ENGAGING AND EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES: FROM BULLIES TO GO-GETTERS

Transcription

1 ENGAGING AND EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES: FROM BULLIES TO GO-GETTERS Professor Denis Collins School of Business Edgewood College Madison, WI Online Course: Business Ethics: How to Create an Ethical Organization You can learn about the 90 best practices for designing ethical organizations and managing organizations of high integrity by taking the online course Business Ethics: How to Create an Ethical Organization available at: This Business Ethics course (13 videos and benchmarks) teaches managers, business leaders and corporate trainers how to design ethical organizations and manage organizations of high integrity. You will learn the 90 best practices for hiring ethical people, implementing codes of ethics, ethical decision making, ethics training, respecting employee diversity, ethics reporting systems, ethical leadership, engaging and empowering ethical employees, environmental management and community outreach. Assessment tools are provided to analyze the ethical performance of your organization and develop continuous improvement action plans. 1

2 Denis Collins Professor of Business School of Business Edgewood College Madison, WI Denis Collins is Professor of Business at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, where he teaches classes in management and business ethics and is a Sam M. Walton Free Enterprise Fellow. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. Denis has published six books and numerous articles. His book, Essentials in Business Ethics: Creating an Organization of High Integrity and Superior Performance (2009: John Wiley & Sons), provides practical how-to examples and best practices on every area of managing ethics inside organizations. He has conducted hundreds of business ethics workshops, talks, and consulting projects. Denis currently serves on the Editorial Boards of several academic journals and has served on the board of governance for several professional organizations, as well as Edgewood College s Board of Trustees. He is the recipient of the 2011 Samuel Mazzuchelli Medallion for empowering others, 2010 MBA Outstanding Faculty Award and the 2009 Estervig-Beaubien Outstanding Professor Award, School of Business, Edgewood College, for excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. Three times he was voted the outstanding MBA faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Business Week s survey of alumni. Professor Collins was a finalist for the Academy of Management s Distinguished Educator Award. 2

3 OUTLINE: What are key attributes of high performing work units/organizations? What do the best employees want in a job? What are the core elements of employee engagement? Who should you empower? How? What issues arise when managing go-getters, fence-sitters, and adversarial bullies? How can you maximize ethical behaviors at work? Other questions? 3

4 Exhibit Core Elements of Employee Engagement Instructions: Please use the 1-5 scale below to assess the following twelve statements. The more honest you are the more helpful the information we will receive. 1=Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neither Agree nor Disagree; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly Agree 1) I know what is expected of me at work 2) I have the materials and equipment needed to do my work right 3) I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day 4) In the last week, I have received recognition or praise for good work 5) My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person 6) Someone at work encourages my development 7) My opinions seem to count at work 8) The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel like my work is important 9) My co-workers are committed to doing quality work 10) I have a best friend at work 11) In the last six months, I have talked with someone about my progress 12) In the last year, I have had opportunities to learn and grow Add the twelve scores: Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p

5 Exhibit 10.5 Workplace Attitudes and Behaviors Type Prevalence Attitude & Behavior How to Manage Go-Getters Some Task-oriented Can-do Enjoys working Freedom and autonomy New challenges Leadership positions Praise and extra rewards Fence-Sitters Many A job is a job Meet performance expectations 9-5 then punch out Adversarials Some Managers are ignorant Work is a nuisance Convert fence-sitters Increase performance expectations Team up with go-getters Separate from adversarials Confront and discipline Team-up with go-getters Separate from fence-sitters 5

6 ETHICAL DILEMMA NARRATIVE As working professionals, you have experienced or observed many ethical dilemmas. Write a one or two paragraph ethical dilemma about an experience that challenged your understanding of business ethics. Five ways that might help you arrive at an issue are: 1) Describe a situation where you were not sure what the right thing to do was. 2) Describe an incident at work that challenged your conscience. 3) Describe an incident at work that challenged the company s code of ethics. 4) Describe an incident that seemed disrespectful toward owners, customers, managers, employees, suppliers, community or the natural environment. 5) Describe an incident that highlights the tension tradeoffs between: (a) truth vs. loyalty, (b) individual vs. organization vs. community, (c) short term vs. long term, (d) justice vs. mercy. Avoid dilemmas about informing someone a co-worker or boss has done something unethical. In order to preserve anonymity, change references to specific people and places. Begin the first sentence with: You are the (state the job title of the key person facing the ethical dilemma, i.e. accounting manager). Describe the dilemma (context, concerns, conflict) and clarify both sides of the issue (your classmates need to understand why the unethical option was a reasonable thing for the decision-maker to pursue). Reach the key decision point, and then ask What would you do? followed by several possible action options, such as (a) notify X or (b) do nothing. You will then read your dilemma and ask others what action option they would pursue if they were the decision maker facing the dilemma. Sample: You supervise ten employees. Kim, the best performer, called in sick today. You learn from a very trustworthy subordinate whom Kim is meeting for lunch that Kim is not actually sick. Instead, Kim is taking a mental health day and just wanted some unscheduled time off from work. The company s sick leave policy does not allow for mental health days. You suspect that Kim might do this once or twice a year, within the allowable sick day allocation. Allowing Kim to take a mental health day off when not sick can damage employee morale by creating a double-standard, one for Kim and one for everyone else. What would you do? Would you: Why? 1) Demand that Kim work an extra day without pay to make up for the missed work day? 2) Just give Kim a warning? 3) Do nothing? 6

7 Denis Collins (2009) Essentials of Business Ethics: How to Create Organizations of High Integrity and Superior Performance (John Wiley & Sons); 7