The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Tech Leader's Toolbox
What Your Tech Employee Wants Right Now
After several months of pandemic shutdowns, #WFH, kids taking school from home, bad Wifi, election-year political turmoil, dealing with loved-ones with COVID-19, it's no wonder that stress is at an all-time high. Continued employment and workplace stability seem so unsure. In this episode, Paul Simkins, The Values Coach, talks about what your employees need from leaders like you now to get through this time.
Plus, because November 14 was National Pickle Day Paul shares an excellent recipe for Grilled Pickles on the grill. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing paul@BoldlyLead.com.
You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.
Join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
Learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.
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The Tech Leader's Toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the Boldly Lead program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees, so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at nights.
Paul Simkins:Hello, and welcome to The Tech Leader's Toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds. Tomorrow. Well, this is Episode 43 of the podcast. If your team is still primarily working from home, it can be a demanding, confusing time for them. They can also be a confusing time for you as a leader. So how do you make sure you're meeting their needs during this pandemic? And going forward? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. So are you ready? Let's go. Well, here we are in the ninth month, of the COVID-19 effect here in the United States. Now, actually, COVID, of course, hit well before that. But really, things started churning somewhere around March of 2020, here in the United States. And right now, as we're recording this, we're actually in this second wave of the COVID effect during the fall, and it is hitting us hard around here. Here in the United States, the number of hospitalizations are way up. The The effects are really hitting everybody hard. And, and it wears us down. We're constantly having to look at pivots. I know for me, I was, you know, again, as a trainer and a speaker, I make my living primarily off of workshops and Keynote engagements. Well, once March hit all of that pretty much shut down. And I'm having to look at pivoting, what I do and how I can do other things still do what I do, and be able to generate income and serve people's needs, and add value to them. And the podcast has been a blessing in that way. And that I can continue to be do the podcast. But I've had to find other avenues, including doing online courses, doing pre recorded keynotes and online trainings. And we're going to be offering a bunch of those coming up here in the real in the real near future. But it wears us down. And not just I'm not the only one who had to make pivots here all of us did employees, your employees in the work from home environment, a lot of changes. First of all, if they have kids, they had to finish out last year school year, more than likely with their children at home, scrambling to find enough computer equipment to make sure that the bandwidth was there so that the kids could finish school online. And with the new school year, it's the same thing. I know of several parents around in my area who have 234 kids, well, they don't have that many laptops. And the broadband at home really was never meant for that. So you're going to have long periods. During the day when the kids are all the kids are trying to access their classes, where it's going to slow things down greatly. And on top of that, if an employee has to not only keep track of their kids in their school, but they've got to do work as well. Now you can see how that builds up, how it affects them. And there are things that employees need to know from you as a leader that helps keep them going. So what are some of the things that Well, there's some things we've always talked about, that employees have always needed to know even before COVID COVID, they needed to know that they matter. They needed to know that what they do matters. They need to know that they are an important part of things that are going on within the organization that they are important to the organization that they are appreciated. And that they are noticed. And yes, you know, income plays a little bit of a part in there. But really what people are looking for is to know that what they do is appreciated by you and it's noticed by you and they're not just another nameless cog in the machine. And at a good example of this is many years ago, I'm chasing a rabbit here but that's okay. Many years ago, this goes back into like the 1950s I think Bell Labs, what was then part of the conglomerate of at&t Bell Labs did an experiment in a workplace. And they wanted to see whether people function better in a cooler environment or in a warmer environment. So what they did is without telling anybody is they would in waves, they would change the temperature in the room. And it'd be cool for a few days. And they would record what happens. And then they'd make it warm for a few days, and they'd record what happens. And again, what they were looking for with support for whether people performed better in cooler environments or warmer environments. And what they found was there wasn't a huge difference. And what they really found was that every time they made a change, and productivity picked up, their conclusion from that is why did that happen? It happened because somebody was paying attention, that with the change in the environment, employees felt that somebody was paying attention. And that made their productivity go up. So again, they need to know that they matter that what they do matters, that they're a part of things that they're appreciated that they're noticed. And as we mentioned last week, in Episode 42, they need to be inspired by you, you can't motivate them, but you can inspire them so they can find their own inspiration, their own motivation. None of that has changed here with COVID, they still need all of those things. Is there anything else they need from all of this? Well, I did a little research on that. And Gallup actually, which is real good about this kind of stuff. Gallup did a