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How To Impact Your Workplace (Video)

How Radio Makes Better Managers

Test-Drive Job Candidates

I appreciate that you have been a follower and/or subscriber to this Blog. But, this Blog will, sadly, be coming to an end in a few short weeks. We encourage you to join us in our new location at BuildingABetterWorkplace.com.

If you would like to subscribe to our NEW RSS Feed, simply click this link: http://buildingabetterworkplace.com/?feed=rss2

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Come on over to the new location. Things are happening there.

This Blog Is Closing

I appreciate that you have been a follower and/or subscriber to this Blog. It has been my pleasure to work for you. But as I attempt to streamlinhe our educational compenent, this Blog will, sadly, be coming to an end.

As we move all of our posting to one central Blog location, BuildingABetterWorkplace.com, this Blog will cease to exist after the next 30 days.

I encourage you to join us in our new location at BuildingABetterWorkplace.com.

If you would like to subscribe to our RSS Feed, simply click this link: http://buildingabetterworkplace.com/?feed=rss2

If you prefer to receive our posts by email, then click this link: Subscribe to Building A Better Workplace – with Kevin Burns by Email

Again, thanks for the opportunity to serve you. I hope you’ll join us at our new Blog location.

With gr-Attitude,

Kevin Burns

Closing Time And Employee Engagement

“We’re closing in five minutes!!!!”

How many times have you been told that by “customer service” personnel (yes I used quotations on purpose)?

I have even been yelled at upon entering the store twenty-five minutes before closing. What does that say about the staff? Worse yet, what does that say about management that lets staff get away with, in essence, saying, “your needs are less important than me getting out of here so hurry up Buster.”

While looking at expensive dishes in a small, Independant store, I was approached hurriedly by the sales clerk who seemed impatient that we were still in the store so close to closing time.

Exasperated she exclaimed, ” we are closing in like two minutes.”

I immediately shot back, “we’ll leave then” looking her square in the eye.

She backpedaled making some lame apology. Too late. I didn’t want to buy here anymore.

The evidence in retail establishments is staggering but this happens in every organization: people who don’t want to start something that they know they can’t finish before closing time. Clock watchers are time-thieves. They cost your organization money and productivity and take a big bite out of a culture that claims to be customer-focused.

How your people handle the end of the day is more tell-tale than how they handle the start of the day – especially around engagement.

If you, as a customer, get the warning that they will soon be closing, walk away. You deserve to be treated better. Besides, there’s a huge difference between locking the doors and being “closed.”

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert – Management Consultant – Keynote Speaker

Some People Need To Be Left Behind

I sat on a panel at a Chief Information Officers’ Conference this week with other thought-leaders from around North America. One of the questions posed to me concerned the push by populist politicians to gain points with the public by endorsing a “leave no child behind” policy when it comes to education and how a policy like this will affect workplaces in the future.

The truth is, although noble, it is not reality-based – at least not in the workplace. In the workplace, not everyone moves ahead. Some people get left behind. Some perform better than others. Some are management material. Some are not. Some are leaders. Some are followers. Some succeed. Some fail. Some are promoted. Some get laid-off. Many get left behind. Maybe you’ve been left behind once or twice yourself. If you did, I’ll bet it changed who you are and how you apply yourself. If it didn’t then you’ll likely be left behind again.

Success is not a right. It is a privilege. It is earned. It is not simply given away.

In the real world, we don’t turn low-achievers into managers and corporate executives. Bottom-achievers are the first to be laid-off when the economy turns. Look, we are already whining, moaning and complaining about poor service, low initiative, poor employee engagement, declining morale, rock-bottom motivation and terrible work-ethic. I’m not sure how lowering the bar so that more mediocre employees can squeak through university makes our workplaces better.

Sorry, but sometimes we need to leave people behind. Not everyone is a top-achiever. Not everyone is a star employee. Not everyone is future management material. If we lower the bar in education, the expectation next will be to lower the bar in employment. And that, in my estimation, is non-negotiable.

We need to raise the bar when it comes to personal performance, to how we deliver service, to how we engage in our work. Removing the consequences of not applying oneself seems counterproductive.

People need to experience difficulty and turmoil. It shapes character and resilience. People learn more from failure than from an easy ride. And I am all for those who do the work, make the effort and achieve what they are capable of. THAT builds better and more cohesive workplaces and I am completely and utterly in favor of that.

If you’re still having trouble with this, imagine a world that leaves no person behind when it comes to testing for a Driver’s License. Now do you see my point?

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert – Management Consultant – Keynote Speaker

Relevant Managers vs Irrelevant Managers

Irrelevant managers say things like: I don’t have time to read management books. I don’t have time to subscribe to management Blogs and email newsletters. I don’t have time to get away to attend that seminar on working with the new generation. I don’t have time to work with social media. I don’t have time to coddle every one of my employees just to tell them they’re doing a good job. I don’t have time to go over it and over it again just because a few don’t get it.

Relevant managers say things like: I make it a point to read at least 4 new management books each year to stay current. I subscribe to a handful of solid management thought-leaders by email and Blog because they inspire me with new ideas. I have worked out a schedule to attend at least one seminar or training session each year that can help me help my employees. Since I started working with social media, I now see how employees and customers use it to communicate better. I reach out to each employee everyday so that they feel value in the work they do and valued for the contribution they make. I will do whatever I have to do to make sure that every employee gets it right and does it right because our customers deserve our best.

So, are you too busy for the people who depend on you to be your best or are you just too self-absorbed to really care? If you cared, don’t you think you’d do something about it?

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How To Define Workplace Success

It’s very simple to define a great workplace. A great workplace is one that has a lineup of high-performers wanting to come work there.

