Workplace Creativity on a Budget

Employee Ingenuity Needs Boost in Beleaguered Economy

In today’s economy with rising costs and struggling governments nursing it back to health, creativity and inventive imagination amongst employees is downsizing.   However, this is one cost of doing business that can have long reaching effects as it permeates the workplace and slowly syphons the growth of the future. 

In the Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail, February 19th, 2010, Jennifer Myers posted an article entitled: “Workplace creativity shrivels on the vine.”

You can access that article here, and we recommend that you do. Myers offers valuable ideas and suggestions as well as practical application of “creative ways” to innovate on a budget.

Integrating New Employees in the Workplace

Infusing Your Workforce with Mission, Vision and Values

Ok, so let’s say you’ve defined your organization’s mission, goals and values. You spent valuable time and resources in that process, and now there is an alignment between your organization and your employees. Still one challenge remains. How do you transfer that knowledge and alignment to the new employees entering your organization?

 Attracting and recruiting top talent also requires time, resources and capital. But all those resources may be wasted if your organization doesn’t have in place a good new employee orientation program, designed to get the new employees aligned with your organization and up to speed quickly.

The First Week Makes A Big Impression

Research indicates that an employee’s first days in an organization sets the foundation for a successful employee-firm relationship. During those first days, new employees learn habits, form relationships and establish their perception of their role within the organization. The future success of the employee might be dependent on those first days. This is a powerful, vulnerable time in the life of a new employee, and it also represents the most teachable instance that your organization will have to shape the new employee.

 The on boarding process should be a mean to emphasize your organization’s vision, values, goals and policies as well as to provide the new employee with necessary information to start their contribution to the organization. The goals of a good orientation process should be to transfer organization knowledge quickly, highlight the mission and the vision of the organization and how it connects to the individual’s tasks and make the new employee feel at ease.

 Key ingredients for a successful orientation program include:

1.  The orientation process should start before the new employee’s first day. Send a message to all the employees announcing the new hire. Ensure that all the tools and necessary equipment are in place for their first day. Send the new hire an email with information regarding their first day in the organization. This will help them feel welcome in advance.
2. Spread the orientation process over a few days or even weeks. Many organizations make the mistake to try and have the orientation program compressed in one day. This will only add stress to the new employee, who will be overwhelmed with information.
3. Assigned a “go to person” or a type of “mentor” for the new employee, someone that can answer their questions, show them around and formally and informally provide them with information and support.
4. Involve the executive team in your orientation process. This is a great opportunity for the senior executive team to “walk the talk” and emphasize the organization’s mission, vision and goals and strengthen the alignment between your organization and the new hire.  Give new employees the opportunity for an in-person welcome by a senior executive.

The manner in which you handle the acquisition and assimilation of new hires communicates volumes about your organization and your leadership team. A good effective on boarding process will enable and inspire the new hires to deliver better results faster. It will also increase their organizational commitment and your organization’s ability to retain top talent.

Remember–first impressions really count, and will set the tone for the rest of the relationship with your new hires.

Nicoleta Ratiu

SFU Human Resources 2009 Graduate

Community Service Providers Invited

Employment Service Providers Free Networking and Development Workshop

The workplace of tomorrow will be very diverse, comprising individual differences in generations, education levels, cultural, and ability/disability. As an employment service provider, you’re aware of these realities, and are focused on connecting your clients with satisfying work situations.

Through the Tomorrow’s Workplace project, we are supporting the connection of businesses with community groups in order to source and recruit job-ready individuals in Surrey. We are helping organizations explore their “Business Case for Diversity” to help them sustain and grow into the future.

During the workshops and discussions we’ve had with employment service providers, one common theme expressed is their challenge in building relationships with businesses.

Please join us for exploration and discussion

We invite you to join with peers in your community as Dr. Neault and Ms. Pickerell share tips and techniques for building collaborative relationships with the business community. This is about moving forward, taking some risks, and recognizing how employment service providers are uniquely positioned to meet the immediate needs of our business community.

More About the Speakers

Dr. Roberta Neault is president of Life Strategies Ltd., an Aldergrove-based firm specializing in diversity, international/global careers, and career management as a recruitment, retention, and engagement solution.  She is a counsellor-educator at Athabasca, Yorkville, and Trinity Western Universities, and an award-winning keynote speaker, trainer, presenter, and facilitator.

