Tag: corporate culture

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Engagement

Engaging Employees in Community Impact: Interview with Ryan Scott

I first learned about Ryan Scott from his blog post When Volunteers Become Voluntold. The term “voluntold” was new to me, but not the concept – it describes the oxymoron “mandatory volunteering” that many employees experience in the guise of corporate community involvement. I was once voluntold for a community fundraising effort by an employer and found the experience extremely frustrating. I read more of Ryan’s posts on his company’ Corporate Philanthropy & Volunteering Blog and discovered a kindred spirit with a passion for corporate community involvement and employee engagement.

We connected via email, and he graciously agreed to be interviewed here. Ryan is a technology entrepreneur who founded Causecast in 2007 to help companies harness their power to do good. He believes socially responsible companies can strengthen employee engagement through social engagement by involving employees in the company’s philanthropic efforts. However, when administrators are hampered by the cumbersome tracking of social campaign implementation and management, their philanthropic program may fall short. Causecast’s Community Impact Platform was developed in response as a centralized online solution to help companies better track and manage their giving and volunteer programs. According to Ryan, this platform “reinvents the possibilities around corporate philanthropy, enabling organizations to propel authentic grassroots momentum that captivates employees and the public alike.”

QSM: Why do you advocate corporate volunteerism as part of engagement? What does it mean for a company’s brand? 

Ryan: Employee engagement is a big concern for executives everywhere – in fact, one recent survey cited it as the top challenge for 2013. Many factors go into employee engagement, but research shows that one of them is social engagement – involving your company in purpose-filled work and getting your employees activated around that process. Not only does employee volunteerism and giving improve your brand internally – through increased employee retention, recruitment and engagement – it also helps your brand externally – through increased consumer trust and loyalty. Edelman’s Trust Barometer survey last year showed that the credibility of CEOs has plummeted, whereas the credibility of employees has risen. Never has it been more true that employees are your best brand ambassadors, and volunteerism gives them something meaningful to say and do that helps build authentic relationships with your community.

One company we just spoke with – Umpqua Bank – has an unheard of 93% participation rate in their volunteer program. They take their program very seriously, make it a priority from the top down and give employees one week a year to volunteer with organizations related to their cause focus. As a result, Umpqua’s compelling volunteer program has become a big boost to overall employee engagement.

QSM: What do successful companies do to get employee buy-in?

Ryan: Corporate volunteer programs are lifeless exercises in lip service without employee buy-in. A surefire way to drain any vitality from your program is to just set initiatives in motion on autopilot and assume that “if you build it they will come.” Actually, they won’t. Employees need to feel connected to the good citizenship your company is espousing, and they need to know that they play a role in setting the direction of that citizenship. After all, they’re your most important citizens.

So how do you get buy-in? Storytelling plays a big part – and I don’t mean storytelling from the top down. Companies that empower their employees to play a big role in charting their cause course and then encourage them to share their experiences with others do themselves a big favor in generating momentum with their program. That’s why our Community Impact Platform has social media capabilities built-in – to make it easy for employees to get the word out and get others engaged. When employees feel that they are drivers of change, and they can be public ambassadors of that change via an open forum of discussion about their experiences, the ingredients are there for a volunteer program with some real meat to it – the kind of program that generates impact for all involved.

QSM: How can a company maintain momentum with its employee volunteer program? What can a company do it keep it from becoming stale?

Ryan: I think you need to continuously find new ways for employees to get involved. Doing the same day of volunteering year after year is not only dull, it doesn’t allow you to build on your experiences or diversify your cause skills. That’s why Causecast offers numerous paths to impact, with ready-made campaigns like competitive corporate crowdfunding that gamify the challenge of fundraising to make it more fun and successful. Is your company engaged in disaster relief efforts after tragedies like Hurricane Sandy? Well how about expanding that to disaster preparedness, so that employees feel more connected to subsequent relief efforts and have the opportunity to become trained disaster relief volunteers who can help with hands-on work in times of crisis? There are so many different kind of volunteering opportunities to consider, and you’ll keep things fresh by staying plugged into the evolving thought leadership in this area and applying it to your own program.

