Produce, Prepared Food and Reefer Logistics Jobs

06:25 PM Friday February 26, 2010 – By Marshall Goldsmith

As we make our way through the challenges of the global economic crisis, high-impact performers are in demand. I’m speaking here of the indispensible workers who are willing to do what it takes to help the company succeed even in the most difficult of times. Those who pick up the slack when the organization is forced to cut back; those whose ideas save time, money, and effort; those with a positive outlook who help keep the organization moving forward.

How do you retain these people? The answer, simply put, is leaders must manage their human assets (i.e., employees), and they must do so with the same vigor that they devote to financial assets. In tough economic times, this may seem difficult; however, it is critical for the success of the organization.

Here are some steps that organizations can take that will help them keep today’s high-impact performers and tomorrow’s great leaders.

1. Show Respect: This may seem rote, but genuinely treating employees with kindness, respect, and dignity will elicit the continued loyalty of employees to both the leader and the organization. It is possible to lead people through fear and intimidation; however, the odds of retaining and developing people using this style are slim.
2. Focus on a Thriving Environment: Creating an environment in which high-impact performers want to stay and will put their all into an organization takes more than a gimmick or enrollment in the fad-of-the-month leadership development program. It takes an environment where people are learning, getting training, and developing their skills — where through inquiry and dialogue, the leader creates an environment that allows each individual to thrive.
3. Offer On-Going Training: High on the list for leaders who want to retain high-impact performers is training and on-going education, both of which ensure that people can 1) do their jobs properly, and 2) can improve on existing systems. Cross training — giving people the opportunity to experience and train in different aspects of the company — is a great way to cross-fertilize between departments and across regions. This is a great competitive advantage when organizations are required to cut back on manpower. Cross-trained employees are equipped to handle different functions in the organization far more easily than those confined in silos.
4. Provide Coaching: By working one-on-one with employees in a coaching relationship, leaders can discover and tap the talents of individuals and direct their development, as well as align their behaviors and skills, thus becoming active as agents of change, enhancing the success of the organization.
5. Give Feedback: More than an annual review, leaders may give employees assistance in specific areas, such as developing networks, handling work/life balance, and attaining job and skills training. Providing feedback is more than an annual or semi-annual performance measure. It is a continual process which comes in the form of mentoring relationships, support groups, and action groups.
6. Money and Decision-Making: I haven’t yet mentioned compensation, which is an obvious employee retainer, but it’s not enough. In addition to compensation, people need to be involved in decision-making. The leader who asks people for their input on how the corporation can increase effectiveness is the leader who achieves buy-in from his or her employees. Not only does this help retain key talent, it also is a great way to generate ideas for organizational improvements.

Developing people is a strategic process that adds value to both the employees and the bottom line of the organization. Highly committed, highly competent people create financial rewards for the organization; organizations that develop their people and provide opportunities for growth are sought-after by high-impact performers. Great leaders know this simple formula. They understand it and strive to create an environment that supports it. And the result is success!

I was talking with my social-scientist sister recently about after-work drinks, and she started to tell me about a recent study she had seen on stress in English workplaces. “Don´t tell me, I interrupted. It showed that employees who go to the pub for after-work drinks with their colleagues suffer less stress than those who don´t, right?” “Yes, of course it did, she replied. I mean, duh, we knew that!” And pretty much any English worker familiar with the after-work drinks ritual could have told you the same thing – and would no doubt add that social scientists have a habit of stating the bloody obvious. But it is nonetheless nice, I think, to have our instinctive “knowledge” of sucht matters properly measured and confirmed by objective research. Being a social scientist is a pretty thankless job, though, particularly among the ever-cynical English, who generally dismiss all of our findings as either obvious (when they accord with “common knowledge”) or rubbish (when they challenge some tenet of popular wisdom) or mumbo-jumbo (when it is not clear which sin has been committed, as the findings are couched in incomprehensible academic jargon). At the risk of falling into one or all of these categories, I will try to explain how the hidden rules of the after-work drinks ritual make it such an effective antidote to the stresses of the workplace.
First, there are some universal rules about alcohol and about drinking-places. In all cultures, alcohol is used as a symbolic punctuation-mark – to define, facilitate and enhance the transition from one social state or context to another. The transitional rituals in which alcohol plays a vital role range from major life-cycle “rites of passage” such as birth, coming-of-age, marriage and death to far less momentous passages, such as the daily transition from work-time to play-time or home-time.In our culture, and a number of others, alcohol is a suitable symbolic vehicle for the work-to-play transition because it is associated exclusively with play – with recreation, fun, festivity, spontaneity and relaxation – and regarded as antithetical to work.
There are also universal “laws” about the social and symbolic functions of drinking-places. I mentioned these at the beginning of the chapter on pub-talk, but it is worth reminding ourselves here that all drinking-places, in all cultures, have their own “social micro-climate”. They are “liminal zones” in which there is a degree of cultural remission – a temporary relaxation or suspension of normal social controls and restraints. They are also egalitarian environments, or at least places in which status distinctions are based on different criteria from those operating in the outside world. And, perhaps most important, both drinking and drinking-places are universally associated with social bonding.
So, the English after-work drinks ritual functions as an effective de-stressor partly because, by these universal “laws”, the hierarchies and pressures of the workplace are soluble in alcohol, particularly alcohol consumed in the sociable, agalitarian environment of the pub. The funny thing is that the after-work drinks ritual in the local pub has much the same stress-reduction effect even if one is drinking only Coke or fruit juice. The symbolic power of the pub itself is often enough to induce an immediate sense of relaxation and conviviality, even without the social lubricant of alcohol.
The specific, self-imposed rules of the English after-work drinks ritual are mainly designed to reinforce this effect. For example, discussion of work-related matters is permitted – indeed, after-work drinks sessions are often where the most important decisions get made – but both the anti-earnestness rules and the rules of polite egalitarianism are much more rigorously applied than they are in the workplace.
The anti-earnestness rules state that you can talk with your colleagues or work-mates abiut an important project or problem in the pub, but pompous, self-important or boring speeches are not allowed. You may, if you are senior enough, get away with these in workplace meetings (although you will not be popular), but in the pub, if you become too long-winded, too serious ot too “up yoursefl”, you will be summarily told to come off it”.
The polite-egalitarianism rules prescribe, not exactly a dissolution of workplace hierarchies, but a much more jolucar, irreverant attitude to distinctions of rank. After-work sessions are often conducted by small groups of colleagues of roughly the same status, but where amixing of ranks does occur, any deference that might be shown in the workplace is replaced in the pub by ironic mock-deference. Managers who go for after-work drinks with their “team” may be addressed as”Boss”, but in a jokey, slightly insolent way, as in “Oi, Boss, it´s your round” We dot not suddenyl all become equals in the pub, but we have a license to poke fun at workplace hierarchies, to show that we do not take them too seriously.
The rules of after-work drinks, and of pub-talk generally, are deeply ingrained in the English psyche. If you ever find that a business discussion or interview you are conducting with an English person is somewhat stilted, over-formal or heavy going, ask the person to “just talk as though we were in the pub”, or “tell me about it as you would if we were in the pub”. Everyone will know exactly what you mean: pub-talk is relaxed, informal, friendly talk, not trying to impress, not taking things too seriously. Of course, if you can actually take the person to the nearest pub, so much the better, but I have found that even just “invoking” the social micro-climate of the pub in this way can reduce tensions and inhibitions.

From: Watching the English. The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Author: Kate Fox
Provided by: Joep Maussen – Fruit Recruit – Fresh produce, Prepared Food and Logistics Recruitment. Produce Recruitment and Logistics headhunting.