Building Trust, Boosting Productivity

An organisation that is committed to work-life integration has more productive and loyal employees.

Trust is defined as confidence in and reliance on the integrity, ability or character of a person or thing. Intuitively, everybody expects and exercises trust in his relationships.

Studies have consistently shown that high levels of trust bring substantial rewards. The Great Place to Work Institute, which has been tracking levels of employee trust in management for over 25 years, showed that the financial returns of the 100 Best Companies (with high employee trust) are better than their lower-trust peers.

Their long-term performance as a group is superior to that of comparable groups of companies such as the S&P 500. Apart from stronger performance and resilience in weathering economic downturns, other advantages include:

• Attracting better talent;
• Experiencing less voluntary turnover;
• Enjoying higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty;
• Fostering greater innovation, creativity and higher productivity; and
• Enhanced public reputation.

More companies are offering flexible work arrangements today to attract and retain talent and to differentiate themselves from competitors.

A culture of trust is crucial in ensuring the effective implementation of work-life integration programmes that will translate into real benefits for employees and employers.

Here are ways to enhance a company’s trust culture:

1. Set Clear and Mutually Agreeable Key Performance Indicators

Employers should help employees understand business priorities and encourage them to be equally clear about their personal priorities.

With all cards on the table, schedules and assignments can be arranged in ways that satisfy both sides. This way, employees are given specific goals but have autonomy over how to achieve these goals.

2. Keep The Communication Flowing

Companies must continually share their vision, values, business strategy and direction with employees and follow up on what they have been assigned to do. Employees should understand business objectives well to help bring the vision and strategies to fruition.

HSL Constructor is one employer who believes in having an open door policy. New employees share their concerns with management through feedback forms and meetings with the management. Also, HSL advocates that to be trusted, one has to learn to trust others.

3. Focus on Relationship-Building

Employers should respect and support employees as “whole people” with important roles outside the workplace. By showing a sincere interest in the lives of their employees, managers will foster trust with their employees, enabling them to tackle their work-life conflicts effectively.

4. Engage and Empower Employees to Solve Problems

To build loyalty, managers need to actively engage their employees in contributing their ideas and creative solutions to solve problems and improve processes.

Empower staff to formulate solutions, and when implemented, give credit to those who contributed.

At Cherie Hearts, a local company that provides child and student care services, the focus on work-life harmony has resulted in a high-trust and loyal environment.

Members of the staff are encouraged to provide feedback and be open in communicating with the management and the human resource department. By doing this, the company gets the performance it wants, and the employees can meet their personal and family needs.

5. Walk the Talk

Good managers know that actions speak louder than words, particularly in how they encourage their staff to embrace work-life balance.

The commitment to rethink and redesign work processes and experiment with new work options that replace the office-centered work model will demonstrate to and instill trust in employees that their company truly cares for them. Many solutions become possible when employers think out of the box and walk the talk.

Companies that work on building up their trust capital will find that they do not have more balanced, engaged and loyal employees. They also experience higher levels of productivity and creativity, which in turn lead to greater profitability and enhanced corporate reputation.

Source: Singapore Straits Times/Asia News Network

 

Move Up The Ranks

Here’s how to show your supervisors that you are management material

The corporate world is competitive, volatile and unpredictable. The secret to scaling the corporate ladder is to move up one rung at a time so that you can manage each step effectively.

How can young professionals build enduring success and advance their careers to the next level – and keep rising? Here are points to keep in mind:

Inspire Trust

Bosses ultimately want someone they can trust to do a job for them. If they know the individual is professional, credible and works in the best interests of the organisation, then they will rely on him to take on a managerial position.

Managing is also about inspiring and retaining the leaders of the future, so bosses will want to ensure that their managers are able to groom those below them to provide a pipeline of future management talent.

Just being good in your job does not necessarily mean you will be a good manager.

This requires a different skill set and relies very much on your soft skills. Your bosses will assess his future managers on their potential people management and leadership skills as well as their performance in their current role.

Be Indispensable

You don’t have to shout from the rooftops about all the extra work you have done to get noticed. It is about making yourself indispensable.

Does your boss always rely on you? Does he turn to you frequently for help and suggestions? Are you making him look good? If you are being assigned specific projects, it is probably because your management feels that you are the most capable person for the job.

So focus on proving that your boss has judged your abilities correctly, and adopt a positive attitude at all times. Learn to take credit when it is due as this will help you climb the ladder more quickly.

You need to have regular “career chats” during appraisals and show you are ambitious by asking your boss what you need to achieve to move on to the next level.

Set milestones so that once you have reached them, you are able to point out that you have successfully accomplished what has been tasked to you to clinch that promotion.

You should also work on your soft skills by interacting, grooming and training your colleagues and new recruits as this will help hone your management skills and display your ability to take the next step.

