Working Together - Without Stress

Have you ever had an employee like this one? Has an incident like this occurred more than once? Does it seem like your staff is just not operating as smoothly as it should?

Working with employees can be very stressful. Many agency employees simply have too much paperwork, so their reluctance to cooperate can be understood. Although I can't make the paperwork disappear, I can offer some ideas for building teamwork.

Start making decisions as a group with all employees. Meet regularly to solve problems and discuss issues. Go around the table and ask each person what he or she thinks about the issue and way to solve the problem. Get all employees involved-in stating the problems and in brainstorming for solutions. If you have several offices, consider telephone conferencing to save travel time and decrease disruption of the workday. When conferencing, be sure to get feedback from all employees on the other end of the phone.

When decisions are too complex to make in a single meeting, have employees do a little more research on the subject before the next meeting-or vote on the issue and let the majority rule. If you feel that the decision is going in the wrong direction, table the issue and bring it up again for discussion in two or three weeks.

The goal is to give the group a feeling of working together. Agency principals may be reluctant to do surrender any control to employees, but doing so will improve morale, quality of work, and efficiency. And management will have gained employees' cooperation because it has demonstrated true trust and concern for them.

Sometimes decisions are difficult to make when agency principals are attending the meeting. Employees feel intimidated. Not a sound is made except by the agency principal, who talks away. If this sounds like your agency, eliminate the agency principals from the meetings or make sure that they're just facilitators. They can ask plenty of questions, get everyone involved, and mediate. But let the employees make the decisions. Ideally, agency principals should attend meetings and learn to work with their staffs-but this is up to the principal. Just remember: The goal is to increase efficiency through teamwork.

If you have a 'too-busy' employee like the one described at the top of this article, don't automatically buy into the idea of too much work. First make sure it's a real problem within the agency. Evaluate every employee's workload. If all workloads are pretty much the same and this employee seems to be the only one having a problem, you might not have to change anything-except the employee. Are you spending a lot of time trying to make this one person happy? Is he or she spreading discontent? Are you beginning to notice a cloud in the office making teamwork difficult?

Think of all the money you're losing by keeping this employee around. Of course, it's always better to resolve the problem; a change in the employee's attitude is preferable to termination. But if you've been working on this problem for some time and seeing few results, consider letting the employee go. Think of the thousands of dollars going down the drain every day in lost time, quality of work, morale, and efficiency. You might not realize the money you're losing!

Letting an employee go is difficult, but it's often a good decision for both parties. About two years ago, my husband quit his job and started to work with me. It lasted all of three months-and the end could not come soon enough. Both of us are happier personally and professionally now that we're back at separate jobs.

A staff's ability to work together smoothly is the foundation of the agency's success. By empowering employees, deciding the principal's role in staff meetings, and removing problem employees, you can make your agency a success again.