Omnia's Employee Attitude Survey (M&M)
People talk about "employee empowerment" as a means of building an employee/management partnership. We agree whole-heartedly. When we ask specifically what a prospective client does to empower workers, there is usually one of three replies:
We authorize him or her to do the job for which they were hired. Sorry. Authorizing a person to do their job is not empowering.
We encourage employees to talk to their managers and we have a suggestion box so they can communicate their concerns and ideas anonymously. Sorry. Anonymous communication suggests employees are reluctant to express concerns or ideas in person, hardly a platform for partnership.
We have not yet found a way to empower our employees; we are uncomfortable with the idea of weakening the traditional, hierarchical organization chart. This reply may be disguised as "it's not in the budget," although one wonders why improving productivity, morale and retention needs to wait for next year's budget.
If employees are committed to the organization's mission, if they co-authored their own goals, if their supervisor has a vested interest in their achievement, it becomes clear that employees will ultimately benefit if the manager becomes a better manager.
Enter Omnia's Employee Attitude Survey. We call "Omnia M&M" because it is an employee's anonymous assessment of his or her own Morale and their assessment of the quality of Management.
M&M is run roughly every six months. It has 24 items the employee assesses as being Excellent, Very Good, Good, Needs Improvement or Poor.
Because some items are more important than others (for example, "I understand how the achievement of my goals moves the organization toward the fulfillment of its mission" is a more important item than "I enjoy my work," which is highly subjective and may be the mood of the moment.
Other features:
· M&M is done anonymously because we want the employee to participate.
· The manager's own manager will not see a copy of the results until authorized by the manager.
· Only when a minimum 3 employees have responded may the manager view the scores. Clicking on an Item Number produces a dialogue box with suggestions for improving the score.
· A common result of the M&M exercise finds the manager bringing a new personal goal to his own manager: "I scored 2.9 on M&M Item 18. When repeat the exercise in six months, my goal is to achieve a 3.5 or better!"
This very positive attitude would not occur if the senior manager had access to M&M results too early, until the junior manager had come to dominate the system.
Here we have a manager/employee-authored goal with an employee-authored amount and end date. Perfect! By concentrating on the two or three lowest scores, thanks to his subordinates, this manager will become a better manager and the manager and the employees will all benefit.
While individual scores are anecdotal, their improving trends over time are important. A click of a button shows the Morale and Quality of Management Scores, exercise by exercise, going back to the time they were first begun.
M&M is another way the Omnia's M&M builds a manager's skills at management while strengthening the employee/manager partnership.
For more information on this Omnia service, e-mail us using the opportunities@Omnia.cc button below or call us at 1-800-525-7117. (Outside north America, call +1.813.254.9449.)
|
