In 2012, there was a Gallup Poll estimated that $450 to $550 billion have been lost in productivity in the United States of America by disengaged employees. Why is this? One of the biggest contributors to this is the information explosion. Think about it. In the 1970s, we had three TV channels. We have over 200 channels now. We have internet radio, Snapshot, Facebook, webinars, podcasts, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. An actual information explosion. More information is coming at us on a daily basis than you would imagine as we get an average of 3,000 marketing messages every 24 hours.
At the same time as this information explosion, there’s been a lack of communication in the workplace. We’re up on virtual meetings, webinars, and such, however, down on the face-to-face in-person meetings.
Another surprising statistic. There was a Google Analytics done between 2018 and 2020 on a search engine for people searching for excuses to miss work. It hit a five-year high, a 630% increase in people looking at fixed excuses not to show up to work.
What’s an organization to do? I agree there’s a lot of frustration out there as the whole environment has changed which is obvious by the statistics. However, I’m going to give you three things to make sure they’re solidly in place to help you in these areas.
Number one, have the right culture. Create a culture, an environment where people want to thrive. Your culture is how people show up. Your culture could be comprised of ingredients like communication, excellence, hard work, whatever it may be, something that you can align your team too. When you are really clear on the culture of the organization, you will find people that want to blend in and be part of that culture. In addition, you as a leader will always be asking people how they’re adhering to the culture of the organization.
Number two, 90-day plans are very effective. Make sure your team leaders are creating 90-day plans. What exactly are they going to be doing over the next 90 days to accomplish their goals? Now you have accountability. You have KPIs, (key performance indicators). They know exactly what they need to do, and the action steps to achieve what they want to achieve. Everybody’s on the same page.
And the last point is to have consistent meetings. When you have a solid culture in place which is how everyone shows up as who they need to be to take the actions they need to take, which is on their 90-day plans, to get the results you’re looking for. While conducting consistent meetings you’ll be tracking all this with your team, asking for and getting feedback. What can we do better? Is there anything else we can do? This keeps everyone aligned with the direction of the organization.
For starters, just implement these three things. Create a culture. Have the meetings to track the 90-day plans and KPIs to make sure they’re doing what they say they’re going to do. This should alleviate a lot of the challenges the industries are experiencing by communication gaps and disengaged employees. Most importantly, you as an owner or leader of an organization, have to do whatever you need to do to make sure your team is engaged because if they’re not, you’re going to be one of the statistics leaving a ton of money on the table.
If any of you out there reading this need any help with any of these areas, feel free to reach out. I’ll be happy to help you put the culture in place, the 90-day plan process in place, and the meeting process in place. You apply and master those three things; it will make a huge difference in the projection of your team as well as your organization.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com