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I can’t believe we’re wrapping up the 3rd quarter of the year already can ya’ll? Well Thanks for checking in with us today here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty, and I’m super excited about all the things we’re working on, we have some great guest coming up over the next few weeks to share and visit with us. It’s really a lot of fun putting these shows together, I hope you’re enjoying them and that your finding, at least occasionally, something of value that helps your career, plans and goals! I’d appreciate if you’d Subscribe to us on iTunes, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or any of your favorite Podcatchers. Maybe even share the show with a friend or two, we love seeing our group growing each week!
Well back to today’s episode, let’s talk about our advancement opportunities and how we may be able to push things along a little. I was speaking with a young gentleman a few weeks ago that thought he’d like to get into the Safety realm. He’d always enjoyed teaching and volunteering in community projects, he’d been in warehousing for about 8 years and was looking for his next opportunity. He had put a plan together and wanted to run it by me, see if I had any idea’s or opinions and as you know I’ve got no problem sharing an opinion ever now and then! We’ll call him Brett for today, Brett had launched his warehousing career in Sanitation for a large production facility, I think he worked there for about a year. He’d earned some time on the electric pallet jack, and although he liked his position it was quite a drive each day and he’d found an opportunity closer to home at a Distribution Center that was advertising for a Pallet Runner. He’s been with the company now for about 7 years, he moved to a forklift operator in year 2 and on to a Receiving position in year 4 so he’s been doing that for about 3 years. I had asked about supervision or a lead position, but he has very little interest in the office hours part of the job, dealing with the merchandising department and having to direct his peers or the same men and women he’d been working with all this time.
His facility has a strong really Safety Department, I mean the kind that shares articles, always participates in the crew’s start-up meetings and really presents Safety in such a way that it builds a Culture, a way of doing things right every day!
Brett’s been educating himself with different articles on the internet and he’s taken several on-line Supervisor and Management classes, I think he’d found a couple on Safety or safety practices as well. If you’re not familiar with Alison.com or universal class.com I urge you to check them out, it’s the internet and believe me you can find a class on just about anything on the internet, a lot of them are free or at a very reasonable price! Now these courses are probably not going to give you any credits towards degrees or even any certificates, but they will arm you with knowledge. I’m a big keyword advocate, keywords can grab our boss’s attention and get us heard and noticed.
And that’s exactly the plan Brett has put together. He is self-educating, learning about Safety, he’s actually purchased the book for OSHA’s 29cfr1910.178 standard and several others on workplace violence building safety etc. Just through speaking up at the shifts start up meetings he’s been noticed, and the Safety Manager is now aware of his goals and what he’s doing to achieve them! I’m certain he’ll have a position in Safety before years end!
Brett’s story reminded me of a class I gave last week. One segment was on Personal Growth in the workplace and although the participants were office staff I think a few of the points can apply to us here in operations.
We all have a personal life outside of work, and I hope that’s our primary life. Our spouse, children and families, yep even our in-laws are important to us. I hear a lot about, I guess you’d call it gossiping on the job lately. I think this is relatively new for us on the floor? I was told by an individual that he had more friends at work than outside of work. I’m of the philosophy that we do not have any friends at work. Think about it, everyone’s paid to be there & we’re all there for pretty selfish reasons, we all want to make more money than the others and I bet we all feel like we work harder than everyone else. I believe our friends come from social settings. Things like school, or our flag football or softball team mates or Yoga classes, oh and our kid’s class’s PTA groups. Anyway, one day we may hear someone talking bad about Mary then the next day Bob’s talking about Mary – and Carol, Mary & Bob’s friend goes and tells Mary Bob’s talking about her. I have to shake my head a little at these stories. We’re at work to make money, get noticed by our boss and get a promotion to take on more responsibility and make more money, right? Maybe as a group we’re getting to comfortable or familiar at the workplace. I bet we all could put a little Personal Growth to play when it comes to gossiping don’t you? That’s a great example of workplace distraction!
I was talking to this group about Attendance, not just how important it is but discussing How & Why we as employees struggle with it! Take our children’s Parent Teacher meetings for an example. I bet we all prepare for those when they come up, we ask our kids how there doing at school, are they acting right in class etc and we’re on time. We don’t want to arm the teacher with anything to hold us up or open the door to hear anything bad! We prepare for the meeting and we make sure we’re on time! It’s outside of work and we make a fun or good time out of it!
Another thing we discussed was our Cell Phone. We all know what a distraction our mobile phones are and yet we’re willing to give up productivity, which is our money just to use them on the floor. I read an article that said the average worker looks at his or her cell phone on average 28 times a day. Let’s half that for our purposes so we’ll say 16 times for 3 minutes at a time, the average was 5 minutes. So that’s 48 minutes out of our 8-hour shift, a productivity shift. If we’re paid on productivity we’re giving away money to look at our social media!
So, there’s three of the topics we discussed in the Personal Growth part of my class. The whole thing was about work place distractions and those cost to employers and associates. The resources I used were by Forbes, Udemy, INC., I love their articles, and the Job Board Monster. When you have a spare moment, remember we need to make time for personal growth, look up the phrase workplace distractions within all of them, I bet it’ll give you something to think about!
Anyway, the articles were about companies that had implemented rules to avoid those distractions & the post surveys taken after some time had passed. Let me share a few of those numbers with you:
75% stated they we’re getting more done and was more productive
57% Felt more motivated to do my best
51% Said I’m more confident
49% stated I’m happier at work
And 44% said I deliver higher quality work
I bet we all can agree if we just put our heads down and focus on our jobs we’d be much better at it. It’s hard though, everyone’s adding to those workplace distractions. Imagine though how much we’ll stand out if we don’t participate in them. Talk about getting put on the fast track with our management teams!
I tell you what, it’s been a while since we’ve given anything away or had a drawing. Email us one of your pet peeves, some kind of work place distraction that you have to deal with AND how you handle it or avoid it by Wednesday 9/19 to be entered in a drawing for next week! Let’s see, I’ll give away a new WAOC tumbler, I think there 22 ounces. It’ll be one from our WAOC store front on Teepublic.com. Oh, the email to use is host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com, I’d love hearing more about the distractions that your dealing with!
Another part of the class was on Time Management, oh just today on the Unlocking the Secret of Living Rich podcast she did an episode on Time – are you a spender or investor and shares 7 secrets on making time your asset. Check it out, I really enjoyed it. Anyway, time management translates to us in the warehousing industry as earning more money. Even if you’re not paid on productivity per say, using our time wisely and efficiently will get us noticed and we will get those promotions, advance and earn more money!
Speaking of advancement, promotions and making more money how are you all doing on your Goals for 2018? Remember at the beginning of the year we wanted to make $2.50 more than what we we’re making in December 2017 or $5,200 more dollars than we did last year. I’ve heard from several of our group that’s well on the way to meeting that goal which is fantastic! Lets see, we’re down to the last what 15 weeks of the year so there’s still plenty of time to make the magic happen! Give us a holler if we can help in any way, we’d be happy to share any thoughts and experiences with you, maybe even a couple of opinions! Stick with it, be on time, keep focused on your task and stay true to your plan, it’ll happen!
Well, until next week, Be Safe, speak up, share your knowledge with a New Boot! And get noticed by your Manager!