Tag: employee engagement

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Engagement

People, Purpose and a Positive Brand

Much has been written the past few weeks about Greg Smith and his public reasons for disengaging from Goldman Sachs – with a lot of the discussion centered on the importance of corporate culture.

Employees don’t work in a vacuum. For better or worse, they’re greatly impacted by “the way things are done around here” and what actions get rewarded and reinforced; i.e., behaviors that reflect a company’s culture and values.

Sure, a company needs profits to survive … but profit is only one of several components critical to sustainable success. A company also needs its employees, stakeholders, and partners associated with the enterprise to be aligned around a purpose that goes beyond pure profit. As these successful executives have learned:

“Maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible; they’re inseparable. … A brand ideal of improving people’s lives is the only sustainable way to recruit, unite and inspire all the people a business touches, from employees to customers. Without that connection, no business can truly excel.” Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble and author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies

“The companies that put profit before people are a vanishing breed. Companies big and small, with a multiple stakeholder approach to business, the ones that value their employees and customers as much as shareholders, are realizing that the financials only get better. If you want to make more money, focus on your people first. It’s not only the right thing to do. It’s good for business.” Paul Spiegelman, founder and CEO of the The Beryl Companies, in his article “Attention Goldman Sachs: Time to Buckle Down and Focus on Culture”

“Over time, as we focused more and more on our culture, we ultimately came to the realization that a company’s culture and a company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company’s culture.” Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

The bottom line: Focusing on people and purpose creates a strong culture and positive brand that helps drive profits.

Categories
Engagement

Employee Engagement is Looking Up


Above the bottom line by David Zinger

“Dwelling above the bottom line
our contributions
our meaning
our routines
our relationships
our passions
our connections
our fears
our irritations
our time
our lives.
Business is looking up.
It doesn’t all come down to the bottom line.”

From what perspective does your organization view the bottom line?

[Source: Assorted Zingers  by David Zinger, with great cartoons by John Junson.]

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
Customer service Engagement

It’s the Employee Experience, Stupid!

Customers have lots of choices these days. It’s one of the reasons the “customer experience” has become a critical differentiator – treat customers right if you want to keep them coming back.

Employees also have choices. While the current economy doesn’t offer as many opportunities for employees to switch jobs as customers have to switch companies, employees can choose their level of on-the-job engagement.

How much longer can they continue like this?

While companies may think they have the upper hand over their employees because of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, they’re ignoring the reality that the customer experience begins with the employee experience.

Consider employees who have taken pay-cuts, given back benefits, or haven’t had salary increases for the past several years. Yes, many organizations have had to cut back to stay viable and learn to “work smarter, not harder.” But some employees have reached the point where they’ve gone from “doing more with less” to now being expected to “do everything with nothing.” No wonder employee frustration is considered the “enemy of engagement.”

What’s a company to do?

Talk with employees before they reach the breaking point, not after. Find ways to respectfully (rather than gratuitously) engage them in the process of coming up with ways to keep business going; i.e., let them take some ownership of the situation and possible solution(s). Then recognize and reward their participation.

Remember, customer relations “mirror” employee relations – the way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers!

Categories
Engagement

Beyond Employee Appreciation Day

This Friday, March 2nd, is Employee Appreciation Day.

I’ve written about honoring this holiday before with the message that “recognizing and affirming employee value is critical to creating and sustaining employee engagement” – and this reinforcement is needed more than once a year.

We all want and need validation – to know that our work matters … to know that we matter. According to noted psychiatrist and author Dr. Barrie S. Grieff:

“No one dies just from working too hard. But when people don’t get any recognition in their work, the stress of that lack of control can kill them.”

For ideas on expressing employee appreciation, here are great resources:

Categories
Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Do You Love Your Work?

I was energized after teaching AMA’s Nonprofit Marketing Bootcamp in Atlanta several weeks ago. The wonderful professionals I met who work in nonprofits and organizations that serve nonprofits truly love their work – even with all the challenges they face on a regular basis, such as dealing with limited resources, silo’d communications, internal politics, and “what-were-they-thinking?!” decisions. A woman who works in a social services agency shared her frustration in striving to meet community needs when grant funding didn’t arrive until nearly a year after it was promised. “I must be crazy,” she said, “but I love my work!”

It’s true that most nonprofit professionals are passionate about their respective organizations’ mission. It’s also true that sometimes even passion for the mission isn’t enough to keep them engaged. But as long as they continue to love what they do, without falling victim to burnout, they’ll stay committed.

In the course of my work in internal marketing, I’ve been fortunate to meet people who are dedicated to their work in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. They are positive, yet realistic in that they are not immune to becoming  discouraged every now and then. Face it – we all have those days that make us question our sanity. But do you love what you do enough to get back on track?

Do you love your work?

Note: If you missed the program in Atlanta, I’ll be conducting another AMA Nonprofit Marketing Bootcamp in Houston next month.

Photo credit: elycefeliz’s photostream

Categories
Engagement

National Fun at Work Day

January 28th is National Fun at Work Day, seriously!

