Q. How do you keep employees engaged in building the company going forward?
People get motivated when they’re a part of the solution. You have to try to build that kind of can-do atmosphere. There is no secret as to where the economy is going. Most major corporations are hurting right now, so if I stood up at our state of the firm speech and said, ‘Everything is great, guys,’ that would be silly. So our people know that every hour they can spend doing something productive with their time will help Vocon.
The key to that is spending the time and taking the time, not brushing someone off if they approach your desk when you’re in the middle of something. If it’s a silly question or a personal question, you just have to be in the moment.
There are days where it does get in the way to have that approach; I’m not going to lie. You have deadlines; you have things to do. But you just have to make it a priority. If you’re accountable to your business and an active part of the leadership team, you should be accountable for the communication part of things. At Vocon, you won’t survive here if you don’t. We have hardly any turnover, but those who have gone, in many cases, it came down to not fitting in with our culture.
Q. What are some other keys to building employee trust and confidence?
I go back to the line, ‘It’s not what you say; it’s what you do.’ It’s one thing to get up and preach about the economy or preach about efficiency, preach about hard work, it’s another to actually demonstrate it, to put your money where your mouth is.
For example, we have flextime here at Vocon, and one of the reasons is that being a mom is a huge priority to me, and that flexibility is important to a lot of parents here. That’s just the bottom line, and we don’t want to do it any other way. As a result, when people walk out of here at the end of the day, you’re not hearing whispers that they had to blow something off on their schedule or anything.
People are accountable for their own schedules. The bottom line isn’t if you put in your 40 hours, or however long, it’s did you get your job done. It comes back to the fact that your people are adults, so you should treat them like adults. You need to promote adult-to-adult relationships in an organization, not relationships that are more like adult-child. That’s something we’ve worked really hard at doing.
How to reach: Vocon Inc., (216) 588-0800 or www.vocon.com
