Compliment day – because when you find a trick that makes your kids or employees be nice to each other, you should enjoy it while it lasts.
I four children: my daughter the 16-year-old teenie bopper, my 9-year-old son and my 4-year-old twin daughters. Some days it seems as if these children have never met each other and are at war. One day I got sick of it. I did not want to yell anymore, I had no more threats and could not think of an appropriate punishment. So I tried something new. I told my children that from now on every day, everyone in the family would kiss up to one member of the family. Whichever kid was the best kiss up, would get kissed up to the next day. It worked out really well.
We picked the teenie bopper to be the first kiss up recipient. All day long her siblings were nice to their big sister. The offered to do her chores, they told her how pretty, smart and charming she was. It was wonderful. There was no fighting, life was good. My son won the contest and was the next to receive the kiss up treatment. However, the little twin was not happy she lost so she has promised to kiss up even better today.
Being a parent is similar to being an entrepreneur in that you must find creative solutions to problems that come up. As an entrepreneur with employees, in some cases, managing groups of employees is like managing a group of children. When you have groups of employees that bicker, refuse to work together or even go as far as to sabotage one another, there is a serious problem. Problems between employees can lead to loss of productivity, mistakes, and loss of income. These problems cannot be ignored and must be dealt with as soon as possible.
When figuring out solutions to employee problems, do not be afraid to be creative. In most employee situations there is no one size fits all solution. You must take time, be careful and look for solutions that are specific to your employees, your business, and the particular employee dispute. A thing like a compliment day may not work at your office. But, how would employee relations be if different if you celebrated a different employee function or department each day? Would employee relations improve if everyone knew what everyone did and how each department and each person was important to the company’s bottom line?
Do an experiment – start compliment day at your office. Once per week select a department or an employee that the other employees will celebrate. On compliment day. On each employee’s or department’s compliment day, there will be no complaining. Whenever possible, everyone will look for ways to compliment the employee or department. When employees and departments receive compliments from everyone else in the organization it will increase pride in a job well done, improve morale and may add to an increase in profits.
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Take a moment now to look at how things are going between employees at your company and look for ways to make things better. Be creative and don’t be afraid to reach out for help, advice and ideas. When employees get along, it is a terrific thing!