Yes, of course you would.

So, why do you not answer all of your e-mails?

Not responding to e-mails at work causes disengagement, discord, defensiveness, and discouragement.

This does not mean that you have to answer the content of the e-mail immediately.  However, you must reply with when you will respond to the e-mail. When an e-mail goes unanswered, the sender starts to manifest all kinds of assumptions that are probably incorrect.  The sender also starts to think and feel under-valued and disrespected.

One of the most frequent questions that I am asked when working with organizations is, “How do I get my boss, peer, or supervisor to answer my e-mails?”  Numerous people have shared with me that not getting a response from an e-mail they’ve sent is the most frustrating and stressful part of their job.  This blog post is not for the sender, it for the receiver.

Responding to e-mails is exactly like responding to a face-to-face question.

I know and can empathize with being inundating with e-mails.  I often feel overwhelmed with the amount of e-mails in my inbox.  And, that is NO excuse.  Responding is mine and your responsibility and in today’s techno work it is a responsibility that has heavy consequences…

Disengagement, Discord, Defensiveness and Discouragement

What to do?  Here are some suggestions:

• Respond with a date that you will address the content.
• Block out time weekly on your schedule to respond to e-mails.
• Respond with a date and time you will address the content, ask sender to send another e-mail if they do not hear back from you.
• Respond with a time to verbally talk through the content.
• Monitor your inbox weekly, sometimes we do not look at the bottom of the box.
• Do not put e-mails that you must respond to into folders.  Folders are great, and they can be a wasteland for e-mails that require a response.

Happy responding and please look for a blog titled:  E-Mail and Engagement (for the sender)

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316.288.6305

Do Happier People Work Harder?
By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
Published: September 3, 2011

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, are the authors of “The Progress Principle.”

LABOR DAY is meant to be a celebration of work. Yet, on this Labor Day, few have reason to rejoice. Even those who have jobs.  The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.

Employee engagement may seem like a frill in a downturn economy. But it can make a big difference in a company’s survival. In a 2010 study, James K. Harter and colleagues found that lower job satisfaction foreshadowed poorer bottom-line performance. Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers.

Over the past decade, we researched the micro-level causes behind this macro-level problem. To gain real-time perspective into everyday work lives, we collected  nearly 12,000 electronic diary entries from 238 professionals in seven different companies. Our study charted each person’s psychological state each day, and asked respondents to describe one event that stood out during that day. Our analysis revealed their inner work lives — the usually hidden perceptions, emotions and motivations that people experience as they react to and make sense of events in their workdays.

The results were sobering. In one-third of the 12,000 diary entries, the diarist was unhappy, unmotivated or both. In fact, workers often expressed frustration, disdain or disgust. Our research shows that inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier. Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do.

Managers can help ensure that people are happily engaged at work. Doing so isn’t expensive. Workers’ well-being depends, in large part, on managers’ ability and willingness to facilitate workers’ accomplishments — by removing obstacles, providing help and acknowledging strong effort. A clear pattern emerged when we analyzed the 64,000 specific workday events reported in the diaries: of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.

As long as workers experience their labor as meaningful, progress is often followed by joy and excitement about the work. “This time it looks good! I feel more positive about this project and my work than I’ve felt in a long time,” one programmer wrote after she’d completed a small but difficult task. This kind of rich inner work life improves performance, which further supports inner work life — a positive spiral.

Unfortunately, many companies now keep head count and resources to a minimum and this makes progress a struggle for employees. Most managers don’t understand the negative consequences of this struggle. When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.

This failure reflects a common experience inside organizations. Of the seven companies we studied, just one had managers who consistently supplied the catalysts — worker autonomy, sufficient resources and learning from problems — that enabled progress. Not coincidentally, that company was the only one to achieve a technological breakthrough in the months we studied it.

Working adults spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else. Work should ennoble, not kill, the human spirit. Promoting workers’ well-being isn’t just ethical; it makes economic sense. Fostering positive inner lives sometimes requires leaders to better articulate meaning in the work for everyone across the organization. Sometimes, all that’s required is that managers address daily hassles and help with technical problems. If those who lead organizations — from C.E.O.’s to small-team leaders — believe their mission is, in part, to support workers’ everyday progress, we could end the disengagement crisis and, in the process, lift our work force’s well-being and our economy’s productivity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/do-happier-people-work-harder.html?_r=1

Formula for Employee Complaints (pdf)

http://www.kansas.com/business/perspectives/story/1126050.html (direct link to the newspaper article on-line)

So back to the original question.  For who?  For what?  I propose that dress code policies are not about the employees, or even the organization.  They are about the attempt to control employees, while bypassing the true issue – the lack of a strong relationship between supervisor’s and their employees.   The reality is that there is no way to control employees choice of dress, because some will choose to be an individual in a way that breaks the policy, whether indirect or directly, regardless of policies.

I am not saying that organizations do not benefit from dress code guidelines, they do.  What I am saying is, “do we want our employees to be motivated to promote a professional image on their own, or to dress a certain way because a policy mandates it?”

Here is an example, “Policy states no more that two ear ring holes per ear.”  I have witnessed, and worked with employees who then wore bright, non-matching socks, obtained a strategically placed visible tattoo, wore bright colored shoes, or wore outlandish outfits.  Do you see where I am going?  Because then the policy-writing team has to revise the policy to control the new, previously unaddressed “unprofessional appearance” issues.

I contend that the less rigid a dress code policy is, and the stronger the alliance and relationship is with the supervisor, the more apt employees will dress for success for themselves as well as for the organization.

Dress code policies create a power struggle between employees and management.  The loser is the organization, because it takes time, energy and money to write, re-write, revise and police the dress code policy.  As a supervisor I have much better things to do with my time.  When I see attire that may not be appropriate, I can speak with that person and motivate them to dress differently.

Remember, employees work and are productive because they are motivated to do so, not because they are mandated to do so.

Stay tuned for a blog on how to motivate employees to “dress for success” versus “mandated dress code policies.”

You may also find these White Papers helpful…

Use Employee Complaints to Coach Emotional Intelligence

Current Best Practices in Employee Engagement

Motivating Employees without Monetary Incentives

Social Intelligence and Leadership

Next Element offers strategic coaching solutions to support Social Intelligence in Leadership.

Call today for details: 316-283-4200, or e-mail michele@next-element.com