Top 10 Signs of Unhappy Employees
In the modern business environment, leaders find themselves in extremely busy schedules and often focus on just getting through myriads of obligations. They end up missing or ignoring the various signs of discontent from the employees. The signs that the employees are unhappy, if left unattended, can result to very serious impacts on the performance of the organization. Leaders, who focus on employees’ happiness on top of the productivity and bottom line results, have a greater competitive advantage. Happy employees will definitely deliver beyond the expectations. Knowing these signs will therefore mitigate the unwanted consequences in the organization. The following are the ten signs that your employees are unhappy:
1. Lack of Energy and Motivation
Lack of energy indicates a lack of interest, and when there is a tangible and collective energy in an organization, people are ready to share ideas, and the working atmosphere becomes lively. What follows is the success in every aspect of the organization.
2. Employees ‘Going Through the Motions’
This is a state whereby employees tend to perform the minimum of their duties just for the sake of it, without actually believing it is of great importance. This is an indication that something is not right.
3. Little or No Creativity/Innovation
Lack of creativity means no ideas are being shared, with little or no combined effort being put by the employees. This means no dynamics in the organization.
4. Increased Rate of Turnover
Many employees abandon their work just because they aren’t comfortable with their managers or the supervisors, meaning that even though they had a great passion for their job, their morale ends up getting diminished by the leaders, and they end up downing their tools eventually.
5. Increased Rate of Absenteeism
Employees do not want to work in a place where there is no opportunity for growth and recognition. People want to work in a place where they are motivated. Absenteeism means that the desire to be at work is long gone.
6. Employee Survey Continuously Yields Same Results
This simply means that the employees are not happy with whatever is going on, and do not have the belief that things can change when nothing has changed in the past.
7. Difficulties in Acquiring New Talent
Lack of new inventions in an organization means that the ideas will keep on being recycled, which brings no inspirations and leaves the employees totally unhappy.
8. Blame Game
When leaders put all the blame on employees, for every negative result, the employees get highly demotivated. An awesome leader always strives towards creating happy employees in order to achieve positive results.
9. Employee Not Caring About Customer Satisfaction
If this happens, it means that he/she is not engaged or is unhappy. In this case, training is highly recommended.
10. Stagnant Growth
Lack of growth means that something is missing. When the employees are engaged, they are happy and it applies to the clients, which in-turn makes the organization grow and yield better results.
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Personal Kanban – Overview and Application
Personal Kanban is a popular work management system popular among software developers. It will ensure all your things are organized, and prevent you from multitasking, allowing you to stay focused on the main task. Apart from gaining its popularity from organizational project management, Personal Kanban has enabled individuals to perfectly organize other personal life aspects such as family chores and wedding plans. This system management is a style of working which originated from Japanese car manufacturing plants, and today, it is common among software developers and its popularity is based on the fact that it is capable of creating a visual representation of something that isn’t completely visual.
What is Personal Kanban?
Kanban relies on cards where you record your information, and then it arranges the cards for you. Actually, these cards are just like sticky notes, and Kanban system is like a board that arranges these sticky notes for you. Kanban software allows you to move the cards around in your own preferred ways. Typically, the cards are labeled in terms of ‘To Do’, ‘Doing’, and ‘Done’. However, you can customize the labels or the purpose in some of the tools. Generally, Kanban tools are collaborative to enable as many people as possible access the same boards and cards. At certain stages of their life, these cards are assigned to someone who is responsible for the tasks assigned on them. Usually, every team member can see all the cards or the tasks, whoever has been assigned to them, and their stages in the life-cycle.
Personal Kanban borrows some of the Kanban ideas, though it leaves some of the rules, and focuses on rules that are more specific to office work and professional productivity. You can share the information you feed into your Kanban board with family members, caretakers, friends, or even a wedding planner. It depends on what you put into the cards. Currently, there are a few Kanban apps in the market such as SwiftKanban and Trello. However, Trello CEO Michael Pryor pointed out that Trello is not technically a Kanban tool but a company tool that was inspired by them.
How and Why Personal Kanban Works
Personal Kanban visualizes whatever you need to manage. According to Janice Linden-Reed, president of Lean Kanban University, one advantage of Personal Kanban over the other many visual management systems is that it limits works in the progress. The software is a pull system rather than a push system that allows individuals to take only the amount of work that they can handle at a given time, therefore, enabling you to stay focused and organized.
