A review of current business articles highlighted a number of tweets, posts, and media articles over recent days and weeks that focus on employee engagement.
This comes on the back of the media hype over the increase in online consumer sales, with Australian retailers being told to lift their game and pass savings onto consumers and to actively compete with online offerings.
The Human Resource Magazine recently noted that an “overwhelming 82 per cent of workers in Australia feel disengaged or disconnected at work” and that this “is costing Australian businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity”. And even LeasePlan Australia, one of the country’s leading vehicle leasing companies, noted in its latest “Roundtable” newsletter that worker disengagement amounts to a “global epidemic” and challenges its workers to become more engaged in service delivery.
These comments appear to be based on the results of a recent Gallup survey. Through its research over recent years, Gallup have developed a series of employee engagement indicators, linked to financial performance, to benchmark and grow employee engagement.
The challenge is to ensure that employees are engaged with the business goals and strategies to a point where everything that they do positively contributes to successful customer outcomes. To implement employee engagement requires leadership from top management, effective communication and effective deployment of resources.
This article on the Sydney Morning Herald site questions whether managers really know what motivates their employees and suggests that employers need to treat their staff as their number one customer. It also quotes presenter and author, Ian Hutchinson as saying that “employees don’t leave organisations, they leave leaders”.
In the book “Employees First, Customers Second”, Vineet Nayar (2010) (https://www.vineetnayar.com/) narrates the journey he took in turning around HCLT by increasing transparency across the company to engage employees and empower them to be the catalysts for change and to create value for customers, the company and ultimately themselves.
All of this points to a tangible disconnect between staff motivation and company strategy. How can staff deliver consistent, quality service if they are not motivated and have not committed to the company strategy? For effective employee engagement, a key question to ask is whether management teams are failing in defining and communicating the company direction to their staff, or whether the wrong staff have been deployed within the company.
How does your company rate in the employee engagement stakes?
Is a lack of employee engagement impacting your workplace?
What’s required to improve employee engagement?
Please share here, or leave a comment below –
Great slideshare presentation by Andy Hanselman as a follow-up to his blog entry late last year …
As managers, when you are head-down, working in the business, day in, day out, it’s hard to step back and evaluate what’s needed to improve the performance of the business. It’s also easy to take the view that because you know your business better than anyone else, that you are also the best person to evaluate what’s best for your business.
I refer to this as “renovation blinker syndrome”. Business owners and management teams often look at their business the same way and with the same bias as someone looking at their own house renovation project. You know what looks and works best, and where and in what order, to satisfy that mindset you’ve cultivated over many years. You may have tried different colour schemes, furniture layouts, etc. Often there are perfectly valid and practical reasons why one layout works better than another. But it takes a certain amount of daring, evaluation, expertise and external influence to achieve the best solution. What we think might work in our mind’s eye is limited by the blinkers we wear.
Think about all those specialty trades people who you work with on a renovation. They review your ideas, advise you of options, massage you ideas, maybe even enhance them, then turn them into reality. Although some of us may try, we don’t tell them how to do their job, instead we seek their advice and discuss the options. For most of us we just want the job done, but leaning on the expertise and resources of specialists and working with them to understand what’s involved and any potential implications, will typically lead us to a better solution and a much greater appreciation of the end result.
When it comes to thinking about improvements and changes within the business, it’s not so different. We may have an idea about a change or improvement, but we don’t always have the the time or the experience or resources to take a step back and impartially evaluate the best options and implement a solution. It’s easy to underestimate the inertia and conservatism that can exist within a company. Specific changes may have been tried before and failed. So why should you even consider those changes again?
I often meet with companies that have a perception that there’s a need for improvement of a specific KPI or business process. Something in their business is not working and needs to change. But often they have a blinkered approach as to what specific change is required and how it needs to be implemented. That’s not to say that it’s all bad, given that the first step towards change is in recognising the need exists in the first place.
Business consultants are specialists whose assets are the depth of our experience and the number of specialty tools in our toolkits. We have the capacity to see beyond what you’ve always seen, using a fresh set of eyes with an independent, outside perspective.
A good renovation adds value, often improving the functionality of specific areas and the capacity for all areas to work well together. It does take time. It also takes effort and commitment. But we also recognise that it’s worth some short term pain to achieve a better outcome.
This year, while you may be spending time renovating your house, how about renovating your business?
If you are not sure where to start, contact us today.
What are you biggest challenges in business improvement? Leave your comments below.
Sessions are filling fast for Customer Experience Professional Training announced for February in Sydney.? Additional sessions have also been scheduled for April.
Details are available on the BP Group website HERE.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Business owners, entrepreneurs, senior executives and strategists, sales and marketing managers, program managers, customer contact managers and staff, customer experience owners, customer service managers and staff, members of customer experience design teams, front-line managers and personnel and everyone else with a responsibility to customers and a stake in getting the most out of understanding and improving customer experience.
This training is very hands-on and highly practical, and arms you with strategies that can be implemented immediately by all who attend.
I highly recommend this training.
If you missed out on the training last year, make sure that you don’t miss out again this year! This is the most pragmatic and immediately accessible approach that I’ve found to reduce costs, increase revenue and improve customer service.
The BP Group have just announced that they are now taking bookings for their Certified Process Professional training and has scheduled sessions for the end of January through until mid-March and in the following cities:
Looking for BPM training in Sydney, Adelaide or Hobart? Or maybe in-house training would be preferable? Either leave a comment below or email us directly via our contact form (here) and we will advise you of possible options.
The BP Group is offering discounts to members of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and the Australian Business Analysis Association (ABAA).
The programme is based around REAL case studies and draws on the world leading best practice of organisations such as Disney, BestBuy, FedEx, Virgin, SouthWest, Gilead Sciences, Emirates and many more. The result is one of the most up-to-date, thorough, and informed courses in business today.
I highly recommend it.
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As the year draws rapidly to a close, company executives and C-level managers are already looking ahead to the new year and its many challenges and opportunities. It’s in the back of their mind as they go about preparing for the festive season. Even though they are winding down for the year, they are (often acutely) aware of the work ahead and the need to hit the ground running once January comes around.
How is the company going to perform in the 6 months from January to June?
Is the strategy of the past 6 months still relevant?
Is revenue going to be up or down on the previous 6 months?
How can the company reduce costs, improve revenue and increase customer satisfaction?
Is it even possible to achieve all three?
Now is the time to be creating a plan. A plan that will lift company performance. A plan that will identify changes and activities that can be implemented immediately and bring about significant benefits.
If you don’t have a plan to improve, can you REALLY expect that the next 6 months are going to be any different to the past 6 months?
If your market place is changing faster than your company can keep up with, then your company ultimately will lose. But if you establish a strategic plan that includes your customers and includes actions that are targeted at improving your company’s performance, then you are quite likely to be ahead of your competition.
If you don’t have a plan, how do you know where you are heading? And if you don’t know where you are heading, how will you know when you get there?
What plans do you have for your company NOW?
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