We encourage our clients to map out a blueprint of their volunteer efforts throughout the year, so that we can fully leverage a calendar of volunteer opportunities and make them as meaningful and unique as possible – whether they’re theme-based (for holidays like Veterans Day) or strike deep into the heart of a company’s cause mission. The more you think ahead and put thought into the kinds of opportunities you’re presenting to your employees, the more resonant and interesting your program will be. The result will be increased participation rates, increased engagement around your company and increased impact for the cause at hand. Isn’t that what every company wants?

QSM: Thank you, Ryan!

 

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

An Almost Perfect Workplace

One of my favorite business books is Zappos.com’s Culture Book that is published annually. It’s written by Zappos employees who share, in their own words, what the company culture means to them.

I ask participants in my internal marketing workshops to consider if their organizations would be willing to solicit employee comments about their workplace culture, publish the results, AND THEN make them available to the public? The responses reflect how confident and proud managers are of their organizational culture.

Occasionally I encounter people who joke about companies, like Zappos, that are known for having a strong employer brand. Typical comments include:

  • “Yeah, they’re the ones who put the ‘cult’ in culture!”
  • “I wonder how much Kool-Aid the company trucks in?”
  • “Where DO they find all those happy employees?!”

I find the folks who make these jokes to be cynical, even downright dismissive, as they struggle to comprehend an engaging place where employees actually enjoy going to work.

Yes, Virginia, there are such workplaces … and most of their employees appreciate how fortunate they are to be working in such organizations.

Just as important, these employees also know that an engaging workplace doesn’t ensure an idyllic one. Engaged employees accept that not every day will be perfect. As a Zappos employee acknowledged in the latest Culture Book:

“A lot of people might say that Zappos employees work in an unrealistic culture, where everyday frustrations don’t occur and cupcakes grow from rainbows in our break room. While I’ve yet to see the cup-cake-producing rainbow, I can say that we do have all of the same pet peeves as everyone else, but because of our Zappos Culture, we rise above it and overcome.”

Well said!

[2010 Culture Book excerpt used with permission. © 2012 Zappos.com, Inc. or its affiliates.]

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Workplace Success Starts Here

A strong culture depends on leaders who strive for success from the inside out. They truly recognize and respect their employees and are diligent in engaging and partnering with them. Unfortunately, some CEOs only recognize their people as a “most valued asset” in the company’s annual report.

Note: Debra Semans and I will address how to build a strong workplace culture at the Internal Branding & Internal Marketing: Strategic Integration for Market Leadership program we’re presenting this week in San Francisco and again in Atlanta in February 2011.

“Companies that had a strong culture going into this terrible time over the last 18 months and companies that really do care for their employees are the ones that did much better through this difficult time.” 
– Diana Oreck, VP-Ritz-Carlton Hotel Global Learning & Leadership Center,
Marketing News interview

Re-Engage authors Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld said it best:

“If you begin your branding process by declaring an ‘aspirational brand’ without aligning it with the reality of employees’ daily work experience, you are in danger of writing a check your culture can’t cash.”

 

Categories
Engagement

Engaging Employees in a Market-Focused Culture: Interview with Chris Brown (Part 1)

I’m delighted to feature Chris Brown, CEO of MarketCulture Strategies, who works with companies to create customer-focused cultures. I met Chris recently and was intrigued with his company’s mission (“Help leaders measure, enhance and maintain a strong market culture as a means of competitive advantage”) and vision (“Spark and sustain a cultural revolution that inspires employees, delights customers & rewards shareholders”).

MarketCulture offers the Market Responsiveness Index, a web-based benchmarking tool that evaluates companies on key characteristics of business performance and competitive advantage. Two of these characteristics are critical to employee engagement:

  • Strategic Alignment – how well employees “understand and enact the vision, mission, objectives and strategic direction of the company”
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration – how well employees “interact, share information, work with, and assist colleagues from other work groups.”

[Note: this is the first of a two-part interview that focuses on corporate culture and strategic alignment.]

