Tag: quotes

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Engagement Marketing

Employee Engagement Advice for Managers

The new Employee Engagement e-book is now available to help managers and business leaders who want to better engage their employees. It features a compilation of concise advice and helpful tips written by members of the Employee Engagement Network. I was happy to contribute to the book (see page 22), although it was a challenge to select and share engagement advice in a single sentence!

Like its companion book on Employee Engagement, this book is free. So what are you waiting for? Download your free copy and circulate the advice. We need all the help we can get to try to reverse the decline in job satisfaction.

Categories
Engagement

I Love My Job! (Yeah, right)

Referred to as the “Lost Dr. Seuss Poem,” this has been floating on the web for several years, and it’s the perfect complement to my last post on declining job satisfaction.

Not exactly a workplace Valentine, but it’s worth another look for a chuckle – especially for those who can relate to it (better to laugh than cry … ).

“I love my job, I love the pay!
I love it more and more each day.
I love my boss he is the best!
I love his boss and all the rest.

“I love my office and its location, I hate to have to go on vacation.
I love my furniture, drab and gray, and piles of paper that grow each day.
I think my job is really swell, there’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my peers, I love their leers and jeers and sneers.
I love my computer and its software,
I hug it often though it won’t care.
I love each program and every file
I’d love them more if they worked a while.

“I am happy to be here. I am. I am.
I’m the happiest slave of the firm, I am.
I love this work, I love these chores.
I love the meetings with deadly bores.
I love my job – I’ll say it again – I even love those friendly men.
Those friendly men who’ve come today,
In clean white coats to take me away!!!”

– Anonymous

 

 

Categories
Engagement

Thoughtful Quotes for the Workplace

Here is more employee engagement advice, and it comes from an unusual source.

I’m getting ready to retire my 2009 pocket calendar for the year; it’s the kind that features quotes each week.

Paging through it I found the following quotes that are applicable to employee engagement:

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”  George S. Patton

“Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.”  Robert Half

“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.”  Albert Einstein

“Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.” Jimmy Durante.

“We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” Hegel

 

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

A Gift to Improve Employee Engagement

This holiday, give the gift of employee engagement … and it’s free!  Employee Engagement Advice Book is a new e-book written by members of the Employee Engagement Network (EEN) and compiled by network host David Zinger.  EEN members (including me) share advice – limited to one sentence each – on how an organization can improve employee engagement.

The book contains over 200 contributions from people who are passionate about employee engagement, including several featured in this blog: Terry Seamon (see his advice on page 6); Kevin Burns (page 9); Paul Hebert (page 28); and Richard Parkes Cordock (page 35). (My contribution is also on page 35.)

Recurrent themes include communication (especially listening), valuing employees, empowering them, recognizing their efforts, and leadership involvement. It’s worth scrolling through to find the quotes that resonate with you. Pass it along and share it among your colleagues … to inspire them and/or reinforce their employee engagement efforts.

Happy Giving!

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Memo to Senior Management: Take Care of Your People

Memo1

I found this great quote from Dr. Judith M. Bardwick:

“When people are perceived as a cost and not a resource, when they are treated as a liability and not an asset, when no one seems to know or care that they are there, they don’t work well, and they don’t stay.”

Who are these ‘people?’

They’re your employees … your contractors, vendors, and consultants … your partners … and ultimately your brand advocates or – depending on how you treated them – your brand adversaries.

Categories
Musings

Amass Less, Value More (A Lesson for the Holiday & Everyday)

I’ve been trying to focus on the positive during the holidays despite constant media attention to the economic crisis. And I’ve found an upside to the down economy: we’re learning to live with less ‘stuff.’

To help us cope better with less, business & life coach Steve Davis advocates that instead of continually amassing more stuff, we learn how to better use what we really need.

According to Steve:

“Unconscious compulsions for “more input” seldom satisfy our true needs. Nor will having piles of unread books and magazines ringing our desks reduce the nagging sense that there is some piece of information that will really change everything for us.

Satisfaction comes from fully digesting and extracting the fine nutrients from what we already have, and making choices for new input based on our true values and passions, not our casual likes and vague interests.”

This is an excerpt from his excellent article, Assimilation vs. Accumulation – The practice of getting full nourishment from everything in your life. It’s worth reading to learn how we can better assimilate what’s important such as: relationships, customers, ideas, information, and experience. (Note: While written for an audience of facilitators, his message is applicable to everyone.)

Best wishes to all for a happy & safe holiday!

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Getting What Internal Marketing is All About

I’m fascinated by audience reactions when I introduce the concept of internal marketing in my marketing training workshops. (Compared with attendees of my internal marketing presentations, these workshop participants are unbiased in that they’re not expecting to hear about internal marketing as part of marketing training.)

Following a recent training session, one young woman approached me to tell me she really got what internal marketing is all about. She shared the following saying [source unknown] that she felt best summed up internal marketing’s empathetic approach to employee-customer care:

People will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did.
But they will never forget how you made them feel.

Exactly.

PS. If anyone knows the source of this quote, please share it with us.

Categories
Customer service Marketing

Notes from the Past – What Lee Iacocca Said

Way back in fall 1996, I heard Lee Iacocca speak at Lehigh University, which is Lee’s alma mater and mine.

I recently came across my notes from his presentation in which I highlighted this quote:

“Technology has evened quality. Hardware is all the same. The difference is how you treat customers.”

It’s a relevant reminder that still resonates today. Technology may have changed how we work in allowing us to serve customers more expediently. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we serve them any better.

The key differentiator is ensuring a positive customer experience that includes a genuine ‘high touch’ component in a ‘high tech’ world of customer service.

I wish more companies would take Lee’s message to heart. “To speak to a live person, press 10 …” just doesn’t cut it.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing – New Definition

Internal marketing is a critical management concept that is difficult to explain, let alone define. Throughout my work in the field, I’ve defined internal marketing simply as “the application of marketing inside an organization to instill customer-focused values.”

But now there’s a new, more comprehensive definition – thanks to the Fall 2005 graduate class in internal marketing, part of Northwestern University’s Integrated Marketing Communications program.

“Internal Marketing is the ongoing process whereby an organization aligns, motivates and empowers employees at all functions and levels to consistently deliver a positive customer experience that helps achieve business objectives.”

What I love about this expanded definition is that it captures aspects of both internal marketing and internal branding. The new definition is a result of an Internal Marketing Best Practice Study funded by the Forum for People Performance Management & Measurement.

I’ll have more on this study in my next post.

Categories
Musings

Best Wishes in the New Year

Dear readers & fellow bloggers,

With the New Year approaching, this quote from comedian Joey Adams is timely:

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.

Best wishes for a happy & healthy New Year!