All Posts Tagged With: "safety"
The New Pro-Business Mentality
There are a lot of politicians hitting the airwaves with their “pro-business” mantra that usually includes reducing regulations, eliminating the minimum wage, and cutting corporate taxes. But, as Seth Godin so eloquently points out, what may have been pro-business in the past has little to do with what is best for business in the 21st century. (“What does ‘pro-business’ mean?” Seth Godin’s Blog, October 13, 2010)
That old-school pro-business mindset is more like pro-factory, but factories in the U.S. business world represent a fraction of all the business that’s being done, especially since so many factory jobs have been sent overseas. “It turns out that factory thinking is part of a race to the bottom,” writes Godin, “to be the cheapest, the easiest place to pollute, the workforce that will take what it can get.”
Godin offers a new set of pro-business strategies that sound like a much better fit for business today:
- “Investing in training the workforce to solve interesting problems so they can work at just about any job.
- Maintaining infrastructure, safety, and civil rights so we can create a community where talented people and the entrepreneurs who hire them (two groups that can live wherever they choose) would choose to live there.
- Rewarding and…
Backdoor Access to World-Class Performance
A CEO recently enlightened me about the transformative power of a robust safety, diversity, or ethics program: It can institutionalize a culture of employee engagement, process management, open communication, and continuous improvement.
Safety, diversity, and ethics have value in and of themselves. Where they have value beyond themselves is in their ability to align people with a shared vision. Everybody shares the vision of a safe workplace. Everyone shares the vision of a diverse workforce (well, maybe not everyone, but nobody’s going to argue against it). Everyone shares the vision of working for an ethical organization.
Leaders can use safety, diversity, and ethics to rally people around ambitious goals and get them nodding in agreement, establish the habit of adhering to policies and procedures, focus people on measurable results, communicate a consistent message, pursue process improvements, and celebrate success. In other words, safety, diversity, and ethics are levers that leaders can use to transform their organizations. They are large-scale pilot projects for how to make your organization more systematic, holistic, and aligned.
For example, if you are an executive for a bank with dissatisfied customers and employees, declining revenue, and escalating costs, and you want to do something about it, you may want…
9Feb2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy HR Needs Baldrige
Not all VPs and the departments they represent are equal: Attend an executive meeting and the pecking order quickly becomes apparent. And Human Resources is often one of those getting pecked.
It doesn’t make much sense since the success of every organization depends on its people, a fact many like to claim with little evidence that they believe it. As a result, the people responsible for recruiting, hiring, training, retaining, engaging, protecting, motivating, and satisfying employees do not get the respect they deserve for the critical jobs they are doing.
That’s why HR needs Baldrige: The Baldrige model values the workforce. As the Baldrige Criteria state, “An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.”
Organizations that integrate Baldrige value their people and they value Human Resources for its ability to build an engaged workforce, provide meaningful work, align with a clear organizational direction, establish a performance accountability system, and create a supportive work environment. As an organization integrates Baldrige, HR’s stock rises.
Workforce Focus is one of seven categories addressed by the Baldrige Criteria. You cannot score poorly in this category and claim to…
9Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued10 Critical Questions: Your Workforce
Several articles on Baldrige.com have emphasized the value of employee engagement and satisfaction. “Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value, as the Criteria state: “An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.”
The best way to evaluate how well you are creating an engaged and satisfied workforce is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.
The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your workforce focus, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
- How do you determine the key factors that affect workforce engagement and satisfaction and assess performance on them?
- How does your culture promote open communication, high-performance work, and an engaged workforce?
- How does your organization benefit from the diverse ideas, cultures, and thinking of your workforce?
- How does your workforce performance management system engage employees and support high-performance work?
- How does your learning and development system address your organization’s core competencies and strategic challenges, action plans, performance improvement, innovation, ethics, employees’ needs,…
Baldrige and Workforce Results
In earlier articles, we listed some of the world-class financial results and customer results achieved by Baldrige Award recipients. Another area where they excel is in engaging and satisfying their employees.
“Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value defined as “committing to their engagement, satisfaction, development, and well-being.” Whatever your organization’s goals for creating a high-performing workforce, evaluating and improving your management system through regular Baldrige assessments will help you achieve them.
You can test the validity of that statement by considering the workforce-related results of organizations that have received the Baldrige Award:
- Named one of “America’s 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare” with employee satisfaction ranked in the 97th percentile nationally (Poudre Valley Health System)
- Increased employee engagement from 37% to 65% in four years (Cargill Corn Milling)
- Staff turnover declined from 13.5% to 7.5% in five years (Mercy Health System)
- Employee turnover declined from 7.5% in 1997 to 4.5% in 2006 (City of Coral Springs)
- Turnover rate of less than 2% and never had a layoff (PRO-TEC)
- Teachers receive approximately 300 hours of technology training per year (Jenks Public Schools)
- 0.6 workdays lost due to injury per 200,000 worker hours, compared to the Bureau of Labor Statistics average of 4.8 (DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Company)
- All employees have career development…
