Author: sybil

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Engagement Training & Development

Favorite Employee Engagement Quotes – Part 2

Continuing last week’s post on my favorite engagement quotes, here are several more gems + suggestions on how you can apply them in staff meetings.

“… the most effective way to engage your employees is to treat them like valuable people with skills, not people with valuable skills.” –  NBRI Employee Engagement Infographic

“Employees either benefit or burden every dimension of a company’s existence. The extent to which they deliver one or the other is primarily a function of company culture and leadership’s view of employees’ value to the company.” – Rajendra S. Sisodia, David B. Wolfe, Jagdish N. Sheth, Firms of Endearment.

“The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.” – Sybil F. Stershic, Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care.

“Culture is about performance, and making people feel good about how they contribute to the whole.” – Tracy Streckenbach interview, Clear Goals Matter More than Mission, The New York Times.

“People want to know they matter and they want to be treated as people. That’s the new talent contract.” – Pamela Stroko in Tanveer Naseer’s blog post How Leaders are Creating Engagement in Today’s Workplaces.

“Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and happiness to leverage, sustain, and transform work into results.” – David Zinger, Let’s Co-Create an Employee Engagement Charter, The Employee Engagement Network.

Discuss amongst yourselves …
Here’s how you can use these and last week’s quotes to facilitate a dialog with employees. The following discussion ideas work best in organizations where management is concerned with and committed to employee engagement. However, DO NOT attempt if management is not open to improving employee engagement; such discussion can devolve into a “bitch & gripe” session leading employees to become frustrated, demoralized and even more disengaged.

  • Ask people to share examples of their experiences as customers interacting with companies whose employees are engaged vs. disengaged. Then discuss ideas on how to strengthen employee-customer engagement in your organization.
  • Employees choose a quote they find most meaningful and/or encourage them to create their own quotes. Based on the selected quotes, discuss ways to maximize engagement or minimize disengagement.
  • Present this scenario: everyone has been granted a wish to become CEO of his/her ideal company. Which quote(s) would they use to guide them in managing the organization and why?

Your turn
I invite you to share your favorite quotes on employee engagement. I’d also love to hear how you use them to reinforce engagement in your organization.

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Engagement

Favorite Employee Engagement Quotes – Part 1

There’s a lot of great content written about employee engagement, and I love finding quotes that best capture what engagement is and is not. Here are some of my favorites, listed alphabetically by author. So as not to overwhelm you with too many quotes, I’ll share more in my next post.

“ … employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated as humans worthy of respect.” – Meghan M. Biro, Your Employees are Engaged … REALLY? Forbes.

“Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity, and meaning in their job.” – Ken Blanchard and Scott Blanchard, Do People Really Know What You Expect from Them? Fast Company.

“Engaged employees stay for what they give (they like their work); disengaged employees stay for what they get (favorable job conditions, growth opportunities, job security).” – BlessingWhite, The State of Employee Engagement 2008 [updated link]

“It’s sad, really, how a negative workplace can impact our lives and the way we feel about ourselves. The situation is reaching pandemic heights – most people go to work at jobs they dislike, supervised by people who don’t care about them, and directed by senior leaders who are often clueless about where to take the company.”  – Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld, Re-Engage: How America’s Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times.

“Highly engaged employees make the customer experience. Disengaged employees break it.” – Timothy R. Clark, The 5 Ways That Highly Engaged Employees are Different.

“Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” – Francis Hesselbein, Hesselbein on Leadership.

I’ll share more quotes in next week’s post PLUS how you can apply them to facilitate discussion about employee engagement in your organization.

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Engagement

When Your Business Needs Help: What to Ask and of Whom

You’ve got to love the results of contradictory studies. One day you’re told that salt, eggs, caffeine, or fill-in-the-blank is bad for you. Then later you’re told that it’s not that bad.

Such conflicting advice isn’t limited to health – you also find it in business. For example:

  • Think BIG … Think small.
  • Be innovative … Stick to the knitting (i.e., what you know and do best).
  • Adopt best practices … Use your intuition and make your own path.
  • The devil is in the details … Don’t sweat the small stuff.
  • Plan for the short term … Plan for the long term.

Which advice should you follow?
The answer is relative: whatever makes the most sense for your organization – depending on your industry and your corporate culture/values/stakeholders, etc. To find the answer(s), you can look in-house.

That’s right, I advocate you start with your employees before going to an outside consultant. Why? Because “The insiders of an organization understand the stupidity of its traditions better than the outsiders,” according to successful entrepreneur Andrew Filipowski. He understands that those closest to the situation may have the best ideas for improvement.