Know Your Job

You are given a promotion not for the time you have spent in a role but because you deserve it. A management position often comes with serious responsibilities. You will be in charge of other people’s career and you need to be equipped with the right skills to manage and lead others.

Sometimes it is better to stay at a certain level to gain a thorough understanding of the role rather than look for quick promotions and set yourself up for failure. You should feel challenged, but you do not want a position that overwhelms you.

Lead Wisely

If your promotion is based strictly on merit, then your peers and subordinates should not be jealous.

As long as you are not advancing your career at the expense of your colleagues, you should be confident and proud of your achievements.

That said, it is always difficult when you and your colleagues have started off as peers but you are now their manager. It is important that you lead by example and make yourself approachable so they will come and discuss issues with you.

You need to be sensitive to their feelings and realise that although there might be some jealousy, you still have to do your job.

An attitude of arrogance or indifference is not going to win you any friends, but you also have to keep in mind that you are not paid to be their friend but rather, to be their team captain and lead them to achieve your organisation’s business objectives.

Keep Learning

Learn from your mistakes, as well as from those around you and above you. It is important to recognise  that mistakes will be made but as you gain more experience, you will make fewer errors or bad judgement calls over time, which will ultimately make you a better manager.

Observe the people you think are good managers and inspirational leaders and emulate their behaviour.

Constantly  share your ideas, thoughts and opinions with your people to motivate them. The  golden rule for management is: Be quick to compliment and slow the criticise.

Most importantly, spend time with your direct boss and ask for feedback regularly so that you can identify areas for improvement.

 

Get Creative

Creativity is not just for the chosen few – here’s how you can unleash your potential”

Creativity is a fascinating subject.

The word itself tends to evoke images of quirky weirdness, sidelining creativity to a fringe populace of misfits.

However, creativity is less about standing apart from the crowd and more about seeking – and finding – new ways to do things.

As we encounter the little problems of everyday life, the common response is to try and solve them.

Nobody likes being thwarted, so we seek to remove obstacles that are in our way. In trying to overcome these challenges, we automatically engage in a very creative process.

Far from being a special characteristic that is randomly bestowed upon a selected few, experts on the subject are finding that creativity is orderly and, by using a specific set of techniques, “teachable”.

A Good Habit

Creativity is, in fact, a potential that everyone has. At its core, creativity is a matter of expression.

How “creative” you are depends on how often (if at all) you engage in the following five habits which can be considered the “core competencies of creative expression:

1. Preserve New Ideas

You often marvel at new ideas, remarking at the seeming ingenuity of the author, while wondering why you never come up with similar breakthroughs yourself.

Chances are, you have, and it is more than likely that you failed to preserve the new idea or insight as it came to you.

By definition, something that is new falls outside of your normal operating awareness. This means that you hardly acknowledge, much less recall, having had that creative burst of insight.

Sometimes, when you have new ideas, you reject them out of hand, fearing that they may be too weird or advanced to be acceptable.

Therefore, to be truly inspired, you have to cultivate the habit of capturing new ideas as they come to you, without making snap judgments.

A good exercise would be to keep a notepad handy at all times to record new insights as they come to you.

Simply note it down first. Evaluate the idea later.

2. Choose Your Surroundings

Mixing in the right company is crucial to determining creativity.

A large part of creativity involves expressing ideas in different and unique ways.

Creative environments and people are often regarded as interesting because their unconventional take on things challenges and stimulates us.

Therefore, exposing yourself to creative people and environments will prompt your own ideas to become more diverse, which will in turn facilitate the birth of creative insights.

3. Challenge Yourself

It is not enough to simply immerse yourself in inspiring surroundings.

Like any skill, the only way to improve your creativity is to work on it.

Habitually tackling tough problems will help to promote creativity.

When solving challenging tasks, multiple skills and behaviours are engaged, competing with each other for attention.

As a result, interconnections form as the brain synthesises thoughts for a coherent solution, prepping it for new ideas that foster creativity.

4. Broaden Your Horizons

Learn as much as you can about subjects beyond your current scope of work.

Not only will you pick up nuggets of information, diverse knowledge also helps you form more interesting interconnections, which in turn boosts your creativity.

5. Don’t Give Up

Creative people are highly productive and disciplined.

As you unleash and cultivate your flow of ideas, you will encounter many that are downright impractical.

Even promising insights are worth something only if they can be applied in a practical situation.

The solution is to keep working on developing your creativity. The more ideas you have, the higher your ability to have more powerful insights, allowing you to become a better problem-solver.

Sometimes, new ideas need time to be understood by other people, and it is very common for new projects to face initial resistance.

When encountering setbacks, it is important not to give up but to continue with the habits that promote creativity.

Stay focused and disciplined to keep your creative juices flowing, and let the successes you have lead you to a more inspired and satisfying work life.