and these aren’t the results of a significant life.

How do significant people behave? They show Unconditional Love regardless of the situation or venue. This Unconditional Love is modeled whether at home, church, work, or the gym. They know the difference between ability, motivation, and attitude. “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” (Raymond Chandler) A story I heard recently illustrates the point quite well.

It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80′s arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am. A nurse took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would to able to see him. She saw him looking at his watch and decided, since she was not busy with another patient, she would evaluate his wound. On examination, it was well healed, so she talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound. While taking care of his wound, she asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.

The gentleman told her no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. She inquired as to his wife’s health. He told her that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer’s. As they talked, the nurse asked if the wife would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was and that she had not recognized him in five years now. Surprised, the nurse asked him, ‘And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?” He smiled as he patted her hand and said, “She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.”

That is the kind of impact we all want in our lives. True love is about being significant and is neither physical, nor romantic. Being significant is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be. The happiest people…significant people…don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have.

I want to leave you with a great poem about making the best of everything we have. That’s when we find true success. That’s when we become significant.

Be The Best of Whatever You Are

“If you can’t be a tree at the top of the hill be shrub in the valley but be,

The best little tree on the side of the hill, be a bush if you can’t be a tree!

We can’t all be captains some have to be crew, there is plenty of work for us here.

There is big work to do and lesser work to do, and the work for US to do is near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail, if you can’t be the sun be a star.

It isn’t by size that you win or you fail, be the best of whatever you are!”

Author Unknown

Here’s to YOUR success…oops, I mean your ‘significance’ journey. There are others who are waiting on you to impact their lives and your destiny.
Team Onyx
Doug Bender Sr.
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution.

Let me ask you a question.  What would your leaders say about the state of affairs in your workplace?  Do employees believe in your organization that recognition is important?  If recognition is important, how do you retain your talent using recognition as a key strategy?  Finally, what does recognition look like in your organization?

Let’s take a look at a few facts.  Only 4% of 90,000 applicants annually at Southwest Airlines are actually hired.  That’s only 3600 lucky people!  What makes Southwest Airlines so popular that 90,000 people would compete for 3600 jobs?  I contend that Southwest Airlines is a great place to work and that people are recognized for their contribution that they made to the organization.

A New York Times study revealed that 25% of employees reported being driven to tears in the workplace.  50% of those individuals call their place of work a place of verbal abuse and yelling.  30% say that they are regularly given unrealistic deadlines and 50% indicate that they have to work 12 hour days just to get all the work done.  What is happening in the American workplace today that leads employees to such poor opinions about their workplace?

There’s more!  The Harvard business review estimates that ‘presenteeism’ (that is lost productivity that occurs when employees come to work but perform below par due to any kind of illness, low morale, or poor work attitude) costs the United States $150 billion annually. These folks are “present, but not fully accounted for…” In a 1999 study sponsored by the Employers Health Coalition, researchers calculated that the costs of lost productivity are 7.5 times greater than costs due to absenteeism.

The Gallup organization has conducted studies that say, as much as 30% of the average workforce is actively disengaged.  That means these employees are not working to fulfill the organizations agenda, but rather their own.

This article explores the critical role that employee recognition plays in organizations today.  In addition, I hope to provide readers with some clues on how to increase your organizational effectiveness and to make the business case for increasing the strategic significance of recognition in your organizations today.

We have all seen many talent management models from great leadership thinkers in recent decades.  They all champion some form of organizational design that supports vision, planning and forecasting, succession planning, recruiting and staffing, and so on.

I have included a step in a model that I use that suggests that recognition is a key element of effective talent management for organizations.  Recognition can be a strategic force, a superior communications methodology, and emotional bond between management and workers, a commitment builder, and an impact on your bottom line.

However, organizations must embrace the fact that recognition is critical to their success. It must be accepted as an organizational value. Interestingly, creating and implementing a recognition strategy in your organization doesn’t have to cost much, but can yield huge dividends.  The fact is, without proactively doing something about the absence of a clear recognition strategy in your organization, the negative effect in your business can be significant.

