Patience, Perseverance and Positive..."P2P"

Change is good… for years that saying was one of my favorites. I even had it as my auto-reply e-mail message back in the corporate world until, one day, a colleague with a great sense of humor said to me, “MJ, if change is so good, why don’t you change that message!”

Well, I’m going to say it again today…Change is good! We’ve made it through the recent election process and I’d like to send good thoughts and positive vibes to our new president-elect, Barrack Obama. The “hope of change” in our country was evident in the over 130 million people who voted in this election! “Change has come…” said Barrack, and reality now sets in for our president-elect and for us. Our new leader and his cabinet have many challenges ahead of them these next four years. During this time of transition and change, let’s focus on three words: patience, perseverance, and positive…

In spite of what’s going on out there, as managers and employees, we, too, have many changes and challenges to work through in the coming months. We need to deal with our immediate reality – the stress and morale issues – in our own workplaces or in those of our friends and family. Since my newsletter, “Positive Energy,” was launched over a year ago, many readers have told me that they have become devoted followers of my “P2P” principle – the “people-to-people” connections. So, as devotees or new subscribers, now more than ever, I know you will be looking for positive, good news and ways to increase the “P2P” in your lives, decrease the stress, improve morale in the workplace environment - where, we indeed, spend most of our time!

With over 25+ years of experience in successfully managing employees in the staffing and financial services industries, during both prosperous and difficult economic times, I have learned that, as leaders and managers, we need to remember to stick to the basics of working with "people" - the employees, customers, vendors, boards, and, for some, shareholders. They are looking to us as a "trusted advisor and" we need to continue to earn that trust. Let’s remember to practice patience, perseverance, and positive…

How we model the proper behavior, maintain a positive attitude, acknowledge and manage their fear, provide information, options, service and solutions, will either heighten or diminish their trust in us and our organizations - and our bottom-line results. How well we or our employees have been trained do all of these things is a critical thought to ponder. The frequency and quality of training or retraining, on both hard and soft skills, is critical to performance management, retention, engagement, productivity and your organizational results.

I believe a “continuous improvement” philosophy needs to be part of our overall business plan and our “people” strategy. Typically, most organizations have a customer service strategy focused on attracting and retaining external (paying) customers. Many organizations provide on-going training/retraining to their customer-facing employees, especially for new hires. It’s important to remember that employees are also each others’ internal customers, and no matter what their position, need be given the tools, resources, and “P2P” training to perform effectively.

Did you know…Care of Our Internal Customers Just Makes Cent$!
· Untrained employees present a bad image for your organization/company.
· If your employees understand your product/service but cannot speak and listen to the customers, you will not be in business very long.
· If your customers don’t get the attention they deserve, they will take their business elsewhere.
· The same goes for your employees – the internal customers!
· Employee training is a frequently underutilized and underdeveloped method of customer retention.
· Most organizations/companies train their employees to do their job (the technical side, hard skills) but not how to interact effectively with customers (soft skills).
· Both are equally important!

The Training ROI - Return on Investment- Is Proven!
• Recent statistics* estimate that:
• If a company spends 2 – 5 % of its annual budget on employee training
it should realize about a 10% increase in net profit
• Organizations/companies with superior customer service and a loyal customer base can charge up to 10% more than their competitors.
• So if you train your employees to provide superior customer service, your net profit can increase by 20% - this is the business case for training.
* Beyond Customer Service, Richard F. Gerson, Ph.D.

If you’re interested in learning more about training ROI, there’s a terrific Workforce Management article titled, “The ROI of Employee Training and Development: Why a Hearty Investment in Employee Training and Development Is So Important.” http://www.workforce.com/tools/features/roi_employeetraining.pdf

Here’s one of the common questions most frequently asked, especially when budgets are tight: Is it really possible to "measure" the impact of employees' training and behavior changes? The answer is, yes, it is possible. Here are some thoughts…

Managers/leaders should be an integral part of any kickoff or rollout of training. They set the stage and context for the training, allowing the employees to understand its value to the organization before they even begin training. Training leaders also are vital in the behavioral changes after the training. It is equally important to educate them about the content and also provide them with tools to support on-the-job application. They may be called upon to reinforce and model the behaviors that the employees experienced in training.
The questions asked of the participants and those around them (peers, direct reports and managers) should reflect behavior seen/experienced before the training as well as after. A suggested rule-of-thumb is that we need to allow at least three months after the training to capture behavior change. The 360-degree evaluation tool is very common in the industry, and it also rates behavior. Let’s remember to practice patience, perseverance, and positive…

There are also many follow-up activities you can create that offer refresher training, practice labs and "lunch and learn" sessions. It’s always a good idea to have the employees involved in creating some of these interim activities as an opportunity for to use their creativity and reinforce what they learned. They will be more likely to complete the activities if they have helped design them.Finally, when possible, the performance management system should be used by your managers/leaders to develop one or more objectives that are tied to applying the learning over time and reviewed at regular intervals. We all know the saying: "If it doesn't get measured, it doesn't get done." Here’s another: “People expect what you inspect.”I’ll wrap up with two questions for you:
Ø When was the last time your organization invested in both hard and soft skills training or retraining for you and your employees?
Ø Does your organization have a "people strategy" that includes development?

As we move through these difficult times and continually assess our resources and operational processes, maybe, as managers and leaders, we need to first change our attitudes and behavior, get back to the “P2P” basics and understand the value of keeping the human resource – our greatest asset – at the forefront of our efforts. As employees, we need to be open to change, better understand how to manage our attitudes, be emotionally intelligent, perceptive, tuned in to successful conflict resolution, and demonstrate "customer service as an attitude and not just a department" mentality. Let’s remember to practice patience, perseverance, and positive…with ourselves and each other.

A well-respected senior officer here in the Connecticut banking industry recently shared his training philosophy with me... He said, "When we are faced with budget cuts, the first thing many organizations think of cutting is employee training and development. This is a big mistake...we need to train in the downturn and implement in the upturn." I totally agree...Thanks, Howard!

Now, more than ever, today’s workplaces need more “Positive Energy” and "Positive-Talk" to help manage the pace of change…improve attitudes, morale, engagement, productivity, customer service, the overall workplace environment and, ultimately, results. Investing time, effort and resources in “P2P” creates a more positive workplace environment for those who are really driving your business – the employees – and has a positive impact on results.

If you have friends, family, or colleagues who are struggling to stay positive in the workplace, please ask them to visit my website, www.posimpact.net, to sign-up for their free “Positive Energy” subscription.

Here’s more good news...I understand and am here to help you.

My “Positive-Talk” programs are available as one-hour, 90 minute, two-hour, and half-day workshops to meet your time and budget constraints to help you as we move through these difficult times into more prosperous times.

I understand and would like to help you prepare to “implement in the upturn” – it will happen! Change will come…and we will be fine. Patience, perseverance, and positive…

Change will come…and we will be fine. Patience, perseverance, and positive…

A Positive Workplace Means Business! It Just makes Cent$! TM