Page 80 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

60 Building a High Morale Workplace

AFLAC, Columbus, Georgia—Employees can take 12 weeks at
full pay to care for a sick child, spouse, or parent.
Scitor Corporation, Sunnyvale, California—The company lets

its people choose their own titles, reshaping the way employ-
ees think about themselves and their work.
Rodale, Emmaus, Pennsylvania—The publisher of living healthy
books and magazines practices what it preaches by giving

employees their own gardening plots on Rodale land.
Janus, Denver, Colorado—A generous time-off policy, free
Starbucks coffee, and an ultra comfortable dress code make
life at Janus pretty cushy.

Life Balance Keeps Employee Morale High
What’s really going on here is that employers are making dili-
gent efforts to help their employees balance their personal and

business lives by making their work environment more enrich-
ing and satisfying.
So, as a manager, what’s in it for you? A lot. Research con-
tinues to show that when employers give to their employees,
their employees reward them with higher performance and pro-

ductivity. According to Jack Hawley, author of Reawakening
the Spirit in Work (Berrett-Koehler, 1993), “Workers always give
to the organization or firm in direct proportion to what they per-
ceive themselves receiving from it.”
Year after year, managers come up with new and creative

ideas that help reshape and enrich the work environment for
their employees. Ask your employees to help add to the list.

Get to the Bottom of What People Need—Ask!

To find out what your people really need to alter the environ-
ment in a more positive way or to uncover what’s necessary to

enrich their jobs, all you may have to do is simply ask. You may
be surprised to find out that most requests you will get are very
easy to honor.
For example, the manager of the kitchen staff at an upscale

resort in Kauai, Hawaii, was relieved to know he could easily