Supervisor Training and Skills: Pay Attention to Employee Hangovers: Signal to Get Help?

Hung-over workers cost employers billions of dollars per year in lost productivity and absenteeism. Have you  seen an employee come to work with a hangover? Have you notice a pattern with some employees.

Although heavy drinkers and alcoholics (approximately 11 percent of drinkers) experience more hangovers and contribute to more financial loss, hung-over workers are more likely to be light to moderate drinkers because there are more of them.

All drinkers will occasionally over-use booze. In fact, this is precisely how all social drinkers know when to quit--they've experienced the toxic effects of drinking too much. Ouch. Alcoholic however lose control over their drinking, which means the time, place, amount of consumption, and what happens to them if they drink.

CLICK THE LINK TO JUMP TO THE SUPERVISOR TRAINING HANDOUT ON WORKPLACE SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND THE PROGRESSION OF SYMPTOMS YOU WILL SEE IN THE WORKPLACE.

Don't think that a hung-over employee is more likely to be an alcoholic or is a troubled employee automatically. The key is a pattern of problems.

Alcoholics do have hangovers, but social drinkers do too. A hangover means you drank too much, or at least enough to feel the affects of acetaldehyde - a metabolite of digested alcoholism and a toxic substance. Most people return to this nasty experience with long periods of avoidance in between. Alcoholics not so much. They have more frequent hangovers.

Some people can get a hangover from just a couple of drinks. Coming to work with a hangover can pose substantial risk to yourself and others even if you have a zero blood-alcohol level. So here's is a bit of advice.

Take a look at this chart above ( click to see the supervisor training handout -- or click here ) to get the supervisor training handout. Give it to your supervisors. Yes, it is $17, but it is also reproducible forever. I call it supervisor training for substance abuse on one sheet of a paper.

Use your company's EAP and refer employees with patterns of problems before crises begin.Document efficiently. The handout will help train supervisors because it has the right signs and symptoms it that can be relied upon for documentation.

Check out -- see it all -- our 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors--our supervisor training and skills program is used world-wide.

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Supervisors and Leadership: Helping Your Employee Generate and Act on Great Ideas

You have many employees with great ideas. These ideas might be for new products, new processes, or even management ideas you can employee as a supervisor. Can you do anything as supervisor to help your employees not only consider great ideas, but not forget about them? Imagine the ideas that float around in your employees minds. Here's how to empower these workers to win for themselves and the work organization.

Let's assume therefore that you have had employees with amazing ideas in the past but

they didn’t act. Start with awareness for why employees give up on their great ideas. New ideas often challenge the status quo and, when examined, feel as if they are outside one's comfort zone. Help employees to feel comfortable challenging their comfort zones. And don't forget you told them to do so!

Remind your employees that it is not you that is holding them back. It's them, more than likely. In fact the following issues typically undermine great ideas. 1) Fear of failure – what you imagine will happen if the idea flops; 2) Fear of success – apprehension about what will be different if you succeed; 3) Procrastination – this postpones or avoids the pain of #1 or #2; 4) Depression and anxiety – these conditions undermine excitement (seek evaluation/treatment if you suspect that they are holding you back); and 5) Inertia – the tendency to do nothing or have things remain unchanged is its own force for inaction. 6) Erosion of excitement - employees with great ideas get excited, but the mind will maintain this level of excitement unless action is taken. So encourage employees to act.

Inspiring employees, praising them, and motivating them to take action by giving them a vision that they truly covet -- one that let's them see what's on the other side of the mountain top is a critical supervisory skill. You train all the supervisors in your company to think in these dimensions with 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors, our worldwide appreciated and celebrated course for any corporation. Go here to see the entire program.

Anger in the Workplace: Supervisor Skills that Build Effective Relationships Can Help

Not all employees handle anger at work in the same way. Some struggle with it regularly, while others may have rare experiences that trigger them to display an unprofessional

scene of discontent.

As a supervisor, if you blow up at disappointments perpetrated by management or your staff, rage at inconveniences, or bark at others’ mistakes, then you probably recognize that you have an anger management problem.

Are you still struggling to get a handle on it?

The change you want entails education about anger, self-awareness, and triggers; practicing alternative responses; logging attempts at change; practicing response tactics; apologizing to others when you slip up; and measuring progress.

