Staff Communications: 10 Questions You Must Always Ask Employees

Summary

Effective staff communications are based on the quality of the questions you ask: not the answers you get. You'll only get useful answers when you ask good questions. Here are some questions that you should always ask and continue to ask.

1. What do you think we should do?

When an employee seeks your advice or counsel, seek their opinion. They may well know what to do and simply be seeking reinforcement. They may have information that you need. You want them to simply avoid "dumping" their problems in your lap. They may have a brilliant idea that you desperately need but won't discover unless you ask. Asking also reinforces your faith in their judgement.

2. What makes you say that?

Business VoIP Phone Systems

Communication is important - it's actually vital to the operation of any good business, which is why various improvements have been made in this regard for a long time now. If you want to ensure that your company is working at the top of its potential, you'll need to invest in a quality communicational infrastructure - and nowadays there are various ways to do that. Phones are great and all, but they have much better counterparts nowadays that can work a lot more efficiently if you're looking for something that won't set you back much.

Voice over IP - or VoIP for short - systems are based on Internet connections instead of standard phone lines. This allows them to operate much faster, and, as a result, they can provide a much better quality of the sound in your calls. What's more, it's a lot easier to place conference calls and otherwise talk with several participants at once when you're using a VoIP system, as it makes it very easy to handle a large load of information which would slow down a regular phone network.

Conflict at Work Causes Expensive Disruption

Conflict at home can cause upset and misery.  Conflict at work can cause expensive disruption and these hidden costs are underestimated in many organisations.

If two people are not working well together, then this will almost certainly have a 'knock-on' effect upon the whole department and, in turn, the entire company.  Sometimes conflict is just ignored 'we will just let them get over it'... 'what has it got to do with us, time will sort it out'.  Well, time may just NOT just sort it out and situations can easily escalate.  What starts out as an aggravation and annoyance can turn into a full blown grievance all too quickly and start to cost the organisation dear, in terms of time and money.

The aggrieved individual concerned may feel:

Motivating Today's Younger Workforce

Part 1 - The Issue

People will only change their behaviours and beliefs if there exists a powerful motivator to do so, especially young people. Having trained and coached hundreds of young Post-Grads entering into the corporate world of IT Project Management, I've found that providing them that motivational element that will inspire and drive them in their training can often be the trickiest part.

That got me thinking about motivating trainees and younger staff generally, particularly in the corporate business environment, and especially in these financially trying times.

Extrinsic motivators such as employee-of-the-month, staff away-days, even bonuses, are all typical workplace motivators which, whilst seemingly effective at the time, are often short-lived, and do not result in overall longer-term changes in behaviour or performance.

Executive Consulting: An Available Organizational Tool for Increasing Worker Efficiency

The challenges brought on by hard economic times are easily felt throughout an organization. Staff members show decreased motivation as companies make difficult decisions to lay off employees, cut benefits, and alter management levels. How can a business keep personnel engaged to meet organization goals with these occurrences taking place? A large portion of morale, job satisfaction, and engagement comes directly from each individual's existing relationship with higher level executives. Executive consulting focuses on developing connections based on trust and encouragement. Organizations dealing with this problem have three basic questions to answer:

    What must be done to keep individuals or teams focused on reaching business strategies?
    How can personnel be assisted with adapting to stressful changes?
    What approaches will encourage individuals to work toward maximizing the bottom line?