Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?: A Handbook for How You Get Everyone to Contribute towards Good Results
    Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?: A Handbook for How You Get Everyone to Contribute towards Good Results
    Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?: A Handbook for How You Get Everyone to Contribute towards Good Results
    Ebook127 pages3 hours

    Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?: A Handbook for How You Get Everyone to Contribute towards Good Results

    By Ingemar Fredriksson

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book has been a top-ten business book
    in Sweden for more than ten years.
    Now it"s available in English!
    "How did you...?" Is a question Ingemar Fredriksson has heard many times since he first reversed negative trends at a company threatened with closure, turning years of red ink into growth that averaged 25% annually for five years, with profitability hitting 26% at its best!
    Mr. Fredriksson asserts this involves getting "a few percent more" from several parts of operations, and in his book series by the same name he offers concrete ideas about how to go about doing this.
    Trouble with staff attitudes and commitment? Addresses the art of motivating the entire organization to pull together in the same direction. And it covers what"s needed to get your employees to perform better and increase their commitment. This book, his first, was appointed as one of the best business books by the magazine Chef (The Manager) when published and has since it was published appeared on the top-ten lists for business books for more than ten years in Sweden.
    Ingemar Fredriksson has long-standing experience in management, business development and marketing. He has worked in both family-owned businesses and large international groups, including senior group management, board member and chairman for almost thirty years.
    Mr Fredriksson have also been appointed as public investigator on how to increase usage of IT in SMEs and as board member of Swedish Airport and Air Navigation Services (LFV) by the Swedish government. Other board assignments include Chairman of Miss Sweden and several private owned companies in various industries as well as vice Chairman of Företagarna, Swedens largest organization for privately owned business representing 70000 companies. In recent years he has successfully handled growth and increased profitability in both established companies and start ups in MedTech, fashion, tourism, manufacturing, inclusion services and other industries. He is currently chairman of Fnatic Gear, owned by one of the most successful epsorts teams in the world and also holds several other board positions in various industries alongside with being founder of the website freefortourists.com.
    So far he has published four business books, which have all appeared on the top list in their category and they have all received positive reviews in Swedish media. The following books are about profitability development, Chinese tourists (the larges group of tourists since 2012) and product storytelling. All of his books have been praised by both media and readers for being straightforward and containing simple advice on how to implement changes rather than being academic.
    He adds to his own experiences those of others from his years as consultant and active in different companies as CEO, chairman and board member so he can provide a rich flora of examples to share with you. Each book contains concrete tools and models, including what he has developed himself and found through research, which he presents, in a way enabling readers to easily apply them to their own operations.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIngemar Fredriksson
    Release dateSep 16, 2020
    ISBN9789198436600

    Read more from Ingemar Fredriksson

    Related to Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Workplace Culture For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      'Values Create Value'

      Dec 23, 2017

      'Values Create Value'
      4 min read

    • Article

      Flair For Fashion

      Mar 31, 2023

      Flair For Fashion
      2 min read

    • Article

      Creating Changemakers

      Dec 20, 2020

      Creating Changemakers
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Million Jobs Plan

      Sep 4, 2020

      At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in Australia, a powerful and committed group of people came together to create solutions for one of the biggest economic shocks in the country’s history. What they identified was 1.8 million jobs in clean

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Best Parts The Power Of Love

      Mar 15, 2022

      When an owner cancels a standing order after a pet’s death, the online pet supply retailer Chewy often sends flowers or a note. Showing that it cares makes customers more willing to recommend Chewy to friends, earning the company a Net Promoter Score

      1 min read

    • Article

      How To Work With A Mentor: 7 Top Tips

      Oct 20, 2021

      1. A mentor won’t do the work for you. Their role includes: • Acting as a sounding board. • Sharing their knowledge and expertise. • Assessing your business and the expertise within it. • Identifying areas that need improvement or development. • Sugg

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Balancing Act

      Dec 4, 2019

      The Balancing Act
      5 min read

    • Article

      Does Incentive Pay Have A Future?

