Engaging The Emerging Workforce with Eric Chester
The first step of customer engagement is to go about engaging the employees. That’s where the battle is won or lost. Often, the most critical metric in your entire business is the 18 inches that lie between the nose of the frontline employees and the customer’s nose, because if those 18 inches aren’t being won, the battle has been lost.
The emerging generation is not exclusively an American situation, an American problem, or even a generational problem. This is a generation that’s influencing people in all kinds of jobs, no matter where they are found, with this new mindset and mentality that says, “What can you do for me?” This mindset has brought challenges for employers in every sector and in every industry all over the globe.
Industry Trends
Bucking the Negative Trends of Engaging the Workforce
The advent of the Internet has brought a reliance on technology to find frontline customer service people, whether they are in a call center or a retail establishment. Most often, companies and organizations think that by getting more and more people in, something will stick, as opposed to bringing the right kind of people into the company. Another trend is that many companies and organizations rely on free services like Craigslist, used to sell used toilets, refrigerators, and services like cleaning gutters. But that’s not where you find quality customer service professionals, and it cannot fill your most critical roles with good, fresh talent...
Positive Trends of Engaging the Workforce
More and more organizations are finding ways to include soft skill assessments in their hiring philosophy, because they want to find out if potential employees share the organization’s values and have the work ethic and engaging character needed in their company. Great leadership and cntinuous training can help employees learn important skills, but you can’t teach someone values like respect and integrity. Core employee values in alignment with the organization make for a great workplace.
Industry Myths
One myth is that the emerging generation is not engaging because they have no work ethic, they're lazy, and they're entitled. That’s simply not true. The new emerging generation is different, in the sense that it is not a miniature version of the previous generation’s workforce. It has been value programmed very differently but wants what everyone else wants. The issue that has the employer scratching his or her head is how the new emerging generation will acquire what it wants and needs. Most people coming into a job feel lucky to have a job. The manager may have put his or her arm around that person’s shoulder, walked him around the premises and told him, “Someday, all this will be yours, if you kept your nose to the grindstone and do what I [the boss] tell you to do.” The problem is that the emerging generation has seen parents, grandparents, uncles and friends become outsourced, downsized and right-sized by the very companies they sacrificed their careers to build. There is more of a free agent mentality and more skepticism, as well as a preference for clear role definition. And there are no vague promises.
Industry Mistakes
The old school mentality can be summarized as, “I’m the boss, and when I say jump, you say ‘how high.’” Believe it or not, many people in leadership roles in all kinds of companies, organizations and industries still believe this. And what do they do? They churn and burn. They keep hiring and firing people, looking for a younger version of themselves; and those people just don’t exist anymore. In the 1950s, Bob Nopps was 22 years old and went to work for a company called the Minnesota Twin Wire Company in Egan, Minnesota. He worked there for 69 years doing nothing but winding wire. In 2009, he retired at the age of 81 and had never missed a day of work, never been late, never called in sick, and he took all the overtime that was available. Bob Nopps never asked for a raise and never went on strike. On April 23, 2009, Bob Nopps punched out for the last time, having never missed a single day of work. The Bob Nopps mentality is gone. You just can’t find those people anymore, because they simply don’t exist.
Another mistake is that many companies believe that training is a period. People are either going to be in training or finished with training. That’s a mistake, because if people working for you today are not learning something new, they are on their way out. So the best companies, the best leaders, and the best organizations are continually training people. The Container Store is a great example for this engaging strategy. Every employee at the Container Store receives at least 50 hours of training every single year. That includes retail employees as well as people in management. Great importance is placed on training, because you and they become of greater value to each other and also to the marketplace.
Best Practices
Apple is a well-known company with a little known best practice. In an Apple retail store, every single employee gets a standing ovation on their first day and their last day of work. Most customer service oriented companies believe the focus should always be on the customer, and yet, Apple believes that engaging the workforce is more important. They encourage their employees to stop in the middle of a shift to pay tribute to employees who’ve provided service. It’s completely countercultural. The lesson here is to focus on your people and how you can make the workplace a cooler environment to work in, and people will instinctively want to work harder, perform better, and stay longer.
Canada's WestJet, an employee owned airline, is another company that practices best practices. CEO Gregg Saretsky once said, “We compete on culture.” Some years ago, the company wanted to introduce a low-cost airline, and rather than say, “Here’s what we’ve decided behind closed doors, we’re going to roll it out and hope the employees can deal with it,” they brought it to the employees and allowed them to vote on it. The employees then came back with their concerns and management acted on what the employees wanted, as opposed to what everybody outside the organization wanted. They listened to their employees, and that is a best practice strategy. When you take care of your people, your people will take care of your customers.
The Blueprint for Engaging the Workforce
The Core Values Employers Want
The core values can be best represented in a sentence: Employers want a positive, enthusiastic person who will show up on time, look, dress and conduct himself in a professional manner; who will go above and beyond the call of duty; who will respect their rules and their culture; that they can trust, and has a feeling of appreciation in their heart. All of these values are non-negotiable. The seven words that best describe an employer’s expectations for his employees are:
- Positivity. Employers want positive people; everyone enjoys working with colleagues who have a positive mental attitude.