Anger responses become ingrained, which is why a programmatic approach is often needed to gain control in the long term. Talk to your company's employee assistance program or a counselor to discuss the pieces above and how to turn them into a plan that will give you results.

Learned management and supervisory skills can help you build more effective relationships with your subordinates, and this in turn can have a major impact on anger responses. You simply learn that there are more effective ways to handle your emotions. Consider our 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors program for your corporate supervisors. You can preview the full program for free. Phone use at 1-800-626-4327 to learn more.

Bright and Educated Employees Who Don't Perform...What to Do.

Do you have a bright employee you know is packed full of potential, but who is not producing the work product or quality you absolutely know they are capable of? You may feel like you are pulling teeth getting them to start producing at maximum levels.


Here's how to make an impact. Typically, if your reasonable attempts to correct performance have not worked, that’s a signal to consider a referral to someone who can interview the employee confidentially and conduct an psycho-social and occupational productivity assessment to find out what is causing your worker not to measure up to their potential. How do you convince such an individual to actually do this!?!

It is much easier than you think, but you must know where your bottom line of low productivity expectation is located, otherwise you will not find the leverage necessary to motivate change. 

You must first identify what level of performance you expect and then stick to your guns. The failure to measure up will be the level you have determined is minimally acceptable is the justification for your referral to a professional who can perform the proper assessment.

The assessment professional will not tell you about what takes place in this meeting, but will and must assure you that your employee came to the appointment and cooperated with recommendations given. This person can be an employee assistance professional operating within EAP principles, but it can also be a privately contracted counselor third party you temporarily hire to perform this function. 

First, before confronting your employee (I will share with you how momentarily) you should consider whether you have used appropriate management tools up to this point--everything but disciplinary action. For example, proper accountability is frequently overlooked by managers although they think it exists. For example, have you set up a procedure in which your employee is obligated to report decisions to you and justify those decisions and actions as they occur? Do you have a mutual understanding about the consequences of failure to meet certain defined outcomes? This is also called “transparency” in supervision. Negative feedback (and positive) should not follow only after the fact, but should be offered before decisions are made and undesirable outcomes are produced. Accountability and transparency in supervision relationships change the mind-set of employees and for many are all that’s required to produce the results managers expect but never thought they’d see.

The Hazards of Delay and Overlooking Employee Performance Evaluations

Are your employees supposed to get annual evaluations but in reality they are often overlooked or delayed? Have some employees gone 2-3 years without such evaluations. If you are like most supervisors, you do not like doing employee evaluations for a number or reasons. The first is that they are a hassle aren't they?

Even though annual evaluations are burdensome for supervisors, not doing them can create a ton of headaches, risk to the organization, and an out of control mob of employees you can't stuff back into the supervision conformity box.

You may notice that some difficult employees in your organization are also the ones who have not had a review in years. These may be employees who feel empowered, manipulate and frankly, start to become bullies. They are empowered without accountability, and begin making their own rules""running the asylum. is

the impact of not getting an evaluation regularly? In some organizations, it is not uncommon for employees to report that they have had infrequent performance evaluations. Years may pass between such reviews.

Regular performance evaluations help validate and increase an employee’s productivity. Failure to conduct regular reviews can contribute to problems among troubled employees because of diminished accountability for performance and behavior.

In many instances, behavioral problems worsen as time passes without a realistic performance review that would otherwise argue for change or some consequence. Some supervisors may avoid writing difficult performance evaluations for employees with problematic performance. Each year that passes without the evaluation makes it more difficult to write one without surprising and angering the employee whose poor performance has long been tolerated. You never have to worry about how to manage employees and help them reach full productivity with a program called "Oh, So Easy!" 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors.

Disrespect in the Workplace---How Do You Respond?

Do you see a fair amount of disrespect between coworkers on the job—things like backbiting, name-calling, gossip, and being inappropriate with jokes? Have you dismissed this sort of behavior and attributed it to stress or the economy? Have you said to yourself, well, employees need to vent a little bit.

STOP! Don’t be fooled, it isn’t the stress, and it isn’t “just the nature of the business.” If backbiting, name-calling, gossip, and general nastiness are the norm where you work, then you’ve got yourself a respect problem—one that you need to get a handle on yesterday, if not sooner.

Few things buy trouble like excusing bad behavior. Left unchecked, disrespectful interactions feed on themselves, growing into a culture of personal conflict and simmering resentment that will eventually undermine your mission and productivity. No one wants to work in such an environment, and your best employees certainly won’t. They’ll leave, and you’ll be stuck with the mess. 