Personal Kanban is very easy to understand and use. For example, if you want to use it for organizing family chores, you need to figure out the columns you may require. These can be ‘To Do’ column, ‘Done’, ‘Doing’ but they can be enhanced to be more elaborate and precise like ‘To-Do Daily’, ‘To-Do Weekly’, ‘To-Do Monthly’. Subsequently, each family member can pick one card from the ‘To-Do Daily’ column every day, one card from the ‘To-Do Weekly’ column each Monday, and one from the ‘To-Do Monthly’ column on the first Sunday of each month.
Examples of Personal Kanban and Who Can Benefit From It
Personal Kanban can be employed in a wide range of tasks, such as managing house chores, planning and organizing weddings, managing a wine cellar inventory, and even helping you manage vacation and travel saving ideas. Various people use different visualization software to keep them organized. According to Linden-Reed and Pryor, Kanban is best suited for visually-oriented people. Linden-Reed further added that those who struggles with burden issues, or those who prefer quality issues in their profession can greatly benefit from Kanban.
DeMaria Barry said that kids with Asperger’s usually perform well using Personal Kanban. She added that kids get serotonin boost and kinesthetic feedback when they pull work from Kanban and see the work in the Done Column. She also said that kids with ADHD usually succeed with Kanban because when they implement a work-in-progress limit, they become compelled to focus on the current tasks rather than getting distracted when they start many jobs but end up not completing any. Pryor said that almost everyone is well suited for Kanban since it is designed to match how human beings already think.
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Are Your Beliefs Helping or Hindering You as a Leader?
Are Your Beliefs Helping or Hindering You as a Leader?
By Susanne Madsen
Have you ever considered how important your values and beliefs are to the results you get (or don’t get) in your personal and professional life? Beliefs are so powerful that they shape your attitudes, decisions, actions, and ultimately determine your results. They are something […]
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Advice from the Field: What Makes a Successful PMO?
Advice from the Field: What Makes a Successful PMO?
By Michelle Greer
Recently, I had a lunch with a newly-appointed Project Management Office (PMO) leader for a major retailer here in SF. He was just hired to reinstate the PMO, processes and tools for his organization. He shared his approach to this exciting new challenge and from […]
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Upwork – A new way of finding resources for projects
The proper management of resources is one of the most critical components for a project to be completed within budget and within schedule. When companies decide to start a project, one of the first things they consider is where to get the resources for the project. Depending on the nature of the project, hiring external consultants may be the best option.
Global Job Marketplace like Upwork.com
When hiring external consultants, project managers carefully select the candidates, so that the skills match the particular task required to be completed. Nowadays, more candidates are available, with some located in different countries or even different continents. This is possible with online job marketplace services that offer the hiring and managing of freelance consultants, either individuals or teams, working in remote locations but connected through the Internet.
Some of these online services include Upwork, Freelancer, Elance, Guru, and Fiverr. These online staffing platforms have a global reach. They also have tools and features for communication, timekeeping, file sharing, and different modes of payment between employer and consultant. As of last year, Upwork is the largest and most dominant among these online staffing platforms. Project tasks that are usually outsourced deal with writing content, web programming, web design, drawing/drafting, documentation, transcribing, and marketing. This new way of finding project resources is helping many organizations.
Advantages of Outsourcing
- Reduced operational costs. By nature, projects are temporary. External consultants can be hired on a project basis, so they will not increase operational costs of the company unnecessarily.
- Flexible staffing. Some projects may be seasonal in nature. Companies can easily add or subtract resources depending on the number of projects being engaged, and still remain lean in-between projects. In a company where there is high turnover of employees, hiring external consultants also provide stability in the operations.
- Available expertise. Some companies may not have the required skill or expertise readily available within the organization or business area. Hiring external consultants is a quick way to find the matching skills needed to complete a critical project task.
- Staff development. Internal staff who may not yet have the level of expertise to complete a project task can learn from an external consultant. By letting employees study the consultant’s work, management can develop the staff in an inexpensive way and prepare them to handle similar tasks in the future.
- Core business concentration. For businesses with limited staff that need to undertake a project only once, hiring external consultants with matching expertise will allow them to remain concentrated on the nature of their business. A group of lawyers or doctors, for example, can remain focused on their practice, while an IT project manager with a team of outsourced web programmers can work on a computer system for them and their business.
Disadvantages of Outsourcing
- Minimal control. The project manager can track the progress only of the tasks assigned to the external consultant. If the external consultant accommodates other tasks from other employers, the project manager may not get the desired focus that he or she wants for the tasks.
- Confidential data exposure. The project might involve giving confidential data to external consultants. Of course, a confidentiality agreement or a non-disclosure agreement can be signed, but still, the possibility that the data will be exposed exists.
