For too long now my organisation has suffered with bouts of a 'them and us' felling. My catering and cleaning staff do not feel they have a worthwhile contribution to make to the business, and yet without them the image of the organisation would suffer - so they are an integral part of the organisation, yet when asked, they always feel 'different' to every one else. How do I over come this cultural problem? How have other organisations done this. By the way, I am a senior teacher within a large HE College
helen roberts
6 Responses
Them and Us
Hello Helen. I recognise what you are talking about – not just in HE (I do some training work for colleges) but also in other businesses. If cleaning and catering staff are thinking “them and us” it may be being reinforced by others. An effective way to resolve this is to tackle the internal service culture. There are effective training and development programmes for this.
It’s possible to make a good start with the staff themselves but if you could get others involved you could really be in business!
Response to Contributions
Hi Helen
Are your people allowed to contribute to the business and if so to what degree? Have you tried forming Action Groups or the old fashioned Participation Group to bring your empoyees closer to the centre of operations, and in turn empower them to make improvement decisions.
Getting people involved
Get them involved in a project – get them to take ownership and give them some responsibility. Meet with them regularly and praise them. Can you give them different job titles which are more meanful? Mention them and their effort in the local newletter. Hope this helps.
Show them proof
Hi Helen, Analyse the benefits they provide to your organisation, then meet with them and re- inforce the points you select. Ensure any feelings of inadequacy are eliminated at the meeting and provide a method of approach if they crop up again. Hope this assists.
Answer??? for Helen Roberts
Helen
Why not try to implement Total Quality Management, the concept of the “Internal Customer”.
I worked for a really huge multi-national where there was a terrible problem with “Them and Us”.
There are lots of good videos from Video Arts on TQM and it’s also quite “fun” to role play a few situations.
We found that once most people adopted and accepted the idea of the internal customer, things changed.
But, but, but – If the project isn’t driven from the top downwards, with all of the management taking an active part, nothing will ever change.
Guess you know all this already, but maybe it helped a bit.
Good Luck
Bill Smith
Empowerinmg
Helen,
I run various courses and workshops, including “Whose Team…?”
Combining concepts from Neuro Linguistic Programming (I wrote the book ‘ The Power to Use NLP’) with other models, this workshop invovoes people at the level of personal responsibility for the process and outcomes of their teams.
Empowered by the trainig, delegates