Tag: corporate culture

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Engagement

Why You Can’t Dismiss Corporate Culture

Corporate culture is intangible, but you can feel it and see it in action. It’s evident in how employees work together, how they treat each other (and customers) in the process, and how effective the collective organization is in pursuing its goals.

Corporate culture is a true reflection of the real values of an organization. And it’s the proverbial “elephant in the room” in places where the company’s stated values don’t align with actual values. That’s why culture dominates strategic execution (“culture eats strategy”) and why it can’t be dismissed.  According to Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and author of several classic books on corporate culture:

“We tend to think we can separate strategy from culture, but we fail to notice that in most organizations strategic thinking is deeply colored by tacit assumptions about who they are and what their mission is.”

Here are more great quotes on corporate culture:

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” – Louis Gerstner

“The culture you create or the culture you destroy will determine the success of your business.” Rebecca L. Ray

“You can’t copy culture. …  Culture is very specific to an organization, the leadership, the employee mix and time. It’s not something you can just cut and paste into another organization.”  Tim Sackett

“A quick Google search on ‘how to create a great corporate culture’ reveals … really fantastic ideas, but they won’t ensure you a great culture. At best, they set the stage for great culture to (hopefully) arise and at worst, they are unsustainable gestures meant to game culture rather than create something genuine.” Susan Piver

“No matter how brilliant or insightful your business strategy is, a badly aligned culture will defeat it.” Don Peppers

Categories
Engagement

What Matters in Recognition and Employee Engagement: Interview with Zane Safrit

I met Zane Safrit by phone several years ago when he interviewed me on his radio show, and we’ve stayed in touch to share our work in employee engagement and organizational leadership. Our most recent conversation centered on employee happiness as a factor in employee engagement.

Zane has held numerous positions ranging from customer service rep to CEO over the course of his impressive career where he applied employee recognition and engagement for positive results. He’s now a successful business consultant helping companies do the same. He’s also the author of Recognize THEM!: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees In Ways They Value and The Engaged Hiring Process: A Simple Plan to Help You Hire the Best. Zane’s latest book, First, Engage Yourself, shares do-able steps that managers can use to create a culture of engagement. I’m honored to feature him on my blog.

QSM: Zane, let’s start with the of importance of recognizing employees. What matters in recognition that we’re not doing?

Zane: The “What” matters less in employee recognition than the “Who.” The employee in employee recognition matters most.

  • How do they like being recognized? A personal note, a conversation – informal or formal, a gift, a plaque.
  • When do they like being recognized? Are they a morning person or an afternoon person? That depends on their work demands and those who deserve recognition are very committed to their work – their team, their customers, their integrity. Choose the time when it interferes the least.
  • Where, in private or in a meeting, standing in front of the group or with the group?

Use their name, articulate what’s being recognized and why, communicate why and how it matters to you and those around you. Then find the right venue to share that recognition. The right venue is the one that matters most to the person being recognized.

Otherwise, they will have difficulties digesting this just dessert, and the recognition loses its impact at best and is counter-productive at worst. Like a politician popping up at an event for which they deserve no credit, you’ll give a speech, blah blah, leaving the recipient feeling awkward. You’ll have missed a great opportunity to honor that person and build a relationship with trust and engagement.

QSM: If employee recognition is so basic, why is it so difficult to apply/practice?

Zane: Employee recognition is built on the virtues of compassion and empathy. They’re innate, we’re born with them. Like seeds, they only need a chance to set roots in our behaviors and perceptions. After that we’ll find the means to nurture them or not.

Too much of our culture fails to nurture those qualities. That’s being generous to say it like that. Too much of our culture degrades, denigrates, demoralizes those who show empathy and compassion, patience, forgiveness.

In too many corporate cultures, careers are built and rewarded on the basis of denying compassion and empathy. The hard-charging, tough-minded, gets-things-done-no-matter-what manager is rewarded with perks and privileges and moves up the career ladder. Employees watch, learn and change. They change their behavior and attitudes to better emulate those they see moving ahead.

Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

So, as long as the rewards are weighted towards disengaging behaviors many people will change to deny their natural tendencies or they’ll favor the development of other, less healthy tendencies of narcissism, arrogance, betrayal. That will keep it difficult to engage in healthy, sustaining ways with each other.

We have the choice. We can create our own conversations which lead to cultures. It’s always a choice. And it’s understandable which choices are taken.

