For decades, it was assumed that employees were motivated only by extrinsic factors such as pay, resources, and health plans. While those traditional benefits are certainly still a motivating factor for most workers, more and more research is showing that employee engagement also has a lot to do with how people feel at work.

The PeopleMetrics’ 2011 Employee Engagement Trends Report found that since 2007 pay raises have been minimal, but the emotional factors such as trust, opportunities for growth, recognition, and a strong customer focus have improved. Today’s employees are reporting more satisfaction with these emotional aspects of their work than they did a few years ago.

One of the most often cited emotional drivers of employee engagement is a sense of purpose. To encourage a sense of meaning among your employees (and thereby increase employee engagement), consider the tips listed below.

Look Beyond Mere Survival; Highlight the Big Picture. If your focus as a leader is on simply making it until next week or next quarter, your employees will have a difficult time seeing the bigger purpose behind their roles. One way to improve this situation is to discuss each employee’s impact during performance reviews. For instance, the person who manages accounts payable at a dentist’s office may see himself as little more than a fancy bill-paying system, until his or her manager points out that his important accounting work keeps everyone organized enough to create a good setting for healing.

Share Positive Customer Feedback with Employees. The 2011 PeopleMetrics Employee Engagement Trends Report found that employees want to be part of the customer experience solution. Just sharing customer feedback with employees can make them more engaged, especially when the feedback is positive. We found that 55% of employees who receive customer recognition are engaged, as compared with just 12% of employees who do not receive customer recognition. Similarly, employees whose managers tell them they have done a good job serving customers are 1.5 times more likely to agree with the statement, “I get a sense of purpose from my work.” Sharing customer feedback can be a powerful addition to any Voice of the Employee program.

Study Your Most Engaged Employees.
High employee engagement is contagious for both customers (who tend to be more engaged when they interact with enthusiastic employees) and for other employees. In this sense, an investment in a Voice of the Employee program is an investment in customer engagement.  We suggest choosing a Voice of the Customer solution that can help you identify which employees are consistently earning praise from customers. Next, you can study how those employees find meaning in their work, and train the rest of your workers to follow suit.

PeopleMetrics is not the only research group that has found a link between employee engagement and a sense of meaning. For instance, the Director of Research at Harvard Business School, Teresa Amabile, recently reported on her studies of employee engagement, saying that the most influential factor was, “making progress in meaningful work.” Amabile and her partners defined meaningful work as “work where the person is contributing something of real value, something they care about.” By implementing the actions described above, you can embed purpose and meaning into the employee experience.

Additional Resources:
Integrating Employee Engagement into the Performance Management Process
Calculating the Cost of Employee Disengagement
Average vs. Great: Why the Quality of Service Matters

Engaged Employees create Engaged Customers—it’s one of our mottoes. As we’ve written before, our research shows that engagement among employees is contagious—it quickly spreads to customers. Highly engaged employees foster more loyal, enthusiastic customers who are more willing to give referrals, go out of their way to do business with you, and increase spending. However, the flip side of this foundational equation is also true. Disengaged employees create disengaged customers. In this post we’ll focus on the negative impacts disengaged employees can have on your workforce and customer base.

First, let’s look at the current employee engagement landscape. Disengagement is definitely increasing. Worker loyalty is down–84% of employees plan to look for a new position in 2011 (up 60% from last year!). Just 27% of today’s employees are actively engaged. Our own research and others’ studies show that the number of Actively Disengaged Employees—those that are actively working against the growth and success of your business—is on the rise.

Now, let’s explore how disengaged employees create disengaged customers.

1. Disengaged employees’ negative emotions rub off on the customer.
Disengaged employees disengage customers by appearing uncaring and apathetic. That matters because, as behavioral psychologists tell us, 70% of purchasing decisions are emotionally-based. No matter what an executive decrees or an advertisement states about “Customer Care”, it is your customer-facing employees who ultimately create the emotional connection. If a customer detects negative emotions from an employee, he or she is far less likely to feel positive during the transaction. And far less likely to return for another disenchanting encounter.