Those individuals in the organization that feel that they are not recognized are essentially hidden employees doing just enough to get by.  Many of them grumbling and complaining, and they pass their behavior along to new employees insuring a continuous negative impact on the organization’s bottom line.

Here are more facts to consider.  A Lynn Learning Labs 1998 survey indicate 88% of employees of feel that there is not enough acknowledgment of their work.  Further, a Hewitt Associates, global study estimates that 54% of the workforce in low performing companies is disengaged.

A Conference Board’s 2005 study indicate that two out of three workers are not motivated to drive the Company’s business goals.  Guess what?  If employees are not motivated to drive your organization’s business goals, whose goals are they promoting?

Interestingly, management doesn’t have a clue as to the impact of poor recognition practices in the workplace.  The same Conference Board study indicated that 65% of US workers reported receiving no recognition for good work performed (2003).

What’s surprising is that over 50% of managers agree that they do not recognize employee performance!  Even worse, nearly 75% of managers do not see a need for a companywide approach to managing employee performance.  No wonder we’re having such massive turnover in organizations.

It’s not all driven by layoffs and reorganizations or mergers and acquisitions. Even in a recessionary environment like that of 2009 there were still employees (albeit not as many as in prior years) who decided to jump ship because they weren’t being valued.

A Gallup Organization study on recognition concluded that a properly designed and implemented recognition strategy can 1) increase individual productivity, 2) increase employee engagement, 3) result in higher retention rates, 4) result in higher loyalty and satisfaction scores from customers and, 5) yield better safety records in fewer accidents than those experienced by organizations without recognition initiatives.

So how do you know when you’ve succeeded at implementing relevant recognition initiatives in your workplace?  There are some tried-and-true indicators.  Employee turnover should be lower and employee feedback scores in organizational surveys should be higher.  Safety issues and claims should decrease while increase in quality scores in feedback should result.
As your recognition initiatives become implemented you should see an increase in satisfactory customer service and a corresponding increase in productivity as well.  The definition of success can and does vary from organization to organization.  You need to determine what the right success measures are for your work environment.

A final thought.  Newscientist.com news magazine stated that working for a boss an employee dislikes increase the chances of heart disease by 16% and the risk of stroke by 33% (2003)!  Implementing full recognition initiatives in the workplace may not improve your employees’ medical condition, but it will create less stress and strife in the work environment.

I encourage you to learn as much as you can about the power of recognition and how you can use it as an inexpensive strategic opportunity for your business.  Books like ‘The 24 Carrot Manager’ and ‘Managing with Carrots’ are excellent in helping you understand what it takes to quickly engage your employees and keep them that way.  The Jackson Organization has written a white paper on recognition that contains great insights into the impact of recognition aligned with the organization’s bottom line. (Just ‘Google’ them.)

Starts helping your organization today by identifying what you believe are the first three steps in the process of developing and implementing strategic recognition initiatives in your work environment.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  Poll other organizations out there similar to yours who are willing to share their practices with you.  Your employees will thank you for it through greater productivity results and higher retention.

Good luck!

Team Onyx
Doug Bender Sr.
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution.

A recent new study by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and U.S. News & World Report (September 2006) reports that 70% of folks in the U.S believe there is a leadership crisis in America. So do I!

If you had ‘Googled’ the word ‘leadership as I did in January 2007 when preparing to write my first book you would have gotten 163 million references on the Internet. If you had ‘Googled’ ‘fol¬lowership’ at that same time you got 192,000… a little over one-tenth of the sites for leadership. We have a fascination for leader¬ship and how it is to be executed. We used to believe that leaders were born not made. In recent decades we have come to know differently. The fact is that because leaders are at the pinnacle of organizations they are expected to somehow magically (and single-handedly) lead their organizations to greatness.