In 2009, working with SUCCESS, she was instrumental in developing a toolkit: SEED: Supporting Employers Embracing Diversity. This comprehensive toolkit guides employers in recruitment, retention, and training a culturally diverse workforce.

Deirdre Pickerell, Life Strategies’ senior consultant, received the BC HRMA Award of Excellence for her innovative work in career management within organizations. Ms. Pickerell is a sought after speaker and an international expert on using career management as an employee engagement strategy.

Meeting Details

YOU MUST CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDENCE – RSVP to Heather Scragg at the Surrey Board of Trade   Email: heather@businessinsurrey.com   Call: 604.581.7130

Wednesday, March 3, 3:00-5:00pm

(network/register 2:30-3:00)

Sheraton Guildford, Surrey BC

Hosted by the Tomorrow’s Workplace project:

Gayle Hadfield, Project Manager,  Lynn Corrigan, Workplace Design Consultant

15th Annual Cultural DIVERSEcity Awards for Business

Gala Event for Diversity – Business to Win Award

Tomorrow’s Workplace is happy to promote the upcoming Annual Cultural DIVERSEcity Awards for Business: April 13, 2010 at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel in Surrey, BC.

Businesses from the lower mainland who exhibit leadership qualities in the application of diversity values and practices are eligible for nomination.  There are a variety of business size categories; small business, non-profit, youth-owned, government funded, etc. to insure inclusive opportunities.

Judges will be looking for:

• Cultural Expertise
• Community Involvement
• Employee Initiatives
• Marketing Strategies

For More information, visit their website at DIVERSEcity.

Click here for a quick  FAQ on the event.CDA FAQ

When the Two Say “I Do”: Marketing Embraces HR

A little used power combination within any organization is a much needed marriage between marketing and HR.

There is no argument that HR must become more strategic in its approach to organizational development. Routine HR functions can be outsourced, freeing the HR practitioner to focus on managing people not paper. Marketing has always been a necessary component of business strategy. When the two functions become aligned and integrated; the result is a sustainable brand. One needs the other to ensure that the brand you build is authentic.

How do the two functions merge to produce a sustainable brand? The key is in authenticity.
Branding is a buzzword that is frequently misunderstood. Let’s begin with what a brand is not. It is not a tag line, nor a logo. A brand cannot be established by changing your letterhead or the appearance of a website. A brand that is sustainable is the essence of your organization – not something tangible. A brand is a promise that must be kept. A brand begins from the inside out. It is the invisible, unreachable heart of your organization that is hard to communicate in mere words. A brand is something that you live every day; not write about in a mission statement or create for an advertising campaign. Branding is emotional. A true functioning Brand is an experience not a thing. For HR to build employer of choice initiatives in order to retain and attract valuable human capital, a partnership with marketing just makes good sense. HR guides the internal experience and marketing guides the external experience. Employees are the link between internal and external – as they influence customer experience every day.
How do you tell if your brand is working?

One immediate measure is employee engagement. A sustainable brand that provides you with competitive advantage and unique positioning is a joint effort between HR and Marketing. A baseline measurement or an engagement survey tells you the most important information you need to know. What is the actual experience of your company? What does it feel like? What emotion does it create in your employees? What emotions are your employees then transmitting to your customers?

To jump-start your organization, here are a few suggestions that enhance both HR and Marketing in their ability to deliver synergistic results.

Strategy Steps

1.    Establish a baseline measurement like the Q12 from First, Break All the Rules. You need to create a qualitative and quantitative baseline to measure the results of your OD efforts (and enhance your credibility as a internal profit-centre).
2.    Ensure that the internal basics are in place before attempting external branding efforts. Do employees know what to do? Do they have the equipment they need to do their job?
3.    Compare your results from your baseline measurement against employee statistics (e.g. turnover, absenteeism, stress leave).

4.    Examine your recent marketing efforts. Does your marketing reflect your internal reality, your actual corporate culture; or is it a fantasy produced to hopefully attract customers? (Such a fantasy alienates your employees and is a major source of disengagement).

