Employee Relations

Q. What should I do when an employee has a personal crisis that interferes with work?

Any number of issues-from a divorce situation or daycare crisis to the illness of a family member in another state-can trigger events that take employees away from work. According to organizational performance consultant Leo Willenbacher, high-performing organizations plan for these occurrences.

"At some point every employee will have a need, and there's nothing unusual about that. It's called life," he says.

"If a company is proactive, they've already got programs and policies in place to deal with things, [specifically] employee assistance programs, either in house or contracted with another party." The company's human resources department typically can guide the employee toward that kind of help.

As a volunteer with the Florida Sterling Council, a group that examines forward-thinking organizations, Willenbacher says that council representatives typically ask companies three questions regarding these kinds of crises:

> How do you know what factors affect employee well-being?

> How do you support employees with services, benefits and policies?

> How do you measure an employee's well-being?

The best organizations have mechanisms in place that address these questions, Willenbacher reports. "There are so many situations where a key person leaving the office for even a short time can disrupt everything," he says.

Procedures vary from company to company and must be modified occasionally to reflect the changing nature of the business.

Larger companies have family-leave policies that address extended illness in the family, which might include length of leave and pay. Although a small organization might not have written policies or benefits in place, it is crucial for every business to be prepared for interruption, Willenbacher explains.

"In all cases, we have found that if you are willing to work with your employees, they will be more likely to be loyal to you," he advises.

"If you are willing to dig into the fabric of your organization to come up with policies that address the diversity of your workforce, you will be rewarded."

Q. If my employees paid more attention to me, I think we'd get more done around here. How can I help employees assess and improve listening skills?

As important as listening is to business success, most schools do not teach it and most organizations provide focused training to sales or customer service personnel only, according to Cheryl Lynn Dratler of Resource Innovations, a human-resource consulting firm in Fort Myers.

"Listening is not a skill that is formally taught in any school that I know of," she says. "Maybe education has changed since I was teaching 15 years ago, but I did not learn about listening skills until I was in graduate school learning to be a counselor. As a psychotherapist, you do have to be able to listen carefully."

Studies vary, but reports indicate that people don't retain much of what they hear, according to Dratler. The listening effectiveness of the typical employee is a mere 25 percent, and three-quarters of everything employees hear is either distorted or quickly forgotten, partly because of competing priorities.

"When employees are being constantly told to do many things, they become focused on those things and not on what is being said," she explains. "In that case, clear communication of priorities is important. The biggest barrier for most people is preoccupation in the workplace. There are so many things competing for attention that much of what is said is lost."

The person who interrupts frequently is not listening.

"The average person speaks about 135 to 175 words per minute, but can listen to about 400 or 500 words a minute," she says. "This creates a huge listening gap. People who are not listening might be busy processing that information, jumping to conclusions and cutting others off. Interruption is sometimes an urgent need to be heard, but a person thinking about the next thing to say is not listening."

Listening is hard work, and so is training people to improve listening skills, according to Dratler.

"Because the training takes a great deal of commitment, most organizations that value productivity will put the effort into training only certain types of employees, often those with a sales or customer service orientation."

But listening skills are critical management skills as well.

"The first step of training is to teach active listening, which is the art of focusing on what is being said," Dratler explains. "The beginning point in developing listening skills is certainly awareness."