QSM: Chris, let’s start with the big picture. How does corporate culture impact a firm’s success?

Chris: Corporate culture shapes what we do (behavior) and how we do it (performance). Culture is a tough concept for many people to get their hands around, so a simple way to think about it is ‘the way we do things around here.’ Ultimately, it is like an invisible but powerful set of expectations that influences the way people work in organizations.

QSM: Engaging employees requires that they have a clear “line of sight” to the company’s strategy, goals, and objectives. In your experience, what do you find is the biggest obstacle to achieving this strategic alignment?

Chris: The reason alignment can be an issue is simply because of change. The dynamic nature of markets means that companies need to change quickly to lead or adapt to market shifts. Strategic alignment is illusive for most because our success breeds failure. It’s human (and organizational) nature to rely on what has worked in the past. When we are successful, we don’t want to change what we are doing. Instead, focus is often shifted inward toward maximizing dollars from our current alignment. But then once the market shifts, we’re stuck focused inwardly. We’re not ready to respond, so we miss the boat.

[Note: This interview continues in my next post with Chris sharing ideas on effective internal collaboration.]

 

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Whatever Happened to Job Satisfaction?

The latest Conference Board report on job satisfaction isn’t good – only 45% of those surveyed say they’re satisfied with their jobs (based on a sample of 5000 US households).

Not a shocker considering the current economy. I know many people unhappy with their work – due to constant downsizing of resources (one can only ‘do more with less’ for so long) and lack of leadership in uncertain times. These folks are just waiting to bolt when the economy improves and better jobs become available.

What surprised me, however, is this latest survey shows an overall decline in job satisfaction over the past 20 years – including times when the economy was robust.

According to The Conference Board:

“The drop in job satisfaction between 1987 [the first year of this survey] and 2009 covers all categories in the survey, from interest in work to job security and crosses all four of the key drivers of employee engagement: job design, organizational health, managerial quality, and extrinsic rewards.”

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. For more than 30 years now I’ve been advocating internal marketing as a way to engage employees and customers.

I’m not sure what the answer is … perhaps growing attention to the study of employee engagement will help reverse this trend. In the meantime, I try to find and learn from the folks who enjoy their workplace. And when that seems to be a challenge, I page through Zappos’ Culture Book to keep from getting discouraged.

 

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Zappos Culture Book: Best Ever Business Reading


Zappos.com’s 2009 Culture Book is here (!) and I’m thrilled to add it to my business library – next to the previous edition that I got on my visit to Zappos last year.

The book is written by Zappos employees who share what the company culture means to them. It’s a beautifully designed and produced book, supplemented with color photos and captions that capture the true spirit of Zappos. The book includes Zappos core values, a brief time line of the company’s 10 year history, and, most important, what the people who live the Zappos culture have to say about it.

Regardless of where they work in the company (customer loyalty center, merchandising, finance, technology & project management, Kentucky warehouse, marketing, etc.), Zappos employees share how valued they feel as members of the Zappos family … how they engage in “serious fun” … how they’re empowered to do and be their best … how they live the company’s values … and how truly happy they are to work at Zappos everyday. (Would your employees say the same? Honestly, I don’t know that many companies whose employees love their workplace.)

Zappos Culture Book should be mandatory reading in every undergraduate business class, MBA, and leadership program.

Read this book to your kids at night, and I swear they’ll tell people “When I grow up, I want to work at Zappos!” This is no fairy tale – Zappos is for real.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Interview with Barry Nelson on Employee Communications & Commitment

Corporate communications expert Barry Nelson, retired founder of The Story Board, is a strong advocate of workplace journalism – a business communications approach that addresses employee concerns along with business concerns. With economic turmoil taking a toll on employee engagement, I wanted to get Barry’s perspective on how we can use employee communications to make a difference.

QSM: What’s the most important message that companies need to send to their employees to minimize disengagement?

