"Our People Make the Difference"

The most common phrase we hear from businesses is "our people make the difference." At first, that phrase sounds wonderful. The company appears to believe in their employees. Value is given to the individuals who perform the work every day and they are indeed identified as the most important aspect of a company's offerings. They are, in fact, part of the product being sold.

What most companies don't realize is that the saying is true - for every business. The people in your business truly do make a difference. The question is: what kind of difference are they making?

Think about this:

• Who interacts with your customers?
• Who interacts with your suppliers?
• Who determines your business' strategy and where your company is going?
• Who makes sure you're meeting government regulations? paying the right taxes? fulfilling your legal and contractual obligations?
• Who builds your reputation?

The answer to all of these questions: YOUR PEOPLE.

So, what happens when you aren't meeting the needs of your people?

It's easy to think of employees in terms of their numbers. How many of them are there? How much are you paying in taxes to keep them employed? How much time are they performing revenue generating activities? However, the more important numbers are these:

• How many customers do your employees encounter daily - on and off the job?
• How much company time are employees spending trying to manage their personal lives because they don't have the life skills to handle things outside of work?
• How often does the stress of feeling overwhelmed cause an employee to avoid solving a work problem because he simply doesn't know how to face it?
• How many times has an inexperienced manager in your organization cost you a valuable employee because she didn't know the difference between managing and demanding?

Your employees make a huge difference in the success or failure of your business, whether it's part of your marketing message or not. 21st Century Professionals focuses on identifying and addressing the personal and professional needs of your employees to ensure that the difference they make is for the better. We know that healthy, well-rounded people outfitted with the proper life tools and support systems make incredibly productive and efficient employees.

Call us today to discuss how we can make a difference for your people, so they can make the right kind of difference for your business: 937-867-0667 or email info@21stcenturypros.com.

A Holistic Approach to Professional Development

The 21st Century is opening up new doors for professional development as the latest generation entering the workforce refuses to believe in the all-powerful, life giving corporation and the requirement to conform to the way things have always been to succeed. Students graduating this year are confident, aggressive, fearless, imaginative, impatient and short-sighted. That combination of traits makes for a scary cocktail for business leaders who have managed employees for decades who believe what they're told and fear stepping too far outside of what is expected.

This new generation intimidates a lot of managers. The situation requires creative answers to questions like: how do we make managers out of these employees? how do we keep them in a job long enough to benefit from their contributions? and how much is it going to cost for us to make the necessary changes?

What many employers fail to recognize is the incredible benefit that these new creative approaches will have for all employees within the organization. Here are two ways professional development will have to change and how those changes will benefit the current workforce:

1) Treating employees like human beings.
The days of developing processes and forcing employees to bend to fit the system are on the way out. Confident, creative and aggressive employees aren't intimidated by authority. They aren't afraid to ask "Why?" and wait for an answer. Businesses that try to manage that behavior out of those employees will lose the talent to more tolerant organizations. Meanwhile, tolerant organizations are going to have to come up with suitable answers.

Eventually, organizations will begin to explore the reasons most business processes don't account for the humanity of the employees they affect. Work days will become infinitely more flexible, lines between home and life will blur even further than they already have. Businesses will find themselves looking for employee training that addresses the personal, as well as professional, development of the employee. It will become infinitely more cost effective to teach employees financial sense that can be applied personally and professionally. Communication skills training will address how human beings talk to human beings, rather than focusing on the proper way for professionals to address one another.

2) Recognizing that Loyalty is a two-way street.
As the dreaded phrase "due to the economy, we're going to have to...." has been thrown around, we've all seen an unprecedented firings by companies in every single industry. The catch phrase means gloom and doom to most employees and most managers make a good show of looking upset and disappointed while they deliver the line. But the fact of the matter is, this has been a blessing to many corporations that have made massive layoffs without the negative attention they would have received ten or fifteen years ago. It's like a "get out of PR jail free" card.

Upcoming generations, however, are not afraid of being dumped. They don't believe that their current job will be their last. They are confident that they can be millionaires, idols, stars and nothing can stop them. As more and more companies jump on the dump & run bandwagon, young, energetic talent will continue to bounce from job to job until retraining costs become unbearable for companies. To combat that trend, smart businesses will begin to differentiate themselves to potential employees by stressing loyalty plans that are customizable to suit the individual.

As these changes are implemented, the workplace will become more humane. There will be many who believe that all of this is huggy-feely nonsense. To them, we say, hope you've fully funded your 401K and haven't put too much of your future in stocks. Companies who ignore the cries of the masses for a return to humanity will inevitably fall...and it's a long way down for some of those folks!