4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

The Connection Between Leadership and Voice

The sound of your voice could make you more powerful according to new research published in ‘Psychological Science’. Findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between acoustic cues and power, that can have significant impact on the way listeners perceive and behave towards the speakers. On one hand, the research showed that people in a position of power speak differently than those who do not but it also shows that we all have the ability to control our own voices so that we appear more assertive or authoritarian (this is also good for parents to know).

And the 'New World of Work' 

Often times, in the process of implementing an employee survey, senior HR management will admit that they ‘think they know what is happening with their staff but could be fooling themselves too’. We, like so many people who work in the field of HR and employee engagement, recognize how fast the world of HR is changing and how difficult it is to really understand what is happening.
An article recently published by Josh Bersin does a fabulous job of providing clarity on the subject of this ‘new world of work’, which he claims is really a ‘new world of life-one where work, home, family and personal lives are interconnected in a real-time way’. Bersin explains how this interconnected way of life, combined with the shift in demographics (today’s Millennial’s could make up 75% of the global workforce in five years), means that ‘businesses must think about talent very differently than they have in the past. Workers now join companies like athletes join professional teams’.

A powerful shift indeed.

8 Simple Steps to Increasing Job Satisfaction

Recent research provides plenty of evidence that as employee engagement and satisfaction grows at a company so does…
• Employee retention, so you save money by not having to replace experienced employees.
• The level of productivity among your staff, which leads to improved service to clients.
• The degree of morale and engagement your employees feel.
• Customer satisfaction with your products and services; and most importantly.
• Your organization’s financial performance and overall health.

What The World Needs Now is Kindness

There is significant evidence that, as employee job satisfaction and engagement increase, so too does an organization's financial performance, as a direct result of higher employee productivity, improved employee retention and greater customer satisfaction. Apart from the surveys we conduct for our clients we also conduct our own independent annual survey of randomly selected employees to create statistically valid Employee Engagement Norms to help us evaluate real levels of engagement.
Using open-ended questions, we often get comments that the least satisfying aspect of working for a company is that other employees are not held accountable. On the other hand, we also hear that senior management is often distant, inaccessible and does not understand what employees are facing every day. For example, “they pass me in the hallways and don’t even acknowledge me”. Sound familiar?

Are You Helping or Hurting Your Team?

A common theme that runs through our research for clients, as well as our own normative research, is the power and influence that good and bad leadership has on our feelings towards our jobs. We can work for a ‘great’ company but if our direct supervisor or manager treats us poorly, that can be reason enough to quit and we know that replacing employees is a costly and disruptive consequence.

This is why people in leadership roles must be aware of their impact on their team and take responsibility for how they interact. In a recent Fast Company article by Hans Hanson, he explores the idea that people are guided by one of two mind-sets that control their thinking, decisions and responses. The type of mind-set you have will determine how effective or harmful your, or your boss’s, leadership style is on you and the people on your team. Identify which mind-set describes you or your boss:

Smile More and Engage Your Team

At Insightlink, employee engagement is our ‘raison d’etre’, which is why we are excited to share Gordon Tredgold’s newest post for 2015. He gives the simplest and most digestible advice on how to become an inspiring leader, something all leaders should aspire to be, because inspiring leaders create inspiring teams, which can achieve inspiring results!
Here are his top 4 tips to make you a more inspiring leader in 2015:

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