QSM: Do you think employee engagement is still relevant? Where do you see engagement 5-10 years from now?

Zane: I have a love/hate relationship with the term “employee engagement.”

I love it for serving as an umbrella under which we can gather to discuss, debate, create and clarify the many activities, issues and factors related to creating a place to work where we’re proud, happy and productive.

I hate it for its sterile academic tone and because it’s being co-opted by too many experts who’d rather you engage with them than with each other: your peers and colleagues and direct reports.

What happens 5-10 years from now? We’ll always have engagement and the best organizations – the ones with the highest purpose that are most sustaining and most profitable – will have the highest engagement. That being said, expectations of and definitions of best will change. We’ll see significant changes to institutions, social norms, organizational climate, the economy, politics. Those will change the expectations around what’s considered engaged, what’s our highest hopes for an engaged workplace or community and what we need to survive.

QSM: As a business professional, what do you think should be taught in schools (K-12 and college) to prepare students to be engaged, productive members of the workplace?

Zane: I love this question! It ties in with the question about if it’s so basic, why’s it so difficult to practice.

I think these negative reinforcements, rewards for the wrong behavior start as children enter school. No, this isn’t a diatribe about teachers or even common core and standardized tests. No, this started when John Dewey began lining kids up in rows of desks to sit silent and only raise a hand when called on and to work diligently, by themselves, to memorize only what’s presented and to never-ever ask Why, What if, Why Not? That prepared them, us, to sit in orderly rows of cubicles and look to the manager and bosses for direction and appropriate behaviors.

I’m not a childhood education expert. I don’t have kids. I don’t even have a pet. And I’ve never stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, either.

However, the skills of communication and collaboration, of team-work and team-building, of helping, of recognizing what makes each child unique as well as what commonalities are shared and, yes, of competition should be taught. Writing, debating, creating, art, theater, rhetoric, painting, drawing, music, athletics especially with team sports, those should be funded once again. These are all activities that help children learn to listen, to understand, to communicate ideas and find common ground, to collaborate and create together and to embrace diversity of ideas, even failures. These are activities that nurture those innate virtues of compassion and empathy.

Standardized tests work well with testing equipment not people.

Teachers, I believe, want the resources and mandates to teach to learn not to pass those tests.

I hope this stirs a discussion.

QSM: Thanks, Zane!

To continue the discussion, I invite you who are reading this post to comment: What do you think should be taught in schools to prepare students to be engaged and productive members of the workplace?

Categories
Engagement Marketing Training & Development

My Top 7 Blog Posts

Reviewing my blog’s top posts over the past few years, I was surprised with the popularity of my “favorite employee engagement quotes” posts. So I’ll continue to share the best quotes on workplace engagement compiled from both current and classic articles on the subject.

Here are Quality Service Marketing’s top seven blog posts:

A special thank you to my many blog readers for your continued encouragement and support!

Categories
Engagement

Amazon’s Workplace Culture Takes a Hit

Amazon’s culture has made the rounds of the press and blogosphere, based on a recent NY Times article, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace.” Sadly, I’m not surprised as I live near the Amazon warehouse in PA where employees suffered during a heat wave due to insufficient air conditioning. There were also complaints during the winter when employees, who were evacuated for a fire alarm, had to wait outside the warehouse in freezing temperatures. These workers were not allowed to retrieve their coats or warm up in their cars, possibly for reasons of theft prevention.

There are pro’s and con’s to every workplace; it’s all relative based on the industry and the culture set by senior executives. These quotes [cited in the NYT article] from former Amazon white-collar employees reinforce an ambitious, yet callous culture:

“Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.”

“A lot of people there feel this tension: It’s the greatest place I hate to work.”

There are also Amazon employees who disagree with the article, including CEO Jeff Bezos who defends its culture.

As an advocate of an engaged workplace, I’m wary of organizations that still use forced ranking for employee performance. What I find most discomfiting is the fact that Amazon owns Zappos, well-known for its uniquely positive culture. Realistically, no workplace is perfect – not even Zappos.

My takeaway from all this? We now have a scale of workplace engagement from A to Z: with Amazon at the lower end and Zappos at the upper end. Where on this scale would you want to work?

 

 

 

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

The Three Most Important Questions You Need to Ask in Human Resources

In addition to the fine folks who work in Human Resources (HR), or in the absence of an HR function, everyone who is responsible for managing or supervising employees needs to consider three critical questions from the employee’s perspective. Answers to these questions are key to strengthening employee engagement. Note: Nonprofit managers can also apply these questions to volunteers who serve in their organizations.

