I stopped by a furniture store this week to pick up a new desk chair. As I was checking out, there was a sign behind the cashier that announced that you could “win a $1000 shopping spree.” I asked the cashier how I could win and he went from smiling and happy to down with a visible loss of energy. He said to me “to be honest ma’am, that sign was here when I came in this morning, but no one told me what it’s about. We are too busy to leave the cash registers to find out, so I’ve looked stupid all day because I can’t tell customers how to enter.”
Management often expects employee’s to be proactive, but if you don’t follow through and make sure they have the ability to be proactive, then it is the same as purposefully keeping people in the dark. If management has implemented something new, then it is management’s responsibility to inform staff of what is new and how it will affect them. Employee’s need time to learn and ask questions. They deal with customers on a day to day basis and will likely know the types of questions that customers will ask.
Keeping employees informed is not limited to new things for customers. Managers need to ask “What is new?” and “Who else needs to know about this?” Then they need to get out there and inform staff. Small efforts such as this add up to big results in motivation and performance. Employees want to do the right thing and they want to be informed, but they also need management to clear the way so they can. If employees don’t get the communication they need, it just adds to the GarbageFactor™.
