Employees Are Motivated When They Feel Valuable and Important

Another method of motivation is to fill a basic human need – the need to feel valuable and important. Mary Kay Cosmetics has a reputation for motivating their sales force, and at the front of this effort are the many things they do to make their people feel special. Here are some ideas they use to make their employees feel special.

1. Listen to people. People feel important and perform better when they think their opinions are valued. Have a weekly production meeting including the project managers, estimators, owner and accounting staff. Progress on jobs, billings and a variety of issues should be discussed. Everyone has a report to give and everyone listens to each other. Each individual knows that their contribution really counts and so they are motivated to do their best.

You can see the importance of this concept and some ways to implement this in your business. There are also ways to extend this to the field. If each superintendent realizes the value of their performance to the success of the job and company they will be motivated to perform at a higher level. This can then extend to everyone working on the job. Having weekly tailgate meetings (which are often already required for safety discussions) gives workers an opportunity for input on how things could be done better.

2. Don’t give responsibility without authority. Giving employees responsibility will make them feel important, but only as long as long as they also have the authority to fulfill their responsibilities. This may be difficult, especially when your business is growing and you have to turn loose decisions you previously made. However, for the business to be successful this must happen, and if it is done right the employees will grow into the job.

3. Let people know you appreciate them. People are motivated when they know they are appreciated – plain and simple. There are a few little “tricks” you can use – such as noting the “hire date” of your employees and sending a card or some other action that is taken on the employee’s anniversary date with the company or on employee birthdays.

4. Put people on a first class basis. One way you can do this is to provide tools for your employees which will make their work easier and more efficient or which results in a more attractive finished product. Give office personnel the ability to enhance forms such as invoices and statements. Whenever they print these they will be reminded that this is a first class company; the type of company where they want to be. The same is true of tools in the field. If these are old or out-dated then employees will be frustrated. If you are on the lookout for new methods and tools, look objectively at their potential and then try out those which are promising then employees will feel that this is a progressive company, not one still working in the ‘Dark Ages.’ Employees do take pride in their work and if the client shows employees that their work is important enough to look “first-class” they will be motivated to perform.

Another way to make employees feel important is to tell the world they are important to you. You can show your client how to do this. You may publish a quarterly newsletter which is sent to clients and prospects as well as employees and vendors. One feature in the newsletter is an “employee of the month” type article with the employee’s picture and an article about that person.

Please contact us if you would like to learn more about instituting a comprehensive training process.  Thank you.

Companies eager to tighten up their information security perimeters should focus not on technology but on teaching their employees how to say ‘no’ per ex-hacker gone good Kevin Mitnick.

Mitnick became a cyberspace legend after his success in penetrating networks at major telecommunications firms — including Pacific Bell and Motorola, Nokia, Fujitsu, Novell and NEC — led the FBI on a 15-year manhunt that ended when his 1995 capture put him behind bars for nearly four years. Older and seemingly wiser, he now uses his skills for good as a Los Angeles-based security consultant, stopping in Australia briefly to address the crowd at the annual Toshiba event.

Many companies invest heavily in security technologies to protect their networks, but Mitnick was quick to point out that even the tightest technological barriers never stopped him; rather, some carefully planned social engineering – or even a bit of Dumpster diving in one’s spare time — can often be far more effective at penetrating the weakest security link at most companies: their people.

“What you can find in the trash is simply amazing,” said Mitnick, holding up a “souvenir” from his earlier days: a printed directory listing the name, phone number, email address, direct reports and other information about every employee in the company. “People throw out notes, drafts of letters, printouts of project documentation they’re working on. In some cases they even write down passwords and access information, or calendars that list every person that person has talked to or met with”.

This information provides invaluable assistance to bad guys keen to worm their way into a company by, say, impersonating an employee and calling the internal help desk, or dropping into the site and pretending to be a business associate. Because people hate to say no even when they’re suspicious of a well-presented stranger, Mitnick says, smooth talking has gotten many a hacker far closer to a target company’s network than days of brute-force technological attacks.

Modern technology is an enabler for such attacks: if a hacker can worm his way into a conference room for just a few minutes, for example, an wireless access point can be plugged into an out-of-the way network access point, providing an open back door into the network even when the hacker is parked outside the building.

The solution to such security vulnerabilities is easy to understand, but often hard to implement: develop clear security policies for issues such as treatment of strangers, handling of information and access to physical facilities by visitors. In suspicious circumstances, teach employees to fall back on those policies rather than trying to ad-lib their response or give in to their natural reticence to accommodate the hacker’s requests.

Even a simple request for contact details, so that a company employee might call back the person requesting assistance, can be enough to make many hackers turn tail and run.

“We can’t expect our employees to be human lie detectors,” Mitnick said. “One of the most difficult challenges in corporate cultures is getting people to modify their politeness norms. Social psychology has found that people should generally pay attention to their own discomfort; if something doesn’t feel right, or it’s nagging at their gut, they’d better check it out. They’re not always going to remember a security policy, but what you want is to come up with some very simple protocols that will trigger employees to refer to security policy. The only people who are going to object to this are the bad guys”.

Please contact us if you would like to learn more about instituting a comprehensive training process.  Thank you.