Jeff Fermin
The new year is symbolic; it means you get to start over and make resolutions and goals to be a better individual than the previous one. Now, what is your workplace doing to help bring in the new year and create a better office for you and your colleagues?
Are there any drastic changes being made? Are they catering more towards the employee? Are the employees satisfied with their workplace?
Companies should be looking at their history and seeing if they are still aligned with their core values and if they are doing their best to make sure that employees are happy and engaged.
Here are some of the things that your company should be doing to bring in the new year:
Have A Company-Wide New Year’s Resolution
As I said earlier, in order to understand where you’re going, you have to look back at what you’ve accomplished or could’ve done better before.
It’s best if you have management come up with ways to make the employee experience at your office better and facilitate an environment that encourages personal growth and productivity.
A manager would be wise to use some of the suggestions that their employees have to better the office. Using an employee suggestion program will allow managers to have information from their employees in order to better their office.
Find any problems within your organization and clear up those weaknesses. Have your company running bigger, badder, and better than ever.
Also, don’t make it a private thing. If you’re a manager, let everyone know the company’s flaw (or flaws) and what steps are being taken in order to make things better. Now, most individuals fail at going through with their resolutions. So you’ll have to create the best possible plan in order for change. If a plan fails, don’t feel down, just pivot and keep on trying to address the problem.
Set Quarterly Goals
One of the neat things that we do here at our Officevibe performance review is set up individual quarterly goals. Whether they are personal or for business; we hold each other accountable for accomplishing our objectives. It helps boost our spirits and is a heck of a team bonding experience.
Your company should be transparent with any quarterly goals and what they expect out of every employee. It doesn’t even have to be something that is measured or quantified.
For example, if a business made it a point to encourage more innovation from their employees they could institute different types of things to encourage it. One thing I’ve always agreed with was having “20% time,” which is basically giving employees 20% of their day or a day out of the week to work on a project.
Google is the innovator of 20% time, and they created some of their most useful products and tools by giving their employees free time to come up with ideas that will better the company and help users.
If your company wants the scalable things as a quarterly goal, make sure to have a game plan that’ll allow employees to meet and beat their objectives and expectations.
For example, if you have a startup website and want to have X amount of unique visitors to visit the site — without spending too much on marketing — have a plan set in place that will give you and your team to attain the goal. Like the old saying goes:
Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance
Part of being a good leader is giving your teammates the ability to execute and meet their goals.
So, as a company set-up quarterly goals and also help individuals reach theirs. I would also like to recommend that employees set-up personal goals to attain. It’ll only boost the productivity and give them something to strive for. Speaking of which, I still have to reach my quarterly goal of 100 blogs in three months!
Set Annual Goals
This one is similar to my last point but still different. Like any other major effort (marketing push, new product, employee engagement initiative, etc.), you have a short-term goal and then a long-term goal.
Your company has to look at those quarterly goals and then think of the long-term.
Leaders of companies have to ask themselves, where can the company be at the end of the year and how will it get there? How will all those quarterly goals help? What can we do to keep employees’ focused and have their eyes on the prize?
Like your individual New Year’s resolution, you’ll want to be able to say you completed it by the end of the following year.
The best way to make the yearly goal clear to every employee is by setting up a roadmap that shows the expectations and responsibilities of every team or department. If possible, have a visual one that you can hang in the office.
This is a good (yet, kinda bad) example …
When I was a teenager working for Best Buy, we had a goal of beating Circuit City. We were going to do this by making sure that we had exceptional customer service, had better prices, and made sure that people have a positive experience whenever they walked into the store.
That year, Best Buy had an incredible year and Circuit City ended up going for bankruptcy (sorry guys 🙁 ). I also found through some of my colleagues that years earlier they had a goal of beating Future-Shop, and they ended up acquiring it.
It just goes to show that the goal of the company was to be better than the competition every year, and it became a part of the company culture. The managers made a fun experience with everything, and we strived to accomplish our goals.
So, if an electronic retail shop could engage a hard-headed teenager to buy into their goal, what’s stopping your company from motivating your team to excel and reach new heights?
Remember, if you don’t accomplish your quarterly and annual goals, or manage to complete your resolution. You can always learn from your mistakes and look to get better in 2016! Oh, and one more thing …
Happy New Year! We would like to wish you and your business a wonderful year.
What Are You Doing To Bring In The New Year?
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