Plain and simple, that’s all that’s necessary. No need to talk of management, money or culture. Any workplace that has a lineup of people willing to come over and work obviously is firing on all cylinders: management, money and culture.

Let me put it this way: who would you rather do business with? A company that has attracted all of the industry’s top performers or a company that struggles to attract the leftover mediocre employees?

If you want to build a better workplace, you have to start with the end-goal in mind – creating a lineup of high-performing job-applicants – and point everything you do at that. Simple.

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert and Speaker

Front-line People Reflect Their Managers

I worked with and addressed a group of retail managers this morning. The first message that I made abundantly clear was this:

“To become an outstanding retail manager, you need to first become an outstanding retail customer. Once you’ve experienced both good and bad service alike, only then can you differentiate. Only when you have set a standard of how you wish to be served can you demand of your staff any sort of standard. If you show apathy in being a customer, you will show apathy in how you train, apathy in how you hire, apathy in how you communicate and apathy in how you manage. The people on the front-line of service are a good reflection of their immediate supervisor’s willingness to train and develop his or her people.”

You know, come to think of it, this doesn’t just apply to retail.

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert and Speaker

Playing The Odds With Customer Service

The printing order I needed on Friday arrived the following Monday. I had placed my order nine days previous and had chosen 7-Day Expedited Shipping and paid a premium for it. They, VistaPrint, missed the deadline because they shipped it by standard mail.

First they first offered a re-order – which seemed pointless since I hadn’t yet received the first order. Then they offered a credit which I refused as I didn’t want a credit, I wanted a refund – especially since they promised guaranteed delivery and then missed it. They complied and I was refunded.

Upon thinking about it, it seems that they are a company playing the odds. Here’s what I mean: by offering a premium purchase option for delivery within 7 days, if they were to ship by Express Post, they would be guaranteed to have it delivered within 3-5 days. But standard Expedited Parcel usually arrives within 7 days. So instead of actually paying extra to ensure every parcel arrives on-time, they are playing the odds – the odds that they only have to pay out on the rare occassion that the Post Office doesn’t get it there within 7 days. Do the math. This questionable practice could be a huge financial saving to them but they are taking a risk with their customers.

The third option, a full refund is the only costly option for them and ONLY when their customers say no to the first two options.

I will not do business with them again because they failed in their promise and their web site has no contact info, phone numbers or email addresses. I used to be a regular customer. But this time, I had to Google to find a phone number and got it from a third-party web site whose users complained about the same things as I did here.

So let me ask you, are you treating your customers in a similar way? Do you hide behind your email, voicemail, phone trees and hidden contact info on your web site? Do you make your customers work hard to reach you? Can you think of anything more rude? You know it irks you when it happens to you so why do you do it to others? You are NEVER too busy for your customers.

Here’s my commitment to my customers and prospective clients: if you want to reach me directly, my direct telephone number to MY desk is 403-770-2928 and MY email address is abetterworkplace@gmail.com. I answer my own emails and I answer my own phone. I have voicemail, sure, but it gets delivered as an MP3 file directly to my iPhone when I am out and I can call you back as soon as I get your message. I AM available to you.

By the way, I wrote this while waiting on Hold to speak to someone at the phone company, Telus. So far, 48 minutes on Hold and counting….finally, someone. Gotta go.

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert and Speaker

3 Questions To Better Workplaces

All successful workplaces have one thing in common: they are operating successfully in 3 different categories: communication, management and culture.

Every issue within an organization will fall into one of these three categories.

For example, let’s say sales are down 20% based on year-to-year performances. Now before you enroll the entire sales team into another redundant sales-training course, perhaps you should be identifying the reasons why sales are down in the first place. Three questions will identify the issue squarely:

Is it a Communication problem?
- Are the sales people not communicating to the customer why our product still holds more value than our competitor’s recently rolled-out product?
- Are the managers not communicating to the sales people new strategies to combat new competition?
- Are the customer service people not communicating trending in customer concerns back to sales?
- Are the customers not being asked about their thoughts on the products, the sales process, the quality of the sales people and/or the service personnel?

Is it a Management problem?
- Are the managers not mitigating threats in real-time to new challenges from competitors?
- Are managers not front-line managing as well as they could be – coaching, inspiring and troubleshooting with their salespeople individually each day?
- Are managers so busy doing paperwork or tying themselves up in meetings that they are not available to their salespeople on a timely basis to handle issues?
- Are managers simply waiting to respond to a crisis instead of taking leadership roles and being more proactive?

Is it a Culture problem?
- Do our service people just not care enough to work to fix a problem?
- Are the salespeople blaming lack of sales on the economy?
- Are we taking our clients for granted because they’ve been loyal to us for a long time?
- Have we, as an organization, become complacent?
- Are we, as an organization, accepting “good enough” as our basis for serving and selling to customers?
- Have we given up our training programs because our people complained that they weren’t getting anything out of them?
- Are our people asking “what’s in it for me” if they go over and above to help our clients?

Don’t just treat the symptom of a problem or, worse yet, the result of a problem. Figure out where the problem is originating from and address that. Stop throwing useless money and pointless resources at issues and “hoping” that they get resolved. Be sure.

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert and Speaker

Mediocrity Is Where Most People Live

Kevin Spacey, in the opening of the movie Casino Jack, does a monologue in front of his bathroom mirror. Featured below are some of the highlights from that monologue.

People look at politicians and celebrities on the TV, newspapers, glossy magazines. What do they see? “I’m just like them,” that’s what they see. “I’m special. I’m different. I could be anyone of them.”

I will not allow the world I touch to be vanilla.

Is today a “vanilla” day or are you going to strive for something more?

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Kevin Burns – Workplace Expert and Speaker