By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
BLR’s founder joins “Michael Scott,” fictional manager of TV’s The Office, in discussing how “gruntled,”, a.k.a. satisfied, workers are, and what makes them so.
Are workers at your firm “gruntled” or “dis”gruntled? That is to say, are they happy, satisfied, and motivated, or ready to bolt for the door (or vote for a union)?
There is no clear evidence that “gruntled” is even a modern word, but a blog has already been named using the term, and it’s been mentioned in TV’s The Office. (Office manager Michael, angling for a raise, tells his boss, Jan, that he has no disgruntled employees at Dunder Mifflin. “Everyone here is extremely gruntled,” he says.)
The blog (www.gruntledemployees.com) is run by Jay Shepherd, an employment lawyer based in Boston. Check it out. It is interesting and fun.
Shepherd’s premise is that employers can avoid lawsuits by concentrating on the HR fundamentals and keeping their employees “gruntled,” a.k.a. satisfied. His dash of humor and common sense – coupled with real expertise – give an enjoyable twist to the subject that occupies much of our workday.
There is no question that he’s right about satisfied employees. Not only don’t they sue, they work harder, reason more clearly, and create a lot more value for their employers, their families, and themselves.
“Gruntled” is a good thing!
Tooting the BLR horn
Which gives me a good occasion to toot the BLR horn. For the second year in a row, we’ve been named one of the “20 Best Places to Work in Connecticut,” an award based in part on a survey of employees, as well as a detailed analysis of our policies and practices. What has helped us get these awards is pretty simple. My experience shows that if you get the following three things right, you’re 80 percent of the way toward success:
–We hire good managers and supervisors.
–We try to make sure they have the resources they need.
–We try to set strategies that make sense, given our internal resources and external forces.
The managers and supervisors, of course, are the real key. They have to be fair. They have to know their jobs well enough to select and train others. They have to be able to work with their teams and their peers. We’re lucky at BLR to have a great team. If we rated high on a “gruntled scale,” it’s our managers and supervisors who’d be responsible.
The “Gruntled Employee Index”
There soon may be such a scale. One of Shepherd’s readers, a Brit named Scott McArthur, has suggested coming up with a “gruntled employee index.” He talks about it in his blog, http://mcarthursrant.blogspot.com/.
Shepherd agrees that a scale is needed. “I’ve been wrestling with metrics to measure the effectiveness of managers, HR professionals, and employment lawyers,” he declares, “because under the Peter Drucker rule that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, we need to find a way to assess our performance.”
Shepherd goes on to urge his readers to tell him what should be measured and how. If you check out the blog, please offer your suggestions.
And by the way…
Isn’t it great to have your ideas seconded by creative people like Shepherd and McArthur! I say that because our HR Daily Advisor/BLR National Employee Attitudes Survey, currently under way, is just what they are talking about … a “gruntled index.”
We ask about supervisor and peer relationships, communication, teamwork, and understanding of … and commitment to … mission. If these elements don’t go into the making of gruntledness, what does?
If you’d like to join the project and get a free attitudes survey for your company, you still can. Just register here and you’ll get all the details.
Maybe you’ll even find out how “gruntled” your employees are.
That’s my e-pinion. I’d love to hear yours. What do you think makes the difference in the “gruntledness” of employees? Use the Share Your Comments button or e-mail me at Rbrady@blr.com