5.     Create an internal focus group from a cross-section of the organization. If you feel that your culture lacks trust, bring in someone to facilitate the discussion and compile the results.

6.    Have the employees review the marketing campaign. Does it produce hysterical laughter? scorn? disbelief? agreement? empathy? commitment? passion?

7.    Where are the disconnects? If your employees don’t believe in the marketing campaign – what do you think they will deliver to your customers?

8.    Get a sense of your organizational experience. What do you stand for and why do you exist? What is your core ideology? What does your product or service mean to your employees? Do they care?

9.    Start reading (yes, recommendations are coming) to get a sense of where a strategic approach to HR and marketing can take your organization.

Employees Must Believe
If you want your employees to fully engage in their work, give them something to believe in, an ongoing story that they are part of and one that results in feelings of pride and accomplishment. In order to retain valuable human capital, your first customers should be your employees. A sustainable brand starts within. That is why the function of HR is now more important than at any previous time in the history of organizations. The function of HR is to protect and support the heart and soul of the organization. Only then do you have something to give to your marketing department. Only then can you build a brand.

Each employee should be able to answer two questions with pride and commitment.  What do we stand for?  Why do we exist?

These questions form the foundation of your brand, the essence of your lifeblood as an organization. Without answers to these questions, you are leaking valuable human capital as well as bottom line profitability. Jim Collins calls it a hedgehog; we call it simply a Core Ideology. It is the foundation for creativity in business. When employees can answer these questions with a sense of pride, you have full engagement.

To create a brand experience requires the participation of employees.

To gain commitment to such participation, the employees must believe in the Brand. If you are looking for ‘buy-in’ from your employees, you have already missed the mark for what are you attempting to ‘sell?’ Your internal brand experience must produce authentic value for your first customer, the employee. If there is no value for the employee, you have much work to do before attempting an external marketing campaign.

It All Starts with a Story

How to create and sustain a brand experience? Look to the ancient art of storytelling. What stories do your employee’s tell about your organization? What is your corporate mythology?

First, just like in traditional storytelling, you need to set the stage, to define the current situation in an insightful, coherent and clear manner. You need to be able to honestly describe ‘what is.’ Your baseline measurement. The starting place for your journey.

Next, again just like storytelling, what challenges are being faced? What untapped resources and talents are available to meet these challenges? Engage your entire employee – not just the small part that fits a current job description. What creative employee gifts are hiding in your organization? This is the ordeal phase. Difficult but necessary. Talent management calls for finding hidden talent that is not being utilized.

Finally, how can you overcome these challenges by capitalizing on employee’s untapped strengths and hidden potential? What can they bring to the brand experience? What do your employees need in order to fully engage in this story? The power to change is fuelled by commitment—emotional engagement anchored in lived experience. This is what will make you an Employer of Choice.

When you have accomplished these three objectives, you will have something worthwhile to take to market. Every life—and every organization—is mythic territory. The realm of story is the realm of actual lived experience. That is why the gift of story has carried the human race since the beginning of time. The essence of that story is what marks you as an Employer of Choice and also carries your Brand Experience. To create a sustainable brand experience – start from the inside out.

Dr. Ginger Grant

For more from Dr. Ginger Grant visit her website

More Articles available at:

University of Manchester Blog on Transforming Management:

Apply Now: Be Chosen for Tomorrows Workplace Business Consulting worth $30,000

The  business candidates chosen for Tomorrow’s Workplace project receive an extensive portfollio of business consulting with a value of approximately $30,000.  To be considered for the project you must supply a written submission that should not take more than 30 minutes to complete. 

All entries must be received by Jan 18, 2010.

Read more about the success of the project with initial candidates:

  Analyitic Systems  and Full Line Specialties. 

The application process is straightforward.

STEP  1

Compose an email with the following components:

1. Your name, Business Name,  Website Address, email address for contact, and phone number of contact person.

2. Tell us how many employees you currently employ. (Eligible candidates must have 11+full-time employees)

3, Write a paragraph or two about what your business provides, how long you have been in business, what are your basic strenghs and where you believe you need help to grow your business.

4. Tell us why you would like to be selected.  How would you hope to benefit and what changes would you expect to see in your business operation?