There have been almost innumerable studies and research on what makes leaders successful. As a senior level HR executive for many years I have personally drawn upon this vast array of research to help coach and counsel lots of leaders in corporations on how to improve their game. What I learned over the years is that, like everything in life, the answers can often be complex but the solutions can be quite simple if the individual is willing to learn more about themselves, their colleagues and the organiza¬tions they serve.

A very good friend of mine, Ken Hampton, a Senior Vice President with the Waco Chamber of Commerce has a great perspective about leader-ship: “A great leader is one that sees himself as a steward of the resources and lives that he’s been tasked with achieving the defined business results.

My idea of leadership is emphasizing collaboration, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power. The leader is a servant first, making conscious decisions to lead because he wants to serve the enterprise and individuals rather than be absorbed in driving his own need for power. A great leader enhances the growth of individuals in the organization to increase teamwork and personal involvement to drive effective business results. To be a great leader you have to be a great follower. Even more importantly, a great leader sees himself as the same as those he leads. No one is more important than the other, they just have different roles.

Leadership employs vision, principles, and commitment to drive great behavior, teamwork, results and experiences for those of which he’s been privileged to serve under his leadership.”

A New York Times study in 2001 revealed 25% of employees reported being driven to tears in the workplace. 50% of workers are calling their place of work a place of “verbal abuse” and “yell¬ing”. 30% of workers believe they are regularly given unrealistic deadlines and half of them report that they have to work 12 hour days to get the work done.

The Harvard Business Review estimates that ‘presenteeism’ (workers who come to work but aren’t productive at all) costs in America to be at $150 billion annually. The Gallup Organiza¬tion studies say that as much as 30% of the average workforce is “actively disengaged”!

My take on what this means is just this…if an employee is actively disengaged they are not only not working for you, they are deliberately working against the goals and ob¬jectives of your organization!

It has also been my experience that employees will undermine the organization (if only in an inno¬cent way) until leadership address the dysfunction. My question is what are organizational leaders doing about this? Do they even know about it? Overwhelming stats like these are a clear call for better leadership.

My personal experience in working for some of the finest or¬ganizations in the world is that there is no magic bullet that will instantly work for everyone. In fact, every leader is different, and the skills and competencies each needs to work on will be dif¬ferent.

There is an array of factors that spell success for organi¬zations and their leaders. However, almost all of the skills and competencies for great leadership can usually be agreed upon.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo Da Vinci
Leadership is designed to be simple and therefore easy to learn and apply.

I challenge you to ask yourself questions… lots and lots of questions about your experiences with leadership, your orga¬nization’s effectiveness in light of your leadership, and what new level of performance can be achieved if you focused on it for just a moment. I hope you will find those questions provocative and insightful. Use those moments to help develop a plan of action to succeed as a leader.

Team Onyx
Doug Bender Sr.
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution.

Recently, Shirley Sherrod, former Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA was terminated without due process, as a result of edited and aired videotape from her presentation to the NAACP.

Unfortunately upon further review, it was discovered that the videotape had been edited in a manner that portrayed Ms. Sherrod to many as in a negative even racist light.  Her remarks at the NAACP meeting were in fact, an explanation of the personal transformation she experienced more than 20 years ago, when working for the USDA.

But that’s not the story I want to talk about here.  I would like to discuss how Ms. Sherrod refused to be a victim and review the empowerment behaviors she used to clear her name, and obtain an apology from the USDA and the President of the United States.  She has also been offered another position with the USDA which she has yet decided to take.

Like Shirley Sherrod, many of us are treated unfairly at work.  We can either choose to accept it and do nothing or assert our rights as an empowered individual.  Had Ms. Sherrod asserted her rights prior to resigning, she may still have her position and the controversy may have been averted.

However, she did choose to assert her rights after resigning and as a result achieved an outstanding outcome.

In this case, Ms. Sherrod initiated a two to three day media blitz.  It was difficult to turn on any news station, and not see Ms. Sherrod being interviewed and telling her side of the story.

