In yesterday’s Advisor, we offered tips for reducing turnover and increasing productivity. Today, the rest of the story, plus good news about job descriptions.
[Go here for steps 1 to 5]
Step 6: Communicate with your employees
Communication is critical for reducing turnover. Remember that communication needs to go both ways. You need to share and to listen.
Employees want to know what’s happening with their company, what the challenges are, what the successes are. Many organizations are sharing more details about their financial performance than ever before.
And then employees want to be listened to. It’s a sign of being respected and valued. One recent survey indicates that a major source of employee dissatisfaction is the feeling that the organization won’t listen and doesn’t care.
Setting up listening systems isn’t hard. Consider the following:
- Suggestion boxes, either physical or on line
- Meetings/briefings
- Newsletters/Blogs
- Employee committees/task forces
As one expert recommends, practice MBWA—”Management By Wandering Around.” Ask questions such as, What can I or the organization do to make your job easier … better? How can we create a better experience for you?
Caveat: Don’t just listen, follow up. Check what you said you would check, and find out what you agreed to find out.
Your job descriptions are already written and keyed onto CD format. Thousands of HR managers have depended on the print version of this product—now they’re flocking to get SmartJobs on CD! Try it at no cost or risk. Go here for info.
Step 7: Facilitate work/life balance
What you are able to do differs from business to business, but in most cases you can at least offer some flexibility. The good news? These ideas don’t cost much. Consider:
- Crosstraining: Crosstraining makes it relatively easy for employees to take on each others’ work
- Job sharing: Split a job, alternate days or weeks or half days. “Pass-off” is often the challenge. Work out a reasonable system.
- Telecommuting: This arrangement is easier and easier with phone and computer meeting software.
- Flexible scheduling: With most flex programs, core hours are set so that it’s easy to set meetings. You probably actually need some people to work late or come in early to deal with customers in different time zones.
- Flex by days or hours: In some situations, it’s easy to let people choose their own schedules; in others, not so much so. Before you let people start new schedules, think about what sort of precedent you are setting.
- Compressed work week: Employees may want to work 4 10-hour days or 3 12’s.
Where’s the first stop in offering work/life balance benefits? That’s simple—the job description. What are the essential functions? Can the job be flexed? Can a person in this job telecommute? Can the job be shared? Can the person work four ten-hour days? Three twelves? It’s all there in the job description.
If only all your job descriptions were all well-written, attorney-checked, and up-to-date … Actually, they are.
BLR has now released its collection of 500 job descriptions, formerly only available in the classic, but shelf-filling, Job Descriptions Encyclopedia, in a program called SmartJobs on CD. That’s cause for celebration—your job descriptions are a click away from being done.
And we’re talking virtually all of them, covering every common position in any organization, from receptionist right up to president. They are all there in BLR’s SmartJobs.
Throw your keyboard away—More than 500 prewritten, legally reviewed job descriptions ready at the click of your mouse. Use as is—or easily modify, save, and print. Pay grades are already attached. Try BLR’s remarkable SmartJobs program at no cost. Click here to learn more
These are descriptions you can depend on. Our collection has been constantly refined and updated over time, with descriptions revised or added each time the law, technology, or the way business is done changes.
Revised for the ADA, Pay Grades Added
BLR editors have taken apart every one of the 500 descriptions and reassembled them to be ADA-compliant. And now they’ve added pay grades for each job, based on BLR’s annual surveys of exempt and nonexempt compensation, as well as other data.
According to our customers, this is an enormous timesaver, enabling them to make compensation decisions even as they define the position.
SmartJobs also includes an extensive tutorial on setting up a complete job descriptions program, as well as how to encourage participation from all parts of the organization. That includes top management, employees, and any union or other collective-bargaining entity.
Twice-Yearly Updates, No Additional Cost
Very important these days are the updates included in the program as a standard feature—essential at a time of constantly changing laws and yes, emerging technologies. And the cost of the program is extremely reasonable, averaging less than 66 cents per job description … already written, legally reviewed, and ready to adapt or use as-is.
You can evaluate BLR’s SmartJobs at no cost in your office for up to 30 days. Just click here and we’ll be delighted to send it to you.
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