All information submitted will be held in the strictest of confidence, and with all legal privacy mandates. Only staff members on the Tomorrow’s Workplace team will have any access to the material provided.

STEP 2

Send your information to: Gayle Hadfield; Project Manager @ gayleh@telus.net

STEP 3

Each applicant will be contacted either by email or telephone within 48 hours.

Thank you for your interest.

Tomorrow’s Workplace – A Collection of Views

Article Summary

Here are some of the pertinent articles written lately on the topic we hold dear here at Tomorrow’s Workplace.net: The Workplace of Tomorrow.

Click on any link you choose.  Consider leaving a comment after what you read.  Comments encourage dialogue, and show appreciation to the author.  In the blogging world, just a “thank you for the article” is appreciated and considered polite.

Enjoy@

Imagine Tomorrow’s Workplace– Lynn Corrigan – A vision of the future workplace.

Jobs of the Future– Joan Runnheim Olson – How to land a job in the changing workplace.                                                            
Gen Y – Changing the World One Team at a Time – Kelly Sharp – The newer employees work differently and will provide a new set of efficiencies.                                                                                                                                                                                
Hispanics in the Workplace – Appreciating the Role of the Hispanic Supervisor –Issac Botbol- How immigrant cultures can affect the workplace.

If you find a great article related to Tomorrow’s Workplace please comment below with a link to the article.  We will be sure it get’s posted for all to see.

Changing Demographics Impacting Tomorrow’s Workplace

Changing Demographics Will Impact  Tomorrow’s Workplace in BC

Staffing issues will be challenging  for BC business in the coming decades warned  Ahn: BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour, George Khoury: Alliance Sector Councils, and Rita Hernandez: Immigrant Employment Council of BC. 

Strategic thinking and planning is key, and collaboration between government, the business community and service providers is the only way to insure future growth for the workplace.

Alisa Choi Darcy from Quote End Quote:Cross Cultural Strategy was passionate in her call to businesses to reach out to ethnic communities for both customers and staff in order to make their diversity values credible. “Cultural integration is absolutely necessary to the future success of the workplace” said Choi.

Dr. Ginger Grant’s presentation presented a metaphor for change and the way it creates emotional reactions. William Gruber of the BC Hydro Multicultural Society shared what Hydro has done and is doing to create a true multicultural workplace.

Lively discussions in breakout sessions surfaced themes and challenges for future development. Donna McFadden, Tomorrow’s Workplace Project Manager, urged participants to use the conference as a beginning of a new relationship allowing employers and service providers to work collaboratively toward a successful workplace.

Bill Beatty, Project Director, SUCCESS Business & Economic Development Division, underlined the  importance of the learning outcomes that have come from the first phase of the project.

Highlighting the conference were businesses owners Jim Hargrove of Analytic Systems and Ken Ehman of Full Line Specialties, actual project participants, who talked about project impact on their businesses and on their thinking.

Did you attend the conference?  We would appreciate your comments: what you learned, what you experienced, who you met, future goals based on the conference concepts?  Do you have suggestions to offer?  Use the comment box below. 

Are you new to the blogging experience?  Not sure how to comment? Read Here.

 

Related Material:

 Sohee Ahn Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09  

 George Khoury Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09

Rita Hernadez Presentation Notes Oct 22, 09 

                                                             Bill Beatty Presentation Notes 1

                                                             Bill Beatty Presenation Notes 2

Accepting Applications For Phase II

Applications are now being accepted for the next phase of the Tomorrow’s Workplace project.

Two suitable businesses will be chosen to receive the benefits of participating in the research and documentary process of the project.  To learn more about the project, read Donna McFadden’s overview.

Benefits Include:

• Over $30,000 of business consulting fees (FREE)
• A 360 degree analysis of your business  including operations, marketing, finance and HR.
• Business growth strategies for business longevity and sustainablity
• Education and implementation strategies on becoming an “inclusive” work environment, and attracting Surrey’s diverse, multi-talented workforce.
• Learn how to work with and cultivate relationships with the resources in your community that benefit your business.
• Have your business featured in this ‘first of its kind’ project and video documentary.
• Prepare your business for the workplace of the future.