That story, which turned out to be true, was that the altered videotape that led to her termination was in fact, edited in a way that would leave an objective observer to believe that she was a racist and that she had abused her power at the USDA.  When the facts came out, her words and deeds were determined to be neither racist, nor an abuse of her USDA powers.

Now many of you may be saying Ms. Sherrod is a public figure and has easy access to media outlets, and that would be true.  But that doesn’t mean if you are not a public figure you can’t successfully assert your rights in the workplace.  You can if you follow these steps.

First and foremost, we always recommend that you to try to resolve your workplace issue inside the company.  Report the issue to the human resources Department or if your company doesn’t have an HR department, report it to management or someone else in a position of authority that can help you.

Don’t just take the mistreatment lying down or decide you’re going to leave the job that you enjoy and go to another company, because you’re not happy with what happened.

If human resources or management does not take the appropriate steps to address your concerns and render a fair and objective opinion as to the validity of your claim; then you should take the issue outside the company in order to get it resolved.
Tell the company those are your plans to give them one last chance to do the right thing.  If the issue you are concerned about violates Department of Labor, IRS or other federal or state laws or regulations.  You should take your concerns to the appropriate enforcement agency.

They will give you an opportunity to present your case and will render an opinion as to whether any state or local laws have been violated.  They will also contact your employer and ask them to address the concerns you raised in your complaint.  At the completion of their investigation, the federal or state agency will issue of finding either in your favor or in favor of your employer.

Depending upon the issue and the agency, they may also issue a right to sue letter that you can then take to a plaintiff attorney for civil action.

If you are concerned about doing this because you believe you are jeopardizing your job with your employer, it is important for you to know that federal and state law also prohibits retaliation against employees that in good faith, initiate a claim against their employer, even if the employee is wrong.

The key point of this piece is to encourage you to take action, to encourage you to exercise your rights and power as an employee.  To accomplish this, The Employee Empowerment Institute recommends you follow our personal empowerment development system (PEDS).  The system includes 10 elements, some of which apply to the Shirley Sherrod incident.

1.    Look within – Practice self-assessment and introspection
2.    Determine your goal – what behavioral change do you want to achieve?
3.    Remove the buts – Take the initiative to eliminate the reasons not to change or to address aspects of your skill set and competencies that are holding you back.
4.    Invest in yourself – Take the time and make the effort to strengthen your knowledge, skills and abilities, and be willing to sacrifice to achieve a higher goal.
5.    Take some risks – To grow and change, we need to move outside of our comfort zone, that requires risking failure, embarrassment or ridicule.
6.    Know your rights – Don’t rely on others to look out for you.  Prepare yourself to look out for yourself and protect your interests.
7.    Work within the system – Give your employer the opportunity to correct the problem.
8.    Work collaboratively whenever possible – Make your desire to change known and use trusted co-workers, family members and close friends to assist you with your change by providing feedback.
9.    Evaluate your progress – Compare your change progress with your stated change goal.
10.    Reinforcement and continuous improvement – Behavioral change like any other learned skill requires practice to master.

Ms. Sherrod has proven to be an outstanding individual full of grace and forgiveness.   Let us learn from her example and assert our rights when we think they have been violated, and like Ms. Sherrod, we should always try to do that in a respectful, constructive way.

Lastly, always remember, we are who we choose to be!

Team Onyx
Pierre A. Towns
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution. Get a FREE copy of our book “The ABCs of Leadership: The Simple Elegance of Getting to the Top… and What It Takes to Stay There.” Sign up here: http://www.OnyxGlobalHR.com/contactus.php.

In our last article we discussed optimizing employee performance.  In part four we will discuss how organizations can sustain the high levels of performance achieved by the 3D Employee Empowerment ModelTM.

The keys to sustained high performance in organizations are well documented and researched.  They include: a high level of trust between team members, a clear and aligned purpose, commitment to that purpose, candid and constructive communication, the opportunity for team members to contribute in whatever way they can and a dedication to continually improving.  Let us examine each of these elements more closely.