2. Disengaged employees don’t solve customers’ problems.
Another way that disengaged employees create disengaged customers is that they fail to solve customers’ problems satisfactorily. Indeed, poor problem handling is endemic for disengaged employees. Because they don’t really care about the job they’re doing, disengaged employees are dismissive at best and downright rude at worst when responding to customer problems. Our Most Engaged Customers Study found that 31% of customers who faced problems and received poor problem handling were engaged, compared with a 48% engagement rate among customers who had a problem and experienced good problem handling.

3. Disengaged employees don’t go “above and beyond.”
Disengaged employees are the opposite of your Brand Ambassadors. Brand Ambassadors feel that their work connects with a greater purpose, their work means something and because of this they go above and beyond to delight customers.  Disengaged employees lack this connection.  Their apathy creates Actively Disengaged and On-the-Fence (read: quick to leave) customers. When an employee fails to go above and beyond, we’ve found that customers are three times more likely to be Actively Disengaged, and two times more likely to be On-the-Fence.

4. Disengaged employees create customers who spread negative word-of-mouth.
To the customer, front-line employees are the face of the brand. When the front-line employee is disengaged, rude, and uncaring, customers are more likely to spread negative word-of-mouth about the company. Think about the last time you got atrocious service from a nasty employee. You probably told at least a few friends, making sure to include the name of the company.

5. Disengaged employees sap your company of customer referrals.
Customer referrals are valuable to any organization. We’ve found that customers who come to your company through referrals are more engaged and more forgiving of service failures. In order to earn those personal recommendations of your brand, you must create exceptional service experiences, something disengaged employees do not do. Remember, 16% of customers who get average service will recommend you, while 84% of customers who experience great service will recommend you. Disengaged employees ensure that a customer will rarely find you remarkable and certainly not recommendable.

Given how clearly disengaged employees hurt a company’s performance, what should leadership do to combat disengagement? Well, a strong customer engagement strategy begins with a strong employee engagement strategy. Start by listening to your employees with a Voice of the Employee  solution and find out what their unique motivators are. Take employee engagement seriously and prepare to act on what you learn. Demonstrate that you care about your employees and you have taken the first step toward teaching your employees how to demonstrate care to your customers.

Additional Resources
Employee Effort: Moving Consumers from Loyalty to Customer Engagement
The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Delivering Authentic Customer Service
Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Our Best Practices for Determining Customer Love

PeopleMetrics recently announced the winners of the 2011 Brand Ambassador Awards. Given to six individuals across five companies, the Brand Ambassador Awards recognize individuals who have consistently delivered extraordinary customer service. Alphabetized by company name, this year’s Brand Ambassador Award winners are:

• Susannah Heitger and John Weber at Crowe Horwath LLP
• Derek Criswell at Moss Adams LLP
• Peter Landis at Signature Flight Support
• Sasha Spei at The World
• Barbara Zonin at The Addis Group.

The Brand Ambassador Awards highlight the importance of identifying and emulating the Brand Ambassadors within any company’s ranks. Brand Ambassadors are employees who “Bring a brand to life,” so to speak. (Indeed, this is the subtitle for Brand Champions, a forthcoming book to which PeopleMetrics’ leadership contributed a chapter.) They are employees who consistently go above and beyond customers’ expectations. Such stellar service can turn a merely satisfied customer into a Passion Promoter for the company.

As PeopleMetrics VP Kate Feather explains, “We have found through our independent and client research that employees who are willing to go above and beyond create customers who love them. These customers, in turn, become Passionate Promoters of the company. Brand Ambassadors are a powerful reminder of how much one individual can strengthen (or weaken) the emotional tie between customers and companies.”

The award selection process is based on the PeopleMetrics Voice of the Customer solution. During quick, “check-in” Customer Engagement surveys, customers are given the chance to recognize certain employees. PeopleMetrics Enterprise Feedback Management system automatically delivers a Recognition Alert when a customer praises a certain employee by name for going “above and beyond” on the customers’ behalf. The five winning companies were selected according to the percentage of Customer Recognition Alerts generated. Within each of these firms, employees who received the most customer recognition were selected as Brand Ambassador Award Winners.

