TIDBITS

Get engaged!

Your employees don't have to marry their jobs, but they should be engaged with them, counsels Roger Herman of The Herman Group, a management consulting firm in Greensboro, NC. Employees who are not fully engaged with their work — as in giving it industrial-strength dedication — could be costing their companies a considerable amount of money. Herman cites a recent Gallup survey showing that “actively disengaged” workers cost the United States more than $3.6 billion a year in lost productivity. What's more, only 23% of these disgruntled workers plan to remain with their employers for the next 12 months.
— RR

Lip service

Is yours a performance-driven company? Chances are, it says it is. But the employee “performance” it likely measures is merely the successful completion of assigned tasks rather than the quality of those tasks. An estimated 73% of companies use task completion as the only indicator of a worker's success, reports a survey by Boston-based research firm AberdeenGroup. Fewer than half (46%) measure growth in skills or knowledge from the previous evaluation. Only the most dynamic pay attention to such criteria as employee productivity, contribution to corporate revenue, and attitudes toward work and the firm.
— RR

‘R's take the lead

Revenue growth and customer retention top the agenda of small businesses this year, reports a study by online service provider Interland. Respondents say the three immediate threats to the success of small and midsize U.S. businesses are rising inflation (44%), the trade deficit and the collapse of the dollar's value (40%), and energy and other supply shortages (40%). The group identifies the three greatest strengths of U.S. businesses as technological leads and strong productivity (49%), a democratic government (46%), and a flexible economy and labor force (39%). Seventy percent say e-mail is critical to their operations; only 14% don't use e-mail in their business. Other important business tools include community relations (55%), Websites (47%), and direct mail (26%).
— RR