How to Negatively Impact Employee Engagement

Don't Acknowledge Employee Successes
If you're always focused on what the employee hasn't done or what they made a mistake on then don't be surprised when you get a resignition letter from a good employee. Employees can only take so much beat down before they start to look for new and better opportunities. If they don't feel appreciated for their hard work and accomplishments they're not going to stay longer than they have to. Make sure you notice their efforts or you'll be sorry you hadn't.

Ignore High-Performing Employee Policy Violations
If you're not discipinilng employees equally then people will get a bad taste in their mouth. You may not think it's obvious but employees are always listening to and watching what you do. You'll lose respect as a manager and as an employer if you fail to treat all employees equally

Cut Back Bonuses but Openly Discuss Purchases and Vacations
Sure, as an employer you have a right to conduct layoffs, reduce hours, reduce bonus payouts and administer pay freezes. However, if you're doing these things but are openly discussing your lavish vacation plans and new Mercedes purchase then you're unknowingly creating negative attitudes in your workplace. Employees will not only resent you but you'll lose respect as well as trust.

Treat Certain Employees As Favorites   
When you always make an effort to talk to Amy Smith but overlook other people you're showing your team that you have an obvious favorite. If you make effort to give them praise but rarely any one else then people start to feel overlooked and undervalued. Make effort with all employee's regardless of who may be your favorite.

Absence Reporting Procedures

Every company should have a well defined absence policy. It should be in it's own section of the handbook and each employee should sign off on the policy.
The policy should outline the following:

• Who must they call to report expected absences.
• Who to talk to if someone is out/unavailable.
• Requirement of employee to call within a specified period of time
• Prohibited use of voicemail, email or text (whichever you prefer) to report absences

As an employer, you have a right to request that an employee provide a Doctor's note when they are missing work due to a "serious health condition".
A doctor's note provides certification from a health care provider attesting either that:

• Employee is needed to care for an immediate family member OR
• Employee has a serious health condition preventing them from having the ability to perform essential functions of their position

Make sure your policy is well defined and make updates annually. Make sure to follow the policy consistently applying the same rules and procedures to all employees without making any exceptions.

Implementing an EAP

Employee performance can be affected negatively by a number of things. Negatively impacted performance clearly affects the employer so why not consider implementing an EAP?  An EAP is an "Employee Assistance Program" which is created to provide general support to employees for various reasons. Employees can call a hotline to vent about what troubles they're having at home or call an AA office to assist with their substance abuse questions or concerns.

Employee's can utilize EAP's to find direction on how to resolve several different issues. The hotline can provide consultation or direct the employee to a credible resource that may be better suited to assist with their concerns. Either way, the employee is able to use a resource to help them find answers on what to do to improve their situation.

The EAP program should be 100% confidential and the hotline should be sourced through a third party.

Consider implementing an EAP this year.

How to Avoid EEOC Problems

Develop and implement clear consistent policies and procedures. Policies should be created to support your company goals and create order in the workplace.

• Policies cannot cause any type of adverse impact on any protected minority group.
• Policies and procedures should always be based on legitimate business needs/objectives.

All employees must be made aware of the policies and sign a receipt and acknowledgement to keep in their personnel file. Policy enforcement must be consistent without making any exceptions. Failure to maintain consistency will increase your chances for losing a lawsuit.

Documentation is an employers best friend. It's your best resource and item of defense as an employer so take advantage and take time to document. Make sure to have notes of verbal warnings and maintain formal written documentation on disciplinary actions administered ensuring both the employer and employee have signed the forms. If an employee refuses to sign make sure to have a witness sign witnessing fact that employee refused.

Make sure that all terminations are justified and that employees have been treated fairly relative to others in the past. Also, if you have a problematic employee make sure to terminate them as soon as possible. Don't tolerate poor employee behavior and/or attitudes.

Remember that all employers are, for all practical purposes, guilty until they have proven themselves innocent. In order to prove your innocence, you must have written documentation.

How You Can Avoid Lawsuits

As an employer you have a responsibility to ensure that complaints are taken seriously, investigated timely and thoroughly, appropriate parties are disciplined based on factsand that documentation is maintained and secured for your records.

