Respond to Workplace Changes As An Opportunity

Last week I attended Administaff’s New Employee Orientation program. When I was a new-hire, none of the dates coincided with my schedule, but I did want to go through the program at some point, if only to learn more about my company and what it’s all about. 

And during the program, I learned all about the values the company upholds, one of which truly stuck in my mind as a way for employers to embrace the Generation Yers entering into and changing the workforce: Anticipate and respond to change as an opportunity to innovate and learn.  

The workplace is changing every day with more and more baby boomers retiring and more and more Generation Yers entering the workplace. And that change is going to keep on happening. So instead of fighting the change, embrace it, and use it as an opportunity to learn something new and create some innovation at your organization. 

CJ Coolidge, president of C4 Dynamics and a member of the Administaff Business Development Advisory Board, says in his personal blog, No More Androids—People: Profit's X Factor, “The rate of change is so great, that more than 50 percent of U.S. business execs are finally confessing that they are struggling with its pace." 

Coolidge says that even the rate of change is changing, and it affects everything in life and in business, but management often tries to ignore this. He says company owners tend to ignore changes having to do with important areas of business such as employee ability and aspiration, customer needs, markets, costs and product value. 

He says change (and customer’s felt needs) often take a backseat to a business owner’s beliefs about the way things are: "’That's not our policy.’ ‘We can't do that.’” 

And business owners justify that position with: "’We've never had to do that before. We don't need to start now.’" 

But, as Coolidge points out, refusal to accept change will lead to disaster. His solution? 

“REALLY embrace change,” he says. “I mean embrace, welcome, anticipate, expect and adapt.” 

In order to embrace change, Coolidge says business owners must grasp the concept of “absolutum obsoletum,” which means whatever works is out of date. 

“Change from the organization that orchestrates change to one that is able to flow with the change,” he says. 

He offers some entirely different approaches: 

• “Instead of determining what your company should be doing in antiseptic board rooms, let the front line employees tell you what their encounters with the real world are telling them.
• Instead of defining jobs for your employees, telling them what you want them to do, discover what they would do for you and your customers, if they could.
• Instead of losing sleep and fighting against rising costs, use your people's creative and innovative energies to identify your own company inefficiencies and redundancies.
• Instead of thinking you have the totality of responsibility or all the answers, free your people to create entirely new, high value offerings for your current customers, and for customers not yet reached.” 

Generation Y is entering the workforce and staking a claim. Change is happening, whether you want to accept that or not. And the owners who are on their way to Building a Better Business are those who embrace change and use it to their advantage.

Last week I attended Administaff’s New Employee Orientation program. When I was a new-hire, none of the dates coincided with my schedule, but I did want to go through the program at some point, if only to learn more about my company and what it’s all about.