FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Tom Ellis
Aug. 11, 2003 Ellis Communications, Inc.
Phone: (417) 881-5635
Everyone loves to belong, to be a part of something. How about the employees at your utility? Do they feel they’re part of a team?
“If you’re looking to enhance corporate results, boost morale, strengthen your customer service and increase customer retention, take a look at the structure you have in place to foster teamwork at your utility,” says David Saxby, president of Phoenix-based Measure-X, a company that specializes in helping utilities improve their customer service and sales. “A whole will always be much stronger than its parts.”
Saxby suggests telecom employees might understand the benefits of creativity if they ask themselves what if:
Saxby offers the following tips on how to strengthen your utility’s teamwork.
Define the mission or goal. Do you have a clearly defined mission for the company? Does every staff member know the mission, understand the direction of the company and comprehend their role in helping to accomplish this mission?
“If you don’t have a mission or goal, get your staff involved in the creation of one,” Saxby says. “With a team-developed mission statement, they are more apt to create one they really believe in and support.”
Train, train, train. Use professional trainers and facilitators to help your staff develop the skills and the understanding to become an effective team.
“Assess whether your staff possesses the skills to accomplish the task,” Saxby suggests. “If not, the provide the training. If they do, then reinforce the training. All skills will dull without use.”
Understand your employees’ values. Everyone develops their beliefs and values from parents, family and the world around them and they use them to evaluate those they interact with.
“Educate your team on the importance of understanding and respecting different values and the importance that beliefs play in formation of values,” Saxby says. “They play a key role in developing a strong team.”
Use team evaluation tools. There are a variety of companies that provide team personality profile tools to evaluate each person and how they function in a team environment.
“These tools help each team member understand not only themselves but also the rest of the team,” Saxby notes. “It’s a small investment toward building an effective team.”
Reward failure. Name a sports team or any other team activity that, when they first started, didn’t experience failure many times before they became a cohesive team.
“Acknowledge failures as the learning experiences that will get you to the eventual outcome,” Saxby says. “If your employees aren’t making mistakes, they aren’t trying hard enough.”
Create teams within the team. Assemble teams to handle projects and develop new products or programs. Create the assignment and let them develop the plan to achieve the outcome.
“Give them the opportunity to pool their talents and skills and solve the problems,” Saxby says. “Most people will rise to the challenge when given the opportunity to play a part on the team.”
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For more information on Measure-X,
call 888-644-5499 or visit its Web site at www.measure-x.com.