If you find yourself in a quandary about what to do to move your organization forward, ask your employees to discuss and share ideas based on their responses to the following questions:

  • What has worked for our organization in the past? … How can we do more of what worked?
  • What hasn’t worked? … How we can do less of what hasn’t worked?
  • What do we need to continue doing?
  • What else do we need to do?

These are simple, yet profound and powerful questions that are solutions-oriented. (Note: you can learn more about this approach in this introduction to “Solutions Focus in Organizations”.)

You have employees who can help, and you have the questions to ask them. What are you waiting for?

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Engagement

“Share of Mind, Share of Heart” Book News

Nonprofit professionals, leaders and volunteers interested in Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits now have the option to purchase it in both print and electronic versions. In response to numerous requests, my latest book is available for purchase and download at Energize Inc.’s Bookstore. I’m honored that Energize, Inc., a valuable resource for ALL things related to volunteerism, has chosen to offer my book.

For those readers who prefer print, Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits is conveniently available online through WME Books, and Amazon.

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Engagement Featured Post Training & Development

You’re in Trouble If Your Employees Can’t Answer These Questions

  • What is your organization’s mission (purpose) and where is it headed (strategy and goals)?
  • What is expected of employees in helping the company achieve its goals?
  • Who are your customers and why do they choose to do business with you? Also, how do employee efforts impact customer satisfaction?
  • What is your brand promise and what’s involved in delivering on it?
  • How do employees know they are valued by the company?

Seriously, you can’t expect to engage employees if they don’t know why their work matters and what it entails. Be prepared to provide them with clear answers upfront (when they join the company), and then frequently remind them because the responses are likely to change based on what’s happening in the competitive marketplace.

Don’t make them guess the answers. It’s really no fun for your employees, customers, and stakeholders.

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Engagement

Employee Turnover Revisited

The economy has changed significantly since the 2008 publication of Leigh Branham’s book, The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave. Enough so that Branham wrote a second edition of his book based on new data collected from employee exit surveys.

Branham states upfront that the reasons given by employees for leaving their jobs are “fundamentally the same.” What has changed are the implications from the data. For example:

  • Employees are “five times more likely to leave a job because of an internal issue than in response to an outside opportunity …”
  • Since employees don’t just leave for better opportunities (although that’s what they’ll tell the company because it’s easier), most employee turnover is avoidable and potentially preventable.
  • Employees may leave their immediate managers, but they also cite lack of trust in senior leaders as a key reason for disengaging.

Dissatisfaction with pay is cause for some turnover, but more as an emotional issue related to salary fairness than with the actual amount of the salary itself. Branham explains that employees “are bothered by inequity – knowing that they make less than others who are no more qualified, or even less qualified than they are. They feel the injustice of getting the same pay raises as those who have contributed far less to the organization than they have … It all adds up to feeling  ‘less than.’”

If you care about employee retention

This book will help you better understand why employees leave and what you can do about it. Branham shows how to recognize the warning signs that employees are getting ready to exit and shares examples of what employer-of-choice organizations do to minimize turnover. Given employees share responsibility for their own engagement, he also offers suggestions employees can consider before they leave as a last resort.

The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave provides research-based evidence that:

“Most of the reasons employees disengage and leave are consistent, predictable, and avoidable, if the employers have the desire to retain and are willing to invest the time to take preventive or corrective actions.” – Leigh Branham

I strongly recommend Branham’s updated book for managers and business owners who need to address employee retention for a better bottom line.

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Engagement Marketing

What They’re Saying About “Share of Mind, Share of Heart”

I’m thrilled with the positive response to my new book, Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits.

I’m honored to share these more detailed book reviews by Ivana Taylor, Small Business Trends, and Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World.

Here are several recent reviews that I’m also honored to share.

“With a great passion for (and deep expertise in) nonprofit marketing, Sybil Stershic has written an immensely practical, valuable book. “Share of Mind, Share of Heart” clearly explicates both marketing fundamentals and more sophisticated concepts for nonprofit marketing professionals in plain, easy-to-understand language, with concrete examples.

“Unlike many academic texts on nonprofit marketing, this book is peppered with questions designed to get you thinking tangibly and immediately about how the concepts discussed can be applied directly to the day-to-day business of your organization. I found her insights into internal marketing tools of engagement to be particularly apt and important. Too often in leanly staffed, undercapitalized nonprofits where staff is pressed for time, we overlook this crucial area. Morale and profits suffer as a result, with organizations sometimes seeming disconnected and disengaged from their customers, volunteers, and (in some cases) overall mission.

