During this last year in my current position, the company was experiencing a problem with absenteeism and a large project was behind schedule. I decided that rather than blindly attempting to throw solutions out there, I should first find out what the problem really was: I asked the employees why it seemed morale was low and folks were taking off more time than usual. I found out that a lot of the workers felt disconnected from the company. We had grown quite a bit in a short time and the core group that had been with us from the beginning had enjoyed a true family atmosphere during the early years.