You are shopping for something big – like a new TV or major appliance – and the sales staff, while clearly visible, seems to be ignoring you.
You take a deep breath and give the sales staff the benefit of the doubt – thinking through a few reasonable excuses in your head. After several minutes it seems apparent that you are getting no help anytime soon. At this point, an emotional reaction kicks in — you are well on your way to a poor customer experience.
There could be several reasons you are being ignored, and most of them can be traced straight to a sales staff that is not engaged in their work.
Employee engagement is a topic of frequent discussion, but often in vague rather than concrete terms. Sometimes it is called culture, sometimes employee satisfaction. What it translates to in broad terms is the level of loyalty, commitment, and productivity of a company’s workers.
I recently came across a Gallup report called “State of the American Workplace.” It is well worth a deep read and can be downloaded here:
I was led there, and inspired to dig deeper, by a CBS Sunday Morning segment that asks “Are Companies that Value Employees More Successful.”
It is an interesting question that I have always had when seeing the cool workspaces of companies from Steelcase to Google, and reading about inspiring managers, strong workplace cultures, and unique perks through reports like Fortune Magazines Best Companies to Work For.
We know it’s important to business, but why? As it turns out the costs of disengagement can be quantified, and the numbers are surprisingly large. According to a recent Gallup study more than two-thirds of all members of the workforce are not engaged in their jobs, and the resulting loss of productivity costs American companies in the ballpark of $450-550 billion a year. Those costs are accumulated in areas like absenteeism, product defects, lower productivity, and workplace accidents. Conversely, having an engaged workforce produces tangible benefits including less absenteeism, higher quality products, and greater customer satisfaction.
In terms of stock performance, between 1997 and 2013, companies appearing in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” returned 11.8% compared to just 6.04% for the S&P 500 (source: The Russell Investment Group).
Companies struggling with engagement face a difficult question: if you can’t change the tasks that your employees are doing, how can you get them more excited about what they do? Gallop lays the bulk of the blame for employee disengagement on the shoulders of poor managers and leaders vs. the inherent roles of workers. While employee engagement does vary between industries and roles (at the high end are managers, executives, and professional workers like physicians and teachers, and at the low end are transportation and manufacturing and production workers), there is variance between workers at different firms performing similar tasks.
In other words, engagement is not necessarily function of the task of a job. Retail sales provides one example, a sales assistant at Nordstrom plays a similar role to one at Children’s Place. Yet Nordstrom’s employees express significant satisfaction with their jobs, landing the company a spot in Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For”- while the workforce at Children’s Place is ranked as one of the most dissatisfied in the country.
Strategies that work are visible in the companies like Nordstrom, Google, and many others who are doing it right. Gallop also adds that different types of workers will respond to different engagement strategies.Gallup reccommends a series of best practices to improve engagement. The report wraps up with “3 ways to accelerate employee engagement:”
- Hire strong managers and provide coaching for all managers
Management has the power to make or break employee motivation. A leader can do a number of things to help bolster the engagement of his workforce:
- Define goals clearly, and in daily terms. Working towards a broad objective can make it hard to perceive progress, while breaking the main goal down into smaller parts can generate a much more consistent sense of accomplishment.
- Continuously collect feedback from employees, and act on their suggestions. People will feel more committed to a workplace that they feel values their opinions.
- Serve as a model of engagement. If the management doesn’t seem to be invested in their jobs, then employees will have an even harder time caring about their positions.
- Providing a sense of value and focus on employees strengths
People will enjoy a job much more if they feel like they are getting something out of it, whether that’s personal growth or the chance to impact the lives of others. Regardless of the job being performed, there are several ways in which a company can help people feel more fulfilled at their jobs:
- Instill employees with a strong sense of what their organization stands for. Management should strive to connect with every employee and find out what’s important to them, and help them draw a connection between their work and their values. This makes their jobs more meaningful to them.
- Identify each employee’s strengths and weaknesses, and help them improve themselves. Give them the chance to contribute in the areas they excel in, and the opportunity to grow in the areas they struggle with.
- Foster collaboration and teamwork within the workplace. People feel their jobs are more important if they are able to see themselves as part of a bigger whole.
- Offer opportunities for growth and advancement. Google, which has held its position at the top of Fortune’s list for 5 years, reviews its workers biannually to consider them for promotions or raises. It is hard for employees to remain engaged if they feel that their position in the workforce has stagnated.
- Increasing Well-being
Simply put, employees are happier and more productive in general when they are healthy. Businesses who help care for the needs of their employees are shown to have lower health care costs, less absenteeism, and greater overall job satisfaction. Ways that high-satisfaction companies have helped to create a healthy and happy workforce include:
- Providing food and relaxation spaces within the workplace.
- Offering to fund gym memberships to encourage exercise.
- Setting reasonable work hours so that employees don’t burn out.
Just how much can engagement affect your enterprise? Take a look at the businesses from Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.” From 1997-2013, the stock market returns of those 100 companies was 11.8%, almost twice as much as the 6.04% of the S&P 500. By laying the groundwork in the three areas listed above, a company can change its whole workplace for the better, and reap the rewards in profits.