Turning employees’ attitudes into assets

Employee attitude determines the impression or outlook of the organisation. What clients assess first when they encounter a business is the attitude of employees — on whether they are helpful, interested and engaged. When an organisation recruits an employee, it hires the skills and talents of the individual and a positive attitude toward work.

Promising employee attitude is the foundation for success of any organisation. It is still appropriate to expect great employee attitude even during the time when an organisation is undergoing difficulties.

Turbulent times

Career experts opine that an employee who uses pretexts of an organisation’s turbulence to justify poor attitude takes self, the team, and the organisation down.

 But success is not easy to achieve but also impossible without good employee attitude.  To a large extend, the emotional state of employees speak volumes. It tells clients a lot about the company or business, including other people’s impression of the company.

It is thus important to carry out a survey in an organisation to assess employees’ attitude, using credible surveys and research organisations. Employee attitude surveys assess attitudes and identify their root causes. “The surveys are used to gather important data about employee attitudes by adhering to scientific and psychological research principles.

After the data has been collected, it removes the guesswork in getting to the bottom of the problems concerning employee attitudes,” says Albert Owino a Human resource consultant.

Owino says results from the surveys can help organisations to decide on whether they can outsource services from credible attitude and behavioural management consultants to help unlock the employees’ potential and boost productivity.

Organisations can then be advised on areas to improve on usually on a step-by-step approach to turn around the image of the company by investing on programmes that offers alternatives to make improvements. “The survey can unearth reasons for low morale, low productivity, low engagement and causes for high turnover in a company,” he says.

Brand identity

A combination of low morale, low productivity, low engagement, and high turnover are the veritable ‘Four Horsemen,’ which may spell doom to an organisation’s brand.  “Invite in two or more of the above, and the results are almost certainly disastrous. Sadly, many companies don’t make such discoveries until it’s too late,” Mr Owino said.  Attitude surveys are expected to uncover any issues a company might be experiencing well before they eat into your bottom line of the organisation. 

This helps the company to understand some of the problems employees could be having and then device programmes to motivate them. Such information can be gathered through opinion surveys from employee.

“By asking the right employee attitude survey questions, you’re never left guessing what motivates your employees, what roadblocks prevent them from doing the best job for your company, or what tools, information, or skills they need to perform at a higher level, says Evans Khaemba, a career consultant with HPC consulting.  He says information collected from such surveys can help enhance growth and build out a strong, productive, and highly engaged corporate culture.

“It is important to evaluate employee training and determine overall employee satisfaction,” he says of what an organisation needs to do to improve service delivery.

This improves customer service, increases employee retention, boost employee morale and gain insight into employee perceptions of the organisation to boost the company’s bottom line.

 Mr Owino says employee’s attitude needs to be used for something great and therefore important to empower them.

“Breed accountability not blame, inspire them and listen when they have problems. Ask what resources they have and or need to resolve the trouble. This empathises without approving of a bad attitude,” he says.