Home

Book-Summary - 7 Easy Ways to Show Employee You Care

Many successful business people say customer first. Your only worry is how to make the life of customer easy using your product?. They are spot on. The thing is that its a huge mission. A single person as in only you cannot achieve that goal. You need partners, you need helpers, you need supporters, you need Employees. So naturally your second most important work would be to take care of these employees who are sharing your passion to achieve this goal.

I have not lead a team, so I don’t have experience in leading a team of people and handling the employee pain points first hand. Still, I was able to connect to this book due to few reasons. I am an employee. I have worked in 3 different companies during which time I worked under 5 different managers. Apart from this, my father and his brothers run 2 hotels. So lot of points mentioned in the book, I was able to connect to due to my own experience as a software engineer employee and my observation in my father’s hotel. A very small book with hardly 30 pages of content and yet the points make you to follow it or at least generate a wish that when you start leading, I need to implement them.

We need to make the employee feel at home in his workplace, before employee faces customer. The reason provided in the book, they are your army who is going to face the situation. The situation might turn out to be bad or ugly. If work environment itself was bad then how will they face the customer? This is so true. From my own experience, when I am comfortable, my coding activity is so much better. When we join a new team, it takes a lot of time to reach the comfortable state. So, during that time our productivity as well as quality is not optimum. When we make the employees feel like home, it definitely removes the fear. As we remove the fear, we are giving the employee space for innovation and risk taking. Yes there is one negative to this, which I have heard from many experienced leaders and managers – possibility of employee taking things too easily. Taking things too easily is an open invitation for complacency. We need to find that right balance here.

Employee achievement recognition is a huge motivator for work. Yes I agree our only aim should not be to win the recognition. But recognition gives boost to the morale for an employee. It not only energises the awarded employee but it also motivates other to get that recognition. It also energises employees friends in the company. It resoundingly answers Yes someone cares for my valued efforts. The caution here is the process by which we are choosing this employee should be transparent. Everyone should see it and understand why an employee was chosen for the award. Otherwise, this can be a huge negative energy generation event. It increases the gap between manager and its employees. It also increases animosity with co workers.

A manager should know everything about his team. Yes observation of the team members work is one way of knowing about the member. More better way to learn about the team members is have a direct one on one discussions. This helps you to learn about the team member which in turn helps to increase the trust between manager and team members. Based on my experience, one on one discussion should happen regularly. The conversation should be no format no restriction type, that is, team members should be allowed to share anything they want to – personal or professional. They can complain about others, they can criticise the manager itself, they can request for improvements, they can share personal pain points, anything. Manager should be ready to hear it out and also help them out in ways which are possible. The most important – what said in the discussion stays between the manager & the member. This builds an enormous amount of trust. This will also help to surface possible future problems. It erases the fear and build better professional bonds between manager and team members. One problem I faced with no format meeting is how to start the conversation and how to expand on that. As it is a non format meeting, generally if member is an introvert or shy, and manager just asks whats going on, the answer will be just everything is good. Its the end of the conversation. So, manager should be skilled enough to have open ended conversations to start with so that team member can open up.

First impression matters. A new team member is joining the team, it should be a special scenario for the team itself. This is important because a new member is joining your group to further your goal. That new member is going to share your pains, difficulties, add new creative ideas. In the minds of the team member there will be fear whether he/she will fit in the team or he/she has necessary knowledge to work for the team or what if he/she fail on the expectations of the team. As new team member is joining the team, it becomes the responsibility of the team to make that member as welcoming and easy transition as possible. One of the biggest factor for this is first day of the new team member. The new team member does not know much about the team and similarly team does not know much about the new member. When they meet and spend time on the first day lets make it special. It would be the day to explore each other. There are companies which provide goodies, there will be cake cutting ceremonies and what not, I personally feel these are just show off and not yet all helping both new team member and team itself. When the new joinee meets for the first time, we introduce each other for 1-2 sentence and that is it. Then there will be one mentor or a manager who will have a regular weekly one-one meetings. If its just a manager he/she will be fairly busy with the work. So every-time as a new comer approaches that manager/mentor, they will feel like they are disturbing the work of managers/mentors. Also manager/mentor is single point of contact and rest of the team hardly had any conversation with the new comer. So, whole place feels like an alien land and new comer himself/herself will feel like an alien to the place. I am not telling that this will remain like this for ever. Overtime team member will mingle with team and tend towards happy ending. But question is why that extra effort? One way I think can help is let each member have an one-one with the new comer on the first day or at-least within a week. In that one on one let them share what they worked on, how they work, what they are working, any tips for work. I am not telling drill down the new comer with technical stuff on the first day but explain things in plain English what you are working on, why you as an individual is working in the team and any advice for the new member. Then let the whole team go out for lunch that day with the new comer. Lunch is casual and helps to trigger off work topics. Let the new comer know, team cares about that new person.

Attitude towards work and the mood of a worker in work is contagious. I have observed this in my workplaces and at my father’s restaurant. If my father is in an angry mood, then the atmosphere is very serious. Only good thing in that scenario is, it maintains a discipline. But the worst part is fear creeps in. The manager is angry or in a bad mood, so if any issues comes up in the work, workers would try to solve it themselves and not let the manager know about it because manager is going to scold them. The other members tries to avoid getting involved in the issue because same reason why should I also get scolding from the manager for an issue which was responsibility of another team member?. Most of the time this hiding does not work and it will blow up. Now manager scolds the team member. Now team member is angry so his angry wrath will be directed towards the customer or his co workers. This spreads. Manager should be calm and easy to approach. Then its very important that manager should be perceived as a person who can help in extreme conditions and not as a person who will scold you for getting into an issue. So every day is a new challenge, start with a smile. This is especially true for managers. But also be aware that this should not lead to a situation where every issues lands into the managers court.

This one point from the book, I am still not yet convinced – “Managers should show that they too are vulnerable”. I can understand the intent but I am not sure how much good it will do. The intent is clear – let your team know what difficulties you go through and show that you are human too. You too can make mistakes. There is a fine balance here right, you are manager you are responsible for looking after your team. By showing them you are vulnerable you are putting them a thought that “Hey you are not able to look after yourself, then how can you as a manager look after the team?”. Also the thought may be “hey manager is already going through a lot personally, lets not bother with team problems”.

Final point is have food with your team often. Either invite them to your home or take them out to a restaurant or ask them to bring their lunch and lets sit together and eat-share the food. By doing this, it brings a sense of oneness among the team and its manger. Lunch is a place where casual talks come up, off the work topics and free flow talk. When manager sits and savours a food which is prepared by team members family its kind of a honour to that team member. It makes the manager humble. This may be cliched but when manager serves the food prepared by his/her family member to his/her team members, the same feeling of humbleness arises. It builds that trust.

So I would recommend to grab this small book and read it especially if you are in hotel industry. I think every manager should read it.