PeopleMetrics CEO Sean McDade provided a context for the award, explaining, “Every company has great people who are doing extraordinary work every day. The challenge is in knowing who they are so you can recognize them and learn from them. We hope that this award will be an incentive, not only to our clients but to other companies as well, to make a commitment to systematically seek out, recognize, and reward the internal heroes in their organizations.”

To learn how PeopleMetrics Voice of the Customer solution can help identify your Brand Ambassadors, visit our Voice of the Customer Page.

Additional Resources
Bringing Customer Experience Research to Front-Line Employees
Employee Effort: Moving Customers from Loyalty to Customer Engagement
Creating Brand Ambassadors Through Recognize Alerts

There is nary a company in operation today that doesn’t claim to have its collective ear open to the voice of the customer. Ask any CEO, and she or he is likely to exclaim, yes, of course they are collecting customer feedback. Whether or not that customer feedback is actually making an impact on day-to-day operations, however, is another question altogether.  Too often, customer satisfaction experience research results get mired in a certain department, or on a certain executive’s desk, and are never folded back into day-to-day operations. Companies often become so enamored with the idea of measuring customer feedback and tracking scores that they forget to actually use feedback data to improve operations and strengthen customer relationships. When customer survey results are restricted to marketing and strategy departments, their power is lost. It is only when we close the feedback loop by applying customer feedback to front-line operations that change can be made.

Sarah Cook summarized this common gap in market research in her book Customer Care Excellence. She writes, “If a customer service philosophy is seen to belong to one person, one department, or one part of the business, the success of the programme will often be dependent on the political standing and influence of that particular department or person within the organization.” Furthermore, she adds, front-line employees tend to become cynical when customer relationship programs have little to do with their daily experience; “What’s the new flavor of the month?” they might ask. To be effective, customer relationship programs must be useful across the organization, from the c-suite all the way to front-line employees.

A few companies are successfully sharing customer feedback insight with front-line managers and employees. For instance, in their Net-Promoter campaign, investment firm Charles Schwab found a way to share feedback results throughout the organization. As a piece in the Harvard Business Review explains, customers were asked to complete a survey twice a year. Survey results were put in a database which branch managers and executives could access. Managers started their day with a review of the latest customer feedback. Their goal was to respond to all feedback within 24 hours, and to close out each customer case within a week. They also used trends and patterns culled from customer feedback to direct branch meetings and train front-line employees. Charles Schwab himself credits this new approach to customer feedback with turning around the company.

PeopleMetrics has developed a similar system for bringing customer feedback to front-line employees in real time. We measure Customer Engagement (which includes a Net Promoter-like loyalty component) through quick, 5-minute feedback questionnaires. Survey results are immediately available through Action Alerts that are emailed to managers, supervisors and leaders for follow-up.  Results are also available via an online dashboard. Leadership decides how to grant access to this online dashboard. Many of our clients choose to allow front-line managers to see relevant customer survey results. That way, those managers can follow up with individual customers in real time.

There are many benefits to bringing real-time customer satisfaction experience research to front-line employees.

1) Close the feedback loop. When feedback is available in real-time, and front-line employees receive that feedback immediately, customer problems can be resolved quickly and effectively. PeopleMetrics’ system alerts managers to certain customer service opportunities, such as when a customer is considering taking his business elsewhere.

2) Unique Insights into Potential Improvements. Such timely, personal contact with customers allows managers and leadership to identify opportunities for improvement that they wouldn’t otherwise discover.

3) Quickly respond to trends and customer needs. As Rob Markley explains in the video accompanying the Harvard Business Review article listed above, “This kind of feedback can allow a company to react to market changes very quickly. Because the feedback is coming in on a constant basis, and because it is so immediate, front-line employees and management teams can very quickly identify trends, issues, and challenges that are facing their business, and take actions to head them off.”

