Employee Relations: Working with the entire human, emotions and all

Archaic employee relations and retention strategies, especially those related to manufacturing or production models, attempt to downplay the humanness of their crew, they try to view the employee as a number or an asset. And in truth, when it comes to the assets of a company, the people are a great asset, but no matter what you do, you cannot remove the humanness from the human.

You can try, but you cannot turn your team members into predictable, emotionless robots. It is an impossible task and the more you try, the more resistant your team will be. When you hire someone or work with them on a team, you are also working with their:

• Spouses, family and friends, if relations are bad with their loved ones it effects work performance and the ability to concentrate.
• Health status, though some rarely get sick, some battle ongoing health challenges or others suffer from self induced ailments, they have to be dealt with either way.
• Finances, if they are facing bankruptcy, foreclosure or are just having a hard time making ends meet, it may occupy their thoughts continually, even while they are supposed to be working.
• Attitudes, beliefs and relationship/communications skills. Everyone brings along their own life instruction book and this effects how they treat/view other people and how they handle problems.

OK, since all this "humanness" effects work performance and therefore profit, what do you do about it?

What you can do may depend on the type of company you have, whether you are small family company, a government entity, a partnership and so on. Here at the Nigro Firm, we don't really have employees, everyone chooses to work with the group as an independent contractor, so we are a really unique situation. Which also means we are not confined by strict corporate standards, we are more like a group of individually owned companies that choose to work together, we are all autonomous, this includes everyone, our IT guy, our writer, our reviewers, our cartoonist and so on. Believe it or not, this has worked really well for us. So in this "cooperation" how do we compensate for the humanness in each other?

• Flexible schedules. The office is available 24/7, so if someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed or has to deal with a family emergency they can always come in later. This also accommodates our early birds and the night owls, some may arrive at work at 7 am and others don't leave till 3 am.
• The ability to work at home. Everyone is allowed to work at home if possible. Though many come in to use the large tables that make looking at the drawings easier, or some just pop in from time to time to just socialize or "catch up."
  
• We share information. Many of the people here share health tips, fresh veggies from their garden, recipes and more to help support each others health.
• Sickies stay at home. What is worse than someone spreading their illness around the office? Often when we are not feeling 100% we can still work or some companies don't allow much time off so people come to work sick, they may be "troopers" but they are also potentially making other people sick.
• Financial Advice. Since everyone in the office essentially runs their own company, they share tax tips and so on. Natalie is also willing to offer advice on running your own company.
• Stress reducing tools. All subs have available for their use a gym, an indoor pool and a nap room as well as the beagles, Wilbee and Izzy, who are great stress and blood pressure reducers.
• Snacks and drinks. Low blood sugar or forgotten lunches can lead to crabbiness and fatigue, so the office is stocked with soda, water, candy, nuts, salty snacks and a full kitchen is available for those that want to cook.
• Open and supportive yet defined work atmosphere. We are open to working with all types of people, we do not have dress codes and so on, but we do have strict and known guidelines about deadlines and quality of work. So we do not micro manage,this empowers our subs and gives them the opportunity to take control of their own work, so they don't feel put upon or helpless like they may feel inside of some large companies.

These things have worked for us. And when occasionally someone has created a situation where they interfere with others work or the project in general, we will step in. But otherwise we empower our team members to take control of their work, performance and schedules. We also provide our very human subs with all of the tools they need to run their own company, perform their work, meet deadlines and de-stress if needed.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Leadership Style: Humans are imperfect, even us

The other day, Natalie and I were going over our web pages making changes and discovered that we had missed making one of our logos an active link to the index page. This was surprising because that was something that was obvious and we had clearly missed it! At that moment, I once again realized what a huge undertaking it must be to design and produce plans for a commercial building. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to work on an elementary school, office building, hospital, a huge prestigious resort, not to mention a stadium that would cost in excess of a billion dollars.

Over the past weeks, working on our own web sites and blog, we have made errors. Yes, we were inconsistent and left things out that we needed.

Not surprisingly, I have concluded that we are not perfect. When I say we, I mean we humans. Although, we may try to be correct, meticulous or stay focused, we still make mistakes. So when you make a mistake (and you will) who has your back?

When we at the Nigro Firm poke fun at the errors made on construction documents, we are not poking fun at any single architect or at architects in general, but are embracing and enjoying our shared imperfect humanness.

And if I know one thing, it is that imperfect humans need other imperfect humans to survive and prosper in life and at work, to watch each others backs and to catch each other when we fall.

How you go about surviving your imperfectness is up to you, but we like to take the happiest route possible...which is together.

Author: Shirley Nigro

Leadership Style: When one of your team members make a mistake

OK, this one was me, I did it. And I should have known better, I do know better, I am an editor and an educated writer, and I screwed up.

Recently we mailed out our first newsletter, hard print by snail mail, and I typed in this blog address incorrectly, and I didn't catch the error and nobody else did either.

So what do you do when one of your team members makes a mistake? And it is a good one.

Of course, I was just stunned, I couldn't believe I did that. But there it was bright as day. My client was standing behind me when I realized and she realized my error. Of course I apologized, then we moved on to laughing about it, too late now right? And I am sure she won't let me forget it and tease me about it for as long as it's funny.

After this incident we talked about this topic. What is the best way to deal with a team member that makes a mistake? Here are some ideas we came up with:

• Accept it. Everyone makes mistakes. However, you may want to reconsider the relationship if they make the kind of mistakes you can't live with.
• Choose progressive thinking team members. No mistake should occur twice, choose team members that are capable of improving themselves and are conscious of their importance on the team.
• Work with people you can trust. Good team members try to do a good job and if they make a mistake you know that they didn't do it on purpose or because they do not care.
• Find solutions. If it is the kind of error that you think could happen again, put your heads together and figure out the best way to prevent the same kind of problem in the future.
• Don't freak out. If you overreact you may foster a situation where your team members will be nervous about fessing up or they will be afraid of you. If this happens and they are anxious all day - nothing gets done. On the other hand, if you anger yourself you are also impeding your own production.

Our solution: For now on we are going to check all web and email addresses, even if we think it is right. Better safe than sorry.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens