March 27, 2008

How to make my employees laugh.

The inventory at work is really high and we are trying just about anything to get it out. Yesterday in a staff meeting one of my employees jokingly made the suggestion that I should spend an hour doing basic level work in our office to help out. Everyone found this highly amusing as I was never trained on how to do that kind of work and the couple times I did it turned into a disaster. Everyone had a chuckle at this and let it go.

Then today I was talking to my employees. The inventory was bad, their moods were gloomy because of the snow and there was just some overall moral issues. So I thought, hey why the hell not. I jumped in and for an hour I worked alongside them. Of course they found this highly amusing. They were telling everyone what I was doing and they where coming over to see me in action. I wasn't the best at it... far from it. In fact I only ranked about 25% production. It's not like I was helping out a lot. Yet at the same time I was.

Because I was willing to jump in and do the work, it showed the lot of them that I was taking them serious and that I'd do just about anything to accomplish the goal. Plus it improved moral. After I finished my hour they all sat down and worked even harder to help out. Now of course my peers all think I'm daft. Hell I had one try to talk me out of doing it because she thought it would set a bad precedent.

Well that might be the case, but for an hour my employees were laughing and enjoying work and all it cost me was a little public humiliation. I think it was worth the trade.

Posted by Contagion in Tales from the Work Place at March 27, 2008 05:38 PM | TrackBack
Comments