Category: Marketing

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Would You Work Here?

I came across this “vision statement” that was meant to rally employees in an organization and industry undergoing change.

 

(Note: I’ve done some minor editing only to disguise the name and type of company,)

 

“We are ONE TEAM determined to build a thriving organization.

We understand that consumers will always have more choices; therefore our actions must by driven by what they need.

We will inform and empower our community through new products and yet-to-be imagined ways while we adapt and sustain our organization well into the future. We will drive urgent change.

By doing this, we will build a thriving organization, admired by employees and customers for making our community an even better place in which to live well, do business and prosper in a free society.”

I admit that I don’t know the circumstances of who created this vision statement (presumably a management team), how it was positioned, and how it was introduced. But its tone really put me off.

While the ultimate intent — to “build a thriving organization … for making our community an even better place” — is lofty, to me the language used throughout the vision statement sounds heavy handed: “We are ONE TEAM … our actions must be driven … we will drive urgent change … “

And then there’s the corporate ego that refers to “a thriving organization admired by employees and customers …”

So I ask you: is this a place you would want to work?

If you read this vision statement differently, I would love to know your reaction.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Wharton Study: Employee Satisfaction Contributes to Bottom Line

Concern for employees’ satisfaction is more than just a “feel good” aspect of management. Wharton professor Alex Edmans’ recent study confirms that happy workers positively impact financial success.

His study examined the stock returns of companies from Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” between 1998 and 2005 and found they had higher financial returns – more than double those of the overall market.

According to Edmans, “One might think this is an obvious relationship – that you don’t need to do a study showing that if workers are happy, the company performs better. But actually, it’s not that obvious. Traditional management theory [still] treats workers like any other input – get as much out of them as possible and pay them as little as you can get away with.”

Part of the problem is rooted in managers’ short-term thinking as they are measured and rewarded on short-term results. Investing in employees, however, is considered to be a long term proposition … despite the fact that it can pay off.

Edmans’ research is the latest of numerous studies citing the financial impact of employee satisfaction. One of my favorites is the 1997 classic The Service Profit Chain, by Harvard B-school professors James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard A. Schlesinger, that documented the self-reinforcing relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and the bottom line. While a lot has changed in the 10+ years since the book was published, the need to pay attention to employees is as important as ever.

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
Engagement Marketing

It’s NOT About the Holiday Bonus

Hold the merriment for a moment, something is happening in the workplace. Walker Information’s 2007 Loyalty in the Workplace study found employee disloyalty is on the rise. The percentage of “high risk” employees (36%) – those who plan to leave their employer within the next two years – now outnumbers the percentage of loyal employees (34%). This trend is frightening when you consider the costs of lost productivity and high turnover

Walker also reports that despite employees’ overall willingness to be involved in strategy development, just 44% indicated that they were involved. And only 50% of the employees felt senior leaders communicated the strategy well. (More evidence to support the need to listen to and engage employees as mentioned in my last post.)

There’s no one simple solution. According to Walker’s 2007 Loyalty Study, the top experiential drivers of employee loyalty include:

  • Fairness at work
  • Employer care and concern
  • Trust in employees
  • Feelings of accomplishment
  • Satisfaction day-to-day.

In other words, it takes more than just a once-a-year bonus to keep employees.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Listen & Engage Your People or Else …

In Lewis Green’s recent blog post (Leaders Reap the Benefits of the Reality They Create) about why nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers are considering switching employers, he says higher compensation is not the answer. It’s more about creating better organizations for everyone: “We should set our goals to create a great culture, to keep our promises to our customers, and to create a better world …” A key ingredient in improving one’s organization is to listen to both employees and customers and “hear what they’re saying.”

His sage advice is reinforced by John Maver who has found employee frustration with management is based on employees “not understanding or having ownership of the company’s actions” although employees are held accountable for results. In his article, Aligning Employees with the Strategic Plan, Maver advocates talking to employees, training them, and engaging them so they “understand that their work fits into the success of the organization and how it fits in. People [need to] see how [the company’s] strategy is going to make them better off through job security, promotions and pay increases … as well as making the company more successful.” In other words, communicate what’s in it for them and the mutual benefit for the organization.

Want to improve employee ownership of business results? Want better retention? Then listening to and engaging employees is well worth the effort.

