Page 31 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

Business on Planet Earth, No Longer as We Know It 11

• Be a manager who promotes the organization’s culture,
values, and mission. Model and encourage loyalty and
fierce commitment to a better workplace for all.

• Hire the people who are the right fit with your organiza-
tion’s community and culture. Try using Nordstrom’s rule
of thumb for hiring: Hire for attitude and train for skill.
• Coach and mentor people to their highest potential.

Recognize and reward results with fanfare and facilitate
each and every employee’s success and career growth
whenever possible.
• Integrate new hires so that they feel welcome. Eliminate
the corporate generation gap by doing away with employee

numbers that corre-
spond with dates of
A Feeling of Belonging
hire. Make new Managers working in high
employees feel like morale firms are using an effective
they’ve been part of technique to create a community feel-

the community in ing for new employees.They don’t
your organization play by the numbers.
Too many companies assign their
since the beginning.
employees numbers that correspond
• Be an organization
to their dates of hire, thereby turning
everyone wants to
numbers into badges of pride and
work for. Build a dividing employees. But managers
community reputa- seeking to create a feeling of belong-
tion that goes ing among employees can easily avoid
beyond culture and falling into this corporate generation

tradition. Exclaim to gap by not telling employees their hir-
the world that your ing numbers.
organization is the
“employer of choice,” both internally and externally. Tell
the world that this is a place where people are valued,

treated with respect, and honored for their differences.
Southwest Airlines has been doing this with great success
for more than 30 years. The result? There’s never a
shortage of applicants or hopeful new hires beating down

their door.