What Are Your Commitments?

Along with the “once in a business lifetime” benefits of participating in this project, there are commitments required of the successful business candidates.

1. Your business employs between 10-70 people.
2. You are willing to commit an average of 10 hours a week for 12 weeks . (The time and people will vary from week to week.)
3. You are willing to have your journey documented by our video and storytelling process.
4. You are willing to allow your workforce to engage in the process.
5. You are willing to tell us your story:  Why Should you be chosen?  What is your business story? What are your current challenges?  What do you hope for the future of your business?

Interested parties should do the following three steps:

1. Read: Tomorrow’s Workplace Project Overview

2. Read: Analytic Systems: A Strong History to Tomorrow’s Workplace

3. Click HERE to apply.

We look forward to hearing from you and working together toward the Workplace of Tomorrow.

Donna McFadden

Analytic Systems: From A Strong History to Tomorrow’s Workplace

The following article is reprinted with permission from Surrey Board of Trade: Business in Surrey, September 2009 Edition (pg 6, 11)

In 1976 Lloyd Hargrove, previously the chief civilian engineer for the underwater acoustics division of the Department of National Defense, which was also known as Anti-Submarine Warfare started Analytic Systems Ware using the ASW acronym for the company name.

Company President Jim Hargrove, son of the founder, began working for the company in 1979 as a student engineer, while studying the professionat UBC. He described his background and involvement in the company, through the succession from his father in 1993 and the company’s future directions with Editor Ray Hudson.

One of the early projects I  worked on was developing an automatic pilot for steering boats and we ended up spinning that project off into a separate company in 1983. Originally called Compunav Systems, it’s still in business as ComNav Marine and is very highly respected in that field.

In 1991, following a dispute, my share was bought out. In deciding what I was going to do, I considered taking over Analytic Systems, but my Dad was operating out of a little office in East Vancouver, where I didn’t want to be. Just by serendipity while driving around Newton one night, we found a small strata warehouse unit in Walnut Industrial Park. I had a look at it with our real estate agents, brought my Dad out and showed it to him, and said “if you’re interested in a partnership in Analytic Systems, I’ll buy this building and we’ll move the company here.” It took him only a few seconds to say yes.

Our first unit was about 2,000 square feet on two floors, and along with one employee, he and I moved the business and set up shop there (We now hold 16 thousand square feet at that complex). At that time we also re-incorporated it as Analytic Systems Ware 1993 Ltd. It was considered a prudent thing to do to sever any legal commitments with the previous company and start anew under my direction.

Were you building the products you designed or were you jobbing that part out?

I did what you’d call a vertically integrated facility, where we do most everything in house, designing and building everything here. We also decided not to do any more custom engineering. Over the years my Dad had done a number of projects in the power electronics area, so I knew there was a base of design work in that field we could draw on. Once I took the company over, we finished whatever projects we had on the books for clients, but we never took on anything new. We said that from that day forward we were a power electronics company, and we would use the intellectual property that we already owned, and work to develop new intellectual property in that specific  niche.

You know it was pretty scary in the beginning.

You know it was pretty scary in the beginning. I think in the first year we did $70 thousand in sales, which doesn’t even come close to covering the cost of having the door open. But we persevered, and we came out with our first catalogue in 1995. We focused initially on the marine industry because that’s where we had all our contacts, and slowly but surely things started to move forward. The sales continued to pick up. Because I kept in touch with everybody that I knew, we started to get some opportunities outside of the marine industry. One of the key ones was with the Teleflex Canada in Richmond, where we were invited to come to the table to do the power electronics portion of a new military cook stove they were designing for the US Army.

We helped to design one of two power electronics products for that project, and when Teleflex subsequently won the contract to build the stove, we were given a contract for what was called a battery pack. When we got that contract, we took over another half bay unit in our Surrey complex. From there we reinvested the income into the development of new products as the business kept on growing. A lot of our growth came from what is called the Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) military marketplace. Slowly but surely, although we’ve continued to service the marine industry and the industrial marketplace, a lot of our key growth has come from the military, particularly the American military, either directly to military or through prime sub-contractors like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin.

Those sorts of contracts are almost recession-proof too.