Trust plays an important role in sustained high performance because it promotes efficiency and effectiveness.  When the members of a work team trust one another’s; competency, commitment to a common purpose, commitment to team, understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and ability to succeed, they eliminate a lot of the inefficiencies that typically result from underuse of group members, misuse of group members, CYA behavior, working toward different goals, etc.

A clear and aligned purpose provides a compass for team members that keep them focused on the mission.  Because the purpose is aligned with the overall mission of the organization, wasted effort or superfluous activity is minimized.  The accomplishments of the team contribute to the success of the organization.  Daily oversight and control by supervision is not needed because the team members know the mission.

Commitment to purpose is also an important element for sustaining performance because it is not enough to know the mission or purpose of the team’s efforts.  There must also be a commitment to that purpose.  The team members have to agree that their purpose for being is clear, measurable, relevant and achievable in order to aggressively work to achieve the purpose.

Having the opportunity for team members to contribute in whatever way they can speaks to employee empowerment.  Empowered team members have the confidence (self-efficacy) and the authority to make decisions and behave in a manner that is supportive of the team’s mission and the interest of the organization.

Team members are not unnecessarily confined to traditional roles that require them to look to their supervisor for guidance and decision-making.   Sustaining high performance requires pushing decisions down in the organization to the lowest level where a competent decision can be made.

Dedication to continually improve is a necessary element to sustain high levels of performance.  Organizations can not rest on their laurels.  The competitive landscape and internal environment is constantly changing and without a system to continually improve, high performing organizations will lose momentum and drift into mediocrity.

Continual improvement systems include; performance goals, performance monitoring capability, change management capability, creative environments, promoting inquiry and advocacy techniques, and freedom to question the status quo.

Candid and constructive communication refers to; maintaining an environment that welcomes feedback, challenging the status quo, speaking truth to power, efficient and effective performance evaluation systems.

Efficient and effective performance evaluation systems require a little more explanation.  The components of an efficient and effective performance evaluation system includes: participative goal setting between supervisor and team members; agreement on goals that are specific, measurable, aligned, achievable, relevant and time-bound; and on-going constructive feedback.

Goal setting theory as proposed by Edwin Locke in the late 1960’s hypothesized that intentions to work toward a goal are a major source of motivation.  Behavioral science research since then has proven him right.

Subsequent behavioral research and empirical data indicate that:
•    Specific goals increase performance
•    Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher performance than do easy goals
•    The more difficult the goal, if accepted, the higher level of performance
•    Goal setting participation increases the likelihood of an employee accepting even the most difficult goals
•    Feedback leads to higher performance than does non-feedback
•    Self-generated feedback where the employee is able to monitor his or her own progress, is a more powerful motivator than externally generated feedback

Behaviors alone may not lead to results.  Results often will not infer the behavior required to achieve the result.  Holding an employee accountable for both, results and behavior, provides the basis for productive performance.

Managers who can answer the question, “What will success look like and how was it achieved”, are thinking about performance in terms of both results and behavior and are well on the road to defining clear on-the-job goals.  An ‘outstanding’ level of performance is not accomplishing 100% of your goals while leaving a lot of bodies in your wake!

All of these elements; a high level of trust between team members, a clear and aligned purpose, commitment to that purpose, candid and constructive communication, the opportunity for team members to contribute in whatever way they can and a dedication to continually improving are key to achieving and sustaining high levels of performance.

Team Onyx
Pierre A. Towns
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution. Get a FREE copy of our book “The ABCs of Leadership: The Simple Elegance of Getting to the Top… and What It Takes to Stay There.” Sign up here: http://www.OnyxGlobalHR.com/contactus.php.

In our last few articles we discussed attracting new employees.  In part three we will discuss getting the most from your workforce.  Unfortunately, many employers think the way you do this is to reduce staff and increase expectations!

In reality, the most effective way to optimize performance is to empower employees to do their jobs.  I advocate the use of the 3D Employee Empowerment ModelTM as the most efficient and effective way to empower a workforce.

