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Ignite Passion in Your Employees

There is a war for talent taking place on a global scale — and right here in Colorado. The future belongs to forward–thinking organizations that are focused on creating and sustaining a dynamic and compelling workplace culture.

This is what guests at our recent Business For Breakfast event learned from award-winning speaker and bestselling author, Eric Chester . Chester shared with attendees the world's "best places to work" strategies for incentivizing employees to work harder, perform better, and stay at the company longer.

Chester's core messages hit on the changing workplace and tools companies can use to help revive work ethic among younger generations.

What's Changed?

• Jobs aren't readily available — teenagers don't have, and often can't get — jobs they used to. There was a time when high school kids worked at sit-down or walk-up restaurants. Today, many front-line employees are being replaced by self-ordering kiosks.
• Parents don't want their kids to work — at one point nearly every young person used to have a job. Kids were not going to summer-long sports camps, and Mom and Dad were not there as automatic ATMs. You had to work for "fun" money.

What Needs to Happen

• Younger genterations need to re-learn basic interview skills — it's not all their fault. The kind of jobs available to teens have changed. More senior citizens are working longer and taking those jobs teens used to have. Also, people have fewer kids today, which means many parents have more money so their kids may not have to work. If not on the job, that means parents must be the ones to teach kids how to work and interview.
• Work ethic means knowing what to do and doing it. It's the basic soft skills employees must have to be able to learn how to work with people, learn a sense of what is needed and then doing the job.

What Employees Need to Stay Longer

• Workers want compensation, goal alignment, atmosphere, growth and acknowledgement — once companies master how to find the workers with the best ethics, they must then ensure that the worker is able to grow with the company. You don't want to teach employees how to be great workers and then lose them.
• Don't settle for engagement, demand fanatical — by focusing on culture, companies can make finding the dream employee a reality. Creating the right culture means offering compensation and an environment from which to thrive.
• Compensation is not enough — no matter how competitively you pay your people. Employees need a stake in the game, perhaps through profit sharing.
• Establish the target so employees know how to succeed — if you work with them and have a performance and values-based workplace, you will draw in the right people.
• Communication is critical — celebrate and discuss performance every day. Discuss what the team does well, one area at which to improve and ask what they need to do a better job. This takes real listening by employers.

The bottom line is, when you work on culture, you will get better employees. This creates an employment brand that breeds success. And even new workers can become happy and successful members of the workforce.

Since 1998, Chester has been the leading voice in attracting, managing, motivating and retaining the emerging workforce. Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People without Burning Them Out is Chester's fourth leadership book, featuring top–tier leaders of the world's best places to work.

Business For Breakfast is co-hosted with Sherman and Howard LLC and Rubin Brown .

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