Tag: internal marketing

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Engagement Marketing

The Power of Employee Gatherings

As mentioned in my last post, Chiumento’s research found positive work relationships and effective internal communication are critical to employee satisfaction & happiness at work.

Chiumento cites the following tips to encourage good working relationships:

  • Foster inter-departmental communication and working, giving employees opportunities to share ideas & experiences
  • Encourage face-to-face communication where appropriate, so that colleagues have more worthwhile discussions than e-mail alone allows
  • Ensure no staff member is working in isolation but feels supported and involved in business.

I find these tips (taken from a longer list) most relevant because I’ve seen firsthand their powerful impact. Two of my clients recently hosted special gatherings to bring together their sales reps: one was a statewide meeting, the other a national meeting. (One group was primarily female, the other group male; ages varied in both groups.)

Here’s a representative sample of their comments from the session evaluations:

  • Excellent opportunity to exchange ideas. We’re all in the same boat with common goals.
  • Beneficial in hearing and learning how team members approach new business & make contacts, etc.
  • This is helpful to prioritize my thoughts. It is always helpful to hear it again from different people.
  • It really charged us up & got the idea stream flowing.

Yes, these types of events are labor-intensive and incur travel costs, especially compared with lower-cost alternatives of webinars and teleconferences. But a well planned face-to-face employee gathering is a worthwhile investment in stimulating and sharing ideas, problem-solving approaches and renewed focus through stronger internal networks.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Happiness at Work

I’ve written before about research supporting the importance of employee satisfaction and happiness. I just came across more recent research conducted in the United Kingdom by Chiumento on Happiness at Work. (You can e-mail Chiumento for a copy of the report.)

Here are the top ten factors (ranked in order) that impact employee happiness. Note: while these findings are similar to previous research here in the U.S., they may not be applicable in other countries.

What Makes Us Happy at Work

  • Friendly, supportive colleagues
  • Enjoyable work
  • Good boss or line manager
  • Good work-life balance
  • Varied work
  • Belief that we’re doing something worthwhile
  • Feeling that what we do makes a difference
  • Being part of a successful team
  • Recognition for our achievements
  • Competitive salary.

What Makes Us Unhappy at Work

  • Lack of communication from the top
  • Uncompetitive salary
  • No recognition for achievements
  • Poor boss/line manager
  • Little personal development
  • Ideas being ignored
  • Lack of opportunity for good performers
  • Lack of benefits
  • Work not enjoyable
  • Not feeling that what I do makes a difference.

These factors also relate to employee engagement – measured in the research by how much employees care about their organization’s success and how much they feel they personally contribute to this success. According to Chiumento, “If you treat your staff fairly and ensure good lines of communication you will help them feel happier which in turn encourages them to give more discretionary effort.”

More on this in my next post …

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Capitalize on This!

I found this ten year old quote recently while doing some research:

“ … human capital, above and beyond all other variables, will be the core building block for the organization of the future. Organizations of today would be wise to critically evaluate their current systems and practices for attracting, developing, and retaining human capital.”

It’s from “Human Capital in the Digital Economy,” written by Anthony F. Smith and Tim Kelly for The Organization of the Future, published by the Drucker Foundation in 1997.

I’m sure it’s not the first time a statement like this has been written, and it probably won’t be the last. Nevertheless, after all the changes we’ve seen in the past ten years, the message is as relevant as ever.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Talk About Employee Satisfaction

You’ve heard the cliche,”talk is cheap,” but it’s invaluable when it comes to employee communication and satisfaction.

Check out Melcrum’s recent Hub newsletter about a survey by British HR firm Chiumento that found employee satisfaction is more influenced by good internal communications & work relationships than compensation.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

National Employee’s Day (Did you miss it, too?)

Did you know March 12th was National Employee’s Day?

It was a surprise to me (especially given my internal marketing, “employees-first” approach). I just learned about it recently (more on that later), and found very little on the web when I researched it. Although I did discover links to National Employee Health & Fitness Day, National Employee Benefits Day, and the National Association for Employee Recognition blog.

When I asked around, I heard some interesting reactions ranging from “I thought that’s what Labor Day is all about” to “Everyday is Employees’ Day – they get paid to come to work, don’t they?” My question is: do employees really need a special day set aside for recognition? I hate to think that’s the only time when a company acknowledges its people.

If anyone has more info on National Employee’s Day, please let me know.

P.S. So where did I first hear about this special day? It was mentioned in the daily newsletter for staff & guests of Glenora Inn, where my husband & I stayed recently. (It’s our favorite getaway place in the beautiful Finger Lakes.) Glenora management was treating its staff in observance of National Employee’s Day, one of many employee recognition efforts they engage in. I already know first-hand the incredible service & hospitality provided by Glenora staff (sigh) … guess I’ll just have to go back to learn more about their internal marketing.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

My Book & the Perfect Title

Finally! I found a title for my internal marketing book as it nears publication.

Why the excitement? Because I’ve been wrestling with the title for quite a while. (I had the book’s concept in place long before the title.)

Any business professional who’s written a book about her/his life’s work knows the mixed blessing involved in such an endeavor. If business is good, you don’t have time to write. It’s much easier to focus on the book when business is slow, which is also when you need to spend time filling the project pipeline.

Truth is I’ve been able to balance my time between serving clients and writing the book. Much of my procrastination is due to my search for the “perfect title.” I struggled with it while minding the sage advice of several mentors:

  • don’t use “internal marketing” in the title since it’s not a universally recognized concept
  • find a clever, sexy title that will help sell the book
  • forget clever … just keep it simple so people know what the book is about.