The 3D Employee Empowerment ModelTM combines the traditional organization-driven employee empowerment pull strategy, with the non-traditional employee-driven push strategy.

The traditional employee empowerment approach is shaped by two dimensions; the empowerment climate created by the employer and time.  Traditional employee empowerment approaches focus on employers creating an empowerment climate that signals to employees that it is okay to behave in a more empowered way.

Over time, an empowerment climate facilitates empowering employees to higher levels of performance by removing the disincentives to employee empowerment behavior.  With the disincentives removed, employees feel more empowered and began to behave in a more empowered manner.

Once a catalyst initiates the employer-driven empowerment change process; there are four types of employee adoption profiles that influence if and when, the change will be fully implemented and institutionalized.  They were described by Hersey and Blanchard as ‘a follower’s ability and motivation’ .

1.    Organization employees that are ‘early adopters’ i.e., those employees that ‘want to change and can change’, quickly began to behave in a more empowered manner.  They have the knowledge, skills and abilities to emulate the desired behavior and prefer to behave in an empowered manner.  They are also comfortable with leading change and migrating away from the majority culture.

2.    Employees that ‘can change but don’t want to change’, must be convinced that the new empowerment climate is real and here to stay, before they are motivated to modify their behavior, but will eventually adopt an empowered behavior.

3.    Employees that believe they ‘cannot change but want to change’, require training and other support to develop the knowledge, skills and abilities to behave in a more empowered manner; however, without employee self-efficacy, employees will not internalize the training because they don’t truly believe they can change; consequently, they will not be motivated to change.  The two dimensional approach often does not provide enough support to fully modify this group’s behavior.

4.    Employees that believe they ‘cannot change and do not want to change’ also require training and other support to develop the knowledge, skills and abilities to behave in a more empowered manner.  Those employees must also improve self-efficacy in order to embrace and internalize the training.

Additionally, enough employees in the organization must adopt the empowerment behavior in order to create enough peer pressure to force this last group to adopt empowerment behaviors, or be out of step with the new empowerment culture.  The two dimensional approach does not provide enough of this support or a high enough employee adoption percentage to fully modify this group’s behavior.

The 3D Employee Empowerment ModelTM recognizes the power of personal empowerment as a supplement to the traditional employer-driven approach.  For any empowerment initiative, the 3D Employee Empowerment ModelTM demonstrates the optimal effect over time, of combining the employer-driven and employee-driven approach.

In this model, the percentage of the organization’s employees that have adopted the new employee empowerment behaviors is much higher than the adoption percentage of the traditional two dimensional model.
This is because the adoption of these behaviors is now defined by an employer-driven dimension on the vertical ‘y’ axis, an employee-driven dimension on the ‘z’ axis, and the time dimension on the horizontal ‘x’ axis.

By including the third employee-driven empowerment dimension, we are exponentially increasing employee empowerment adoption in the organization because it effectively mobilizes the ‘can’t change but want to change’ and ‘can’t change and don’t want to change’ employee groups.

When these groups’ needs are addressed, the percentage of the organization’s employees that will adopt the new employee empowerment behaviors is a much greater portion of the organization’s overall workforce.

Today’s most effective and sustainable competitive advantage is optimizing employee productivity.  Information, technology and operating processes all provide a competitive advantage but has not proved to be sustainable.

The companies that learn to optimize employee productivity by empowering employees to behave as though they own the company, will out perform their competitors for many years to come.

Team Onyx
Pierre A. Towns
Onyx Global HR
www.OnyxGlobalHR.com
(866)715-4806
info@OnyxGlobalHR.com

We provide Custom HR Solutions For CEO’s and Senior HR Executives. Onyx Global HR is one of the foremost respected Human Resources Consulting Firms providing fast and reliable high-level HR expertise and thought leadership to our clients with a focus on reliable and effective execution. Get a FREE copy of our book “The ABCs of Leadership: The Simple Elegance of Getting to the Top… and What It Takes to Stay There.” Sign up here: http://www.OnyxGlobalHR.com/contactus.php.