Tag: employee engagement

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Engagement

Pathetic Tales from the Clueless in Charge

Incredulous but true. Here are several examples of the absurd-in-action from the executive suite.

  • A colleague who works in sales shared that her employer is undergoing massive changes and consolidation. Besides reducing staff and increasing the remaining employees’ workload, management also lowered sales commissions while raising sales goals.
  • At a staff meeting the head of a small organization announced the company was outsourcing its IT work — without having first told or consulted with the person responsible for the in-house IT function.
  • A CEO invested in a senior management team retreat where everyone, including the CEO, committed to agreed-upon behaviors to improve team efficiency and effectiveness. Several months later, the team found that everyone except the CEO was living up to their commitments.
  • The president of an well-respected ad agency called a staff meeting to announce a “merger of equals” with a firm that was much bigger and actually acquiring the smaller agency. It was news to the staff including several of the agency’s senior partners who had not been told their agency was being shopped. It was also news to the retired CEO and founder who kept an office and secretary in the agency but was out of town when the meeting was held. He learned of the deal when it hit the newspapers.
  • A CEO, who complained about wasting time in a company-wide email, made everyone wait for him on an all-hands call before cancelling it 25 minutes later. While he never acknowledged his actions (contrary to his pet-peeve), he continued to complain about employees wasting time.
Call the executives/decision-makers in these situations by whatever words fit: clueless, unrealistic, inept, [fill-in-the-blank with your own description]. Whatever you choose to describe them, they are also major contributors to employee frustration, disengagement, and burnout.
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Engagement

Two Special Holidays to Recognize in March … Maybe

Besides the coming of spring, the month of March offers two little-known holidays.

World Compliment Day – March 1st

This global holiday “addresses the basic need for human recognition and appreciation. Nobody wins commercially, but everybody gains emotionally. And therein lies its power.”

It’s easy to participate in “the most positive day in the world” — take a moment to compliment someone: friend, family member, colleague, neighbor, caregiver, teacher, store clerk, first responder, restaurant server, etc. You know who’s important to you — tell them you value and appreciate them.

Employee Appreciation Day – March 6th

The first Friday in March is Employee Appreciation Day that was created 25 years ago to focus attention on employee recognition in all industries.

For those companies that practice effective employee recognition on an ongoing basis, celebrating the first Friday in March can be a fun event. Host a special breakfast or lunch, give out special treats to everyone, or find a creative way to recognize how employees collectively contribute to company goals, etc., as long as it’s done with an authentic message of appreciation.

You should skip these holidays, however …

IF your observance is forced. People know lip-service when they hear it and token efforts of acknowledgement fall flat.

Authenticity and sincerity matter when telling/showing people you appreciate them. So don’t do it if you don’t mean it.

[Image credit: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.]

 

 

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Customer service Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Building Connections and Engagement in “Smart Women Conversations”

Connecting and engaging people in the workplace with LEGO® … just one of many fascinating topics shared in my video discussion with Smart Women Conversations’ host Yvonne DiVita, respected blogger, serial entrepreneur, and my former publisher who remains a dear friend.

Yvonne launched Smart Women Conversations to “inform, educate, create laughter and share stories of reinvention” as part of her passion to “inspire and educate smart, talented women eager for business success today.”

I’m honored and humbled to be among the impressive women interviewed in this special series and invite you to read Yvonne’s introduction or just watch and listen to our conversation below.

To learn more, please visit Nurturing Big Ideas and check out these other Smart Women Conversations.

 

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

What’s Reflected in Your Brand Mirror?

To hold on to your customers amid strong competition, it’s important to provide a positive customer experience. But where do you begin?

You start from the inside out with the employee experience because the way employees feel is the way customers will feel – and if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers. 

Picture the relationship between the two as a mirror. If employees are frustrated by company policy or internal politics, their attitudes can be reflected in their dealings with customers. Who wants to be served by employees who feel hassled or ready to disengage? It takes only one or two such encounters before a customer goes elsewhere. And who knows how many other customers will hear of their experience?

What do you see when looking into your company’s employee-customer brand mirror?