- Reliability. Punctuality is important in every organization.
- Professionalism. Employers want employees who can separate their professional and personal life.
- Initiative. Valuable employees don’t limit themselves to the minimum daily requirement; they take the initiative to go above and beyond what is asked of them.
- Respect. Respect plays a big role, because you want employees who will respect the rules, culture and authority of the organization, whether or not the employee likes that person.
- Integrity. All employers want people who are trustworthy and honorable.
- Gratitude. Employees who have gratitude in their hearts make a big difference in an organization’s culture. Even if they are having a bad day, their gratefulness will overflow into their interactions with internal and external customers.
Keep in mind that all seven core values are nonnegotiable.
The Core Values Employees Want
If you really want to motivate your people and develop a culture, you must find out what your employees want from you. The next seven core values are just as non-negotiable as those that employers want from their employees. By knowing what the employees want from their employer, they will be better equipped to motivate their people and develop a healthy culture.
- Compensation. No one wants to work for free, everyone wants compensation; this encompasses job perks, benefits, the work-life balance, and the set figure people have in mind.
- Alignment. Everyone wants to work with companies and organizations that are in alignment with their own personal values; no one wants to work for a company that wrecks havoc on the environment or takes advantage of somebody if it’s not in alignment with what their personal values.
- Atmosphere. Employees want an atmosphere they enjoy, that they feel safe in and where their backs are protected and management gives them the tools and resources they need to do their job; an atmosphere with elements of fun, cohesiveness and enjoyment working with colleagues.
- Growth. Nobody wants to do the same mundane task day in and day out for an extended period of time; employees want an opportunity to grow themselves and their career.
- Autonomy. No one enjoys having someone looking over their shoulder or breathing down their neck; employees need leadership but also want autonomy to make their own decisions, a great value to develop a great workplace culture.
- Acknowledgment. Everyone appreciates being acknowledged for a job well done; managers are very good at pointing out mistakes, like showing up late, missing a deadline or incorrectly handling a transaction correctly, but this doesn’t encourage employees to perform better.
- Communication. Communication is critical in a company, and no one wants to operate in a vacuum or a silo; employees want to know what direction the company is heading towards, so do what WestJet did and include your employees’ opinions instead of doing everything behind closed doors.
Case study
Ben & Jerry's is an iconic brand that makes the greatest ice cream in the world, bar none. Its founders are two guys who were hippies and part of the Woodstock movement. The company’s culture has never changed much over time. Headquartered in Vermont, it is very iconic, in terms of the products it produces, but what sets it apart is it is a values driven company. It’s not about making a profit but about making a difference, making an impact, and doing things it believes are right, like not using GMOs in any of its ice cream. It also doesn’t settle for the cheapest provider. It wants to make sure that the sugar that goes into its ice cream is produced and grown by environmentally responsible farmers who take care of their people and produce the product in environmentally sustainable ways. Ben & Jerry's even sends a team of people to investigate the farmers before it decides to purchase the sugar, milk, and various other ingredients needed for its ice cream. This does make the ice cream cost a little bit more, but the result is worth it. Not everyone may agree with its values, but Ben & Jerry’s is very true to the values it holds dear and in sharing those values with the community.
Physical Action Step
Continuing with Ben & Jerry’s as an example, it tries to recruit its customers coming into their stores, who have conversations with them and have the same values. Only then do they extend the possibility of working at Ben & Jerry’s. They want to find the right person for the right job, because it isn’t enough to be able to scoop ice cream, put it on a cone, and operate a POS system. The employees also need to be engaging.
STOP is a physical action step that organizations can do: Stop doing those things that work against the organization. What are some things that irritate or disengage employees? If the answer to that question is unknown, then ask employees specific questions: “What would an employee do differently if he were running the company? What would make this a better job for the employees?” Then once those answers are gathered and analyzed, stop the practices that alienate people and drive them away. Changes that employers want to make in their employees must first be embodied in the employers themselves. They have the ability to make an employee’s job better today than it was yesterday.
Another strategy is to survey employees. Many organizations take time to gather feedback from their customers, but rarely do they take the time and effort to find out their employees’ opinions. Also look at hiring practices. Organizations should seek to bring in the best talent possible, and it’s imperative that they hire people whose values align with company values. One way to learn more about a prospect’s core values is to present scenarios that evoke answers that reflect their personal values.
Last Word
Rethink
A word to summarize everything is Rethink. Telling someone what to do doesn’t work anymore, and expecting someone to enjoy coming to work, do mundane tasks, receive a small compensation for work rendered, endure a lackluster atmosphere and expect minimal growth possibilities is impossible. Rethink and make the company a better place to work. Rethink.
Connection is the foundation for customer love, and when an organization possesses that connection and their customers feel loved, they will tell everyone about it.
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