4) Identify Service Patterns to Improve Customer Relationships. As customer feedback is gathered, leadership can take note of service patterns and behaviors that win the hearts and minds of customers. Those behaviors can then be disseminated as best practices across the entire company.

Finally, when customer feedback is shared with front-line employees, there is more sincere attention paid to customer service. Instead of management jargon, real-time feedback is seen as a powerful tool front-line employees can use on a daily basis. This kind of approach blends cutting-edge technology with customer relationship research to provide intelligence that can be used to create engaged customers.

Additional Resources:
Enterprise Feedback Management Dashboard Tools to Improve Efficiency
Benefits of Responding Immediately to Customer Feedback
Customer Engagement vs. Customer Satisfaction: Which Should You Follow?

[photo: clix]

A gap separates good companies from great ones. Shrinking this gap results in better employee performance, lower operating costs, and increased customer engagement.  What is this one seemingly magical rift that separates surviving companies from thriving companies? The engagement gap.

The engagement gap is the difference between what people do and what they are capable of doing. In his book The Power of Positive Thinking in Business, Scott Ventrella describes the engagement gap when he writes, “In most cases where people know what to do (that is, they have the knowledge) and how to do it (they have the skills), they still don’t follow through (perform) nearly as well as they could. Self-limiting beliefs and negative thoughts that shape attitude are the culprits.”

That gap doesn’t just exist in the office. Missed opportunities and mediocre performance also plague education. But as many of Harvard’s undergraduates can tell you, a new academic field is trying to change all of that.  The field is called Positive Psychology, and its findings show that employees, students—everyone, really—can close the engagement gap by focusing on the meaningful, positive aspects of their lives.  At first dismissed as self-help pop science, Positive Psychology classes are now the most popular courses on the Harvard campus, showing just how thirsty students are for proven ways to become engaged in all aspects of life.

According to Harvard’s newspaper, The Crimson, professor Tal Ben-Shahar says Positive Psychology teaches that “studying what works is more productive than dwelling on what doesn’t.”  His main goal is to teach students how to be happier and healthier. “Happiness is and ought to be the ultimate end,” he says.

Just where does PeopleMetrics’ work fit into all of this? Well, we’re in the business of closing the engagement gap, both for employees and for customers. PeopleMetrics defines both Customer Engagement and Employee Engagement according to four qualities: Passion, Advocacy, Effort, and Retention. Happiness figures into the Passion part of that equation.

On the HR side, employee happiness contributes to Employee Engagement. To help our clients improve Employee Engagement, we’ve developed tools—including a 40-question survey, performance-importance mapping, and an online planning tool for managers—to help companies close the engagement gap. We emphasize Employee Engagement because our research shows that companies with high Employee Engagement also enjoy more business success, in the form of higher ROI and profits. We’ve discovered that’s because more engaged employees tend to have more positive emotional interactions with customers. And positive emotional interactions turn run-of-the-mill customers into Engaged Customers. Thus, higher Employee Engagement translates to higher Customer Engagement, which means higher overall sales.

To help increase Employee Engagement and bring the lessons of Positive Psychology to your workplace, emphasize the big picture and how your employees fit into it. People have an innate need to feel their work makes a difference in the world.  By reminding associates that their work does make a difference, you can help to boost Employee Engagement. Be a cheerleader; tell everyone on your team why they are important and how their day-to-day duties contribute to the big picture.

In her book The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky explores how employees’ perceptions impact their productivity. She writes, “Interviews with twenty-eight members of a hospital cleaning crew revealed that some of them disliked cleaning, felt that it entailed low-level skills, and did the minimum amount of work required; others, in contrast, transformed the job into something grander and more significant. This second group of hospital workers described their work as bettering the daily lives of patients, visitors, and nurses. They engaged in a great deal of social interaction (e.g. showing a visitor around, brightening a patient’s day) reported liking cleaning and judged the work as highly skilled. It’s not surprising that these hospital cleaners found flow in their work….They set forth challenges for themselves…They added tasks outside their formal duties…They saw themselves as part of a larger, integrated whole, not just mopping floors and emptying trash cans but serving as a part of a system that improved people’s lives.”