“‘Share of Mind, Share of Heart’ is a book that should be on the shelf of every nonprofit marketer, both novices and veterans.” – Andrew Edmonson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Houston Ballet

“Like the author, I have served on a variety of non-profit boards and counseled them about marketing. I’ve found that the whole idea of marketing is intimidating to many non-profits. They often believe marketing is too complicated for them and requires a commitment of resources (both human and monetary) beyond their capability. This insightful book dispels these fears as myths. Marketing is presented here as it truly ought to be: a simple, people-based idea about creating and communicating value. Each chapter provides an understandable exercise that will cause the reader to pause and reflect upon how to bring the marketing concept to life in any non-profit.”     – Frank Haas, Dean of Hospitality, Business and Legal Education, Kapiolani Community College

“Every now and then, you find a book that contains more than a powerful message—it houses a poignant experience. Share of Mind, Share of Heart is an experiential wisdom-sharing tome written for organizations that benefit us all. Full of practical how to’s and laced in the language and philosophy of non-profits, it will open eyes, enhance skills, and enrich outreach.” – Chip R. Bell, noted author and consultant, The Chip Bell Group

Special thanks to Andrew, Frank, Chip, Ivana, and Wayne for taking the time to review and share their thoughts on my book!

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Engagement Training & Development

Why We Still Need to Get Together for Work

I consider technology both a blessing and a curse in the workplace. While it enables employees to communicate and collaborate across time and distance, it also makes work more insular as people seem to engage more with smart devices than with co-workers, customers, and channel partners.

So as workplace technology continues to expand, I’ll continue to advocate the power of employee gatherings.  Bringing people together in an effective face-to-face forum can provide a rich and satisfying experience. This was the case for a large company that brought together marketing and sales support staff from its regional offices as part of an “all hands” planning event. The company is in transition as a result of restructuring, and its divisional leader recognized the need to bring staff members together. The event combined training, planning, and team-building activities in an informative and comfortable setting.

Employees appreciated the opportunity to step back from the daily grind and focus on:

  • better understanding where they fit within the “big picture” of the company
  • expanding their internal resources through networking and relationship-building with co-workers
  • enhancing organizational capacity through shared learning and planning.

The event also provided employees an effective forum in which they could get answers to their questions, contribute their ideas and be heard.

Regardless of whether your team’s goal is learning, planning or problem-solving, sometimes there is no substitute for getting off the cloud and bringing people together, face-to-face.

“One of the single most effective ways to enhance your creativity is to regularly break the cycle of isolation and interact, talk, and share your work.”
– David Burkus, Why Sharing Your Work, Setbacks & Struggles Breaks Creative Blocks.

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Engagement Marketing

What is Volunteer Engagement?

Ask most people to explain volunteer engagement and they’ll tell you they know it when they see it, yet find it difficult to articulate. They can describe it in general terms as a process that includes recruiting and matching volunteer interests with a nonprofit’s needs, then recognizing and respecting those volunteers.

Beyond the generalities, it’s easier for people to describe what volunteer engagement is not. For example, volunteer engagement means:

  • not taking advantage of volunteers’ time and talent.
  • not keeping volunteers out of the communication loop regarding what’s happening (e.g., major changes in operations or direction).
  • not ignoring volunteers’ input and ideas.
  • not creating extra work just to keep volunteers busy.
  • not giving lip-service to volunteer value.

One can turn these negative descriptors into positive ones to get closer to explaining volunteer engagement, but it’s not enough. Fortunately, there’s a more comprehensive definition.

Volunteer engagement is …

According to the late Jill Friedman Fixler of the JFFixler Group, now VQ Volunteer Strategies, volunteer engagement is “a strategy that builds organizational capacity through staff and volunteer collaboration and the development of high-impact, meaningful opportunities that create greater influence and outcome for the organization.”

What I like about Fixler’s definition is that it recognizes:

  • as a “strategy,” volunteer engagement is intentional
  • its purpose is to help advance a nonprofit’s mission by building “organizational capacity”
  • it is based on mutual endeavor via “staff and volunteer collaboration”
  • it benefits the nonprofit by creating “greater influence and outcome.”

A great way to articulate what volunteer engagement is and does.

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

The Assimilation Approach to Employee Onboarding

Not all organizations offer a formal orientation or onboarding program for new employees. Even so, they shouldn’t leave the process to chance.

Corporate without class
by David Zinger

“The new guy
down the hall
needs to learn
how we do
things around here.
We’ll train him
without a course
by rolling eyes,
banter at lunch, and
afternoon chocolate bribes.
He’ll fit in,
won’t make waves
and tread lightly
around cultural cubicles.”

Assorted Zingers by David Zinger, with great cartoons by John Junson.