Motivating Your Employees

In today’s labor market it's important to have your leaders (shop floor and upper management) know and understand how to interact with the employees, which is a key factor maintaining stability. There are many factors in running an efficient facility, but without an engaged and stabilized workforce you will constantly be faced with obstacles limiting your ability to consistently achieve industry average targets. Your top leadership must be on the floor, each day, getting a pulse from the employees and TRULY interacting with them. Your shop floor leadership needs to talk with each of their employees every day and striving to learn something new about them and their personal life. You cannot underestimate the importance of getting to know your employees' passions outside of work.

When approaching your team members there are the Eight Cs that I try to abide by to accomplish tasks in a diplomatic fashion:

1. Courtesy – Employees expect a friendly, enthusiastic greeting every day. Enthusiasm is caught…. Not taught

2. Concern – Employees are persons…. Not personnel

3. Consideration – Encouragement energizes…. Discouragement paralyzes

4. Compassion – Compassion is a powerful motivator that pays big dividends in the end.

5. Consistency – Employees respond to a supervisor who uses the same tone of voice with everyone, treats everyone as an equal and is always pleasant and peaceful.

6. Control – A supervisor must control himself before he can control others.

7. Caring – Caring about employees and their families is a full time job.

8. Countenance (Appearance) - To be a leader you must look like someone that people want to follow.

By following these simple rules you will be able to motivate employees in a way that will make them want to accomplish goals rather than just wait to be told what to do. It’s a pretty simple formula. You cannot achieve results without engaged employees who support the end goal.