Barry: The whole trick of getting through hard and trying change with your people still behind you emotionally is to establish a mutually caring human connection with them. Business reasoning and economic motivation aren’t unimportant, they’re just not the most powerful tools. To establish such a connection, the company can’t simply tell, but must show its staff that the company’s top management cares about them as human beings, not just work assets. That means a company must set up institutional infrastructure — policies, systems, programs — that average workers can recognize as promoting their welfare. This goodwill toward workers can’t be whimsical or dependent on the style of a boss who may be gone tomorrow — it has to emanate from and be embedded in the company itself.

A well validated body of research shows that companies where employees believe their organization (not just their direct supervisor) supports their best interests, are overwhelmingly more likely to enjoy high, across-the-board levels of employee loyalty and commitment than those where that perception is lacking. But for employees to get and maintain such a perception, they need a continuing stream of evidence that it’s so. This presents an opportunity for internal communication programs to systematically provide the needed evidence. That’s why I’ve always urged that at least a portion of the content in ongoing internal communications should be about issues employees experience in the work environment, and what the employer is doing to help. It can’t be all about management’s view of the world.

QSM: What internal communication trends do you see emerging in the coming year (or two)?

Barry: Really hard to say, but I would hope that the immensely more difficult job of maintaining employee commitment in these hard times, when work-force and perhaps pay reductions may be unavoidable, might drive our more resourceful colleagues toward more empathetic, less management-centric forms of communication. The rise of social media clearly offers that potential, as overall communication becomes more multi-directional and democratic. But without an underlying philosophy that management doesn’t have all the answers, that employee views matter greatly, even on issues not perceived from the top as central to the strategic agenda (but which could be disrupting efficiency and sapping worker vitality) — without this more humble institutional mindset, the mere implementation of new communication toys won’t do much good.

QSM: What advice do you have for smaller organizations who don’t have anyone formally responsible for employee communications?

Barry: Such an organization these days is almost surely one with a small enough work force that a high level of personal contact by the top leaders is either happening or at least possible. I’d advise those leaders, and the HR or administrative staff who support them, to remember that you lead people mainly by their feelings. And those feelings won’t run in your favor unless you show your people, often and sometimes very deliberately — going out of your way if necessary — that you genuinely care about them. There’s no more powerful communication, or one more likely to be repaid, than an act or expression of love. You don’t need a communication degree to send that message. But you do need to really feel it.

QSM: This is great advice for every manager and business communicator. Thank you, Barry!

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

The Sweet Sound of Brand Love

I just attended my first brand “love-in” experience thanks to my husband, a member of the Martin Owners Club – a special group of Martin Guitar aficionados.

The first official gathering of the Martin Owners Club was held recently in Nazareth, PA, site of the company’s home base, factory, and new Martin Guitar Museum & Visitors Center. The day’s events included factory tours guided by employees, museum tours, re-stringing of club members’ guitars by Martin technicians, a special address by C.F. Martin IV (company CEO), music performances, and lots of food and brand mementos.

Brand Passion Inside & Out

More than 500 members & their guests, from 40 U.S. states and six countries, came to the one-day event.  According to Steve Carletti, VP of Sales & Marketing, the Martin Owners Club started just three years ago and has grown to approx. 3200 members. Members pay an annual fee to belong to the club – reflecting their devotion to this incredible brand.

Equally impressive is the employee passion & pride for the brand that I witnessed during the factory tour and throughout the event. Martin & Co. has a dedicated workforce with low turnover. And those employees who don’t play guitar are proud to say that they own one or two (or more) Martin Guitars.

I highly recommend a visit to Martin & Co. The exquisite craftsmanship that goes into the making of these guitars in incredible. Yes, some of the process is automated, but the actual assembly of the guitars is done by hand. (Upon first entering the factory for your guided tour, you’re greeted by the scent of fresh cut wood.)

In full disclosure, my husband is involved with Discover Lehigh Valley (of which Martin & Co. is a member), and he’s the proud owner of several Martin guitars. But that’s not the only reason I encourage you to check out the place.

The Martin Guitar Museum & Visitors Center is a great place to visit, and admission is free. It’s also a great place where you can feel and understand the depth of brand loyalty and love.

What an incredibly sweet sound.