Not knowing your employees is Cancerous, Smile!!!

      With the number of stress issues we have today, employers must be aware of how all these stressors can lower or even halt productivity in a diverse multi-cultural staff of employees. Some of your employees may be world thinkers, in other words they may have their finger on the pulse of what happens not only in their town, city, state, or country but around the world and with having a diverse staff this may play a big part in the company’s overall moral. They may have families in other countries suffering abroad and coming into work and being beaten with the work force whip will only have them retaliate with no production or it will plant a seed of animosity towards a firm that is only concerned with the bottom line, the stock holder’s equity. I have seen many fortune 500 company downsize, close, develop internal silos, or have many internal issues, especially in hiring new staff.

       Employees that realize that a company doesn't care about worldly events that may affect them can easily fall out of loyalty and rebel by lessening productivity. They can also become a host of cancerous effects, meaning they start to spread this ill feeling of abandonment, of worthlessness, they start to think of themselves as a numerical value to stockholders who are often out of touch employees and the firm in which their attached to.

       Once this cancerous effect take place in a company it’s hard to stop it and eradicate it because the opportunity to address world issues as a weekly monitoring session has passed. Once employees become detached, and their loyalty to the company drops, their next mission is to break the work machine by recruiting other employees to adapt the same mentality of abandonment and worthlessness to say company. One this cycle happens it then jumps onto the media world, the internet in which employees can then have an open arena to the world on how corrupt, insensitive and immoral your company is and thus making it extremely difficult to recruit prime candidate for key roles within a company that has bad review on this internal culture.

        Employers must be sensitive to world events such as natural disasters, world wars, religious wars, and financial economic hardships in third world countries. Having an early morning meeting to express sympathy, empathy and looking for ways to donate or help employees affected by this will show that you are in tuned with world events and that your money making entity (your employees) are worth their time in skills and labor. It straightens your staff cohesiveness and loyalty and loyalty has monetary value. 

        Another effective way to eradicate a low moral staff is to imply some sort of healthy living sessions once a day, once a week or once a month or all three. For example, on Mondays after you weekly meeting at 3pm you should have everyone get up for five minutes and do some sort of exercise by their desk, play music from all genres loud in the office, even the CEO should be present for this at all cost, all managers, all above the line personal should simultaneously take a pause to mesh and build cohesiveness with their employees. Employees like to see above the line personnel in the trenches with them, this gives them a feeling that they’re not just a number but also their known by face and stature.

        Another great way to ease tension or eliminate some stressors is to have a weekly team-building event that is fun and quick. For example, the Olympics happen last year, our supervisors made a weekly team-building event. We have an Olympic theme with gold silver and bronze medals and we had contest on product knowledge, processes, and compliance and the team who got gold was allotted a jeans day. One of the most effective way I was able to boost morale in many companies was to have a comedy hour. I went into a company to build its moral, the employee body was diverse but you can see the morbid and depress spirits of certain employees who walked around like zombies. I saw that to encompass everyone, instead of singling out certain individuals I needed something that would bring everyone together and put smiles in their faces, I felt like changing this companies culture was going to need a different approach. There was nothing fun, exciting happening in this company, no softball team, no monthly potlucks, no midweek meetings of concerns, no direct contact between the hair ups and their subordinates. It was run like a concentration camp. NOOOOO GOOD!

      I implemented a 30 minute off the clock comedy half hour. I found thru YouTube and various other online media sources clean funny comedians from around the world from all different ethnic backgrounds. I had the company buy a movable TV in which we can have many options on where to have our weekly comedy session. "Humor is tonic to the soul” it eases the daily pains of merely surviving, and it brings people of all ethnic backgrounds together. I stood back and while the slew of funny ethnic comedians entertained the staff I saw smiles, I saw a great appreciation for the time out, I saw a great appreciation for the supervisors who signed off on this precious activity. I saw employees laughing, smiling, relating, and well I saw that moral was being lifted. This worked and the company started to focus on their employee’s mental status on a daily basis. All of a sudden, this company changed around to being very productive after they implemented many other employee interaction activities and addressed worldly issues that may directly or indirectly affect their bottom line.

        Adding a little humor into the workforce tactfully, with respect to others religion, gender and sexual orientation may be a super weapon to offset a low moral and low loyalty consensus. Employers must be world thinkers; they must truly care about their employees just as they care for their families. A good CEO must be transparent; they should implement a transparency within the "above the line" staff as well. I know that they are certain aspects of the company business that cannot be shared with their employees but the more you make your employees feel like their part of the overall growth of the company the more their loyalty and production grows. Remember bad reviews are online forever, bad internal culture and under par communicating styles between supervisor managers and Owners are crucial to the success of any company. Employees run the work machine that produces dividends and I say dividend because at the end of the day it’s all about numbers. Getting the best candidates for your company to produce dividends can only be done successfully with having a well work life balance employee internal company culture.