Archive for the ‘employee engagement’ Category

Smart companies during this economic downturn are using this time to engage employees in coming up with innovative ideas to set them apart from competitors when times turn good again. One of the most effective ways to be innovative is to look at the quality of service – the customer experience. And for transformational leaders this offers the opportunity to directly engage employees in change.

The key here it to examine customer satisfaction feedback and determine exactly which attributes customers value the most – for the banking sector fro instance it may well be convenience, friendly and helpful employees and ambiance of the branch.  If this is the case then the focus is on how to think outside the square and offer convenience in banking over and above what competitors do, which may not be about hours but might be about location. Similarly with friendly and helpful employees – how well do you staff understand what the customer experience is like, have they tested it as a customer?  And with regard to ambiance, are employees encouraged to become involved in design and facilities and comment on those little things that they have noticed would improve the customer experience?

It goes without saying that if you want to create a service culture you need to engage employees in the design of that culture.  So how can you do this for the least cost but highest impact? One way is to form teams across divisions and levels, communities of interest that come up with innovative suggestions for improvements. Tap into employees’ collective knowledge about the customer experience, what they have noticed, what customers have complained about to them, some of the best research is not the survey that researches customer satisfaction but the comments made to employees during their actual encounters with the organization.  If you take this information, divide it up into segments, pilot, evaluate and implement and then reward employees for their contribution you are well on the way to creating a culture focussed on service and not just focussed on turning up to work and not contributing.

An organizational culture will only change when you set up systemic practices that support the change. So you need to ensure the following is in place for to achieve optimum outcomes:

1.   That managers and team leaders have specific accountabilities in encouraging new ideas from their teams and understand the concept of communities.

2.   That a process is developed on how to decide which ideas to improve the customer experience can be implemented as a pilot.

3.   The evaluation process is determined against business results and that successful ideas ARE implemented.

4.   Employees are rewarded for those innovative ideas that customers truly value - the reward system may not be about money – it might be about dinner with the Executive team – therefore again reinforcing the culture of having access to people who make the final decisions and that innovation in customer service is valued.

5.   Finally the communication strategy needs to focus on the success of the program and continually reinforce the positive impact on the customer experience and business outcomes.

So, something to think about, how are your strategies in employee engagement and change management encouraging employees to make a positive impact on the customer experience and create a service culture?

One of the common mistakes people make when designing a change program is assuming that if a person is a team leader, supervisor or senior manager they should naturally know how to communicate face to face with their teams.  However communication skills are rarely one of the key competencies that is taught or measured by organizations.  There is however a very easy way to ensure that there is structure and content that make it very easy for managers at all levels to follow.

What is needed is structure and process and team briefing which is a formal communication cascading process via management is a tool that perfectly fits the bill. It has three levels of cascading messages:

1.    The first is the CEO who at his executive team briefings decides which topics for that week he wants communicated to employees.

2.    This is then circulated out to his direct reports who then have to communicate those issues and decide the top 5 issues for their respective divisions and then finally the top 5 issues for their teams.

3.    So the only aspect of a team brief that changes is the last section which is how what is happening in the company and our division relates to the work we are doing in our team. This is the section that always changes depending on your team in the division.

The reason this works is simple.  The only aspect a manager has to think about is what is happening in the organization that will effect his team that week or month depending on the frequency of the team briefing process.  The rest of the information is already determined by the divisional head and the CEO.  The team brief should only take around 15 minutes so it can be incorporated into a regular team meeting.  And most importantly it is constant as the CEO has his Executive team meeting dates set for the entire year and this ensures that everyone from the Executive team to the frontline know what is happening in the organization.

The key factor to the success of team briefings is that they are driven by the CEO.  Whenever your CEO talks with managers and employees he should ask whether they had in fact attended a team briefing and how regularly they occured.This way if they are not he can say to his direct reports, “I am conducting my team brief with you now so there is no excuse for you not to do the same with your team members”.

So these are the keys to making Team Briefings work.

1. Make sure that you put in place a simple process
2. Make sure that the CEO drives it and that his direct reports understand the importance to the CEO – not you. Afterall you are not their boss, he is.
3. Ensure that the topics are the type of content that management are comfortable and knowledgeable about
4. Provide a feedback loop, again this is part of the process, if there is a question that management do not know the answer to, there must be a formal easy process for them to follow to quickly obtain the answer and respond to the employee.
5. Team briefings should only take 15 minutes, they can also be incorporated into regular weekly meetings.

When it comes to cascading information in a face to face format via management remember that as with anything, there will be some topics that employees want to hear directly from the CEO and other topics they are happy to hear from their manager. Generally when it comes to significant issues such as retrenchments, closure of offices and mergers or acquisitions employees generally want to hear this from the person at the top. Day to day, week by week and month by month operational issues they are comfortable in hearing from their manager who manages their daily work.