You may have heard a similar anecdote about three bricklayers. When asked what they are doing, the first says, “I’m stacking up bricks.” The second says, “I am building the west wall of a church.” The third, his eyes shining, says, “I am building a grand Cathedral that will stand for centuries.”  Show your employees how to see the “Cathedral” in their day-to-day tasks, and their performance (and happiness!) will skyrocket.

Additional Resources
If you’re looking for more tips to improve Employee Engagement, check out our Employee Engagement Management resources. 

Why Acting on Employee Suggestions Boosts Employee and Customer Engagement

Fun: The Secret Ingredient in Employee Engagement

In his timeless work How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), Dale Carnegie traces all human motivation to one sensation:  feeling important.  Quoting American philosopher John Dewey, Carnegie emphasizes “that the deepest urge in human nature is ‘the desire to be important.’” Flash forward to 2009, when the most innovative business leaders are applying Carnegie’s dictum to the workplace through Employee Engagement Management.  More than just an “HR buzzword,” Employee Engagement Management is a leadership approach that values each employee’s well being and input, with the understanding that passionate, engaged employees are more productive.  This article will explain why gathering and implementing employee suggestions is an effective technique for improving both employee and customer engagement.

Making use of employee suggestions increases employee engagement because humans have an innate need to feel that their actions and ideas make a difference. In fact, human development theorist Erik Erikson tells us that the major developmental crisis of middle adulthood is generativity vs. stagnation—whether or not we successfully contribute to the society around us.  When employees see that their suggestions are highly valued, they feel important to the organization.  Later, as their ideas are implemented, employees feel generative and effective. This is why employees typically become more personally immersed in their work when staff recommendations are regularly implemented.  Personal contribution raises our attachment to any outcome. As they recognize that their ideas can make a difference, employees will often spend more discretionary effort to find ways to improve their own working conditions and performance.  A contributing, innovating employee is an engaged employee.

Moreover, taking suggestions from your employees makes good business sense, since employees often have unique insights about how to improve operations. Since they are on the front lines, your employees have a rich understanding of what your customers need and want. By harnessing their first-hand customer knowledge, you can also improve your organization’s customer service, thereby boosting customer engagement and enjoying higher profits.  (In fact, PeopleMetrics has found a clear correlation between increased customer engagement and higher profit margins.)

The Japanese have a name for the end result of respecting every employee’s ideas—kaizen, or continuous improvement. By listening to your employees’ suggestions, you can boost engagement while ensuring that your organization continues to grow and improve.

~Kate Feather, Executive Vice President

Additional Resources:
Using Customer Engagement Management to Create a Culture of Accountability
1001 Ways to Energize Employees
Kaizen Teian 2: Guiding Continuous Improvement Through Employee Suggestions

Photo credit: Alosh Bennet

In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard L. Florida highlights the factors that motivate creative workers like programmers and scientists.  One of his conclusions is that increasing numbers of modern workers are motivated, at least in part, by peer recognition. This is why, even in today’s rocky economic climate, many people are willing to work for free on projects that they feel will win the respect of their peers.  Fortunately, progressive managers are beginning to recognize the power of peer-to-peer recognition.

In addition to the motivational factor, many managers encourage peer recognition because they know that it is usually accurate. As Judith A. Hale explains in Performance-Based Management, peers may deliver more detailed, effective feedback, since they have more opportunities to observe their coworkers’ performance.  As Ms. Hale writes, “It is not uncommon for the manager to be removed from where the work is performed and, therefore, rarely see what people do or how they do it.”

