Employee Engagement Articles
Internal Branding – the Key to reconnecting your Customers and Employees
Customers drive sales and profitability. So how do your employees interact with and engage customers? How would your customers describe their experience? Do your customers have an expectation on how your employee will represent your brand?
So how does an organisation manage its customer experience to ensure its people, processes and culture are reinforcing customer expectations? A key foundation of customer experience management is internal branding.
Internal branding in essence is ‘living’ and ‘delivering on’ your organisation’s brand promises. It is an organisation-wide initiative that enables all employees to understand how they can personally impact on a customer’s experience and contribute to building the company’s reputation and brand.
Will you be coming back to an empty office in the New Year?
New Year’s resolutions: typically they involve trying to change oneself for the better. The New Year brings about a new resolve to improve their lives –a new diet, new exercise regime or in some cases, a new job. For any business, this time of self-improvement can come at a cost in the form of employee turnover.
Research shows that employee turnover can cost businesses serious amounts of money: Mercer Human Resource Consulting estimates the cost of staff turnover ranges from 50% to 150% of annual salary, depending on the role. At first, those estimates may seem over the top, but when you take into account the various aspects of losing an employee – time to consider the employee needed, networking, searching, advertising, interviewing, reference checking, offering employment, getting someone to cover the vacant position, getting the new employee up to speed. That is, if another person for the role can be found – in some industries, the right people are getting harder and harder to find.
Meaningful Employment Value Propositions for Generation Y
Generation Y is widely defined as the people born between 1982 and 2000. In total there are in excess of 5.15million Generation Y people currently living in Australia. Understanding how they view the world is critical as Employers grapple with skills shortages and an ageing population. Companies that can understand and cater for the needs of this younger group of workers will be more likely to attract and retain this critical group of workers.
In an article published by the Australian Leadership foundation Mark McCrindle explains that Generation Y’s have lived through “the age of the internet, cable television, globalisation, September 11 and environmentalism. Such shared experiences during ones youth unite and shape a generation. There is an ancient saying that bears much truth: People resemble their times more that they resemble their parents”
FIFO – What’s life on site really like?
Having recently completed a month long tour of 9 different remote mine sites conducting focus groups with employees I have seen firsthand what the mining boom and Fly in Fly Out is really like.
Conditions vary massively, some sites that have recently been established have temporary dongas located on portable semi-trailers so that the process of extracting ore can begin without camp construction. These sites could only be described as primitive. Dongas are very small, there is very little communication with the outside world and the people that work in these environments are generally long term experienced miners.
Attraction and Retention – Navigating the Perfect Storm
The recently released HAYS Salary Guide points to a “perfect storm” on the horizon for employers. The survey highlights 3 factors which will contribute to the storm. These are:
Positive Hiring Intentions – most employers are planning on hiring more people
Widening gap between candidate and employer salary intentions – most candidates expect more than employers are prepared to pay
Skills shortages – 54% of employers in Australia are experiencing difficulty in filling critical positions. This number is significantly higher in WA and QLD. Australia is ranked fourth out of 39 countries for skills shortages in critical roles.
Employee Engagement for Competitive Advantage
Your brand is only as safe as your least engaged employee. Engage your employees and align them with your corporate vision and values, as they are the face that represents your business at all levels, interacting with all stakeholders. Employee engagement is also an effective source for competitive advantage. Not only are employees an asset that is dynamic, flexible and resilient, but they are also difficult for your competitors to replicate, a source of value and uniqueness.
Activity Based Working Drives Attraction and Retention
The new trend in office design is referred to as Activity Based Working (ABW). This concept has been developed based upon the idea that people will be more engaged and satisfied in their jobs by removing hierarchical structures from the workplace. Hierarchy is removed from the workplace by removing symbols of seniority and creating an environment which fosters collaboration.
Activity based offices are designed to give people the freedom of how to work, where to work and when to work. There are no assigned desks and in most cases no private offices for executives. Team members are also encouraged to work remotely.
Are you helping to put a man on the Moon?
There is a well-known story linking NASA and employer branding during the rush to place man on the moon. In this story, it is suggested that whilst inspecting the NASA facility prior to take-off, President Kennedy came across a janitor in the hallway. Casually asking the janitor what he specifically did in the facility. The janitor’s response was quite remarkable. Not “I clean the ablutions and mop the floors”. No, the janitor showed an organisational-centric response in saying “Mr. President, I am helping to put a man on the moon”. Is your employer brand so strong that all people within your company are aligned and committed to your organisation vision?
Retention: Why it’s not just about the Money!
In a recent conversation with a business owner, he stated “employees are greedily seeking jobs that offer the highest salary and there is little that will prevent them from being poached or switching to another employer in favour of a higher salary”. I disagree and recent research supports my position.
The influx of Gen Y into our workforces demands that retention strategies must evolve to meet new expectations and needs. Recent research suggests that employees may be attracted by higher salaries; however retention rates can be dramatically improved through strong employer branding and consistently delivering on your Employer Value Proposition (Moroko 2008).
Using Employee Engagement Data To Gain Valuable Insights
It is amusing to think that many organisations say they are a “people focused company” first and foremost. Yet are HR managers and initiatives given the same amount of credence at the discussion table as operational strategies and cost-cutting drives? The need to create a new type of dialogue about how people and performance is linked is becoming ever more important, especially as organisations do realise that whatever business they are in, they are a people company.
A recent McKinsey Quarterly article titled, “Question for your HR chief: Are we using our ‘people data’ to create value?” (March, 2011) addresses some of these concerns. One of the key takeaways from the article is that business results may be more a function of an organisation’s talent strategy than originally thought. For example, Microsoft has been conducting studies on top performing employees to investigate if there is any correlation between their performance and the schools and companies these employees hailed from.