Now, I know that most that read this blog are work at home moms and are not thinking of employee engagement initiatives and employee personality types. However, some of you may have advanced your company to the point where you need outside local help. If you have hired employees or are planning to in the future, this article is a good read for you.
After talking with a friend and fellow business owner, I noticed some things about his employees compared to the employees I had for one of my businesses. I also noticed the difference between our companies.
My company was innovative and always ahead of the competition, creating new trends instead of waiting for them to come knocking on my door. His company is behind, way behind, and now he wants to play catch up by implementing employee engagement initiatives. The difference in the employee personality types we hired, including the difference in our own attitudes affected the company’s advancement.
The difference between us, the company owners, was that I wanted to be ahead of the game and continued looking and thinking of new ways to do things that were different from anyone else. Problem was that as soon as I did something new, everyone else copied and did it too. Nevertheless, this was okay, because it made our industry better and I can be proud that I had a hand in that. It also forced me to keep finding new things and ideas so that I would continue to stay different.
In the other company, he wanted to stay small. He didn’t want to be innovative or grow too big. He intentionally made this choice. Moreover, his site design is about 6 years old. This tells me that during this time, he didn’t do anything to keep up. I am assuming here that he felt if he kept doing what he was doing, nothing would change.
Now, he is a very smart man. At the time, 6 years ago, he was ahead of the game. However, he failed to take into account that new companies would arrive that would challenge the status quo as he did back then. He failed to take into account that technology could change so fast as it had the last 5 years. But really, who woulda thunk there would be 10’s of new social media sites within a year, when for so long there was only MySpace. He also had no one trying to copy him or force him to innovate.
The difference between our companies was like the American carmakers and the Japanese carmakers.
American carmakers were comfortable where they were. Nothing forced them to change. They had a large enough loyal following – “buy American” citizens would say, and if they landed into trouble the government would bail them out, which has happened a couple times already in America’s history.
Japanese carmakers didn’t have that comfort. They needed to stay innovative if they wanted to be competitive and gain market share. American carmakers had the technology long ago to make electric cars and buried the technology. Japanese carmakers used the technology to give the customers a solution to their problem of uncontrollable gas prices. Now the American carmakers are playing catch up!
What does this have to do with employee engagement initiatives? Everything!
No matter what employee engagement initiatives we try, our attitudes, innovative versus too comfortable to change, already molded our hiring process and the employee personality type we chose. I hired employees who wanted to make a change and bring new ideas into the business. He hired employees who would be consistent and not have aspirations that would lead to them leaving the company.
He had to use employee engagement initiatives to encourage his employees. I also wanted to have a low attrition rate or high retention rate in my company but that was not my priority when hiring.
Daily, I would encourage my employees to think of new products and services we can do for the customers, as well as improve what we already have going.
Weekly, he discussed with his employees how to keep doing what they are doing.
Two things he had said was, “we will never get any more customers than we are currently getting, no matter what we do”, and “we can never brand our company”. I know what you are thinking, “how can he be saying these things, having a friend like you.” I know, I know. I will work with him on those issues, but now is not the time. When people have such strong convictions, you have to tread carefully and slowly.
Another behavior that has molded our employees was, when someone approached me with a new idea, I would encourage that person to work on that as an assignment. When someone approached him with an idea, he would say, “not now.”
After a long time of working with an employee the way we did, my employees will eventually run out of ideas and then leave to find a new company where they will be refreshed. His employees will get comfortable and fight change, staying where they are because they are now afraid of anything different or unknown.
What effect does our attitudes and the employee personality types have on the company’s advancement? There are pros and cons in both situations.
The pros of working with innovative CEO and employees are that they will stay ahead of the competition and there is no need for employee engagement initiatives. The cons are that the company will be unstable because there will be a high turn around of employees and lots of time will be wasted on hiring and training. You may be thinking, “what about focus.” With the right CEO, she will keep the team focused on the company goals, while still keeping innovative.
The pros of working with a comfortable CEO and employees are that the company will be more stable and the CEO will have employees he can depend upon to help run the company. The cons are that the employees will fight change that will be needed to keep the company afloat and ahead of the competition and a wasted effort will be placed on employee engagement initiatives.
Lessons Learned
Your attitude can be either innovative or comfortable for a successful company. However, either way, you must still keep ahead of the competition because times keep changing. If you sit back and do nothing, thinking things will always stay the same, you are wrong. Like the American carmakers, the competition will leave you in the dust.
Having both employee personality types in your company is important for a solid company that still grows. Use those employees that are afraid of change as the managers and the employees who handle menial tasks, while having those who are innovative work with the development of the company’s technologies, products, services, and marketing. Don’t waste your time on employee engagement initiatives to change your employees.
Find innovative employees that are:
- Fresh out of college
- Have a history of not being at a company for long but have made a difference while there
- Are creative types with lots of hobbies
- Have had many businesses of their own
- Their resumes will be formatted differently than the typical resume and their cover letter will contain enthusiasm
Find employees that are “afraid of change” that:
- Have a history of staying a long time at one company
- demonstrate dependability at other companies
- moved up the corporate ladder but haven’t made a big impact on the company
- took a long time to move up the corporate ladder
- Their resume will be formatted like everyone else’s and their cover letter will not stand out as different
Don’t try to change your employee’s personality type from comfortable to innovative, or vice versa. You can never change people; people change themselves. In addition, if you hire correctly, you will hire them for who they are, so why try to change them. Instead, take advantage of their personality traits with how it can work best for your company. This is why employee engagement initiatives are not necessary.
Don’t try to keep your innovative employees. Let them leave. This way you can replace them with fresh new employees with fresh new ideas, keeping your company fresh and new.
Remember, either type of company can have the same sad ending. The innovative company can fail due to the loss of dependable employees to run the company, and the comfortable company can fail due to the loss of market share. However, failing can be prevented if you take the best of each employee personality type and use them together to create a solid, steady growing company.
Now before I conclude this post, I need to say that if you are the one afraid of change, you must read Who Moved My Cheese?
Goodness, now that I think about it, it took over 9 years to write this article – that is 9 years of running my own business and working with other businesses to discover this thesis and solution. I wish I had found an article like this years ago. It would have saved me tons of money and helped my business grow steadier and more solid. Perhaps, it can also help my friend not waste time on employee engagement initiatives
and concentrate more on employee personality types.
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