Poor work ethics can be heard from the boardroom to the shipping dock. Employees pointing the finger at their fellow employees who do not consistently demonstrate the same beliefs about working hard or even just working.
How to change these poor work ethics is a question that stymies the best leadership or management. What makes one employee hard working going the extra mile? Why do we have so many who are just here to earn a paycheck? And let us not forget the few who make a business work day a miserable experience for everyone around them. Small Business Coaching Tip: Identify your explores (25%), vacationers (50%) and prisoners (25%). Then put together an action plan to convert more vacationers into explorers and terminate the prisoners.
First, there needs to be some clarity around what is a behavior and what is an ethic. A behavior is what someone does, a physical action that is observable from body language to actual performance. An ethic is a belief about what is important to that individual.
For example, an employee comes to work at clocks in at 8:50 am and is on the floor ready to begin a day’s work. Another employee comes to work clocks in at 8:59am and is still not on the floor. The behaviors of these two individuals demonstrate high work ethics and poor work ethics.
Since an ethic is really a belief, then to change the behaviors begin by changing the beliefs. Unfortunately, most training only looks at the behaviors and fails to identify the beliefs. Small Business Coaching Tip: Negative results are reflected through negative actions. However, negative beliefs drive negative actions.
Additionally, within the K-12 educational system, there has been several decades where hard work has not been rewarded consistently. Too many parents do not want their children to be considered losers so rewarding the top two performers has been replaced. After all it isn’t fair that the student who was just .5% behind number two students did not receive any recognition.
Conditioning also plays an important part in the development of work ethics. Remember being in class and how the other students treated the over-performers? Very few students wanted to be the “smart person” or the teacher’s pet. Staying unnoticed was a far better way to get recognition from your peers.
The lack of having a personal values statement can contribute to poor work ethics. In a society that now frowns on judging behavior, the wink and the nod belief takes over. What this belief suggests that sure I believe in honesty unless I get caught.
Several months ago, I observed the wink and the nod behavior when I saw one business person pay for a newspaper from a vending machine and then give a second unpaid paper to his colleague. Both believed this was OK until I deposited $.50 and paid for the paper that was stolen. Then their behaviors changed because they were caught.
Businesses, as well as other organizations, also suffer from the wink and the nod belief. Executive management talks about conserving resources and then spends excessive profits on marketing junkets to the now famous golden parachutes.
To change poor work ethics requires a multi dimensional approach that infuses the executive team leadership actions and beliefs identification through effective communication of current goals and strategies. When alignment of all behaviors is not present in any organization, one of the outcomes can be poor work ethics as demonstrated through poor work behaviors.
Poor Work Behaviors Begins with Poor Work Ethics - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
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