A recent CareerBuilder survey revealed some intriguing insights about employees’ knowledge, or lack thereof, about the organization they work for. The study sampled more than 7500 full-time US workers in late 2011.

So How Well Do American Employees Know Their Organization?

• One in five American workers says they don’t know what their chief executive looks like
• More than two-thirds (68%) of workers don’t know how much their company generates in revenue each year
• Only 35 percent of workers can name all of the C-level executives at their organization
• Workers in business services, sales and manufacturing are most likely to have met their CEO
• The majority of workers in IT, financial services and retail say they have not met their organization’s top leader

Why is it Important for Employees to Know Their Organization?

Employees who are aware are employees who care. When organizations share information and communicate openly about business operations, strategic objectives, successes and more it makes employees feel valued. It gives them a sense of purpose, and helps provide a big picture of the organization’s vision and their role in executing on that vision.

Also, employees who know their organization and can accurately represent the brand and vision can influence external perceptions in a positive way.

Internally, employees who really know the organization they work for tend to be more curious and invested in its health and well-being.

Employees actively communicate and engage with each other about the organization when they receive regular updates about the business’ activities and accomplishments. The more information they have about the organization, the stronger their ties to it are.

What Happens When Employees Don’t Care?

There is an extensive body of evidence showing that the prime reasons employees don’t care/are disengaged at work are: lack of motivation, commitment and purpose.

It’s management’s role to cultivate and strengthen these pillars. It’s rare to find employees who will naturally exhibit such qualities without external reinforcement like praise, feedback and clear expectations. Defining clear roles and responsibilities for every employee instills in them a sense of ownership for their projects or tasks. As they saying goes, “No one washes a rented car.”

People won’t put in the same kind of effort into things they don’t feel true ownership over. Disengagement costs organizations big time. Not only does it sap productivity and team spirit, it eats away at profits. Disengaged employees return a mere 60% of their salary in value as compared to their engaged counterparts, who yield 120%.

See our infographic on employee engagement for more information on the cost of disengagement and strategies for boosting engagement.

For insight on how job descriptions can help foster that sense of ownership, check out Halogen’s Best-Practice Job Descriptions Center of Excellence.

Why Are We Here?

In an effective organization, the answer to this question goes beyond “For a paycheck” or “To provide the best returns for our shareholders”. In fact, these are simply the outcomes when an organization’s employees truly understand why they are there — when they live and breathe the organization’s purpose and vision.

What exactly is vision? Vision is a path, a direction, a desired future state. Vision is what creates a sense of purpose. It may have nothing to do with the products or services you sell.

Really great companies, with an engaged workforce, have a clear purpose and vision and have key leadership figures who communicate these to every level of the organization.

Zappos, for instance, sells shoes and clothing apparel but their vision is to deliver happiness to customers, employees, and vendors. They have a unique culture that is founded on mutual respect, open communication and fostering creativity. If you look at Zappos’ core values, the focus is on team-building, embracing change and family spirit.

Sales and profit are not even mentioned. What’s most important is the way Zappos runs its business; the vision paves the way to a better business model.

When it comes to articulating the vision, organizational fit is everything, and Zappos has a unique approach to weeding out disengaged employees. At the end of their initial training, new employees are presented with an offer: Zappos will pay them a $1000 bonus to quit.

Offering this “bonus” enables new hires to self-select themselves out of the hiring process. It may not work for every organization, but the practice helps Zappos weed out any employees who are lacking the high level of commitment the company is looking for. (Source)

Let’s Make This Company Ours

Leaders who want brilliant results from their teams need to make employees feel it’s their company too. How? By making employees part of the decision-making process.

Collaboration is an essential ingredient for creating accountability and ownership. At first, it may take longer to come to a decision when pooling a large sea of minds. But implementing decisions in a comprehensive way unfolds much more quickly when everyone is involved from the beginning and is clear on the objectives.

Employees realize they have little final control over decisions the company makes. They may offer input, but at the end of the day, someone else is making the decisions. But it’s important for employers to promote transparency and culture in their organization and give employees a voice.

For vision to strike a chord with employees, they have to feel like they matter.

5 Steps to Aligning Your Employees to Your Organization’s Culture and Vision

1) Focus on goal alignment (There is a positive correlation between employee performance and organizational performance)

2) Involve staff in decision making (Employees feel their contributions are valued and purposeful)

3) Improve communication at all levels (Leaders and employees share a common vision and foster values every step of the way)

4) Give credit, recognition, awards, feedback (Members of the organization have a sense of pride in the work that they do)

5) Let them grow! (Offer all employees opportunities to learn and develop)

When employees feel valued and appreciated, they become motivated to make a difference, clear in their direction, more fulfilled and more committed overall.

Essentially, when your company says “We care”, that makes the employees care too.

For more on how your organization an use talent management best practices to develop an engaged and aligned workforce, read our Employee Engagement Center of Excellence.

Competency assessment is much more than looking at your employees’ various accreditations and professional skill sets. 

It’s about having the knowledge, skills, attitudes and abilities to do the job. It’s about applying a skill set to the ever-changing work setting.

In Halogen’s latest HR’s BOLD Thinkers video series, Donna discusses how can you derive more value from your competency assessments, as well as make them more manageable and meaningful.

She also addresses some of the basic questions and challenges healthcare facilities face in completing and managing competency assessments.

Watch a brief introduction to Donna’s four-part video series:

Here’s a sneak peek at what to expect in each of the four video segments:

Competency Verification: The Value of Choice – Learn how to drive up engagement by allowing your employees to choose their verification method from a predetermined list of options.

Competency Selection: How to Keep to a Manageable Number – Discover how you can eliminate unnecessary competency assessments and avoid the trap of evaluating the same competencies year after year, while still meeting accreditation requirements.

HR’s Role: Connecting Competency Assessments to Employee Performance Management – Find out how HR can play an important role in facilitating the competency assessment process and how connecting it to a larger performance management process helps bridge communication gaps and supports quality patient care.

Competency Assessments: A Measure of Employee Commitment – Do you understand the difference between accountability, responsibility and authority? And what does commitment have to do with any of these? Hear what Donna Wright has to say and what she recommends.

We hope that you enjoy the best practices recommendations Donna shares in the videos. You might also like the other videos in our HR’s BOLD Thinkers series.

Bonus Resource:

Interested in hearing more of Donna’s thoughts and ideas on competency assessment? Listen to the archived webinar, Competency Assessment Madness: Transform Your Process from Crazy to Manageable and Meaningful!

Owning and operating a restaurant is as daunting as it is promising. For both the new restaurateur and the seasoned professional the daily ins and outs can get frustrating.

While there are some things you can’t control – like a restaurant equipment breakdown or the occasional upset customer - poor employee performance is a factor that you have the ability to correct.

You expect a lot from your employees, and that’s understandable. Unfortunately the expectations you set and the performance you receive don’t always go hand in hand, and more often than not poor employee performance is a result of poor management.

Here are five ways you, as manager, negatively affect your staff’s performance:

You’re not complimenting enough

It’s a given that members of your staff get an earful when something goes wrong. Detailed feedback is expected, but how often is the same attention paid to staff accomplishments? If you want your employees to feel motivated and proud of the work they do it’s your job to make them feel like their job is worth doing.

Empathize and realize that every employee has different opinions and expectations about their job. Provide just as much detail in positive feedback as you would accidents or missteps. In a workplace full of negative comments your staff eventually tunes out the negativity. On the other hand, if employees grow accustomed to hearing when they’ve done a good job they’ll be more likely to pay attention when you’ve got something negative to say.

You’re micromanaging

Managers often see underperforming employees as a teaching opportunity. This is a good thing, but can also be detrimental when you take it upon yourself to make sure every aspect of your problem employee’s job is done correctly.

Taking away an employee’s responsibility is the quickest way to make that employee mentally check out and put even less effort into their work. A good way to maneuver around doing the job for them is to spread several layers of quality control among your staff. This way you can get your own work done and your employees will feel like you’re not looking over their shoulder all the time.

You play favorites

Applying standards unevenly is terrible. When you’re setting guidelines and telling your employees one thing only to let one or two of them slack off because they’re “in” with you you’re sending a mixed message. Pretty soon your “star” server is slacking off because they’re feeling entitled, and the rest of your crew starts to do the same because they resent how you treat your favorite employee.

If you want everyone to do side work you need to stick to your guns and make everyone do side work, it’s that simple.

You’re not setting a good example

Going hand in hand with not playing favorites, if you as manager aren’t following the guidelines you establish then you’re setting the wrong kind of example. Being hypocritical by not adhering to the rules you set gives your employees the notion that you don’t really care about the rules.

Ducking out early to spend time with the family may sound like a good idea because “I’m the manager and I work harder than anyone else” but what you’re really saying to your employees is “I know I’m on the schedule but I feel like going home”. Your employees don’t care what reasons you give for breaking the rules, all they care about is that you’re breaking them. Once this happens trying to reverse the process is like attempting to remove poison from soup.

You haven’t outlined a clear path for advancement

It may surprise you, but that star server we spoke of earlier might not always want to be in a serving position.

Without a clear path for advancement you’re most efficient employees will eventually start looking for advancement somewhere else. Be sure you’ve outlined very clearly how an employee can move up the ladder, and don’t make the only requirement be the person with the most years under their belt. It’s frustrating to an employee when the only qualification their superior has over them is a few extra months.

Strong, consistent management in the form of setting good examples and keeping the lines of communication open can make managing a restaurant an extremely rewarding experience. You’re the hub that holds the spokes (your employees, your kitchen, your customer’s satisfaction) together on the ever-turning wheel that is your restaurant, and it’s easy to start throwing around blame when something goes wrong. Before disrupting your forward momentum further try taking a look in the mirror first, you may be part of the problem.

Andrew Call provides blog insights regarding restaurant management and marketing at The Back Burner. The top-rated food service blog is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant supply, parts, and a wide variety of foodservice equipment and sundries.

In fact, some would say that that the negative outweighs the positive in terms of frustration, stress and diminished morale (Hey, I deserve a higher rating than that!)

Maybe it is worse than tax time.

How do you eliminate dread and drudgery of annual employee reviews and turn them into something welcome and valuable?

Change Your Organization’s Approach to Appraisals

The first step is recognizing that performance management is an ongoing practice, not a once a year task. This approach ensures employees get the continual direction, feedback and development they need to continuously improve and succeed.

Ultimately, your organization’s performance management process should help your employees develop and sustain high performance— all year long.

Which means the annual performance review should be exactly that – a review of the performance feedback you’ve already provided your employees.

Naturally, getting your managers and employees onboard and fully engaged in ongoing  performance management discussions is critical to the effectiveness of your performance management program as a whole.

So why not make it easy for them?

How to Get Your Managers and Employees Onboard

Ensure your performance management process, forms, training and tools are designed to:

• Help employees achieve their goals and develop the competencies they and the organization need for continued success.
• Provide managers the coaching resources they need to guide their employees, develop them and foster high performance. Here are 5 ways to get managers on board with talent management.

If you want to take your performance management process to the next level – and truly demonstrate how it is driving results for your organization – don’t wait until the annual performance review season to get your managers and employees thinking about performance.

Make performance management an ongoing practice, not a once a year task.

For some great resources on how to make performance management an ongoing practice in your organization, start with the Performance Management Center of Excellence.

The center is a veritable best-practices buffet of expert articles, white papers, archived webinars and case studies that cover the how and why of implementing an effective employee performance management system.

Visit the Performance Management Center of Excellence today — and give tax time its rightful moniker as the most un-wonderful time of the year.

So what do you do when an employee has a worldview of their performance that has nothing to do with your reality?

Ignore their perspective, and your ROI on the conversation is the equivalent of talking to a government clerk with 30 years experience about the finer points of the Nordstrom customer experience program – while you’re still 3rd in line at the DMV.

Pointless, right?

On May 9th, Kris Dunn – Chief Human Resources Officer for Kinetix and creative genius behind http://www.hrcapitalist.com/ and http://www.fistfuloftalent.com/ – will give a comprehensive breakdown of the five most common faces managers see during performance reviews.

Kris will break down the five personas – including the Star, the Diva, the Deflector, the 9 to 5 and the Upwardly Mobile – and how to identify them. He’ll then explain how managers can engage each of these personas to maximize performance discussions and drive higher performance.

Presenter: Kris Dunn, Chief Human Resources Officer for Kinetix

Date: May 9, 2012

Time: 1pm – 2pm ET

Register Now

This webcast is designed to help HR and managers bridge the perception gap between how a manager thinks the employee is doing, and how the employee actually perceives their own performance.

Register for The Five Faces Managers See During Performance Reviews webinar and learn how your coaching and communication skills are a key tool for maximizing organizational performance.