      Oct 19, 2022

      Does Incentive Pay Have A Future?
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Drivers and Derailers of Great Leadership

      Sep 1, 2018

      The actions and interactions between individuals have a huge impact on outcomes in the workplace, and this is played out every day, in every profession—sometimes with extraordinary results and other times with disastrous results. We have found that p

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Power Of Positive

      Aug 15, 2017

      The Power Of Positive
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Pivot To A New Future

      Jan 28, 2021

      How To Pivot To A New Future
      7 min read

    • Article

      Designing Your Legacy

      May 1, 2023

      EVENTS OCCUR UNEXPECTEDLY to all of us at random points throughout our lives. Some of them can spark sudden and drastic changes; others make themselves felt slowly and over time. What about you? Are you hearing the slow, dull murmur of dissatisfactio

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Future Looks Bright

      Aug 17, 2021

      No one can deny how difficult the past year has been for everyone. The COVID pandemic hit us hard in our personal and business lives. But as the tide begins to turn, business leaders are remarkably optimistic about their prospects for the immediate f

      3 min read

    • Article

      Q & A

      Sep 1, 2021

      You have said the global pandemic teaches us that “change is not a project with a beginning and an end”. What is it, then? If you look back at the 20th century, change was relatively rare. We had some massive shakeups in the forms of wars and economi

      6 min read

    • Article

      Of Nannies And Babysitters

      Sep 6, 2021

      Of Nannies And Babysitters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Former Volkswagen CEO Indicted Over Emission Testing Scandal

      May 4, 2018

      A U.S. grand jury has charged Martin Winterkorn, VW's former CEO and 5 other ex-executives on felony charges of conspiracy. In 2015, VW admitted installing cheat devices in its diesel vehicles.

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment?

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Trouble with Staff Attitudes and Commitment? - Ingemar Fredriksson

      Fredriksson

      In all labour there is profit

      Proverbs, ch 14, v 23

      Companies are there to make money

      Essentially, this is rather obvious. People go to their jobs to do something that someone else is willing to pay them for. However, this someone else isn’t the company, but rather, in the end, it is always the customer. If the customer isn’t satisfied with the work performed – or to put this more concretely – if the customer doesn’t think the value of the work performed corresponds to what they are willing to pay, then they move along taking their business elsewhere. And with it, the reason for doing the work in the first place. Thus far everything is certainly clear? Sure, for almost everyone, but there are still some who believe they work for other reasons. But this is not the case, and this book largely covers this – a company is an economic organisation whose purpose is to create a result. End of discussion. If the company fails to generate a positive economic result, it can’t exist for long. To generate a profit, in other words, is the absolutely most basic task any company has. Naturally, a company can’t stop at that, as it still has to ask how they can do this. Often, this involves finding a need that someone, or many more, is ready to pay to have met, and then offer to provide for that need competitively. That I insist on emphasizing that companies are there to make money, is due to the huge demands placed on so many companies that cause entrepreneurs and managers to sometimes forget this simple truism. They can become so weighed down by demands for working conditions of their employees, their social responsibility, their environmental responsibility, and so on, that they forget this basic fact. I have seen many businesspeople accept declining profits year after year and employed managers who can’t stand up for the idea that their company must make money. In either case, both the employees and the company lose when bankruptcy or closure is the end result. That companies must make money isn’t an ideological issue, nor is it a question of equality or fairness, it is simply a fundamental fact!

      In recent years companies have been criticized for management not taking responsibility and merely chasing short-term gains. As to responsibility, companies must follow a variety of laws and regulatory frameworks in many areas. As well, companies generally take significant responsibility in the communities where they operate by offering gainful employment, and by paying taxes. That companies often come under criticism for failing to take responsibility despite having done so is partly explained by unrealistic expectations. Many people want to see companies as some kind of good parents whose task is to take care of their employees, but this is actually not among the basic tasks of any business. Expectations of this type are likely remnants of the company town mentality where it was natural that the employer from the large estate took care of infrastructure and other necessities since they own the major part of the environs and was the only person with the resources to deal with these issues. As well, the employer had to offer living quarters for their employees to ensure they were available and close to their work tasks on the estate. Early in industrialisation, it was also common for employers to offer living quarters near their factories. It is likely these kinds of traditional employer commitments that remain in a somewhat romantic image of what a company should do for their employees. But what is forgotten in this ideal is that employers took on these commitments simply to have access to labour at all – not merely out of goodwill.