Respect is an institutional mind-set that must be promoted and practiced from the top down. As a manager, you’re on the front line in this struggle, and although it can be daunting, you have the influence and control to stop it. Consider the following programs to help gain superior skills in managing respect and employee behavior.

1. 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors
2. Mastering the Respectful Workplace

Energize and Inspire Employees As A New Supervisors

Every conversation with your employees produces one of three results: positive impact, no

GET THIS TRAINING PROGRAM AT 14 Vital Skills for Supervisors

impact or negative impact. You want to create as many positive encounters as possible.

To inspire people, set their sights on a faraway goal that’s so exciting and potentially rewarding that they cannot help but covet it. Help them visualize what it’ll feel like to reach the mountaintop—to know that they gave every ounce of their effort to deliver superior performance. 

Skip the long speeches when you’re trying to inspire employees. Instead, summarize a tantalizing goal and then ask lots of questions. That will turn your workers into true believers.

Try these techniques to engage them: Remind workers of their past triumphs. Ask them to reflect on what drove them to achieve successful outcomes in the past. Examples: “When you won the Jones account, what did you learn that you can apply to this challenge?”, “Remember your great work organizing our Hawaii convention? How about topping yourself by planning an even greater convention next year?” 

Probe to identify your employees’ source(s) of inspiration. Ask them to tell you whom they admire as a mentor. Examples might include their parents, siblings, friends or teachers. Armed with this information, you can ask each employee how his or her most cherished role model would approach the situation at hand.

Align their interests with yours. Succinctly explain why the goal is important to you and your organization. Then give the employee a chance to chime in. Use this format: “Here’s why it matters to me. Why does it matter to you?” In terms of praising employees, ignore the conventional wisdom of dishing out daily doses of compliments to everyone you supervise.

It’s better to recognize superior effort or performance rather than try to praise everyone, everyday. Praise resonates more deeply when you express it just before and just after an employee takes on an assignment.

When you delegate a project, offer a brief expression of support (“Jim, you’re our expert on this, so I’m sure you’ll do a good job,” “Mary, with your work ethic and determination, I won’t have to worry about this getting done right”). And when the employee completes the assignment successfully, acknowledge the fine work (“Ray, your sophisticated analysis really helped us beat the competition,” “Jane, I appreciate you stepping in at the last minute and doing such fantastic work”).

Praise also carries more weight when it’s specific. Go beyond saying “Good job” and give details of what you admired most about the individual’s work. Examples: “Good job staying calm with that irate customer,” “Great work answering all of those phone lines when we were swamped this morning,” “I’m so pleased that you trained those temps so quickly to use our new software.”

Mix public and private praise. Save time in staff meetings to spotlight those employees who deserve kudos. Lead the group in a round of applause for your starring employees and ask them to stand and perhaps say a few words to the team. Their comments can prove just as inspiring as yours, especially if they thank their peers.

Saluting outstanding performance lifts everyone’s morale; even those workers who are not basking in applause will see that you value outstanding effort and they’ll push harder to excel in the future.

When you praise in private, maintain eye contact and avoid distractions. Speak with passion and sincere appreciation. And don’t follow praise by making a request; that can seem manipulative and undermine the goodwill you seek to establish. 

At its best, praise serves as a management tool. If you want to induce certain behavior among your team, praise individuals already exhibiting it. To spur workers to propose ways that improve operations, praise the clerk who came up with a money-saving idea. To highlight the need for superior customer service, praise service reps who inconvenience themselves to satisfy a demanding client.

WARNING: Never praise out of obligation.  If you sense an employee craves recognition, don’t feel you must find a way to compliment the person. Instead, dangle a challenge. If the employee accepts your challenge and delivers fine results, then your praise will truly matter. TIP: Nothing will inspire employees more than the opportunity to achieve personal goals that add meaning and excitement to their lives.

Listen carefully to your employees and help them identify personal work goals—magnificent obsessions—that fit within the goals of the organization or work unit. IT’S TRUE: In survey after survey, employees indicate that they value praise, recognition and a positive, high-morale workplace more than pay.

So, ask yourself, do you find it’s just as easy to recognize people for what they do right than to chastise them for what they do wrong. Think about this. You have reflexes, and they may be reflexes to be more negative than positive in order to feel more empowered with yourself.