In the meantime, I worked on developing and expanding meaningful content while trying out various “working” titles on my clients, colleagues, mentors, friends and family (with my husband’s “Just finish the damn book already!” echoing in my ear).

Here it is (drum roll) … my book on internal marketing & communications, to be released this year by WME Books is: Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care.

It captures the essence of internal marketing: taking care of employees so they can take care of customers. Both employees and customers matter to organizations, and both need attention. Employees are people, too; yet they’re sometimes treated poorly in the workplace. Ditto for consumers in the marketplace.

So I finally have a working title that I love (thanks to all who’ve put up with me as I cleared that hurdle), and my manuscript is being edited. Now what?

As I’m learning from my publisher, Yvonne DiVita, my book journey is only beginning. Stay tuned …

Categories
Engagement Marketing

A Must Read: “Firms of Endearment”

I predict a business best seller for a book that’s being released this month: Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose. It’s about how successful companies focus on ALL their stakeholders, not just shareholders. [2014 Update: This book is now in its second edition.]

Given my internal marketing bias, I’m thrilled with any book that encourages companies to pay more attention to their employees. But Firms of Endearment goes even further as it advocates appropriate attention to all of a firm’s stakeholders: its customers, employees, partners/suppliers, investors, and the community-at-large/society. I also love the examples of how these companies do this profitably in spite of Wall Street’s short-term focus.

The research process used to identify “Firms of Endearment” (FoE) was opposite of the Good to Great approach. Instead of starting with financial performance and working backwards to find common corporate practices as with “Good to Great” companies, FoE authors began by identifying companies that people love. These companies were then screened for their performance in serving each stakeholder constituency, followed by an investor analysis on the publicly-traded companies.

The book explores the answer to the question:

“How is it that these companies can be so generous to everyone who costs them money (customers, employees, suppliers, communities) and still deliver superior (some would say spectacular) returns to investors?”

I’m adding the book to my “recommended reading” list that I handout in my training workshops and, of course, my “Good Reads” blog roll.

Happy reading!

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Employees & the Customer Experience: A Question of Motivation

Here’s the last post in my series about Maritz‘s approach to the Customer Experience.

Maritz recognizes the importance of the customer experience as a critical brand differentiator: “ … companies must take a more thorough, local, meaningful, and integrated approach to managing the people who are in regular contact with their customers.”

One point I would add is it’s important to ensure the process also includes non-contact staff; i.e., don’t forget the behind-the-scenes folks and the role they play in taking care of their fellow employees (aka “internal customers”).

However, there’s one excerpt from Maritz’s white paper that I question, and I wanted to bring it to your attention. “Maritz defines ‘the customer experience management process’ as creating greater value for customers by better understanding drivers within the experience, enabling the people who touch customers to act differently, and motivating them to care.” [emphasis is mine]

There’s something about those last few words … I know we can motivate employees to deliver a good customer experience, deliver on the brand promise, etc., but can we really motivate them to care? I keep thinking of the advice from the hospitality industry: hire people for attitude (i.e., those who genuinely like working with and helping people) and train them on the skill set you need.

Maybe I’m just having an issue with semantics here. Let me know what you think.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Employees & the Customer Experience: What Companies Can Do

As promised in my last post, here are the findings of Maritz’s 2006 Customer Experience study:

  • Almost half of all customers (43%) who defect do so because of service
  • 77% of these customer blame their leaving on employee attitude
  • 83% of these customers tell someone else.

Maritz’s white paper, “Delight or Defection: The Pivotal Role of People Inside the Customer Experience,” also outlines its approach on how companies can positively impact employee behavior:

  • Better (deeper) measurement of the customer experience:
  • Localized, “grass-roots” intervention (more on this shortly)
  • Meaningful motivation
  • Integrated & aligned action.

I especially like Maritz’s combination top-down & bottom-up strategy to enabling and driving change at the local level: share research results with employees … obtain their input on improving the customer experience … and facilitate action plans based on the research & particulars of the organization at that locale. According to Maritz, “Co-development of learning and action plans with front-line staff generates relevancy, greater participation, and employee buy-in.”

More on Maritz’s approach in my next post …

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Shhh! Check out the “Quiet Manager”

It’s good to be reminded that not all great leaders are of celebrity-caliber.

That’s one of the key messages in Managing Quietly by thought leader and academic Henry Mintzberg, who is critical of the hero worship stimulated by the media for turnaround executives. According to Mintzberg:

“To ‘turn around’ is to end up facing the same way … Might not the white knight of management be the black hole of organizations?  What good is the great leader if everything collapses when he or she leaves?”

Instead, he favors the “quiet managers” who:

  • Inspire rather than empower their people by creating a culture with “conditions that foster openness and release energy” so that “empowerment is taken for granted.”
  • Care for their organizations by spending more time “preventing problems than fixing them, because they know enough to know when and how to intervene.”
  • Infuse change so that it “seeps in slowly, steadily, profoundly” instead of dramatically so “everyone takes responsibility for making sure that serious changes take hold.”

The power of listening

What I found particularly refreshing is the quiet manager’s appreciation & respect for an organization’s institutional and collective memory. Mintzberg writes:

“Show me a chief executive who ignores yesterday, who favors the new outsider over the experienced insider, the quick fix over steady progress, and I’ll show you a chief executive who is destroying an organization.”

His description calls up one of my favorite quotes from entrepreneur Andrew Filipowski:

“The insiders of an organization understand the stupidity of its traditions better than the outsiders.”

Quiet leaders are in touch with what’s going in their organizations and do not treat their people as “detachable ‘human resources.'”  A manager who respects and listens to employees?  That’s the understated mark of a true leader.