poll not too long ago, just just about a month or so ago. And what they were doing is they were looking for what is needed for leadership in a crisis management situation like this. Well, what they found first was that employees, their overall conclusion of this was that employees are looking to their leadership for crisis management. If you leave it to them to figure their own way out, they're going to feel lost, they want leaders to be able to step in with crisis management, they need them to show the way forward. They need to be able to trust you. And know that you are trusting them. They need to see compassion, they need to see stability. And most of all, they need to see hope. And think of all the things that are going on during this time that are affecting people, the stress of all of it, and maybe even the loss of loved ones affected by COVID. And even if those people did, even if some of their loved ones didn't die, they may have ended up in the hospital, I have a friend who got hit with COVID ended up for two weeks in the hospital, he did recover. But it was a trying time, and a lot of those people are still experiencing effects from being hit with COVID, you may have experienced some of that. How stressful was that for you? Do you think it's any less stressful for your employees. So they need to know that there is hope, and that there is a way forward. They want to know if things are going to be okay. So here's some of the interesting things that came out of this Gallup poll that they did some very interesting to get this word out some very interesting statistics. And so I'm going to share those with you and then we're going to talk a little bit about what that means for you and what we can do about it. So first of all, the poll showed that only 39% of the employees felt confident that their leaders had a clear way forward. Did you get that? Only 39%. significantly less than half. were confident that their leaders had a clear way forward. Now, did they didn't they? Oh, you don't know either. But the point is, is that if there was a clear way forward, it wasn't being communicated to these employees. They didn't feel confident that that was there, and slightly over half of them felt well prepared to do their job. Just slightly over half and a little less than half felt that they were being kept well informed by their leaders during this covid time, and also a little less than half felt that the company cared for their well being. And only 27% said that they always practice social distancing, both at work and home. In other words, always practice social distancing, wearing a mask keeping six feet apart, and all that 40% said that they at least practice it mostly, but not always. So the gist of all of this is that your employees must know that the organization is looking out for their best interest. And you remember, I've talked about it before the old quote from Bob Berg, everybody listened to the same radio station, WI I FM, WI I FM, what's in it for me. You can also refer if you're into psychology refer to Basil's hierarchy of needs. People need to know that their best interest are being taken care of. And if somebody else isn't helping look out for their best interest you as an employer and not looking out for their best interest, they're going to do it themselves. And if they're going to concentrate their energy on looking out for their own best interest, they don't have time to look out for yours. Or the organizations. If they don't think you care about them, they're not going to care about you. Simply put, do a gut check. Are you keeping your employees well informed? How do you know? Have you asked them? Have you talked to your employees about their understanding of where you are and where you're going? Do you have a plan? And have you shared that plan? With your employees? Are you continuing to make sure that your employees have the materials, the equipment and the training to continue to be effective? Again, there's a lot going on here. And if they're having to work from home where they don't normally work from home, they may not have a lot of the equipment, they really need to be effective in a work from home environment. What's it going to really impact you to provide them with little things that can provide a better ergonomic workplace
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Paul Simkins:One of the things I liked I worked for a large government contracting agency years ago, and since they allowed us to work from home part of the time, they actually made sure that they offered us at no cost to us some ergonomic equipment for working from home like risers for your laptop and monitor a an external keyboard and other things that would allow us to have a more ergonomic workplace and feel more comfortable in a work from home environment. So make sure they have the materials, the equipment and the training they need to continue to be effective. Alright, are you encouraging your employees to use masking to maintain social distancing? Not just in the workplace. But wherever they are. If they're not healthy, no matter where they got COVID if they're not healthy, healthy, they're not going to be able to be effective at work. They're not going to be effective with their families, they're not going to be effective anywhere. So encourage them to think about healthy practices. Are you checking in with each and every person on your team? frequently? These are some questions you want to do you want to audit yourself. And at the end of all of this, remember, they want to be able to trust you and know that they're trusted. They want to see compassion from you. They want to see stability, and they want hope. So here's a tip of the day for you that you can apply other than auditing how you're communicating with your employees and whether you have a firm plan in place. Go back to your values. Look at your core values within your organization, the core values that you have established. And of course if you haven't established them, you need to establish those core values and you can always give me a call and I'll help you out with that. But check your core values, the way you're handling things right now during COVID. Are you fulfilling those core values? Where are you lacking? What can you do better in order to fulfill your core values for your organization. All right. We'll be back in a moment.
