Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/685770
Top managers at PalletOne participate in formal training to help build those skills. The training, which lasts one or two days, involves 250 company leaders and focuses on basic competencies. "Our HR team develops a curriculum, and we implement it. We give our leaders practice and expand their toolkit," says Wallace. "The one-minute manager is one of the themes that we hit this year – the virtue of one-minute praises, one- minute redirects, and one-minute goals – and how people respond to that and how that helps them develop." During the training, leaders also hear results of the company's annual employee survey, which gauges employees' attitudes toward their work environment. "Do they feel like their opinions matter, and do they feel like they receive regular feedback? Do they understand their job expectations? Do they feel safe at work? Those kinds of questions," says Wallace. "I give those results back to the group and tell them where they stand, what we've learned and what we're going to do as a result of knowing what the survey says." Blog to Engage The purpose of training is to change behavior, but that doesn't happen without reinforcement. So after a training session, Wallace committed to writing the trainees every day for four weeks with follow-up messages. What he intended as a short-term project turned into a years-long, company-wide employee engagement tool. Each day, he writes a short message – sometimes business-related, sometimes inspirational – that's emailed to employees and printed out and posted at worksites. It's also posted on the company blog. "As people learned about it, some wanted to access to it. So we put it on the blog when it's generic," says Wallace. "Because I'll also share how much we sold last month, what we did good and bad – that kind of stuff. When it's that kind of internal business, it doesn't get blogged. But when it's a generic thought-piece on how to lead, how to manage, how to think about things, that's what hits the blog." The important point is not whether your company blogs or not. What matters is that you constantly look for new and effective ways to engage employees. That engagement – whether it's through a blog, surveys and so on – contributes to a trust-centered culture. And as the research shows, firms tend to perform better when employees trust their leaders. PC palletcentral.com PalletCentral • May-June 2016 31 Andy Brown is freelance writer specializing in stories for business publications. He can be reached at andy@methodicalwriting.com or phone: 571-403-1306. The [trust-centered] culture is also reinforced with daily safety checks and constant back- and-for th communication between employees and management. — Kathleen Dietrich, Vice President & Operations Manager, Commercial Lumber & Pallet Company