Whilst browsing in a large furniture store recently (you know, the kind that has been advertising final reductions since the dawn of time, and who will continue to do so until long after we’ve all taken our last breaths), I overheard two female employees discussing their manager. They were having a lengthy moan about the fact that the manager had asked them to work over the Easter break with only the standard remuneration. In their view, their boss was ‘off sunning himself in the Caribbean’, after having cancelled their Easter employee lunch, as he had to go shopping for ‘holiday clothes’. Their manager may well have deserved a holiday in the Caribbean, but evidently his staff were disenchanted and felt very hard done by; so much so that, rather than attend to the customers on the shop floor, they preferred to moan and complain about their work situation in public.
Whilst I really liked the look of the leather two-seater on offer, I left the store with a negative view of the business.
It’s a competitive world for businesses at the moment, whether you’re a furniture store or a service-related business. The market place for every type of business changes weekly in our technology-drenched, social media-driven, time-poor decade. Small business owners and large corporate clients now have to think more about how they survive in a crowded market place in which everyone is vying for attention, and how they preserve the longevity of their brand.
Whilst many companies, especially the big corporates, spend millions on glossy brochures, websites and clever marketing paraphernalia (like handheld fans and light-up pens) often the most important element of any business is overlooked; it’s the people, NOT the product, that can have the greatest impact on your company image.
Great marketing, fancy branding and a good level of funding help to build the perception of your business, sure, however, it is the people within the organisation who are actually the heart and soul of your business: they have the power to turn your investment into a profit or loss because they are the first line of interaction with the customer. There is a proven correlation between employee engagement and positive business outcomes, like talent retention, customer satisfaction and innovation, but despite this, few businesses are successful in making their employees feel as important as their customers.
Traditionally, business owners use conventional tools to gauge their employees’ attitudes, but they are limited in the type of data they can analyse and they certainly don’t measure sentiment – thus they are only telling part of the story.
As the market becomes even more competitive and the cost of doing business escalates, retaining happy, empowered employees is a priority for you, I’m sure. Capturing the intelligence contained in employee feedback can make all the difference in maintaining a positive and productive workforce. The reality is that it can improve customer experience significantly – surely reason enough for making intelligent employee engagement a top priority for your business? We all know that how we are perceived is very much to do with what we are thinking; after all, what’s going on in our head often leaks out through our attitude, body language and behaviours. Therefore, it stands to reason that the happier and more valued your employees feel, the more positive they are in your business and as a result, your customers feel the same about doing business with you.
So, why should you care about employee engagement?
Given the enormous effort and expense that goes into hiring, training and replacing employees, retention is critical to ensure a company’s future – that’s where employee engagement comes into play.
Employee engagement programmes accomplish four things:
They increase motivation: When employees feel that they have a voice and their opinions are heard, they are motivated to work harder.
They increase productivity: Engaged employees experience a greater sense of well-being, which comes from believing that they are making a difference.
They increase retention: Studies show that one of the top reasons employees search for a new job is because they feel overlooked and underappreciated: it’s not all about money!
They improve the bottom line: Higher levels of engagement are correlated with higher levels of market performance in the areas of revenue growth, market share, profitability and customer satisfaction.
How different my experience could have been, not to mention my bank balance (!), if I had been approached by a happy, smiling and motivated employee who had noticed me hovering over that leather two-seater on offer…
