What Can You Do To Energize Your Employees?

During times of change, what can you do as a good change manager to get (or keep) your staff energized? A lot! According to a recent survey by New York City-based consulting firm Towers Perrin, 75% of employees polled believe they can have a direct impact on their organization’s success and 72% derive a sense of accomplishment from their jobs.

What can you do to build on this feeling of commitment and enthusiasm? Think about a particularly tough day you’ve had recently. Maybe your computer crashed while you were working on an important project, or a customer decided to vent all of his pent-up anger on you. Would you have felt better if your boss had dropped by and thanked you for a job well done on a recent assignment? The answer is probably ‘Yes’.

Small gestures of appreciation don’t cost anything and don’t take much time, but they can energize staff members and improve employee morale. Good change managers recognize successes, big and small. They know that the energy boost provided by a little staff appreciation can power an entire company. If you’d like to learn more about how you can help your staff successfully navigate change in the workplace, check out these resources:

Who Moved My Cheese?, Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard, 1998, Putnam Publishing Group

Taking Charge of Change, Douglas K. Smith, 1996, HarperCollins Publishers
The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life, Ken Blanchard, William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Change Management Resource Library -- http://www.change-management.org

For managerial concerns, call our EAP Program at 1-800-769-9819 or logon to the Bureau of Human Resource at www.maine.gov/bhr/sos or the Division of Employee Health and Benefits at www.maine.gov/beh

Adapted from Successfully Managing Change, George Hardy, 1997, Barron's Educational Series, Inc. and 1001 Ways to Energize Employees, Bob Nelson, 1997, Workman Publishing Company, Inc.