Rosa Say has another great tip in her post titled The Daily Five Minutes. She suggests that each day, managers give five minutes of “no-agenda time?? to at least one employee. Here are some benefits to the managers:
In the process of developing this habit, they greatly improved their own approachability. They had nurtured a circle of comfort for their employees to step into and talk to them——whenever time presented itself. The Daily Five Minutes itself soon became a more personal thing. Employees started to share their lives with them——what they did over the weekend, how their kids were doing in school, how they felt about a local news story. Managers began to know their employees very well, and their employees began to relate to them more as people and not just as managers. They were practicing the art of ‘Ike loa together.
When our new Human Resources manager took over I suggested to her that she change the name of the department from Human Resources to People Services. In doing that, she would go a long way to shifting the focus of the department from one that regards the staff as resources to seeing them as people who play a vital role in the business. That rebranding didn’t happen, which is a pity.
I believe it is vital that businesses realise that they are run by people and when employees feel that they are respected as people then they tend to work better and are happier in what they do. I don’t have any data to support this, it is just a sense I have (based on my own experience perhaps).
(via the [non]billable hour)
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What do you think?