By Michael W. Hill, Mobius Vendor Partners Executive Consultant,                               

Author of Measuring to Manage

It may seem that every day your company is hit with a new Challenge. Yes, some companies are, but some of these Challenges are shared by a number of companies and some might be unique to yours.

In the last couple of months articles, I have addressed 6 common Challenges and some recommended solutions. This month I’ll address my final 3. These are not in any particular order. Just be open-minded about what might be affecting your business.

These Challenges are not unique to just full-time office employees or the remote workers. These are problems that your company needs to address to be successful.

Challenge #1 Trust Issues

It seems after the pandemic everyone’s lives got more and more complicated and busier than ever before. One of the biggest challenges after the pandemic and even now (more than 2 years later) trust is a big issue. It’s hard to gain someone’s trust but it’s very easy to lose it.  If employers don’t believe they can trust their employees, or the employees don’t feel like management can be trusted, either one of these challenges will result in unhappy and non-productive employees.

So, what do you do? Communicate with your employees. One of the easiest ways for trust to break down is from lack of communication, one of the best ways to build trust is through open, informative communication. Mind reading always gets people in trouble – so prevent it by communicating. Communicate both the good and Bad news. The research shows that employees can be very accepting of bad news if you’re open and honest with them, this is going to build trust. Communication is so important – make sure you involve your employees in the process: ask them what areas of the business are not clear to you and how is the best way to communicate with you? Some want things written, some like to hear things verbally – my suggestion, do both!

Challenge #2 No Potential Growth

In my work consulting work, I’m continually surprised the number of times I hear from an employee “I need to start looking for another job, this one is a dead end.” Most employees have goals and if their current job does not help them grow towards accomplishing those goals they will look elsewhere. You may be thinning “my employees are happy and performing to a satisfactory level. But do you really know what they’re thinking? It might be, is this job helping me progress and am I being challenged?

So, what do you do? Lay out career progression programs that show the employees the opportunities that are available within your organization. In my consulting role I was working with an individual that was all excited and showed me their rewritten resume that they were going to start showing to other companies get away from what he thought was a dead-end job. I suggested that they may want to show it to their current employer’s human resource department to see if something was available in their current organization. The HR department was impressed with the knowledge and experience the employee had gained and offered them a position that was more challenging and rewarding than his current role. 

Challenge #3. Lack of Employee Performance Reviews

In the past, employees were reviewed yearly and then given a raise or not depending on their performance. This once-a-year review did very little to increase the employees and the organization s performance. Many companies stopped doing employee reviews entirely. Smart companies started doing a combination of reviews and feedback sessions. These techniques increased both employee and organization performance.

Your best employees are asking. ”How am I to know what is expected of me if there’s no communication as to what is required and at what level”? Lack of communication will always lead to problems in the workplace. What I find is that most employees want to do what is asked of them, but management must be clear as to what the expected and the level of expected performance. This needs to be communicated both verbally and in written form to the employee. The written form (employee review) is key. This eliminates and guessing by the employee as to what is to be done and at what level.

You probably noticed that I point out with each Challenge that you need to ask your employees for their input. Some of what you “need” to know can only be answered by the employees themselves. Maybe a survey would help? You might be making some assumptions that are just not correct! Get your employees involved! Some of these Challenges may be affecting your employees more than you think and  they may currently be looking for employment elsewhere because they do not feel that the Challenges are being addressed. 

You may want our help. 

At Mobius’ Employee Experience – EX Consulting Employee Experience – Mobius Vendor Partners (mobiusvp.com) – we have the software to survey your employees so you can make the best decisions for your company and respond to your employees’ needs. Contact us to get started.

Mike’s book: Measuring to Manage is available on Amazon.