I've Been Thinking...

About how severely cold this winter has been in so many areas of the country. This cold has gripped our houses the way the fear and concern over the economy has gripped our businesses. What we really need is some HEAT… some workplace HEAT. We need a workplace that gets us fired up and excited. We need a workplace that ignites our passion for performance and gets employees excited about contributing and making a difference. A challenging economy is a great time to redefine and reinvent the quality of the workplace. Today, we have to get more done with less; this means that we need each employee to be more committed and more passionate about what they do. Provide the HEAT and they will turn up the intensity.

This month in the Take Action section below, I introduce the concept of workplace HEAT (Health, Energy, Achievement and Team) as ways to ignite passionate employee performance and defrost so many organizations, frozen from fear and concern about today’s recession. Fired-up workplaces unite their employees into a performance powerhouse capable of successfully handling any challenge – today’s economy, or future challenges that have yet to appear. Fire up your workplace - create the HEAT.

We work with organizations who want to be more successful attracting, hiring and retaining the best talent, to create a high performing workforce that inspires customer loyalty and advances profitability.

Take Action

Create Some Workplace HEAT

So many workplaces are dull and boring; they lack personality, charisma and energy. Employees are like zombies – the walking dead – mindlessly moving through the day, counting the minutes until the day ends – only to repeat the process – day after day. Yawn. Zzzzzz.

Where is the fire…the passion…the energy? Where is the excitement, the enthusiasm, the thrill of contributing and making a difference? Where is the workplace HEAT – that fervor and passion to do much more than just show up?

Today, more than ever, we need our employees to fully engaged, committed and excited at work. We need them to be dynamic with our customers, inventive with our opportunities and efficient with our resources. Bland, boring and ordinary workplaces don’t inspire this behavior. Today, our workplaces have to fire up our employees – our workplaces need to provide the HEAT – Health, Energy, Achievement and Team. And when the HEAT is on, employees connect, perform and come alive. When the HEAT is on, employees are fired up, ignited and motivated. Then, and only then, will employees respond in a way that significantly drives our success. Build the HEAT in your workplace to ignite employee performance.

Health – Create a health-minded workplace. Healthy workplaces care about their employees as people. Healthy employees contribute more significantly, attend more regularly and become more fully vested in the organization’s success. Health-mined organizations share information about diet, exercise, self-improvement and learning. They provide healthy alternatives to snacks in the workplace; they create challenges for employees to become and remain healthy. They sponsor employees in healthy living action plans. They applaud employees who commit to and achieve improvements in healthy living.

Energy – Make the workplace a high-energy center. High-energy doesn’t mean frantic; it means exciting, innovative and cutting edge. Involve your employees in creative brainstorming sessions. Give them big targets to strive for – and show them the impact of their ideas, performance and results on the organization. Make the workplace fun and energizing; add color, redesign space and create fewer physical barriers. Build in weekly and monthly events that inspire and activate employees.

Achievement – Make the workplace an achievement hub. Spend time with each employee to clearly define their personal performance expectations. Connect employees’ performance to results, rewards and opportunities. Show employees how achievement benefits customers, the organization and each employee. Create easy to measure performance plans; talk about numbers, performance and success. Focus on learning and growing as a way to constantly improve and accomplish. Be sure to celebrate (with great energy) when great things have been achieved.

Team – Create a collaborative team environment. In today’s rapid fire world, successful organizations need input from every employee – employees are the eyes and ears of the organization and all must feel included. Information must move around the organization freely and accurately to facilitate ideas, innovation and extraordinary responses. Eliminate as many boundaries as possible – tangible and intangible – to encourage employees to work and connect with each other. Create an open and partnership-based approach to information sharing, idea generation and physical workspace layout. Help employees learn to rely on each other and develop performance synergies.

What kind of workplace do you want to work in – bland and boring or energized and engaging? Turn up the HEAT. Ignite passionate performance. Build a high energy workplace to fire up your employees – and they smoke your competition.

Feel the HEAT in February

The Humanetrics website hosts the daily power learning tool called BLOGucation. Each day BLOGucation offers practical power learning tips to help businesses constantly improve. This month, it will present ways to provide (workplace) HEAT to help your organization fire up employees to connect them to their work and to customers. Be sure to check in each day. Share your ways to turn up the HEAT – the kind of heat that ignites employee’s passions for performance.

Due out in late February 2009!

Fire Up Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition; How to Invite, Incite and Ignite Employee Performance by Jay Forte

Bored employees do not drive the results you need. Excited, engaged and fired up employees bring their best to work and perform at extraordinary levels. Fire Up Your Employees Employees is a new resource for managers that introduces “how to” activate extraordinary performance from today’s intellectual-age employees. Learn how to implement the complete and proven Fire Up! Process^SM that shows managers, through practical information, exercises and activities, how to attract, hire, and retain high performing employees. Watch for more information and how to download free chapters, or to order your copy, on FireUpYourEmployees.com.

Contact Humanetrics to learn how to create a passionate workforce that drives your success; we not only know what to do but specialize in helping you learn HOW to do it. Big results are always our focus. Contact us to schedule your 2-day Fire Up program; it is an investment in your greatest asset - the intellectual capital (thinking and loyalty) of your employees.

The Humanetrics Mission

We offer practical, dynamic, innovative and customized education and consulting to significantly advance our clients' personal and professional performance.