Whilst celebrating the end of 2018 and welcoming in the new year, it’s highly likely you made some resolutions. Your workforce made some too.
And while the most common new year’s resolutions are to lose weight, exercise more and eat more healthily, there are also a lot that are work-focused. People are keen to get a pay rise, work harder, or learn some new skills. All of these could work in your favour if you’re a member of your company’s leadership team. You just need to know how to use them to your advantage.
The trouble is, according to research, most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions by January 12th. This means you need to work quickly if you’re going to keep people committed and reap any benefits. But how do you do it? We’ll tell you how but first…
What are the new year’s resolutions that will benefit your business the most?
New Year’s resolution for work #1: Get a promotion or a better job
This one sounds very self-serving but it’s actually great for your business too. Anyone after a promotion or bigger role is after greater responsibility and is willing to work harder to prove their worth. By identifying these individuals quickly, you’ll be able to take advantage of this ambition by giving them more work, bigger tasks and harder targets.
Yes – an increase in productivity!
You’ll also ensure that they don’t take that ambition to another company as you’ll be able to reward them appropriately when they achieve the targets you’ve set them.
Of course, the challenge is that you might not have a new role to give them immediately but if you work with them on a programme that lasts at least six months, you have time to review your company structure and find a way of creating new levels of role for the shining stars within your business.
New Year’s resolution for work #2: Achieve a career highlight like winning an award or a big contract
If you have employees who want to achieve a career highlight such as winning an award or big contract, this could be a huge benefit to your business. Which company doesn’t want an award win or more business under their belts? It just needs to be managed carefully.
Nurturing this attitude in a team environment will mean you have several people working together to win which will increase your likelihood of meeting the goal. Conversely, if you leave the individual to work alone, they could fail which will affect morale in the long term, alienate others and potentially damage your company’s reputation.
New Year’s resolution for work #3: Make a decision about my career path
Deciding what role you ultimately end up in will be a very popular new year’s resolution, particularly for younger workers. By supporting them in their decision, you’ll not only shape a person’s future but you’ll also ensure they stay with your company for the long term. They need to see the opportunities that exist within your business and the training you have available.
So how do you keep staff committed to their new year’s resolutions?
1. Identify the goals
The first step is identifying who has committed to what. Use your internal communication chat tools to encourage people to share details of the resolutions they‘ve made. This will foster community support where people pull together to keep to their resolutions. It will also encourage people to open up more and perhaps come up with similar resolutions to others. So, be sure to plant a few work-related ones in there!
2. Talk about their targets
Start the year with a performance review check-in and target-setting exercise and add New Year’s resolutions to it. It may seem a bit trivial but to let your employees know that you care as much about their well-being as you do their professional life, will mean a great deal. Also, holding a performance review at the start of the year will ensure everyone starts 2019 on the right foot.
3. Create content to help them
Publish guides on your intranet that are specifically focused on how to achieve the most common resolutions mentioned above and share them regularly. You could even hold career workshops to help younger workers find their path.
4. Do it too
Get your leadership team to share their new year’s resolutions on your intranet and share their progress with the company in regular news updates. This will help bridge the gap between the workforce and the leadership team and dramatically improve employee engagement. The workforce needs to see that your bosses are real people too.
5. Incentivise
On Quitters Day (Jan 12th), send around alerts to all employees encouraging them to keep with their resolutions and offer incentives for those who keep going. The incentives can be small – such as a mug or badge – but it will show that you care about their progress.
6. Recognise good work
Publicly praise those that make significant progress with their targets on the intranet and this will keep everyone motivated to do well.
You may have noticed there are some important tools required if your workforce is to keep to their career-specific new year’s resolutions: internal engagement tools. These include:
– a performance management system for setting and reviewing goals
– an intranet function that operates across any device so that ALL employees can access and share information with their colleagues
– a rewards programme and alerts function
Does your internal comms system have these? StaffCircle is a people engagement and productivity platform providing two-way communication and performance management for all desk, remote and non-desk-based workers. Available on iPhone, Android, iPad, Android Tablet, Windows Laptop, Apple Mac, StaffCircle provides one of the most accessible business tools on the market.
Every member of your team can access the information they need to feel a part of their company, do their job well and meet their goals. All from the device in their pocket. By capturing valuable data on performance and people, you can help your workforce meet their goals (or resolutions) and deliver a stronger company performance this year.
Get started with a free demo today!