  • a shiny reflection of positive experiences with your internal and external brand?
  • a blurred image that needs polishing to be more employee- and customer-focused? or
  • a cracked image opening up opportunities for your competitors?

Three keys to creating a positive and polished brand reflection:

  • Proactively pay attention and listen to employees to better understand their experience in your workplace; e.g., employee surveys, management by wandering around, engagement discussions, exit interviews, etc. Do your employees have the tools, resources, and information they need to effectively serve customers?
  • Based on what you learn from listening to them, involve employees in improving business operations to better care for customers and each other.
  • If your organization is in transition or stressed with limited resources, positively acknowledge those who rally the energy and enthusiasm to serve customers and co-workers despite the situation.

If you need a reminder :

“There is no way to deliver a great customer experience with miserable employees.”  Steve Cannon

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.”  Stephen R. Covey

[Image credit: Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider on Unsplash]

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Strengthening Your Company’s Brand from the Inside-Out – Podcast Interview

What a joy to be a guest on the “Profitable Happiness™” Podcast, hosted by bestselling author and musician, Dr. Pelè, who focuses on workplace happiness as a key to success.

In our engaging 30 minute conversation, we talk about what lead me to bridge marketing and human resources with internal marketing to create a positive workplace culture that values employees and customers. We also discuss interesting issues such as how to identify happy workplaces, how to save money on outside consultants, and how to have a positive impact in a toxic environment.

Listen here for our conversation on Internal Workplace Wellness Marketing.

To learn more and listen to Dr. Pelè’s other interviews with “successful workplace happiness experts, executive coaches, and entrepreneurs, check out his website.

 

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Engagement

True Confessions: I’m Tired of Employee Engagement

I started working on employee engagement long before the “e” word came into vogue, and I’m tired of it. Here’s why.

Overused as a business buzzword, the term “employee engagement” has become meaningless. It gets talked about in executive suites and management meetings, yet few companies actually do anything about it because too much effort is required to change a culture that needs fixing and artificial attempts in a cultural vacuum only make the situation worse.

As a result, I’m just plain tired of:

  • the endless rhetoric and discussions that go nowhere
  • the naysayers who don’t think engagement matters
  • executives frustrated with engagement because it’s not a quick fix.

Employee engagement 1.0 and beyond
When I started Quality Service Marketing more than 30 years ago, my work involved helping clients gain employee commitment to marketing and organizational goals. Managers wanted to know how to get employees motivated and willing to work with them to take care of customers.

Engagement’s scope has evolved since then to recognize that employee and employer each bear responsibility for it. Employees need to show up to work ready, willing, and able to do their best, and employers need to provide a workplace where employees are respected, trusted, and eager to do their best.

Work and workplace expectations have also changed. Employees want meaningful work with flexibility and fair pay. And while some companies proactively engage them as valuable partners, too many still consider them as labor to be manipulated in response to short-term market pressures.

That’s the main reason I’m frustrated with employee engagement. We haven’t fully transitioned from the industrial age of management control over employees-as-commodities to a better model of management with employees-as-respected-partners sharing in responsibility and ownership of results.

Not ready to give up
Despite my frustrations, I’m encouraged when I meet with employees who tell me how great their employers and workplace cultures are. Ditto when I hear and read about successful organizations where employee-care is as important as customer-care.

Despite the clueless-in-charge, there are still leaders out there who value their employees and genuinely want to do better with and by them. So I’m not giving up – because people matter and they deserve better.

[Image credit: photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash]

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Engagement

Summer Blog Break 2019

Photo by Anna Demianenko on Unsplash

July and August are a time to invest in sunscreen to avoid sunburn. For me, it’s also a time to invest in a break to avoid blogging burnout.

I enjoy this special time to step back from the pressure of posting. But it’s not a total vacation as I’ll be working this summer to help clients with their facilitation and training needs while continuing to stay active on Twitter (@SybilQSM), LinkedIn, and other social media.

In the meantime, I invite you to explore this blog with its abundance of evergreen content on improving employee, volunteer, and customer care with internal marketing tools of engagement.

Have a happy and safe summer!