For more information on our team briefing kit and how team briefing works visit www.teambriefingkit.com

One of the things that continues to surprise me is that when times are bad organizations still spend money on employee engagement surveys.  A general look around the office or factory and tea room discussions would make it obvious to all that wanted to see it that employees are not so much engaged as they are worried about their job security.  This leads us to two major issues to consider during tough times, the first is how leaders inspire confidence and innovation in an organization that appears to be in freeze mode.  The second is what you should measure as an indicator of employee engagement.

Let’s deal with inspiring confidence and innovation in your organization.  Well this boils down to a change management strategy that focuses on getting employees actively involved at all levels in understanding the business and how their ideas can have a positive impact.  Here’s an example of what you could do. 

1. Take real business data and share it with groups of employees at all levels that deal with customers in specific sectors. 
2. Ask employees for ideas on improving or innovating just one aspect of your service offering or product line and test in a specific market segment on a small scale, say a sales territory or state. 
3. Then after testing those ideas for a six week period ask employees to examine the business results. 
4. Take those ideas that have shown a substantial improvement in sales and implement either state wide or nationally depending on your organization. 
5. Design a reward and recognition program around the impact of these ideas on the business outcomes and start to energise your workforce. 

 It really is that simple, treat employees with respect, stop telling them what to do instead listen to what they have to say, put some rigor around the framework for ideas and reward outstanding results.  This is how innovation happens and how you can energize an organization to respond quickly to changing market conditions. 

Another key is to ensure that whatever the management strategy you implement it has specific activities and responsibilities for management. Often we forget that managers are just as concerned during tough times about their job security, but their team members are looking at them for direction and support.  So when we design change strategies ensure that there are key responsibilities and clearly defined activities for all levels of the organization.  So practically what does this mean with our example above?  Well you would design specific activities such as;

1.            Leaders would identify the real business data and share it with their teams

2.            Leaders would be responsible for selecting which ideas would be selected for testing in a specific market and they would decide which test market

3.            Leaders would obtain the business results at the end of the six week test period and organise briefings with their teams

4.            The hierarchy of managers would then decide which tests produced the best result and decide which to implement and project plan that implementation

5.            Together with human resources the management team would decide on a reward and recognition program and share it with their teams.

So what about employee engagement surveys?  I say save your organization the tens of thousands of dollars they cost and invest your time in a well thought out change management strategy like that outlined above.  This will ensure a climate where communication is open, ideas are valued and actions are implemented.  All these steps are indicative of a workforce that is focussed, has purpose and feels a greater level of confidence about the future of their organization and therefore their role because they are actively involved in designing the future, not being told what do and when to do it.  If you just change the paradigm from budget cuts, budget cuts and budget cuts to opportunities, growth and involvement your organization’s business results will be your barometer of employee engagement, no survey required.

If there is one issue that is constantly raised by clients and workshop attendees it is what to do about senior managers that continue to block your attempts to engage employees in your organization.

There are many steps you can take to ensure that management understand the value of your employee engagement strategies and why they should be supported.  Very few managers have formal training in communicating with their employees and running team meetings, maybe somewhere along the way they were taught how to communicate one on one, but to a large team, particularly communicating complex messages about change it is unlikely. 

So just handing your management team a power point presentation or a script is not going to work.  And human nature being what it is, they will avoid delivering the message you have so carefully crafted or just mumble some general information about the team and the business without focussing on the real issue.  When implementing a transformation strategy it is vital that all employees have face to face communication with some level of management.  And this may be team members with team leaders, state managers with divisional heads, executive teams with their Company President or Chief Executive Officer.  Regardless, all levels of management have to be part of the face to face change communication strategy for it to be effective.

Here are a few tips to consider when faced with this dilemma.

1.     How can you make it easier for managers to communicate? Provide a sheet of key messages, meeting outline and allow them to talk to the key points using their own natural style.

2.    Provide support – you can always volunteer someone from the communications team to be present at the meeting or have a communication champion to attend.  Their role is to take notes on any questions that are raised that can’t be answered then and there and to “fill in the gaps” should the manager fail to stay on message.

3.   Make sure that what you are asking them to communicate is clear, concise and not too long.  A 15 minute meeting is much easier to get agreement to than a 1 hour meeting.

4.  Provide each presenter with some tips on how to manage communicating and presenting to large groups – 5 key points – again don’t overwhelm them.

5.  Finally you may wish to brief the management team at their regular meeting about what is required.  It is highly unlikely that they will raise questions at the meeting so follow up with an email or phone call afterwards to ensure that they know what is required.

Most importantly, one of the key reasons management don’t communicate is because they don’t think that they are responsible for the change message, they think the communications team is.  Clarifying the difference between everyone’s role and your expectations of your management team and their responsibility in communicating change is essential at the outset so there is clarity about what is involved.  Face to face communication is uncomfortable for many people, just because someone is in a leadership position does not mean that they know what to do, they need coaching, they need simple clear messages, they need support and they need to understand how what they are requested to do fits into part of an overall change strategy.