If you’re looking to develop a peer recognition program for your workplace, keep a few general feedback guidelines in mind:

1. Remember that specific feedback is more effective than general praise.  Encourage your employees to be precise when complimenting their peers.
2. Additionally, you should involve employees in designing your peer recognition program.  Avoid launching new recognition programs without ensuring that the whole crew is on board.  Your new recognition procedures will be far more likely to take root if everyone in your organization understands why they are being implemented.
3. It’s also important that everyone in your firm has equal opportunities to give and receive feedback.  Set up a level playing field. Make it easy to give recognition.
4. Your system should aim for immediate gratification.  Don’t let peer compliments pile up for weeks or months, since employees will be more motivated by timely feedback.
5. Finally, keep in mind that employees follow their managers’ lead; your managers and executives must lead by example, especially in providing helpful, positive feedback

As you discuss possible programs with your team, here are a few examples of how companies incorporate peer-to-peer recognition.

1. The Recognition Raffle. Each time an employee receives recognition from a peer, he or she is entered into a raffle.
2. Let the Most Kudos Win. Employees fill out a card or form to thank, compliment, or recognize their peers.  The cards are then displayed on a central bulletin board to foster a positive work environment.  Regularly, managers review the kudos board and award the employee who has received the most peer recognition.  (If you choose this method, you might also incorporating a raffle, to avoid popularity contests.)
3. The Company Store. Employees receive points for each peer recognition.  Points may be accumulated and traded in for prizes at The Company Store.  Your prizes don’t have to be big; perhaps five compliments would be enough to earn an extra hour off, for instance.

~Monica Nolan, Account Manager

Additional Resources:

Three Ways to Mix Up your Employee Recognition Routine
Employee Recognition: Engagement Fuel
Creating Community at Work

New jobs are hard to come by these days, and good help is always hard to find.  In any job interview, almost all of the power seems to go to the employer.  Still, the process of finding and keeping excellent people is not easy.  In fact, the currently flooded labor market has made any hiring manager’s job much more difficult.  The path to employment is a dance in which both parties—the potential employee and the hiring entity—can gracefully execute powerful moves.  And what comes after the dance can be a wonderful or hellish experience, depending on the fit between the employee and the workplace.

For the next couple of PeopleMetrics blogs, we’ll be writing about the hiring process in today’s dismal economic climate.  Today’s entry advises potential employees on how to find a good fit—but don’t let that throw you off if you’re on the hiring side.  Put yourself in your potential employees’ shoes as you read this article, and ask how your company would look in a new hire’s eyes.

If you’re currently unemployed, consider this transitional period in your life an opportunity to find your dream job.  Given how difficult it is to find a job, once you land one, you’ll want to stay for a while. Make sure that you’re entering a supportive, personally fulfilling environment by running through the following tips before you say yes.

1.  Know yourself. Before you can figure out if employers have what you need, you have to figure out what you need and enjoy in your ideal workspace. What would it look like?  Do you work best in silence, or do you like music while you work?  Do you work better on your own, or on a team?  In other words, to land your dream job, you must spend some time meditating on what you want.

2.  Put on your Anthropology Cap. Ask the potential employer if you can hang out in the office for a day.  Chat with people.  Take them to lunch and pick their brains.  Sit and just observe the office flow for a half hour. Write down what you notice, and see if you can draw any conclusions about the underlying office environment.  Not every office will allow you to do this, but it’s usually a good sign if they will:  it means they’re confident that their employees are happy with their work.  Try to get a sense of how the office operates on a cultural level, and whether you would fit into that culture.

3.  Ask about alternative benefits. Everyone knows to ask about traditional benefits, like health care, salary, and vacation time, but many people don’t appreciate the lesser-touted benefits until they realize what they’re missing.  As they often can’t afford to pay higher salaries, many employers are finding creative ways to offer new benefits.  These alternative benefits may include free passes for public transportation and showers for freshening-up after your morning bike.  Flexible hours and the ability to work from home may make your next job a joy—so do your best to figure out what alternative benefits your potential employer offers.

4.  Demand Respect. Employee engagement research indicates that employees are more engaged when they feel that their contributions make a difference.  Engaged employees also feel like they have a good relationship with peers and management.  Finally, they feel empowered to do their best work thanks to support from management and the team aroudn them.  If you don’t see this in the organization, don’t take the job.  Why work where you won’t be appreciated and nurtured?

