Five Steps To Engaging Your Team For Better ROI
Amy Munroe, CPS, MTS and Staffing E-Trainer.com
In today's business environment, how your staff connects with your customers (client and associate) is more critical to your ROI than ever before. A strategic manager should be focusing on how to engage his/her staff for when the market turns around, and it will turn around.
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I recently read a very interesting survey which discussed the topic of employee engagement. I learned a staggering statistic, only 29% of employees in North America are fully engaged in their career or work place endeavors and 19% are disengaged. Wow, that means that over 70% of the workforce is not fully engaged. How does that impact your bottom line? How does that impact your ROI? The biggest impact is on turnover and low productivity which has been proven with research.
About Amy Munroe, CPS
Amy Munroe, a Certified Staffing Professional, is an industry veteran with over twenty three years of experience in the staffing industry working with small independent staffing firms as well as large international services. Amy is the president of MTS, Inc and a partner in Staffing E-Trainer which is a web-based training offering for the staffing industry.
Our mission is to help staffing companies provide greater value to their clients, decrease time to full productivity for internal staff, and improve employee retention and engagement. At MTS and Staffing E-Trainer, we pride ourselves on delivering innovative, engaging, and interactive education. We are an active member of the American Society of Training and Development, and the American Staffing Association.
Amy Munroe has shared her philosophies and techniques with thousands of staffing professionals and many staffing associations. A few of those associations are the American Staffing Association, North Carolina Association of Staffing Professionals, South Carolina Association of Personnel and Staffing, New Jersey Staffing Alliance, TEMPNET and Georgia Association of Personnel Services.
Contact:
Staffing E-Trainer (staffingetrainer.com)
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770-740-0965
Employee engagement is defined by the amount of time an employee is “fully engaged” at work by being 100% or more involved in their tasks, following the mission and focus of company, and being productive. How do engaged employees benefit your company? Engaged employees are more productive, have longer tenure and create stronger client relationships. Now is the time to focus on involving your team for the long term success of your company. Let’s take a look at some steps that will help you start down the path of ‘employee engagement.’
Step One - Praise and Respect Your Team
Currently many staffing companies are operating with minimal staff which dictates doing more with less. One way we can help our team members be more productive is to use an accelerator or motivator. In the workplace there is no motivator more impactful than purposed-based recognition. This sounds like common sense, but this is not your normal employee recognition it is purposed-based.
In the book, The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton reveal the results of research they conducted on using purposed-based recognition to engage your team. One interesting finding is directly related to return on equity. Participants were asked to rank their company on recognizing excellence. Where the response to the statement “my organization recognizes excellence” was the lowest the companies averaged a 2.4% ROE, versus where the response was the highest the companies averaged 8.7% ROE.
Now more than ever, in these times of uncertainty and stress you need to recognize and praise your team on their successful efforts. Hand written notes are an impactful way to say thank you for a job well done. Don’t forget to give your praise in a timely manner with details to explain the reason for the recognition.
Step Two – Engage Your Team
Company loyalty is wavering. Many employees feel like they are an island to themselves because of the unpredictable marketplace. The island syndrome pushes team members into a protective mode versus a collaborative mode. Managers need to understand the importance of keeping your team members engaged.
Many times team members need to be reminded to turn off ‘auto-pilot’ and revisit how they conduct sales calls, prescreening calls, interviews, sales strategy meetings, and all their daily tasks. To engage your team, have them look at each action with a new perspective to determine how to improve their skills. We allow what we learned years ago to power us through our daily tasks. Similar to flying a kite, at some point the wind will stop and the kite will fall, so will our skills become outdated and ineffective.
The demographic of a team member impacts the most effective way to engage him/her based on what is considered important. A recent study, conducted by The Sloan Center on Aging and Work, showed higher levels of engagement with: older workers, Gen Y’s where they had access to flexibility, and Gen X’s where there was a satisfaction with education and training. So remember how you engage your team could vary by employee.
Step Three – Hold Each Other Accountable
We have all heard the saying ‘what gets measured, gets done’. That is true. The companies I know that are most successful have very detailed points of measurement and they hold one another accountable to these measurements. Think about this…what was your new year’s resolution? Did you keep it? Why do you think that is? I think it has to do with accountability and focus. Accountability drives success.
Each team member should understand your company goals and how he/she directly impacts them. Goals are normally tied to revenue or cost savings. Therefore, each team member should also understand the basics of a P&L and how they impact their associated area of the statement.
Step Four – Create a Best-in-Class Culture
With less than 2% of the workforce in our employ and flexible work being in such high demand, what can you do to get a bigger chunk of the market? Managers need to take advantage of this slower time to create a stronger company. Take an honest look at what do you do well and what do you do not do so well. And then ask the question “How do we know?”
Are all your offices and team members living by the same values, principles and mission? Can everyone eloquently and succinctly verbalize your company’s mission and focus? Do they understand how they play into it? Every team member should be on the same page when it comes to defining the purpose of the company.
Step Five – Create an Education Culture
When we think about education we have tendency to look at it as a cost item only - an expense on the P&L. Actually, studies have proven exactly the opposite. Poor training (employee engagement) leads to higher turnover, lost productivity and possibly reduced morale. We should use this time now to train our staff, polish our skills, and prepare for the uptick – because it will come.
A study by Cranfield, one of the UK's foremost Business Schools, showed clearly that those companies that continue to invest in education do much better in recessions than those that don't. And in addition, when the good times return there is absolutely no comparison between those that invest in training versus those that do not, in terms of results.
Some say knowledge is power; I think it is the implementation of knowledge that is power and ultimately success. The key to improvement is education and implementation. You cannot educate and think change will happen. You need to hold your team to actually changing behavior.
In conclusion, to get staff engaged you need to keep them interacting with each other and feeling appreciated. Your team also needs to feel they are in control of something right now. Let’s let them control their own skill enhancement or add to the discussion of how to make your company stronger. For a stronger tomorrow, allow them to become motivated through knowledge and engagement.
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