Thanks to Toby Bloomberg for introducing me to Lewis Green & John Maver in a recent Diva Marketing post.

Categories
Marketing

The Ultimate Gift Card: The Good Card

For personal and corporate holiday shopping, consider the ultimate gift card – The Good Card, a gift card for charity that allows the recipient to donate to his/her charity of choice. The Good Card is the brainchild of nonprofit Network for Good, the leading online charitable resource that’s approved by the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

Good Cards can be purchased online at Network for Good and can be sent via mail or email (the latter as an electronic gift card). The Good Card recipient goes to Network for Good’s website, selects his/her charity of choice from over one million charities registered in the U.S., and enters the donation amount using the code indicated on the card. Network for Good then sends to the donation to the chosen charity. And get this – 100% of the card’s value goes to the charity!

A wonderful gift from individuals and any-size business

Each card costs $5 plus the donation amount (ranging from $10 to $250). Both the donation and fee are tax deductible for the purchaser. (Remember, 100% of the donation amount goes to charity.)

For corporate gift-giving, companies can get logo placement on bulk orders of the physical cards for an additional charge. This unique charitable gift card allows a company to reinforce its philanthropic image without limiting its support to a single cause.

The Good Card – it’s the perfect gift suitable for anyone.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 3)

Here’s the last post in this nonprofit case study on how small nonprofits can effectively balance growing demands and limited resources by working smarter, not harder. As a quick review, the first two steps involved staying mission-focused and inventorying your organization’s program offerings.

The third key step called for role clarification and communication. Each ABC Healthcare affiliate was increasingly recognized as an organization that “made things happen and got things done.” As a result, other groups’ expectations were becoming unrealistic in looking to ABC Healthcare to do everything – providing funding, leadership, and manpower. The affiliates needed to better manage these expectations.

Step 3. Clarify and communicate your organization’s role

To do this, they assessed their participation in regional activities – from program development and implementation to assisting with other groups’ programs to serving on community committees. They recognized they played a number of roles (based on their mission and operation) that they labeled as: “advocate,” “catalyst,” “connector,” “do-er,” and “facilitator.”

The resulting discussion helped staff identify which role was most appropriate for certain situations instead of being all things to all people. When someone came to ABC Healthcare with a request for money and/or manpower, staff clarified “up front” their limited resources and the specific role the organization was willing to play. As a result, the affiliates learned how to better manage expectations within their communities.

An ongoing challenge

Coping with success involves a delicate balance of mission, need, and resources. To maintain equilibrium, nonprofit leaders need to continually ask hard questions: What are our mission and purpose? What programs and activities do we need to offer, maintain, or give up to fulfill our mission? What is our role in the community we serve? Should we change that role, given our capabilities and resources?

The answers may be as difficult as the questions themselves. But the results, as ABC Healthcare has learned, are worthwhile. Those who don’t engage in these critical discussions are at serious risk for fragmented focus and staff burnout.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 2)

This post continues the case study on how small nonprofits can effectively balance growing demands and limited resources by working smarter, not harder.

The first step is to stay mission-focused, but that can also present a challenge. Many nonprofits have broad mission statements that let them justify responding to even remotely-related requests. Staff who are truly passionate about the mission find it difficult to turn down such requests or discontinue programs that are no longer worthwhile. (“But we helped the three people who came to our educational seminar!”)

Recognizing this situation, one ABC Healthcare affiliate took the next step to address the question: Where can we, with our limited resources, really make a difference?

Step 2. Inventory your program offerings

To answer this question, the affiliate conducted a detailed inventory of its educational programs and activities. This was a multi-step process in which staff completed program descriptions and developed a profile for each educational offering. First they reviewed the following key questions (several adapted from the Drucker Foundation’s nonprofit self-assessment tool: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Nonprofit Organization) for each of their programs:

  • Who is the target audience for the program?
  • What does the target audience value about the program (based on evaluations and other feedback)?
  • Could this audience get the same program elsewhere?
  • What is the estimated return on investment for the organization (based on mission-fit, resource input, and resulting output)?
  • Will this offering advance our capacity to carry out our mission?
  • If we weren’t already presenting this program would we start now?

