YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF YOU DON’T ASK

Your most important task in your business is to attract and retain customers. Second most important task is to attract and retain great employees.

You need a great product or service and a great value proposition to have loyal customers. The same is true for your employees. You must have a great employee value proposition. You are never going to learn the truth about your value proposition if you don’t ask.

There are some organizations that never ask their customers or staff how the company is doing. Fear of hearing bad news will not make the bad news go away. However, it appears that many companies are just not comfortable asking the ultimate question, “How are we doing?”

The reason that we know that companies are not interested in knowing how they are doing can be found in a Gallup survey. According to Gallup around 30% of employees are engaged at work. That means that 70% are not engaged in their jobs work. What would you do if you learned that about your company?

Recently Gallup released a new survey on employee engagement. When I read the commentary, I could see that engagement is not static information but depends on company, employees, and time. There is a take away and that is that we can’t make a universal supposition of what engages people. Instead, we need to understand the diversity of our workforce which includes gender, culture and the different generations. Engagement factors are dynamic.

Now, with regard to customers, it is easier to think all is well because there are not a growing number of customer complaints. What if the customers are not coming back?

What action would you take if your employees were to give a negative answer to the statement, “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?” Meaningful work means different things to the different generations in the workplace. Consider not only generational differences but also cultural differences. Get to know your employees and what is important to them. A baby boomer’s wants and needs are different from Generation X and the Millennial Generation is different from the other two generations. The engagement solution does not involve pushing a round peg fit into a square hole but rather to match each employee to a position where he or she can be the best.

Is your organization suffering from a retention challenge? This can be costly. When you consider recruiting and training, lost customer service, lost productivity, and lost morale in others who are left, the cost is at least two times the employee’s salary.   An engaged employee becomes more valuable as he or she grows. In addition, high-performing companies have loyal customers because they have loyal employees.

If you are the CEO or the head of Human Resources you need to have an engagement strategy. This should be a line item on your P&L. The strategy should include careful selection to see that an employee is matched to a job where he or she has a chance to excel, an assessment plan to identify key employee strengths, and a development plan to leverage those employee strengths.

Is it time to have a strategic employee assessment and development plan in place?

Learn how to start a DIALOG with your employees.

Contact us to learn more

or call 914-953-4458.