Make an effort to eliminate the factors that put stress on them [workers].
The one thing that any work environment can produce employees is stress. A key job of anyone in business leadership is to be committed to ridding a company of as many of those underlying reasons for stress that emerge. It can't be planned out from the beginning, especially in operations, because unknown practicals emerge that can't be foreseen until we start to take action.
A major thing that can be done is the type of culture our business embraces. Much of what comes out of our specific business culture creates many of the stresses or lack of stresses.
If there are a lot of stresses in our people, we need to look at the culture we have in our businesses and see if there are things we can change there that would reduce stress levels in our people.
Flexibility is another key factor in putting stress on workers. If we aren't a flexible company, as it relates to the personal lives of our people or in how we are empowerd to serve customers, great amounts of stress can add up from being locked into ways of doing things that can crush the spirits of our workers.
There is no playbook for this as stress and its causes can be completely different across different markets. For managers, we need to make it one of our major goals to run ahead of our people and keep an eye on anything that hinders them doing their jobs great.
Most people really want to do a good job, but if policies and procedures are too inflexible, it can lead to burnout in a big way. Anything that gets in the way of our people from performing at high levels needs to be eliminated. We must have our ears and eyes opened to what how they are responding in their actions and what they are talking about in these areas.
If we hear complaints and frustrations on a steady basis from a number of sources, we need to seriously look at our operations to see if problems causing stress are systemic and need to be changed.
I think that this is in the top 5 of the most important responsibilities of anyone in business leadership.
Other Mary Kay Resources:
Remember to Sign up for my feed, bizzbite and digg this!
Sponsored link: The outsourcing every manager requires - Tampa Locksmith
Comment Preview