4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

10 Ways to Get Candid Feedback

With so many articles and blogs written about bad bosses, do you ever wonder if you might be one? It is rare to find someone who is completely and totally self-aware. Most of us have a few blind spots about ourselves and don’t know all our strengths and weaknesses. Still, self-awareness is one of the most critical leadership competencies and is considered by many to be the single most important predictor of leadership success.
Feedback is one way to close the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. To make it meaningful and actionable you want the feedback to be honest, which is hard to get, especially from people who don’t want to offend or upset you.
Management and Leadership expert Dan McCarthy gives us 10 great ways to get candid feedback and he recommends that when you do get it, keep your mouth closed and just say thank you!

Well-Organized Meetings Are a Sign of Respect

There should be a zero tolerance policy for bad meetings. Bad meetings can be annoying and a complete waste of time. But don’t just complain about them….do something! If you call a meeting, respect your teammates by taking the time to learn how to run a good meeting. They will respect you in return and respect, as we know, is a key ingredient for achieving employee engagement and job satisfaction.
So if you have been winging your meetings so far, this blog is definitely for you!

Dan McCarthy writes a well-known, award-winning leadership development blog called Great Leadership. He recently published the simplest and most effective 8 easy steps on how to make a meeting tolerable and productive.

Why Having Happy Employees Is The Wrong Goal

Seriously, can anything be changed in 10 easy steps?

Nothing in life comes easy and in her recent article titled ‘Why Employee Happiness is the Wrong Goal,’ Liz Ryan steps up and says making happiness your goal at work is ‘insulting to employees.’ Why? Because happy is nowhere near sufficient to describe the relationship between work and a truly engaged worker.
Ms. Ryan’s article is a refreshing change from the litany of articles written about employee engagement because she captures the essence of the engaged employee, the one who gives discretionary effort, the one who goes above and beyond. And this employee as she explains, is not always happy!

Just Look at What You've Got!

What kind of company hires outsiders instead of promoting from within? Maybe not a good one but that doesn’t stop many companies from doing it. Why would anyone who values their employees think this is a good idea and what message are they sending to those employees? To be passed over is damaging in so many ways but it especially damages morale, trust and company culture. Many business leaders fail to see how harmful this practice is and how employees interpret it to mean ‘somebody from the outside is better than anybody on the inside’. This is demoralizing to say the least.

John Hoolon from TLNT recently reviewed a study released by Lee Hecht Harrison that explored why organizations are missing the opportunity to hire from within. The study confirmed that many companies have pipeline problems, as a third of employers think that their internal talent pipeline is poor or non-existent, and only 4 percent think that their talent pipeline is excellent. This might explain why so many go outside rather than promoting from within. Yet Hoolon points out that only half of talent managers have regular informal conversations with their employees about their future with the company. This suggests that employees have good reason to become restless because their managers ‘simply aren’t spending enough time talking to their people about where their careers are going’.

Low Satisfaction Scores Decrease Profits

It is no surprise that great companies are also profitable, and that they attract and keep top talent but does the opposite hold true and does that mean that companies with unhappy employees work for companies that are not as profitable?
In a recent Glassdoor research report Dr. Andrew Chamberlain explores whether satisfied employees impact stock performance. In his research he compares the financial performance of companies with satisfied—and less satisfied—employees and the correlation between stock returns and employee satisfaction. The Glassdoor Research report is called “Does Company Culture Pay Off?” and it is fascinating for employee engagement-driven gurus like us, to learn that the answer appears to be ‘yes’.
Chamberlain examined the portfolios of 30 companies with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and found that they under-performed the stock market as well. He also found that there is a meaningful link between employee satisfaction and stock market performance among publicly held companies.

The Most Important Reasons

If you are considering surveying your employees, the first key step is to ask what you want to achieve by doing so. What are you looking to get out of doing an employee survey? If you are not entirely sure, consider our key objectives and see if you can relate to them. If you are already convinced that an employee survey is needed but you are having trouble convincing senior management to agree with you, then you might find this list could help strengthen your case too!

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