We’re so busy right now we haven’t even been touched by what’s going on economically. We’ve grown from 2 owners and one employee in 1993, to 75 today, and we have set up facilities both in  Delta and Surrey. In Surrey we continued to buy additional units in Walnut Industrial Park, so now we own or control about 16 thousand square feet of space there.

We use a lot of aluminum extrusions for building heat sinks or housings for the products that we make. It was one of the biggest sources for our quality problems we had with both on-time delivery and quality of the extrusion. We’d order this stuff from California where it would be made to our design and shipped to a local machine shop which would cut and machine it, have it anodized and deliver it to us with all its value added. But it would arrive with the fins bent or something would happen in the shipping of the raw extrusion – yet it would be processed anyway, which caused us no end of problems, so about five years ago we finally decided we had to go into the CNC machining business, which is a dirty messy process compared with electronics. Originally we were going to move the CNC operation in to Delta as well, but we’ve decided now after seeing how things played out, we’re leaving that in Surrey and expanding it into an independent enterprise. So the CNC work will happen in Surrey and the electronics side will be in Delta.

We’ve built this one step at a time – a process of putting one foot in front of the other.

All of our growth has been financed through either bank financing or re-investment of income, so we have complete control over what the company does. We’re not beholding to Angel or Institutional investors. We have a lot more flexibility in what we do.

What is your dream for Analytic Systems now?

We were just meeting with the people with the Tomorrow’s Workplace project and we said that this year our sales will hit around $9 million. Our three year goal is to hit somewhere around $20 million. In order to do that, we want to introduce four new product families in the power-electronics field over the next 36 months. We want to continue to develop the markets we’re in but we’re also committed to growing into and exploiting the green energy marketplace as well. So we’ve identified those three key objectives for the next three years.

What attracted you to become involved in the Tomorrow’s Workplace initiative?

Although we were pretty happy with the way things were going with the business, the concept of having people come into the business to do a global assessment of how we run our business and give us feedback on how we could do it better, was very interesting to us. We weren’t really sure what we were getting into at the outset. It’s been a very good program, but it’s been very challenging: everything from reworking our mission statement our values, our vision to the nuts and bolts of how we get to where we need to be to be a twenty-first century employer.

Can you describe some of the aspects of the program from your perspective?

It’s going to give us a vision across the business for how we can grow that is accepted by everybody. One of the key points is, rather than developing the vision at the top and flowing it down, the Tomorrow’s Workplace consultants are helping us build the vision from the shop floor up.

We’re engaging key people in every aspect in the organization that we probably would never have done otherwise. So you get a complete vision that’s easy to get buy-in from everybody in the company from the entry level assembler on up to our VPs.

Soon businesses aren’t going to be able to meet all of our workforce requirements from our domestic workforce, and we’ll need to look to new-comers to fill that demand. How diverse is your workforce, and how do see that evolving?

We have people from virtually every continent on the planet working here.

It seems that in the summer, half our staff goes to Romania for example. But we have a lot of Europeans, people from Fiji, Indo-Canadians. I think that the diversity of the community is well represented in our workforce, and everybody brings value.

Your involvement with the Tomorrow’s Workplace project is just about done, September or October. What would you say to anyone else thinking about getting involved with this program?

I think they should jump at the opportunity.

They’re going to learn an awful lot about themselves and their business, and what it takes to remain competitive. In order to keep your business competitive, you have to have good people. It doesn’t really matter what business you’re in, business comes down to the people you employ, and they walk out the door at 4 o’clock everyday. You want them to come back to work the next morning. Often that has little to do with money and everything to do with quality of life and vocational challenge. So where I think Tomorrow’s Workplace is really helping us is to identify how we can build on and improve on those areas. It’s easy to grow the business when people want to come to work for you, when you’re identified as a workplace where people will be fulfilled.

Labour is going to be in short supply and this recession isn’t going to last forever. We will see things turn back to when it’s a buyer’s market for the labour supply, and getting and holding good employees becomes difficult again. Preparing for that, I feel is the underlying theme of Tomorrow’s Workplace, how to differentiate your workplace from the one next door.

Our thanks to the Surrey Board of Trade and Analytic Systems for their generosity to print.

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