[Image: photo by Anna Demianenko on Unsplash]

Categories
Engagement

At the Heart of a Successful Brand

This powerful statement is from the late Bob Wood, former Chairman of Wood Dining Services, whom I had the privilege of interviewing for my first book on internal marketing, Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care. 

Bob was the epitome of an engaged leader who truly cared about his employees and customers as reflected in this description of the company culture:

“The Wood Company’s recipe for success is developing and nurturing its people.
We value and understand the difference they can make in pleasing our customers.”

I wish there were more inspired leaders like Bob who knew how to nourish a successful brand from the inside out.

Categories
Customer service Training & Development

3 Simple Ways to Engage Employees in a Better Customer Experience

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

Need to have your employees better understand and improve the customer experience?

Here are three simple approaches designed to do just that. Each one can be applied to engage employees in sharing their experiences and building on their ideas to take care of customers.

1. Consider the customer perspective 

“Smart people walk in the shoes of their customers. But wise people remove their own shoes first.”

Because empathy is critical to improving the customer experience, it’s valuable for employees to consider and discuss their own experience as consumers. You can engage them in discussing one or more of the following questions, such as:

  • Thinking about a recent experience you had as a customer, how would you describe the quality of that experience? What stood out for you that made it that way? … Based on that experience, would you recommend that company to a friend? Why or why not?
  • As a consumer, how can you tell whether a company is customer-centric?
  • How do you see who you are and what you offer through the customer’s eyes?
  • [Based on the responses to these questions:] What does this say about how we serve our customers? … How can we do better?

2. Consider employee impact 

Use notable quotes from the business press that will work well as discussion-starters to elicit employee reactions and ideas. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • “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
  • “If you respect the customer as a human being, and truly honor their right to be treated fairly and honestly, everything else is much easier.” Doug Smith
  • “Brands are built from within … [they] have very little to do with promises made through advertising. They’re all about promises met by employees.” Ian Buckingham

3. Consider combining both of the above approaches

Depending on how much time you have for discussion, you can start with the empathetic perspective and close with an applicable quote that supports delivering a positive customer experience. Or you can start with a quote and segue to discussing the customer’s perspective. As for selecting quotes, you can even invite employees to share a favorite or create their own.

Helpful tips

When you engage employees in these special discussions — whether as part of orientation, customer service training, staff meetings or retreats — you can elicit their understanding and ideas to better serve customers as well as co-workers who are “internal customers.”

Regardless of which of setting or approach(es) you use, it’s essential to conduct such discussions in a positive, non-threatening, and respectful setting. Your objective is twofold: 

  1. to encourage employees to comfortably share stories and actionable ideas that enable them to better serve customers, and
  2. avoid getting mired in a spiraling critique of complaints.

The key is to not dwell on negative barriers but focus on ways to overcome them.

And don’t forget the food (e.g., appropriate amounts of caffeine, water, sugar, healthy snacks, etc.) that can fuel the thinking and ideation process.

 

Categories
Engagement

“You’re facilitating with what … ?!”

I’m proud to announce that I’m now a Certified Facilitator in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®.

That’s right, I can help companies “solve real problems in real time in 3D” using specially selected LEGO® bricks.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a proven methodology based on extensive research from the fields of business, psychology, learning, and organizational development. It uses the power of “hand knowledge” that leverages the hand-brain connection: research shows the hands are connected to 70-80% of our brain cells. Using the neural connections in our hands, we can better “imagine, describe, and make sense of situations, initiate change and improvement, and even create something new.”

Participants engaged in this innovative approach “lean-in” to deal with business challenges in a safe environment. “Thinking through their fingers,” participants are fully engaged and empowered to unleash “insight, inspiration, and imagination.”

When is it helpful to use LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®?

Here is a sample of situations in which it works. Use it when you:

  • Are dealing with a complex challenge/issue that has no clear answers
  • Need to grasp the bigger picture, identify connections, and explore options/solutions
  • Want participants to equally contribute their respective knowledge and opinions on a topic/issue – with 100% engaged participation.

Its application is customized to each organization’s unique situation.

I’m excited to share this new addition to my facilitator tool kit. If your team or organization is ready to discover new insights and uncover fresh perspectives, let’s talk.