By | David Klaasen | Helping You Create Clarity, Inspire Your People & Drive Performance | Retain your best people | Changing Management Mindsets and Behaviour | Practical Behaviour Analytics
The relentless pressure on finances is putting a serious strain on all aspects of business. The significant pressure on profit margins from an uncertain economy is less money available to invest in improvements and yet, there is an ongoing demand from staff to increase salaries as they feel the pinch in their personal lives. But what are your staff and managers really worth? How do you go about estimating their value; their contribution to your success?
Last month I ran a training course for some Managers. They were all men who had worked their way up through the ranks and learned tough lessons through the school of hard knocks. As we got started many were sitting in the room with arms folded, heads tilted slightly back and a wry sneer on their faces. It reminded me of when I was a chef in the 1980’s and some slick looking manager in a tailored suit would come and pontificate about internal and external customer service when all I wanted to do was get back to my 60 litres of Consommé before it came to the boil and went cloudy.
No more meaningless forms
While the session I was running was about improving performance and profitability, when I got to the bit where I asked them what they expected to get from the workshop, I could see they were sure it was going to be a boring lecture telling them that they should sit with their people to fill out some meaningless forms and call it an Appraisal. It was clear that they would rather attempt to dance Swan Lake in a tutu on the X Factor than go through some pointless and convoluted paper exercise with their people, just to fill a few boxes so they can be filed away and never looked at again.