  1. Does my employer care about me and my work?
    People need to know that managers recognize and respect their roles within the organization and will support their efforts to do the best job possible.
  2. What difference do I make?
    Employees and volunteers also need to know how their efforts contribute to the organization’s mission and goals. This includes having a clear line-of-sight as to how their work impacts customers or clients, co-workers, stakeholders, the community where the organization is located, and the organization’s overall success. (Think of the NASA janitor who wasn’t just cleaning floors — he was helping to put a man on the moon.)
  3. What’s in it for me?
    Addressing this question gets to the heart of why an employee’s work matters and why s/he should stay with the organization. Considerations include the meaning and purpose of the work involved, the quality of the workplace culture (how employee- and customer-focused it is), and basic benefits,

How do you learn the answers to these questions?
A variety of listening posts are available in most organizations, including (but not limited to): employee engagement or satisfaction surveys … exit surveys … management by wandering around (MBWA) … everyday conversations with employees … and “engaging conversations – open-ended, non-judgmental conversations with each employee about passions, aspirations and opportunities.”

Ask first, then listen for understanding.

 

Categories
Engagement

Foundation for a Decent Workplace

In my research on dysfunctional workplace cultures, a LinkedIn connection shared the following “Ten Commandments of the Workplace” that can be honored by both employees and employers. [Special thanks to James Dodds for bringing this to my attention.]

Ten Commandments of the Workplace

  1. You have the right to be treated with respect and the responsibility to respect others.
  2. You have the right to be treated fairly and the responsibility to treat others fairly.
  3. You have the responsibility to respect the rights and needs of others.
  4. You have the right to a work environment that is free of distractions.
  5. You acknowledge that change is difficult and necessary.
  6. You acknowledge that errors are often the symptoms of a larger problem, and not the problem itself, and work to find better solutions.
  7. You acknowledge that employees are part of the solution, not the problem.
  8. You acknowledge that while blame is easy, finding the right answer is hard.
  9. You acknowledge that finding the best answer often requires everyone being involved.
  10. You acknowledge that while customers come first, they may not always be right.

Source: The Three Legged Table: Why Every Employee Matters by Brian James.

If you find yourself needing to fix a dysfunctional work environment, this is a good place to start.

 

Categories
Engagement

Dysfunctional Workplace Cultures to Avoid

It’s true – there’s no such thing as a perfect workplace. Every organizational culture has its positives and negatives. But in my experience with employee engagement, there are two particular workplace environments to be avoided at all costs.

“Oppression by purpose” describes “companies whose mission to make a positive difference in the world, but essentially do so on the backs of their employees.”  [Source: When Employee Engagement Turns Into Employee Burnout by Tony Schwartz, March 13, 2105  NYTimes.com] Consider the company that prides itself on supporting a special cause (e.g., protecting the environment, enhancing educational opportunities, helping communities become healthier, etc.) with mandatory employee participation; i.e., employee involvement is “voluntold” not voluntary.  Just because an organization serves a worthwhile purpose does not ensure it is a great place to work.

Institutional disrespect is another organizational culture to avoid. This workplace is characterized by managers who bully employees without repercussion, including those who ignore or dismiss company protocol to assert their perceived power. An environment in which managers continually undermine employee efforts is not healthy,

Both cultures share characteristics of a toxic workplace that suck the life out of employee enthusiasm where doing meaningful work is not enough to sustain their engagement.

Seriously, it’s no fun to work in a dysfunctional organization.

 

Categories
Engagement

Coping with the Credibility Gap in Employee Engagement

“Our current practices and approaches to employee engagement are failing. They are failing to achieve organizational results and most employees fail to experience the benefits of their own engagement.”  Excerpt from David Zinger’s 21-Point Employee Engagement Manifesto.

A disheartening statement, but not surprising as employee engagement gets more intention than action. In my workshops, I frequently hear managers lament about being told to initiate engagement and/or recognition programs with insufficient commitment and resources needed to support their efforts. Then when these programs don’t work, the well-meaning but clueless-in-charge look for other quick-fix workplace remedies.

Frustrated by wasting precious resources on “flavor-of-the-month” engagement initiatives, employee cynicism continues and top management’s credibility gap widens. If this describes your workplace, here are several tips to help you preserve whatever sanity you have left.

Help for hanging in there

  • Keep in mind that across your life’s spectrum this situation is only temporary.
  • Another important perspective is your workplace isn’t all that unique – the world is filled with Dilbert-like organizations. While “misery loves company,” refrain from wallowing in a victim mentality.
  • Until you can change jobs, or if you’re unable to make the switch, look for whatever positive, fulfilling aspects of your workplace you can find such as making a difference through the work you do, helping customers, enjoying some of the people you work with, and yes, even getting a steady paycheck.
  • Find healthy ways to de-stress and maintain your mental and physical health – it’s the most precious resource you have.
  • Consider the opportunity you have to learn what works and what doesn’t work in dealing with people in the workplace. You can apply “lessons learned” in your next job and any community activities you may be involved in as a volunteer. (Note: the practice of engaging employees is similar to that of engaging volunteers.)

It’s important to remember that engagement is a two-way proposition between employers and employees. While the management team is responsible for creating an engaging workplace, employees are responsible for showing up each day ready and willing to engage in their work. The absence of the former may mitigate–but doesn’t preclude–the latter.

Categories
Engagement

Is Your Organization Contributing to Employee Disengagement with Institutional Disrespect?

Lately I’ve been hearing more about employees disengaging at work due to a condition they describe as “institutional disrespect.”  This occurs when new or newly-assigned managers, with upper management’s complicit support (or feigned ignorance?), make decisions with little regard for organizational protocol. For example, the manager who automatically sides with a group of employees in departmental disputes without fully investigating the situation as prescribed in HR policy. Or a supervisor who reverses a customer service rep’s appropriate handling of a customer problem without consulting the employee to explain the change. The result of continually undermining employees’ efforts, particularly when they’re performing according to company standards, is increased employee frustration and disengagement.

Most employees will give new managers the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of their tenure. But when a manager continues to dismiss company policies and procedures, employees begin to wonder: “Are the higher-ups blind to this boss’s performance? Or is management trying to make our work difficult as a way to get rid of us?”  Such speculation plants the seeds of discontent as employees can’t fully engage when they don’t feel respected by the very people they work for.

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T …  find out what it means to me” 

Employee engagement and retention specialist, Dr. Paul Marciano describes how respect can best be applied in the workplace:

  • Recognition – thanking employees, acknowledging their contributions
  • Empowerment – providing the necessary training and tools employees need
  • Supportive feedback – giving employee feedback that’s positive and corrective
  • Partnering – fostering a collaborative workplace
  • Expectation setting – establishing clear goals and accountability
  • Consideration – demonstrating courtesy, kindness and empathy
  • Trust – demonstrating faith in employees’ skills and abilities, supporting their decisions.

Employees in organizations that practice institutional disrespect find little evidence of true partnering, consideration and trust.

“Employee engagement depends upon the extent to which individuals respect their organization and its leadership, and feel respected.”  Dr. Paul Marciano

 

Categories
Customer service Engagement Training & Development

Great Customer Service Quotes for Training

“It’s risky to underestimate the benefit of exceptional [customer] service; it’s equally risky to overestimate the level of customer service that you are currently providing.” Unknown

I often use this quote in the beginning of my customer-focus workshops to engage attendees on the impact of customer service in their organizations. Discussion is based on addressing these questions: Who defines quality customer service? How is it measured? To what degree is your company truly customer-centric? etc. learn_and_share

Another approach to foster discussion and idea-exchange is to add the words “How do you …?” at the beginning of each of these customer-centric guidelines from Diana LaSalle:

  • See who you are and what you offer through the customer’s eyes.
  • Consider the well-being of the customer in all decisions.
  • Train and trust employees to care for customers in the moment.
  • Anticipate customers’ needs by continually striving to improve their experiences.

You can also use the following quotes as a springboard to talk about the importance of taking care of customers:

  • “The easiest way to turn a service into an experience is to provide poor service – thus creating an memorable encounter of the unpleasant kind.” B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy
  • “Customers care about the degree to which you respect and value their business … If you provide customers with clues that you don’t value their business, then all the customer satisfaction in the world won’t help you.”  David C. Lineweber
  • “Technology has evened quality; hardware is all the same. The difference is how you treat customers. If you treat them well, they’ll love your product. If you treat them poorly, they’ll find 100 things wrong.” Lee Iacocca

I welcome your favorite quotes and suggestions for using them in staff development.