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by Ed Sykes ©2004 In most cases, part-time employees present a special challenge when it comes to motivation. They do the “grunt” work, have little career choices, are often focused on other goals outside of your organization (college, hobbies, etc.), and are treated as outsiders by full-time employees. So what’s a manager to do? How do we turn our part-time employees into outstanding employees? The following are eight proven techniques to motivate your part-time employees: 1. Orient them properly. Take time to describe job duties and go over what is allowed and not allowed, e.g., personal telephone calls, use of organization property, etc. Avoid confusion by designating one person to orient and give assignments to part-timers. This will eliminate the “well he told me one thing and she said something else” situation that can lead to a demoralized part-time employee. 2. Find Out What Motivates Them. Ask your part-timers questions so that you can find out how to best motivate them. In my teambuilding and leadership programs, I discuss the “Sykes Seven Questions of Motivation” that you need to have the answers to if you are truly motivating your employees. One question you can ask your part-timer is, “What do you want to do in the future?” By asking the question, you can relate their future goals to your present needs. For example, the part-timer says he/she wants to be an artist. Listen, acknowledge, and embrace the answer and realize that you can possibly apply their skills now by allowing them to create recognition posters (I know you are already doing these, right?), work on the organization newsletter, or any other art project that will benefit your organization. If you don’t ask, you won’t know what the hidden talents of these part-timers are. 3. Check Yourself When Communicating Sometime part-timers are looked at as an unnecessary evil. It may be great to have the extra hands, but not so great to deal with them. First, realize you are fortunate enough to have the extra help. Most people are anxious to have the extra help. Second, it is your job to develop them. Third, only communicate the positive when communicating with them. Remember, for your part-timers, this may be their first experience in the workplace. They may be a little scared and may show it in a number of different ways (rebelling against requests, not working with others, or showing up late or not at all). Our job is to check ourselves whenever we communicate with part-timers so that they feel welcome. Check yourself when communicating requests so that they are always discussed with positive expectations. Check yourself when communicating with part-timer and full-timers so that both groups know you are glad to have them. It will go a long way to letting the part-timer feel motivated to be there. 4. Assign a mentor Even after proper orientation, part-time workers will be confused. Assign them a full-time worker to be a mentor. The part-time worker will feel more like part of the team, and the mentor will feel good about the added responsibility. Important: Pick someone who is patient, has good communication skills, is motivated to do the task, and has the time to answer questions. 5. Mix up the workload. Don’t overload part-time workers with “grunt” tasks only. It’s a common temptation to assign all low-level work to part-time employees. Don’t do it! It’s demoralizing. Remember, “Variety is the spice of work life.” This is where you would apply the information learned in technique number two to mix up the assignments. 6. Eliminate any Hard Feelings Eliminate any perceived or real hard feelings between part-timers and full-timers immediately. Explain to full-time employees why you’re bringing in part-time help and that their jobs are not being threatened. Important: Sell them on the benefits of bringing in part-timers (make jobs easier, allow them to learn management skills, etc.) 7. Offer Flexible Hours Many part-time employees are working part-time to meet special situations (College, family health situations, childcare issues, transportation issues, etc.). Use that to your advantage. By allowing flexible work hours, you’ll retain your part-time workers longer, eliminating the need for costly retraining. Important: Make sure part-time employees communicate and clear all scheduling conflicts in advance to avoid confusion. 8. Offer Incentives Most companies don’t offer part-time employees incentives. Believe me, the part-time employee knows and resents this policy right away. That’s a big mistake. Set up an incentive program based on your organization’s revenue or behavior you need to see from the part-time employee. In the case of incentives for behavior, give a bonus or incentive for the following: * Perfect attendance * Perfect on time attendance * Working well with others * Working well with full-time employees * Taking initiative to solve problems * Great customer service Important: Recognize the part-time worker as soon as the action was taken and praise publicly (my article “Appreciate to Motivate” will explain how). If you follow the eight steps mentioned, we guarantee that you will be well on the way to motivated, productive part-time employees with less turnover and retraining. You will accomplish far more in less time without the stress.
This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Below Dave details cost savings that can be claimed by implementing automation and self service as part of your deployment project. Read Dave’s other guest post on rationalizing your apps prior to a Windows 7 deployment >>
Imagine that you have finally completed the following phases of your project:Core Architecture, Gold Image Build and Test, Application Rationalization, Testing, Testing, and more Testing Now you need to get your images deployed to end users…well this is a problem because most organizations lack the forethought to automate this process. So when it comes to deploying Microsoft’s operating systems there are really two choices that we are normally presented with: Lite Touch and Zero Touch. Let’s take a moment and define both of these:
Now do either of the above work… the answer is yes absolutely. The issue is that all of this requires Careful coordination and communication to end users. This process normally involves hiring project managers, business analysts, corporation communication specialists, and costly IT Engineering time. My question is this: We are in a world where we can get applications delivered to all of our phones by simply clicking in a portal and having them magically installed. We can change devices and simply re-deploy these applications from the same portal. WHAT IF… you could do the same thing for your Windows 7 deployment. Just treat the Windows 7 deployment as nothing more than a complex application. Allowing end users to click on a Windows 7 upgrade icon in a portal. Then have them them schedule their own upgrade for a time that works for them. Check out this product from 1E Software called yes you guessed it, 1E Shopping:
Does this mean death to the manual spreadsheets… well probably not – we always seem to return to what we know and love. I have personally deployed this product and have seen the impact it has on the classical approach to operating system and software delivery. The only requirement for Shopping is that a customer must already own and have configured System Center Configuration Manager. The best part of this application is that it can be easily be installed and configured in less than five consulting days. So I want to wrap up this post with a little bit of simple math for everyone:
Now…here is a look at the old way! Deploy 1000 Desktops x $3,000 each = $300,000 in resource costs
How about the new way!!! Take the opportunity to incorporate this organizational change into your Windows 7 projects. From my previous post on application rationalization:
Add in savings from using automation and self service:
Assume your budget for this Windows 7 project was around $500,000. I will leave you pondering those numbers. Now of course remember there is an acquisition cost of new software that would save money. The nice thing about 1E is that all of their software pretty much pays for itself very quickly. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far. About Dave Kawula
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