~Kate Feather, Executive Vice President
PeopleMetrics

Additional Resources:
Dream Jobs: Companies with the best employee engagement scores
Top Ten Sources of Workplace Stress, and How to Fight Them
Costco Case Study: Employee Passion Increases Employee Retention and Customer Engagement
Introduction to EEM

Top photo by Jesse Dill.

In their song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” The Who expresses the common view of management in the line, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Most employees see their employers as just another authority figure to follow. In this Pavlovian system, the employer uses carrots and sticks to motivate the employee to work.  Employees work because they need payment and benefits (carrots), and/or because they fear what will happen if they lose their jobs (sticks). However, some education and business organizations are moving beyond this classic approach, instead opting for systems that allow management to act more as guides who help employees exceed their own goals and expectations.

Such organizations must consider and cultivate a positive culture of accountability, in which employees are engaged and dedicated to consistently producing their best work. We’ve all experienced different levels of engagement in a job, based on the organization’s culture.  Some companies’ cultures are based on fear, while others are based on mutual effort toward common goals.   Attaining the latter sort of culture requires employers to actively engage employees. Passionate, engaged employees feel that their feedback is valued.  They advocate for and are inclined to stay loyal to their employer.  Beyond focusing on increasing employee engagement, management can increase accountability through Customer Engagement Management (CEM) tools.

By engaging employees through Employee Engagement Management (EEM) and monitoring their output through CEM, management can create a culture of excellence and accountability.  Some Customer Engagement models provide aggregate results, which are useful for making long-term marketing decisions, but have little impact on individual employees’ performance. In addition to those results, PeopleMetrics’ Customer Engagement Management solution also delivers actionable reports based on individual customer feedback and employee performance.

Immediately after customer feedback is submitted, a good CEM system will send alerts to designated individuals in an organization via email. These action alerts allow management to take immediate, personalized action based on customer responses. For instance, if a customer mentioned that she was considering taking her business elsewhere, an alert might be flagged for customer service management, who would be able to immediately respond with strategies to earn back that customer’s trust.

Once a CEM system is in place, it encourages a culture of accountability.  Action alert management makes it clear who is responsible for handling certain alerts, so management and employees always understand what follow-up is required.  By pairing CEM and EEM, organizations can create positive, productive work cultures where high accountability and exceptional performance are the norm.

~Kate Feather, Executive Vice President

Additional Resources:
Creating Community at Work

Top photo by Herval.

As the corporate paradigm of the previous century disappears from the American workplace, communication skills are increasingly seen as the crucial glue that holds a corporation together. Shorter employment cycles, performance-based pay, and increased diversity mean that communication in the workplace must be effective, in order to quickly convey information and motivate a wide variety of people. Clear, effective top-down employee communication isn’t enough; successful corporations must also find ways to ensure positive, productive communication between peers. Here are five tips for managers who hope to establish healthy team communication.

1.    Set a good example. Team members will base their behavior on the models provided by management.  As a manager or executive, your communication skills must be especially sharp in order to positively influence (and hopefully inspire) your employees.  To set a good example, be open to all ideas, support your team members, and set clear expectations. Finally, don’t let your communication skills tarnish; stay current on business communication strategies.

2.    Conduct a Communication Audit. PeopleMetrics’ Employee Engagement tools can help managers and executives identify breakdowns in communications.  In addition to gathering employee feedback, PeopleMetrics helps analyze intra-team communications and map how information moves through your organization. Your goal should be to discover where messages get trapped, so that communication processes may be improved.

3.    Encourage team members to be enthusiastic about their work. Research in employee engagement shows that passionate, enthusiastic employees provide better customer service.  In fact, engaged employees attract engaged customers, and higher customer engagement results in higher profits.  Be excited about your work, and encourage employees to be excited about theirs.

4.    Help team members feel respected. Set clear behavior expectations for your team.  Let them know that you expect them to treat each other with respect.  If a team member feels disrespected and isolated, do your best to bring them back into the fold.  Speak privately to employees who make others feel excluded.  A respectful environment is the best for encouraging creative, productive work.

