Embracing Change

February already? What happened to January? Are you as shocked as we are that a month has already gone by in 2014? Don't freak out. I want you to take a look back at January. What did you accomplish? Remember to celebrate your successes. What professional resolutions did you make for 2014? Did you put any pieces in place that got you closer to your goal? Progress is a great thing, celebrate it! In December, we sent our our E-zine article about change being inevitable and it is. The strongest and most successful people are adaptable and embrace change. Albert Einstein, a very wise man indeed, once defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If you want different results in your business, or just in your life in general, you have to embrace change. Too many people (our employees included) do not embrace change. When someone is in their comfort zone, change is scary. Business owners tend to embrace change more than their staff does. Entrepreneurs have to push through the fear in order to launch their business, launch a new program or product, hire their first or another employee, change locations, change their company name, and the list could go on and on. We've conditioned ourselves to embrace change. The question is, how do we condition our employees to embrace change? Employees don't like new systems, new methods of doing things, and sometimes they even frown at the new staff being added to your growing company. The unknown is scary for them. They realize that they depend on someone else for their paycheck, that their job is in the hands of someone else. They fear change because they are scared they won't be able to learn the new system, or because they are intimidated by the new employee. It is our duty as their employer to communicate with them open and honestly, to provide them with training that gives them confidence both in their jobs and the organization, to spend time with them to uncover and address their fears. It's not that hard, but we see many small business owners that keep themselves too busy to spend any quality time with their employees. Are you guilty of this? When you go to talk to one of your employees is it to ask about work? Get to know them as an employee, as a valued member of your team. Something that we launched within our own business at Elite HR Team is Dream Manager. We held a company-wide meeting where we "Dream-Stormed" with each other. It was very neat to see the team document their dreams, share their dreams, and it will be even better holding each other accountable to their dreams, and watching everyone achieve their dreams. In the process we learned a lot about each other and 'what makes us tick.' Dan Cozzi, our Excellence Manager, oversees the Dream Manager program internally for us and also as an external service for our clients. Contact him to learn more. Outside of the Dream Manager, other ideas to help your employees overcome fear are to have frequent meetings with them, identifying their needs, and their concerns, and putting goals and plans of action into place (and signed copies into their personnel files) to follow up on during future meetings with them. Simply asking your employees what they need shows and tells them that you care about them.