Priority #1: Be Responsive to All Complaints

• Never brush a complaint off
• Always remain neutral
• Keep an open mind and consider that the claim may be true
• Act immediately, same day or no later than next day if you have a good reason
• Gather statements from all parties with signatures and dates

Priority #2: Document and Keep Evidence Secure

• File all notes about complaints and meetings in a separate claim file
• Pull and file records, evidence and/or video of mistakes and/or behavior

Priority #3: Enforce Discipline

• Discipline appropriate parties who were confirmed to violate policy through fact finding
• Discipline any manager who was witness to incident who failed to address issue immediately

Keep in mind that there are always three sides to any story or complaint and your job is to get down to the facts of what has happened. It's not to say he or she was right but what has actually transpired based on what you can confirm. Make sure to advise all parties on what they did right and what they should've done differently. 

How to Minimize the Impact of Flu Season on Your Workplace

There's a lot you can do to prevent flu from invading your workplace, making your employees sick, increasing the risk of accidents, and creating havoc with work schedules. Here are some recommendations from Flu.gov.

• Promote vaccination. Encourage all employees to get vaccinated for seasonal flu. Make sure your employees know where they and their family can get seasonal flu vaccination in the community. Find out about health providers, pharmacies or clinics that offer seasonal flu vaccinations in your community. Partner with a pharmacy or provider to get your employees vaccinated. Or, if possible, offer seasonal flu vaccination opportunities right at your workplace.
• Educate employees to recognize the symptoms of flu.  Symptoms of flu include fever or chills and cough or sore throat. In addition, symptoms of flu can include runny nose, body aches, headache, tiredness, diarrhea, or vomiting. Workers who have flu-like symptoms should be asked to go home. Continue to advise workers to check for any signs of illness before coming to work each day.   
• Encourage hand cleanliness by providing education and reminders about the importance of frequent hand washing. Make sure all employees have easy access to running water and soap or alcohol-based hand cleaners.
• Encourage "respiratory etiquette" by providing education and reminders about covering coughs and sneezes with tissues, and easy access to tissues and trash cans.
• Promote routine cleaning of surfaces and items that are more likely to have frequent hand contact. Provide employees with cleaning agents.
• Prepare for employees to stay home from work and extend the time sick employees stay home to at least 7 days. People who are still sick after 7 days should continue to stay home until at least 24 hours after symptoms have gone away, even if they feel better sooner. Employees may stay home because they are sick, are at higher risk for complications, need to care for sick household members, or because schools have been dismissed or childcare centers have closed and they need to care for their children. Review sick-leave policies and consider making them flexible and consistent with public health recommendations.

Safety Daily Advisor

Don't Do This!!

You hear and read about how important documentation is but what you don't hear is what not to do when you're documenting or speaking to an employee. 

It's very important to follow these basic tips:

1. Be direct and concise about what the employee did and when they did it.
2. Document verbal discussions and warnings you had with the employee.
3. Document the discussed expectations and follow up plans for correction.
4. Remove emotion, sarcasm, the use of "you" and keep a neutral tone in written and verbal form.
5. Focus on facts and do not exaggerate the situation with unnecessary details. 

Examples of what not to do in either written or verbal form:
"Amy just isn't pulling her weight which is causing co-workers to take on extra work."

• Instead: Amy has failed to produce and send ABC reports each Thursday to the accounting department for the last 3 weeks. Because these reports have not been sent, the accounting department must redo their XYZ reports to add missing data never sent by Amy.

"You show no desire to be at work on time and you always have poor excuses."

• Instead: I'm concerned about your attendance. The last two months you've had 6 late arrivals on ABCDEF days and called in without notice twice on XY days without an acceptable excuse or doctor note.

"Yet again, Amy is making mistake after mistake which shows she just doesn't care to do a good job."

• Instead:  Amy has made another mistake on her customer order sheet. This will be her 3rd time to submit a non-complete order sheet. Amy received training on how to properly complete the order sheet on X date and was directed to ask questions if she was unsure on anything.

"You're out again? Can you not work a full week. This is ridiculous."

• Instead: Amy, we hired you to work a full time M-F 40 hour a week position that you accepted. Your repeated absences are interfering with your work schedule as you've only worked one 40 hour week over the last 5 weeks. I need to know how we can ensure that you meet the 40 hour expectation as that's necessary and required of this position.

Under no circumstance should you ever make comments about another employees performance in a public area because people are always ease dropping! Don't create a mess and unnecessary office gossip. Remember that employee performance should always be kept confidential.