5.    Listen to your team. We’ve all heard that true communication is a two-way street, but as managers, it can be difficult to turn off the bullhorn and actually listen to employees.  Not only will listening to your employees uncover unique ideas on how to improve your company’s performance, but it will also provide a good example of effective employee communication for your team members.  Employee engagement management is an effective tool in gathering, analyzing, and acting on employee feedback.

As the Harvard Business Review tells us in Leading Teams, “Communication is the key to keeping a team productive and functioning smoothly.”  By following the steps above, you can improve peer-to-peer communication in your organization’s teams.

~Monica Nolan, Account Manager

Additional Resources:
Top Ten Sources of Workplace Stress, and How to Fight Them
Costco Case Study: Employee Passion Increases Employee Retention and Customer Engagement

Top photo by Ralph Bijker.

UCLA’s Anderson School of Management recently hosted a seminar for executives with an unusual message: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. With consumer spending at 1997 levels, many companies are struggling to find easy ways to cut costs and boost productivity. Yet the speakers at UCLA’s conference urged executives to take advantage of the economic crisis as an opportunity to improve performance as well.  In addition to strengthening balance sheets, executives at the seminar were advised to hold onto key employees, let go of unprofitable business lines, and grab up new investment opportunities– in other words, work smarter, not harder. As finance professor Antonio Bernado said, “If you invest now when your peers and competitors are waiting on the sidelines, you can be a leader in your industry when the recovery does come.”

Here are three more areas to consider if you’re looking for ways to work smarter in today’s volatile business climate.

Reward Your Most Engaged Customers For Bringing In New Business.
Looking for a treasure trove of hidden value in your company’s current assets? Look no further than your own customer list. PeopleMetrics has found that highly Engaged Customers will passionately advocate for your brand.  Can you offer an additional incentive to motivate your best customers to bring in their colleagues, family and friends?  Before you roll your eyes at the idea of spending more money in sales, consider how much you spend in-house to bring in new customers.  If you can pass that job on to your customers, there’s a good chance you can save money– and attract more Engaged Customers.  Customers attained through positive word-of-mouth recommendations are more likely to be engaged and more prone to forgive your organization for any services failures if they do occur.

Present a Passionate, Friendly Face.
Even if you can’t cut your customers’ costs, you can keep them coming back with exceptional customer service. When Engaged Employees smile, sympathize, anticipate customers’ needs, and move quickly to solve problems, customers are more likely to feel an emotional connection to a company– and PeopleMetrics has found that emotional connections attract Engaged Customers who will stick around for the long haul. If you’re not sure how to motivate your employees to provide stellar service, consider implementing an employee feedback program. (PeopleMetrics can help– check out our section on Employee Engagement.)  As a bonus, keeping your employees emotionally connected to your company will also reduce recruiting costs, thanks to lower turnover rates.

Strive to Maintain Marketing Budgets
In lackluster economies, it’s tempting to trim marketing budgets. Why market a brand when consumer demand is so low?  Because some day, consumers will have expendable income, and  marketing during the recession will influence what they’ll buy.  Coke’s worldwide dominance in the beverage industry can be traced to crucial advertising during a historic financial slump:  World War II.  Despite the fact that both Pepsi and Coca-Cola had limited distribution and demand, Coca-Cola advertisements continued to appear.  Pepsi slashed advertising budgets during the war and could not maintain a steady presence.  Once the war ended, Coca-Cola’s consistency was rewarded:  Coke dominated the market.

During economic downturns it is more important than ever to keep your customers front and center.  Gathering and listening to their feedback is essential – doing so will allow your company to spot new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Top photo by Jekert Gwapo.

Source for UCLA seminar: The Los Angeles Business Journal.

Welcome to the PeopleMetrics Industry News blog!

We are excited to add this new resource offering.  Here we will share with you insights from our independent research, client service news, employee and customer engagement strategies and ways in which this information can help your business.

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