- Substandard quality. The completion of a task may be defined only by the output. However, the means of how the task is completed may not be up to the quality standards that the employer is expecting. For example, a task of developing a computer program is considered complete when it gives the correct output. The program may be giving the right output, but the way the code was written is inefficient.
- Higher risks. An important task assigned to an external consultant may be delayed or not done because of a problem specific to the consultant’s location. The external consultant may suddenly become unavailable and for a long time due to an unreliable Internet connection, a power outage, or a natural disaster.
- Misunderstanding and miscommunication. Sometimes, hiring external consultants give an impression to internal staff that they are not trusted or dependable enough. This can lower the morale of the project team. Cultural differences and time differences can also result in miscommunication.
Final Decision
Resources are a vital component in the success of a project. Having the right number of people, with the proper skills, at the required time can result in the fulfillment of all the defined goals, at the scheduled time without going beyond its budget. Online staffing platforms such as Upwork offer a great way to hire external resources. External consultants are available and practical options. They may not be applicable or advisable at all times, but they certainly can help make project goals more achievable most of the time.
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Portfolio Metrics Need to Advance Beyond on Time and on Budget
Portfolio Metrics Need to Advance Beyond on Time and on Budget
By Kiron D. Bondale
While simply meeting the triple constraint is not the best method of evaluating project success, on time or on budget statistics continue to be used by Project Management Offices (PMO) as proof that project delivery capabilities are improving. After all, if the […]
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Read Me a Story
Read Me a Story
By Kerry Wills
When I was a little boy I enjoyed when my father would read a story to me before going to bed. Now that I am much older I don’t need someone to read them to me and yet many presentations are just that – people showing slides and then reading […]
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Benefits of an “Agile” Mindset
Benefits of an “Agile” Mindset
By Perry McLeod
Projects are a social endeavor. Traditional project management approaches have shied away from the social advantages a more agile project environment brings. By nature, we are storytelling, pattern seeking and social people. We need colocation to shine truly in a project environment. Agile is about creating and fostering a […]
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How a Project Manager can get Better at Public Speaking
The fear for public speaking, also known as glossophobia, happens to be among one of the most common fears among people. This article shows different ways that a project manager can overcome the anxiety or fear to present a speech. It shows how a project manager can calm his or her jitters, enhance their delivery style, engage their listeners, as well as the manner in which to effectively read a speech.
Mindset for Public Speaking
According to Jeff Davenport, a highly acclaimed presentation coach, perspective is very important while giving presentations. He reminds managers that it is their job to convince others. For instance, to complete a sale, the key idea is to not only sell the idea, but get the audience believe it and get into action. Managers should only worry about the listeners and not the presentation slides.
Giving Data-Heavy Presentations
Nowadays, data-driven presentations should be regarded as a part of business life. In fact, data-based conclusions are more convincing. However, managers should be careful not to let numbers take over their presentation. According to Alexandra Samuel, an author and researcher, one should utilize data to tell a convincing story. Managers should also learn to utilize human examples to demonstrate points of significance as an occasional substitute for data presentations.
Reading Your Speech
Most people commonly view paper-reading of a speech to be a cardinal skin. That is not always the case. At time, it is OK to rely upon written notes during a presentation. Andrew Dlugan, an award-winning motivational speaker, describes what a successful speech involves. Mastering pauses in between words as well as between sentences, among other techniques, happen to be quite significant in making a speech successful. According to Dlugan, there are various advantages that come with reading a speech.
Focus on the Audience
Nancy Duarte, a presentation expert, after analyzing some speeches, concluded that perspective is a common mistake while making a speech rather than the technique. She advises managers against creating a speech out of their heroism as it might make listeners tune out. However, audience-centric content encourages them to act, and highlights their struggles. Putting the key idea as a means for the listener to overcome his/her obstacle encourages them to take action, that in-turn makes you more persuasive as a manager.
Conquer your Fear
It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, but worry during public speaking affects everyone. According to Leslie Belknap, re-framing your physical stress that you feel as something positive is a solution for dispelling your stress. Your mind is easily turned to enthusiasm when you say that you feel excitement rather than anxiety. Getting specific about your worries makes them powerless. This way, you can spare energy that can otherwise be spent on brainstorming potential solutions to put into place in case they come to pass. You can have your worries make you stronger rather than fearful and anxious.
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Leaders Should Inspire Change Through the Rear View Mirror
Leaders Should Inspire Change Through the Rear View Mirror
By Roy Osing
There is certainly no shortage of advice on what actions leaders should take to successfully implement change.
However, despite the plethora of guidance available, organizations generally have difficulty executing their “brave idea”. The desired change doesn’t see the light of day; the intended benefits aren’t realized; […]
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