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Paul Simkins:Well, this week, for the shared recipe, I have a real interesting one I want to share for you. For those of you who haven't listened before, I am a huge fan of outdoor cooking just any kind of outdoor cooking, I can do a grilling, smoking, working cooking over an open fire working with Dutch ovens. And I like it so much. I actually created a Facebook group called smoke and ash. And on that Facebook group, me and all of my friends we gather together and we share recipes and we share what we're cooking over the weekend and what we're cooking on special occasions. We show off our equipment and the tools that the cookers and everything that we have to do what we're doing. Occasionally we have trivia questions, and also trivia share share general trivia, people will share pictures of stuff they've seen or places they've eaten, and all that, but it's called smoke and ash. And I invite you to come out and join us. And here on the show, I always share a cooking recipe and outdoor cooking recipe. Most of them can be adapted for indoor cooking if you're not into outdoor cooking. And I also make these recipes available on the show are on the smoke and ash Facebook group every week. So you can always get it from there. Or you can just email me directly at Paul at boldly lead.com, and I'll be glad to send it to you. So for this week, well, this is in November, and I just discovered November 14 was national pickle day bet you didn't know that. I discovered that just happenstance, national pickle day. And so I wanted to share with you a recipe for Grilled Pickles. Don't make a judgement yet, this would be much better than you think it's going to be grilled pickles. So what you need for this is you need a large jar of either kosher dill pickles, or I like to use sometimes the half sour pickles and they need to be the pickle halves. So they either come already in half or buy the whole pickles and cut them in half lengthwise. You're gonna need one red onion. And you're going to need several cloves from a bowl of elephant garlic. Now if you're not sure what elephant garlic is, you look in the produce section. It's the real giant bowls of garlic that's called elephant garlic. And you need several cloves of that for this. And then you're going to need some kind of a seasoning and the what I like to use is called Everglades Seasoning. It's manufactured down in South Florida. I use that a lot when I'm camping and everything it's great if you can't find that just any kind of a seasonal seasoning that you like to use. I mean you could technically use like Mrs. Dash or something like that. I like something that's got a little bit of a bite to it. So if you can find something like that, that's great, and you're going to need olive oil for this. So what you're going to do is take the pickles out of the jar, reserve the brine from the reserve the brine that was in the jar, you're going to take your pickles and you're going to place them out on a paper towel lined baking sheet and then take a another paper towel and pat them dry. Then you're going to take your red onion and you're going to cut it into wedges and peel it and then cut off the stem hat part of the garlic cloves. Now place all of this in a bowl, take a tablespoon or two of olive oil and drizzle it over top of all of that and mix it well. So the olive oil gets all over everything. Then put it all back on the baking sheet. Take your seasoning and liberally sprinkle that seasoning all over everything. And then you're going to put it all on the grill at medium heat. Now when you put the pickles on there, and it worked for the onions as well. It's a good idea with the onions. Put them at an angle to the grill slats. Almost perpendicular to the grill slats. You get grid you know or at a diagonal that will get good grill marks across everything. And you're going to grill for two to three minutes on each side. until those grill marks are burned in good. You don't want charred but you want good grill marks on there. That's it, you can serve that immediately, what will happen is that elephant garlic will soften up and be real nice and have actually, it won't be that as bitter of a garlic flavor is as you'd normally would expect, the onions will be delicious and softened a little bit, and the pickles will have a nice flavor to them. And you can serve that as an order of appetizer or something like that. And everybody really like that. If you're not going to serve it immediately, put everything back in the pickle jar, and then add enough brine back in to cover and seal up the jar. That'll keep in your refrigerator for about five days. So that's it grilled pickles, much better than you would think it would be. Alright, so this week, we talked about keeping tabs on what your employees need right now what your tech employees need right now. from you as a leader in order to keep moving forward and being productive. And remember, they're looking to you for crisis management, they're looking for you to show a way forward, they need to be able to trust you and be trusted by you. They need you to show compassion, stability, and hope. They want to know things are going to be okay. Hey, I'd like to ask you to do a favor for me, you know, we don't play advertising on this or anything else. And I put this out because this is a way that I'm able to continue to add value to you even when you know stuck at home. And I'm going to continue to do this because I like to do it. It's a lot of fun. And I hope you're enjoying it too. So the favor I want to ask for you is if you're listening to this podcast on any kind of an app. Leave us a good positive review on there. If you can do a star rating or whatever do that as well give us a high star rating so that other people can find this podcast and can learn from the things that we're sharing here. Also Come on out to the smoke and ash Facebook group, I invite you out there. And we have another Facebook group specifically for the podcast called The Tech Leader's Toolbox, where we kind of expand on what we talked about here on the podcast every week. Well, that's it for this week. Until the next time, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be!