Answering these questions allowed staff to sort the educational programs into three categories:

  1. “Need to have” (programs that should be kept)
  2. “Nice to have” (those that might be expendable) and
  3. “Not sure.”

They further assessed each program in the “nice to have” and “not sure” categories by considering: Is what we’re doing precluding other opportunities? Can (or should) we invest our time and energy more effectively elsewhere? What would be the greatest consequence if we didn’t offer this program for a few more years?

Their answers to this second set of questions helped determine which programs to keep, which to phase out, and which to eliminate. Staff also revisited programs in the “Need to have” category to see if they should be kept “as is” or if there might be opportunities to enhance or expand them.

The inventory exercise was a valuable way for employees to prioritize and streamline their programs and activities. While initially reluctant to let go of a number of programs, they recognized that doing so would free them to explore new initiatives as well as improve current ones.

The next (and final) post in this series explores the 3rd critical step involving communication.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 1)

Picture this: You’re the head of a relatively new nonprofit serving a community need with a small, dedicated staff and board. In just a few years, you experience major growth in your activities and accomplishments. Such success, however, is a mixed blessing: work demands have grown faster than your human and financial resources. In addition, the more you do and the more successful you are, the more others expect you to do.

How do you continue to serve the community’s growing needs with increasingly limited resources?

The challenge of coping with how to do more with less is twofold. On one hand, nonprofits have to guard against potential burnout when staff members are pulled in too many directions. On the other hand, mission-driven organizations have a hard time saying no.

Several of my clients found themselves in this situation, and how they effectively dealt with it may be helpful to others. In this “case study” to be covered in three posts, I’ll share the experience of several affiliates of a healthcare-related nonprofit who learned how to manage their success by working smarter, not harder. To maintain confidentiality, I’ll call this nonprofit ABC Healthcare.

With a broad-based mission and regional scope, each ABC Healthcare affiliate – ranging in age of operation from four to 10 years – was challenged to respond to its area’s diverse healthcare needs while not spreading itself too thin. They were initially funded by government grants, so their budgets were variable (never knowing how much they would get or when they would get it).

To cope with growing demands and limited resources, they followed three vital steps:

  1. Stay focused on the mission.
  2. Inventory your organization’s program offerings.
  3. Clarify and communicate your organization’s role.

Step 1: Stay focused on the mission

Regardless of how long a nonprofit has been operating, it’s a good idea to keep the “big picture” in mind by focusing on the mission. Why? Because the mission describes your organization’s purpose and reason for being.

ABC Healthcare affiliate staff regularly revisited the organization’s mission to: 1) ensure they were on target, and 2) guard against fragmenting their focus to avoid overextending manpower and other critical resources.

In routine meetings or special planning sessions, staff members placed high priority on mission “fit” when evaluating requests to participate in new or ongoing programs. Any requests that didn’t directly fit with the mission were turned down.

While using the mission as a touchstone is a no-brainer, the reality is staff in small nonprofits can lose focus because their jobs involve multiple and time-consuming roles (such as outreach and development) beyond their primary responsibility.

Starting with the mission is an important first step in working smarter, not harder. But by itself, it is not enough as I’ll explain in my next post. So stay tuned.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

Seems almost everybody I talk to who’s in the current job market has stories on how they’re ignored by prospective employers when they apply for jobs. Only a few organizations extend the courtesy of a postcard or letter confirming receipt of an applicant’s resume.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s an entry-level or executive job search … new job or job-change … for-profit or nonprofit … too many organizations do not acknowledge their job applicants.

I’ve heard the excuses before: HR & other departments doing the hiring are short-staffed and/or there are too many applications flooding into the system. But there’s enough technology out there to automate the acknowledgment process.

At the very least, firms can better manage applicants’ expectations by putting a disclaimer in their want ads that tell people “You won’t hear from us at all unless we’re interested in you.” Don’t assume every applicant takes “no news is no news” as a given.

The smart organization can actually create a favorable brand impression by extending the courtesy of communication to its job applicants. Consumers, including prospective employees, judge an organization by how well they’re treated by everyone in the organization they come in contact with. In other words, EVERYONE in the organization impacts the brand. So ignoring job applicants doesn’t do much if you want to be known as an employer-of-choice.

To those involved in the hiring process, listen up: someday YOU may be the one looking for a job who is ignored.