      As I’ve already mentioned, the company’s basic task does not include providing infrastructure or social security, it is to generate an economic surplus. Thanks to this surplus, the company can pay taxes and employ people who both earn their pay, and pay taxes in their turn. These remunerations are what employees and the community they live in have at their disposal to build infrastructure and create social security.

      The criticism of short-term profits often comes when a company implements a change process (as with staff redundancies) even when they show positive results. Naturally, for public relations this isn’t the most appropriate time to implement cut-backs, but still could be the right move for the company. Restructuring in organisations is often brought on by factors that management determines will happen going forward while the annual results presented report events already taken place.

      Companies must also consider that individual consumers now have other opportunities to express their viewpoints about company accountability, including through using new technologies. There are many ways to use the Internet or email to spread dissatisfaction and drive campaigns against company misconduct. The media are also thankful recipients of stories where they can easily take the side of the weaker party, to present themselves in a positive light. We can exemplify this in an article about poor 78-year-old Hazel who was misled by multi-national Giant, but where Evening Newspaper X has intervened to help highlight Hazel’s difficulties, or even got the company to give in. This shows that companies are indeed regulated by a wide variety of means – politicians, authorities, consumers, and the media. Every company is fully aware of this and they do take appropriate consideration of it in their actions. What’s more, companies are run by managers who are also people – which is forgotten at times.

      Their decisions are influenced by empathy, which leads to them taking responsibility for their fellow humans and for the community where they live and operate.

      Clearly, there are sufficient controlling functions to regulate corporate accountability. On the other hand, the staff’s responsibility for the good of the company has been obscured by what is discussed more often – employee rights. Absurdly, it has become fully legitimate to place demands on a twelve-year-old to perform and excel for their football team, but nearly unthinkable for a company manager to tell an adult to work a little harder. As manager, you’re more likely expected to apologize. This is why many managers apologize when they start presenting organisational changes. They say apologetically that naturally this won’t add to anybody’s work load – No …, ‘we’re going to work smarter, not harder’ – exemplifying the ‘Muffin Syndrome’ that I detail in the chapter with that name later in this book.

      A female manager I spoke with related that after twelve years as manager at the same company she was still met with suspicion from staff when she presented organisational changes. Though she’d never lied about the reasons for or the consequences of the changes, there was always a few staff who asked about a hidden agenda behind the information or what she was hiding from them. Suspicion against a manager can be deeply rooted this way, but the foundation is laid in an ingrained perception held by many that managers are the bad guys. That managers cannot demand greater performance is justified today by reference to the increasing incidence of burnout syndrome. This is blamed by some as entirely related to the workplace, which is a completely absurd claim. That people today react in different ways to the increasing information flows (adverts, media, new communications channels, and similar), in combination with insecurity about the future (climate change, globalisation, erosion of welfare systems, and changes to pension systems) is something entirely different from work environment problems.

      Being continually exposed to desires through adverts while handling all types of new technology, home electronics, taking over your own pension, and such, naturally brings greater pressure on people. That this causes problems is certainly not surprising.

      Those who study these things will tell you that the phenomenon of burnout isn’t really new. As early as 1869, American neurologist G.M. Beard introduced the diagnosis of neurasthenia. This is described as a medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability together with hypersensitivity which was seen as being a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system, and which mostly affected upper-class women.

      Another common complaint at companies today is that production is transferred to low-cost countries. But this complaint is unwarranted for two reasons. First is that companies themselves cannot determine the correct price for a product or service. The customer always decides this. And that customer is you or I, which means that we are all part of globalisation and its impact. None of us can stand with our shopping cart full of products that declare ‘Made in China,’ and still think it’s wrong that jobs have moved there without understanding that we all play an active role in that process.

      The second reason is that the search for a better source of supply is a quintessentially human behaviour that has always been part of our existence and always will. When humans lived as hunter gatherers, they roamed widely to find the best hunting and fishing grounds. Having later settled into farming, we moved to areas around the world with better soils for this. Moreover, what we now associate with ‘outsourcing’ or jobs relocation to low cost countries has been part of the industrial landscape for hundreds of years – as I elaborate in the later chapter I can’t protect you.

      Any ethical or ideological conflict relating to a company’s profitability shouldn’t reasonably lie in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1