Thursday, September 29, 2011

Wanna Make More Money? Make Your Employees Happy


Copy this article from here, without permission :p
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Wouldn’t it be great if you could wave your magic wand and abracadabra, up go sales and profits? If you flunked advanced wizardry, don’t worry. Believe it or not, this is a trick for mere mortals. All you have to do is make your employees happy.
Happy workers perform
In a Gallup, Inc. study of over two thousand business units on “the causal impact of employee work perceptions on the bottom line of organizations,” researchers found a distinct link between employee attitudes and a company’s financial performance, employee retention and customer loyalty.
Research conducted by the Wharton School found that Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” reported 3.5 percent higher returns than their peers (Harvard Business Review Daily Stat).
Of course there’s the chicken and the egg question. Is company performance better because its employees are more engaged or is it the other way around? According to the Gallup study, the answer is clearly the former—happy employees are productive employees.
But most employees aren’t happy
Unfortunately, for the majority of businesses, employee engagement—a strong indicator of satisfaction and morale—is in the toilet.
According to a study by Mercer, a global HR consulting firm, nearly a third (32 percent) of U.S. workers are seriously considering looking for a new job (up from 23 percent in 2005). Another one in five (21 percent) don’t have plans to leave but also don’t give a rat’s buttocks about what they’re doing—just the kind of people you want on the payroll. (Mercer’s What’s Working survey)
Similarly, Blessing White, a global consulting firm that focuses on employee engagement, found that only a third of U.S. employees are fully engaged. Their research, and that of other industry experts, shows that the most engaged employees are both highly satisfied and high contributors to the organization.
In their 2011 Global Engagement Report, they summarize the level of engagement of North American employees as follows:
  • Highly engaged: 33 percent of North American employees.
  • Almost engaged: 10 percent—high performers and reasonably satisfied but not consistent.
  • Honeymooners and hamsters: 24 percent—either new to the organization in a kind of limbo or “working hard but, in effect, spinning their wheels.
  • Crash & Burners: 15 percent—“disillusioned and potentially exhausted.”
  • Disengaged: 18 percent—not contributing very much and not very satisfied; likely skeptical and may spread their negativity around the organization.
Millennials were the least engaged (only 23 percent were highly engaged and 25 percent were disengaged). Boomers were the opposite (36 percent were highly engaged and 16 percent were disengaged).
Looking at the numbers by department or function, employees in sales showed the highest engagement (38 percent in Blessing White’s highest engagement category) and IT and R&D workers showed the lowest (26 percent). Worse, 27 percent in engineering and 22 percent in IT were categorized as disengaged. Think about that next time you walk into a smart building.
So how do you make your employees happy?
Based on the answers to Blessing White’s question “which one thing would improve job satisfaction.” it was clear that employees simply want to do what they do best. Career development and flexible working conditions were also high on their radar.
  • Opportunity to apply their talents 27 percent
  • Career development and training: 20 percent
  • More flexible working conditions: 15 percent
From their managers, the report showed employees want:
  • A sense of belonging; feeling like they’re part of a team
  • Regular feedback on performance
  • Recognition for achievements
  • Encouragement for them to use their talents
  • To be treated like an individual
  • To be asked for their input (and have it acted on)
  • To not be micromanaged
Employees want their organization’s top leaders to:
  • Create an environment that drives high performance
  • Communicate honestly
  • Act in alignment with the company’s core values and guiding principles
  • Link the work of the company to a larger purpose
The Blessing White report observes, “Engaged employees...stay for what they give (they like their work and are able to contribute); Disengaged employees stay for what they get (a secure job in an unfavorable employment market, a desirable salary or bonus, favorable job conditions, or career advancement).”
Which kind of person would you rather have on your team, or for that matter, spend the majority of your day with: a giver or a taker?

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Those days are gone

About a year back, when we clean our construction manager shit. I don't know how the management look at these sohais, but I use this photo to describe the word "teamwork", not on paper but in real life. Anyway, those days are gone.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Today we are going to learn a very simple Chinese word, 米. It may look like an asterisk "*", but this word is very important to human being, especially Asian people.

Ok, the word that we going to learn today is 米, pronounced as "mi". The meaning of this word is rice. We all know what is rice, something that we eat. Apart from it default meaning, it also has different meanings.

We like to say someone that rich, or seem to be rich, "有米", mean got rice. Why we say rich people got rice, but not got gold, got silver, or got grass, but we say the bugger got rice. To understand this sentence, we need to go back to few thousand years ago, back to Qing dynasty 秦朝.

At that moment, all the government workers are paid using rice. For example, the prime minister annual salary at that time is ten thousand stone rice. One stone is around 150 pounds of rice. Which mean, the prime minister was given 1.5 million pounds of rice as his salary. So, if you want to buy something, like fish or house, you can pay the vendor using rice. If you want to know the price of an item, you may ask "How much rice?". Therefore, the rich people are those who owned lots and lots of rice.

The story now go to Jin dynasty 晋朝 (the dynasty after the three kingdoms), the vary famous author named Tao Yuan Ming said a very famous idiom, 不为五斗米折腰, we can direct translate it as "don't bow for 5 pecks of rice". According to history, one peck of rice is about 15 pounds, so 5 pecks is around 75 pounds of rice. Tao Yuan Ming was resigning from his post because he did not want to put down his pride to please the higher post officer. A great person don't work for money, there are far more important things than money.

Ok, that's all for today about the rice story.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Thankew you

Finally is my turn to receive the pen from my colleagues and friends. Thanks to everyone, especially my wild horse for preparing the pen for all of us. Good job, he can be a purchasing manager next time.

I hope the resignation heat will cool down after this, although I'm very much doubt it. Anyway, that's not my war anymore. Good luck to everyone.

Someday I wish I can use this pen to sign a $1,000,000 cheque

Monday, September 05, 2011

Unfortunately, that day has come


What's hot nowadays? Owning an Android phone or an iPhone? The collapse of the market? The Bersih? Or the resignation?

The most famous resignation is none but the resignation of Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs. I personally have to respect and salute him for his talents and hardworking in bringing the Apple to the world. We all are going to miss this genius.

So, if my post ended here, I believe it will be too short for the day. Ya, finally I have decided to resign from my current company after 10 years of service.

It's not a sudden decision and also not planned. It's just happen that it is time for me to leave this company. The total number of staffs that resigned since beginning of the year is near to 20 people, and mostly are those working for more than 5 years, some reached 25 years of service. The totals of year of service add up to about 200 years, which mean average of year of service is around 10 years.

I totally agreed that whenever there is a change in the management, there will be someone resigned. But, I believe this series of resign is not because of people reluctant to change to accept new management, everyone will agreed with me that, we can’t see our future in this company anymore. Maybe I am a lousy management people, because I don’t know and I can’t see any action or planning to look for income to the company. With current overhead, I don’t think it can last long if there is no positive income in short time, which I really see none.

I can still stay in this company, if I want, to enjoy task-less salary, play facebook’s game, drink tea at mamak, watch movie. But as I said, working is part of my hobby, sitting and doing these unproductive actions will only wasting my life.

It’s really sad to see it end like this, but unfortunately, that day has come. Therefore it’s time for me to leave to search for better future.

I will not miss this company, but it will be remembered.