How To Create A Winning Culture
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My Dad was a simple man with simple sayings that were profound. He always said “the fish stinks from the head down.” So it goes for a company’s culture. The owners and managers have to be the leaders every day and every minute. It’s not something you do sometimes, it should come naturally all the time.
We must be humble, think big, act small and always honestly. Culture can be good or bad, it can also turn quickly in either direction. This is why you must make it a priority and work on it continuously.
How To Keep Employees Happy And Satisfied
Employees (like customers) don’t care what we have to offer until they know that we care. Showing you care means knowing your employees and treating them like the greatest asset in your organization.
Here’s one tip you can implement immediately: Acknowledge personal events publicly. Personal events can include birthdays, employee anniversaries, marriage anniversaries and even vacations.
At Jon Wayne, we send company-wide emails for every employee’s birthday and anniversary. Everyone then has an opportunity to reply to that email congratulating that person directly. Imagine getting 50+ emails saying happy birthday from co-workers and managers.
Also, when employees submit vacation requests, make it easy, simple, and fun. Acknowledge the vacation in a meeting and have the group congratulate the employee for having an opportunity to spend time away from work, with their family. Too often in this industry, employees can’t take vacation because the company is “too busy,” it’s a “bad time” and so on and so on. Hard work should be rewarded and recognized. Vacation is just one opportunity for such recognition.
Some other initiatives we implement at Jon Wayne include efficiency bonuses, profit sharing bonuses, easy work schedules, group events and team building events. These kinds of programs ensure that everyone loves coming to work every day.
Using training to ensure that your culture grows and remains healthy
Train, train, train. Take every opportunity you have to train your people. It can be a simple five minute lesson or a full day seminar but know that what you put in you will get out tenfold.
At Jon Wayne we have a three day process that takes brand new employees through the history of our company and what makes us different from all the rest. This teaches them not only what we do, but why we do it. They get to take a tour through our facility and meet and greet everyone. It’s a great investment on our side that pays off time and time again. Prior, proper planning prevents poor performance.
How can we expect a person to come into our company and work to our standards without at least a couple days of training? It gives them a setting to learn and ask questions. We show them our DNA. These are tough trades as it is. New company, new rules, new customers, new everything, yet we all too often throw ‘em in a truck and tell em, “go fix it.” Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you think of it like that, doesn’t it? We have a very high retention rate and we attribute that to training early and training often.
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Posted In: Building Performance, Management
