Newsflash… Managers/Leaders do not know what they do not know, until they realize that they do not know it. After almost two decades of assessing hundreds of human relations climate assessments, I feel qualified to make the opening statement. A great low cost way for organizations to find out what is on the minds of their employees is to orchestrate a human relations employee/climate assessment. Often there is a disparity in how senior manager(s)/leader(s) view daily operations differently than the employees on the front line. Prior to conducting a human relations climate assessment, the senior manager/leader should take the actual assessment to capture his/her perception of the organization and compare it to the overall results from the employees.
A plausible reason for the disparity in how the climate is viewed; non-management employees are closer to the problem areas (low employee morale, outdated and/or broken equipment, etc.) and have the tendency to not complain to senior managers/leaders because they do not want to be labeled as an employee that whines. The truth of the matter is the bulk of your employees are just trying to come to work, do their respective job without causing a stir so they can go home and do it all over again the next day. Therefore, the challenge is for senior leaders/managers to find a way to obtain a mechanism to capture the perceptions of their people, align his/her perceptions of the working environment and appropriately address the concerns that affect their employees.
A common occurrence that often happens in places of business is that they do not take the opportunity (or worse yet neglect) assessing how their employees view key characteristics (perceptions of communication, leadership, interaction with other employees, etc.) throughout the organization. Additionally, a common complaint from employees is, when businesses do attempt to assess their human relations climate, one of two communal concerns exist;
1) employees that are not in management are never briefed on the results and
2) management does not act on the feedback employees provided in the assessment.
Generally, the decision makers in organizations want to tap their internal resources to address concerns because they are seen as being the most cost effective.
The fundamental flaw with using internal resources to assess and address the workplace employee climate issue(s) are twofold;
1) the most likely department selected to assess the organization is the Human Resources department (and they are often already overworked with their normal daily administrative duties) and
2) when internal resources are used, employees may not be as forthcoming when providing not so positive information for fear of how it may be perceived and interpreted when they have to interact with HR at a later date.
Without using an outside company to accomplish an independent assessment, leaders/managers are left to their own devices as they attempt to read the hearts and minds of where their employees are and then challenged to present viable solutions.
Elite Maui Team Building LLC. has masterfully develop a system to find out the top concerns of organizations, create/establish buy-in from employees by coordinating ways to move forward in targeted areas that are essential to a business’s foundational support to establish/maintain their competitive advantage by addressing the issues that are making the most impacting effect on the human relations climate.
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