HeartWhen it comes to their employees, most companies demonstrate “LOVE” or rather, “Levels of Varying Engagement.”  What they should be focused on is “HEART” or,” Helping Employees Achieve Results – Together.”

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  Some companies marked the occasion with heart-shaped cookies or donuts, some distributed chocolate, and others placed a single red rose on each person’s desk. While it’s nice to inject some fun into the normal routine, the result of these actions was most likely “LOVE.”  Some employees would have appreciated the gesture, others would curse you for reminding them that they are single, and yet others would have been indifferent and preferred you used your budget to provide a more lasting perk or benefit.

How can companies show more “HEART”?

Exercise is required. Not physical exercise; mental training. There has to be a change in mindset. Your employees must become your main focus.

“Without your employees, you cannot provide customer experience. If employees are not engaged and satisfied, they cannot provide a “WoW” customer experience. And if customers are not satisfied and served well they will not keep coming back; it impacts the bottom-line, employees will not have a job (or the resources will not exist to serve them best).

So, if you want to be prosperous and build a sustainable business, you have to put your employee’s experience first.”1

“There is a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance.”2

 

Where should you start?  

The biggest impact you can have is to focus on your direct managers. “Gallup estimates that the manager accounts for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units.”3

 

What do you need to do?

  1. Put the right people in management roles.

Most companies promote from with and assume that a superior individual performer will make a good manager. The result?  “Gallup’s research shows that about one in 10 people possess high talent to manage. Though many people have some of the necessary traits, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve the kind of excellence that significantly improves a company’s performance.”4

Google has identified the 8 Habits Of Highly Effective Google Managers5 You can use these habits as a guide or do research with your own high-performing managers to identify those “good habits” your company.

  1. Ongoing training for managers, access to resources, coaching, etc.

“In order for managers to effectively lead, coach, and nurture their employees, they must be nurtured themselves.” “Coaching and training are not just about learning and sharpening skills, they’re about empowering staff to excel in each and every position, to collaborate effectively as a team, and to effect positive change in the workplace.”6

  1. Build a Community of Managers

Bring all your managers together periodically and provide communications channels that allow them to share experiences and best practices, ask questions, collaborate, and build relationships with other managers.

 

As was said earlier, this requires work if you want to reorient your focus from customers to employees.  It’s about moving from “LOVE: Levels of Varying Engagement” to “HEART: Helping Employees Achieve Results – Together.” The potential for improving your employee experience is something at which you should be “GREAT: Get Really Excited About Today.”7

 

 

What are your thoughts on bringing more “HEART” into your organization?  Where would you start?

 

 

1 Rao, Vidya Priya. “Employee experience or Customer Experience: Which comes first?” People Matters, People Matters Media Pvt. Ltd., 3 Mar. 2017, www.peoplematters.in/article/employee-relations/employee-experience-or-customer-experience-which-comes-first-15045?utm_source=peoplematters&utm_medium=interstitial&utm_campaign=learnings-of-the-day.
2 Clapon, Paula. “Align The Employee Experience To The Customer Experience Standard.” Hppy, Hppy, 7 Oct. 2017, sumo.ly/H9gv.
3 Harter, Jim, and Brandon Rigoni. State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders. Rep. Washington, DC: Gallup, 2015. Print.
4 Adkins, Amy. “Only One in 10 People Possess the Talent to Manage.” Gallup.com. Gallup, Inc., 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2015. <http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/182378/one-people-possess-talent-manage.aspx>.
5 Blodget, Henry. “8 Habits Of Highly Effective Google Managers.” Business Insider, Business Insider, Inc., 20 Mar. 2011, www.businessinsider.com/8-habits-of-highly-effective-google-managers-2011-3.
6 “HOW MANAGER DEVELOPMENT & TRAINING BENEFITS YOUR BUSINESS.” CSP, CSP, LLC , www.csp.com/manager-development-training-benefits.
7 “Acronym Generator from Letters.” Acronymgenerator.net, Paul O’Donovan, www.acronymgenerator.net/.

 

 

 

Let’s Engage! 

I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

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P.S.  First contact? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement community. Explore and join fellow employee engagement operatives in targeting a known thief – alias: Disengagement. Together we can bring this thief to justice and make the world a better place for all companies and their employees.

Other recent Agent in Engagement data/reports by Agent Gregory F Simpson: