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Home >Enterprise >Know How Centre >Business Insight >Motivating Your People

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1. Build a better workforce

Every business owner is aware of the wicked war for talent, which will only get worse as economic conditions improve.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

Every business owner is aware of the wicked war for talent, which will only get worse as economic conditions improve. If you run a growing company, fighting for new recruits is a necessary evil. However, the real key to victory is maximizing the performance of your existing employees, and hanging onto them for dear life. While a raft of research suggests engaged workers facilitate higher growth and a better bottom line, the opposite is truly frightening. Recent research conducted by global HR consultancy Hewitt Associates LLP estimates that one disengaged staffer can cost a company $10,000 in lost profit annually through factors such as decreased productivity and stress-related absence. The following strategies will help you improve the performance and engagement of your people-provided you apply them consistently.

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2. X,Y, Zoom

Never before have Canadian entrepreneurs had to manage and motivate a workforce as generationally diverse as today's employees. Here's your quick reference guide to getting the most out of the three key generational cohorts.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

By Kara Aaserud

Never before have Canadian entrepreneurs had to manage and motivate a workforce as generationally diverse as today's employees. Here's your quick reference guide to getting the most out of the three key generational cohorts.

You dipped into your cash reserves to build a way-cool open-concept office space, splurged on the latest video-game console for your lunchroom and, once a week, you meet with your entire team to discuss their challenges and celebrate achievements. Yet productivity is sinking like a stock exchange during a credit crisis.

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3. Generation Y: The collaborators

The "echo boomers" were born into culturally diverse communities and a range of family structures.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

What shaped them:
The "echo boomers" were born into culturally diverse communities and a range of family structures. This has made them more tolerant than prior generations were of people whose religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or economic status differs from their own. Gen Y's parents and teachers have encouraged them to voice their opinions and set their own agenda. Whereas Gen X's parents left the kids at home alone, Gen Y's parents sent them to daycare and filled evenings and weekends with adult-supervised, structured activities from piano lessons to organized sports. Gen Yers watched corporate scandals, the Columbine shootings, 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghan wars unfold by the minute on CNN and the Web, while being in close proximity to school violence.

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4. Generation X: The independents

This relatively small cohort of Canadians grew up in the shadow of the boomers, where they "did not receive the same level of attention [from] the media, the marketers or the government," write Kovary and Buahene.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

What shaped them:
This relatively small cohort of Canadians grew up in the shadow of the boomers, where they "did not receive the same level of attention [from] the media, the marketers or the government," write Kovary and Buahene. Gen Xers also grew up as latchkey kids left by working parents to supervise themselves. Before the age of 25, they witnessed the birth of AIDS, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iran hostage crisis.

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5. Great Ideas: Four employee-coaching essentials

Powerful coaching techniques from Unleashed!: Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance by executive coach Gregg Thompson.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

Powerful coaching techniques from Unleashed!: Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance by executive coach Gregg Thompson.

To coach your staff successfully, you need the right instruments for the task at hand, says Gregg Thompson, president of Bluepoint Leadership Development, a training, consulting and coaching company.

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6. Baby boomers: The competitors

Born in droves during the optimistic post-war era, it didn't take long for the boomers to realize they could use their numbers to influence traditional systems, which they did by leading the civil rights, feminist and anti-Vietnam War movements while experimenting with illicit drugs and premarital sex.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

By Kara Aaserud

What shaped them:
Born in droves during the optimistic post-war era, it didn't take long for the boomers to realize they could use their numbers to influence traditional systems, which they did by leading the civil rights, feminist and anti-Vietnam War movements while experimenting with illicit drugs and premarital sex. Boomers were the first generation to grow up with television, which juxtaposed idealized images of family life (e.g., "Leave it to Beaver") and Neil Armstrong's triumphant moonwalk with the horrors of the Vietnam War and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

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7. Great Ideas: Become a better mentor

Advice on boosting employee performance through mentoring, from Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance, a Harvard Business Essentials guidebook.

Uploaded: Thursday, October 28, 2010

Advice on boosting employee performance through mentoring, from Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance, a Harvard Business Essentials guidebook.

Boosting employee performance is one of a business owner's most important duties, and mentoring can be just the ticket to achieving that. Yet only a few entrepreneurs ever take formal training in how to do so.

Still, you don't have to take a course in the subject to learn the basics, according to Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance, a Harvard Business Essentials guidebook.

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