How/if you celebrate this “holiday” depends on your organization and its culture. Not everyone is fortunate to work in a company like Zappos, whose core values include “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.”  Zappos knows a fun workplace can be an engaging one.

“Humor is a delightful and powerful way to open doors, minds, and hearts. Isn’t that what we and our organizations should be doing?” according to Joel Goodman. Founder of The Humor Project. Humor in the workplace is a great de-stressor and can help open communication within an organization. (For more benefits of workplace humor, check out Joel’s article “Taking Humor Seriously”.)

Have your heard this one?

In his recent post about using humor to enhance group effectiveness, Steve Davis wrote:

“When all else fails, lighten up. Injecting a little humor may be all that’s needed to lift a group out of a rut when they get stuck, help put them at ease in times of stress, make bad news easier to accept, or introduce a sensitive subject.”

Steve also shared this story about how a telecom company introduced a price increase to its employees:

“A frequent hostile question from the audience was, ‘Why are long-distance rates going up?’ One speaker gave this reply: ‘It’s sort of a good news-bad news situation. It’s true that long-distance rates are going up—that’s the bad news. The good news is the continents are drifting closer together.’”

How to have fun at work 

For ideas, here are a few resources to get you started that I found online:

“25 Ideas for Building Fun into Your Work Setting” by Dr. Paul McGhee

Employee Morale News

301 Ways to Have Fun at Work by Dave Hemsath & Leslie Yerkes

Is your workplace fun?

What makes it fun? I welcome your examples …

P.S. If for some reason you miss “National Fun Day at Work” this month, there’s always “International Fun Day at Work” that’s celebrated April 1st. And don’t forget “Recess at Work Day” on June 21, 2012!

Categories
Engagement

Employee Engagement Limbo: How Low Will They Go?

Why do so many organizations claim to embrace employee engagement, yet stop short of actually doing anything about it?

In organizations where employee engagement garners more lip service than action, employees find themselves doing a workplace limbo dance. They get under management’s limbo stick by doing the minimum to appear engaged without breaking their backs. At the same time, they may be craning their necks to see what other jobs are available in the market. It’s a difficult balancing act.

Employee engagement author and consultant Leigh Branham explains:

“The main reason most CEOs don’t aggressively tackle the employee disengagement issue … is that it appears ‘soft’ and overwhelmingly difficult (soft = hard) to do so. After all, in many cases it would mean a complete overhauling of the culture. Most CEOs, especially in public companies, would much rather, in their board room discussions, deal with the nearer-term topic of how to increase quarterly profits. The irony is, of course, that the surest way to increase profits is to build a culture where engaged employees consistently exceed customer expectations.”

As the limbo song asks, “How low can you go?” For employees, the answer depends on their tolerance levels. Employees can bend backwards for only so long before decide to withdraw and quit the game … and the organization.

 

 

Categories
Engagement

What Do You Plan to Draw in 2012?

To start off the new year, here’s a gem I found in David Zinger’s book of poems on workplace engagement, Assorted Zingers. (Note: David’s book – with great cartoons by John Junson – is now available in both print and e-book editions.)

Napkin futures
by David Zinger

Tabling strategy.
Gel pens drawn
during fast food lunch
sparking napkin artistry.
Ink bleeds
arrows, word, and stick figures
into thin paper.
Absorbing both
strategic thinking
and mustard drips
oozing from the overflowing cheeseburger.
It is going to be a good year.

Categories
Customer service Engagement

“I’m Just Happy to Be Here …”

This was the gist of a conversation I had with Julietta, who works in food service at Mohonk Mountain House. Her “attitude of gratitude” went beyond feeling fortunate to be employed – Julietta truly loves her work.

I met Julietta during a recent visit to Mohonk. She was smiling all the while she cleaned up the area where the continental breakfast had been set up. We engaged in conversation, and it was obvious that she enjoyed working at Mohonk. “It’s like being part of a wonderful family,” she told me – a family that includes both co-workers and guests. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation.

Julietta: I love my customers, and sometimes, I listen more to my customers than my boss. I want to make my customers happy.”

Me: “If you’re customers are happy, then your boss will be happy.”

Julietta smiled: “Yes!”

And she’s not the only one who enjoys her work at Mohonk. I also met Emily, a young woman who was one of our hiking guides. She’s worked there for less than a year, but it’s a job she literally grew into. Emily explained that her family had been going to Mohonk for years, and she’d been an active participant in its kid’s club and teen program. From an early age she knew she wanted to work there and was thrilled to get hired in the recreation group. “I feel so fortunate,” she told me. “How many people get to live their dream job?” She spoke enthusiastically about her love for the place and the people.

Since my husband and I began visiting Mohonk several years ago, we met many such members of the Mohonk family, including Rudy (dining staff), Michael, Annie, and Matt (recreation), and others too numerous to mention. This was the first time I met Julieta and Emily, and they reinforced the engagement that’s part of Mohonk’s culture.

How many employees have you encountered lately who truly love their work?

[Note: For more on Mohonk’s guest service culture, see my interview with Jackie Appeldorn, Mohonk’s general manager.]