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The Two Most Effective Ways to Increase Employee Productivity, Customer Loyalty & Profitability

Guest post by: Susan Ireland

Article Overview: Wouldn’t it be great if you, as a leader, could wave a magic wand and initiate two simple tools that would almost guarantee an increase in employee productivity, customer loyalty and company profitability? Impossible, you say! After all, those increases require exhaustive planning, numerous employee training and business development initiatives, and a dogged determination to cut costs. In some cases, they even requires massive company reorganization – and everything takes lots of time and with no guarantee of success. Well, all that may be true. But consider another truth: By improving just two things --employee engagement and inclusion --you can immediately increase employee productivity, customer loyalty and profitability and it doesn’t take a long, drawn out program to pull it off. Let me explain . . .

The Two Most Effective Ways to Increase Employee Productivity, Customer Loyalty & Profitability

Wouldn’t it be great if you, as a leader, could wave a magic wand and initiate two simple tools that would almost guarantee an increase in employee productivity, customer loyalty and company profitability? Impossible, you say! After all, those increases require exhaustive planning, numerous employee training and business development initiatives, and a dogged determination to cut costs. In some cases, they even requires massive company reorganization – and everything takes lots of time and with no guarantee of success. Well, all that may be true. But consider another truth: By improving just two things --employee engagement and inclusion --you can immediately increase employee productivity, customer loyalty and profitability and it doesn’t take a long, drawn out program to pull it off. Let me explain . . . According to Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership, employee engagement is generally viewed as the degree to which employees view the goals of the company as in line with their own lives so that when they have choices, they will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests and vice versa. In Getting Engaged: the New Workplace Loyalty, author Tim Rutledge explains that truly engaged employees are attracted to and committed to, inspired by and fascinated by the work they do. In my experience, I’ve found that engaged employees are more productive, make more money for the company, and create loyal customers. They contribute to good working environments where people are happy, ethical, and accountable. They stay with the organization longer and are more committed to quality growth. (I’ve been fortunate to have had these types of employees over the years, and I’ve always wished I could “clone” them!) In fact, studies show that engaged employees outperform their unengaged counterparts by 20-28 percentage points. Yet, according to the Gallup Management Journal’s semi-annual Employee Engagement Index . . . • 20 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs; • 54 percent are not engaged; and • 17 percent are actively disengaged. Employee inclusion suggests that people of every position or title, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, aspiration and disability feel that they have a place at the table. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, describes inclusive culture as “the way you feel when you enter a building. It’s the people who take time to say hello and are interested in answering your questions. It’s about respecting people you work with; about knowing they’re there when you need their support and that they’re willing to listen to your opinions.” Many companies place a priority on including and engaging their employees (mandatory training programs on work place diversity and team building are some examples of common-place happenings), yet few succeed as evidenced by the dismal scores. Why? Because inclusion and engagement can’t be feigned, trained or forced. They can’t be taught in some required online course or dry management seminar. Inclusion and engagement starts with you, the leader. Whether you’re a front-line manager, department head, senior exec or owner/CEO of the company, it still starts with you. Let me ask you this: On a scale of 1 – 5, with 5 being completely engaged, how engaged are you? How engaged would you say you are in your work, with your team, your boss, what it is your company hopes to accomplish? Unless you answered “5” your employees will not be actively engaged, and I guarantee your productivity, customer loyalty and profitability are suffering. The good news is, while there are a lot of things beyond your control these days, you CAN control your ability to effect a change in the area of employee engagement and inclusiveness. And it doesn’t take a massive amount of resources like time, money or training. You can do it right now; just begin by following this personal action plan: 1. Stop talking about leveraging the diversity and talent within your company and start doing it. Focus your team on something tough, important. Bring together people from throughout the company and ask them to accomplish something significant and difficult in a short period of time. Make sure they’re from different departments or workgroups, perspectives and job descriptions. Get them to think out loud about a problem, a decision that needs to be made, a strategy that needs designing, an opportunity that needs evaluating. Then execute on decisions that are made. Even if you take small steps to begin with. Execute something. 2. Don’t fire and forget; don’t allow someone to resign without an exit interview. Find out what went wrong. Act on what you learn. Make it easier to fire people who aren’t right for the company or the job or who think that just coming to work each day is enough. If you have a separate HR Department, work closely with them to make this happen. This practice has a positive effect on the rest of the team -- not the least of which is engagement. 3. Hold a workshop that helps people not only understand generational and ethnicity differences, but also reveals their similarities. People will find out that they are all more similar than different – a realization that helps connect people and make them feel they have a place at the table. Do these at least once a year, more if you have a serious engagement problem or if you’re hiring new people at an accelerated rate. 4. Make it a habit of creating consistent, enduring connections everywhere you go. Focus on the unique capabilities of individuals on your team and on employee and client relationships. 5. Conduct effective meetings. Respect peoples’ time by starting and ending meetings ON TIME. Don’t allow distractions during your meetings – shut off your phone and Blackberry and insist that others do so too. Focus on resolving problems or designing strategy (vs. unending complaint sessions). Invite people to share different perspectives in an open, inclusive and safe environment. Occasionally invite people to your meetings who have nothing to do with the team or topic – people whom no one would expect to see sitting at the table – and include them as equals. 6. When you ask people how they are, or how your customer service is, don’t be satisfied with “fine.” Help employees and customers articulate a true answer. Keep your tone encouraging, not fear inducing. 7. Ask your people where they want to go career-wise and why they want to go there. Be honest with them about how they’re doing relative to their goals and ask them how they think they’re doing. Allow your top performers to grow. Look for ways to help them develop their careers, whether it is additional training, new responsibilities, or a transfer to another department. Even if it results in a short-term impact to your progress, if you see a natural move for someone to another area of the company, champion it. Part of a leader’s job is to build a stellar bench both within their own department and other departments in the company. 8. Build a “conversations I need to have” list and have those conversations. Who deserves your praise? Who deserves an apology? Who deserves your support? Who deserves the truth? Have these conversations in person if possible, or at minimal by telephone. Don’t send an email or leave it on a voice mail. 9. Delegate more. Then let people do their jobs. Support rather than command. Ask instead of tell and put your focus on developing others rather than winning or looking good. In conclusion, know that it takes courage to be engaged. To seek out different views, different perspectives and to help people feel included. It takes even more courage to be willing to change the way you lead. To hold people to a standard that is nothing less than their “A” game. But I promise you that if you will constantly seek to raise the engagement and inclusiveness bars both in yourself and in your people, you will see your organization’s productivity, customer loyalty and profitability soar . . .almost like magic!

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Article Tags: business development initiatives, company profitability, company reorganization, customer loyalty, employee engagement, employee productivity



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