4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

A survey of CEOs, business owners, HR directors and frontline managers identified the following eight characteristics as those looked for most often when hiring and promoting staff.

1. Understand and demonstrate the value they bring to the organization,

2. Have a positive impact on the company, its customers and their colleagues,

3. Embrace and initiate positive change,

4. Communicate openly and directly,

5. Commit to lifelong learning,

6. Deliberately look for opportunities to build their leadership skills,

7. Learn to ask for help when they need it and work with their company on how to solve problems, and

8. Not only work harder but also smarter, faster and better.

Characteristics like these are desirable because they represent the ideal employee; the kinds of people all companies should aspire to have working for them. Why? Because it is essential to the success of your business to have motivated employees working for you. Motivated employees save you money because they stay longer and work harder. And, they make your company look good to the outside world whether they are connecting with the people you do business with or telling stories from the office to friends and family. Like Brand Ambassadors, your staff reflects all that is good, or bad, in your company.

You probably already have an intuitive sense whether people in your company are miserable, enthusiastic or somewhere in between. To be absolutely sure, we encourage you to implement a well-executed Insightlink Employee Engagement Survey and get the facts. We are experienced professionals who can help you take the first step to ensuring you are a company comprised of Highly Effective People.

Employee engagement is essential to a company’s success. When a company receives an employee satisfaction survey report, there are often several things that become important for success with employee engagement. These essential elements become the backbone of an engagement program in many successful companies like Google, Microsoft and others: Communication between staff and management is key.

Did you know that at least 37% of employees never have discussions with management on anything? This is a problem that can easily be solved. Companies that have advancement options have better engagement. Listing what is needed for advancement helps to brew motivation. Career development plans tend to help engage their employees. Plus, employees who are engaged are likely to be 2.5 times more productive than those who are not. Recognition from management plays a major part of engagement. Just a few simple, kind words can boost engagement by 60%. It also motivates employees to do their best. This in turn increases productivity for employees. Employees need to get along with both their managers and each other. Most employees greatly value teamwork, knowledge and positive attitudes.

If they get all of the above from everyone around them, they will most likely be engaged. Set goals for everyone to collaborate on. This plays big into teamwork and recognition. Set reachable goals for the employees in your organization, and then recognize when the goals are met or exceeded.

For more tips and information on how to keep employees engaged, contact us at Insightlink Communications.  

Employee surveys tell you everything that is going well and not so well within an organization. They are crucial to helping identify issues that affect employee engagement. However, they do not normally explain how the employees became disengaged in the first place. Below are five things that could cause disengagement in most employees:

Not enough training, or problems with training. Most employees expect to be trained for their job. Just telling them what to do is not enough. Continuous training with the ability to expand their knowledge helps to keep employees engaged in their job.

Overpaying employees for engagement. If you throw money at employees, it’s only going to temporarily fix engagement. At first, employees will be happy with the extra pay, but in the end the problems in the organization are still there. Engagement cannot be bought; it must be earned.

Poor management skills. When the wrong person becomes manager, nothing else can fix the impact that the employees feel. This causes disengagement. In fact, most employees leave jobs due to management, not pay or benefits.

Inability of a company to share information spreads distrust. Employees feel like they cannot trust their company when information that can help them do their jobs better is not shared. This information includes how the company is doing, overall, and the annual outlooks.

Bad hiring practices. Hiring people who are not right for the job will eventually weigh heavily on a company. Employees who feel they do not fit in or do not have the right skills for the job are generally disengaged.

For more information on employee engagement, contact us at Insightlink Communications.  

Disengaged employees are common in today’s society. It’s expected, since the workforce and jobs available as a whole have changed dramatically in the last 50 years. In the United States, alone, employment satisfaction has hit a low. This low is equal to about 30%, which is one of the lowest in the world. More and more companies are sending jobs overseas, and the American pride sometimes seems to have been taken over by greed.

But the newest generation hitting the workforce, the so-called Millennials, are demanding better employer relations, as well as social responsibility from the largest companies. This could, in theory, create a shift in how employers handle their business. It seems that engagement for this new generation is dependent on how innovative a company is with their corporate social responsibility programs. These programs dictate how money is donated, where employees can volunteer, and how the company tries to help the environment. These programs were traditionally held behind closed doors, but this might change.

Considering the current demands of the Millennials when it comes to these programs and the employee’s level of engagement, a more transparent policy needs to be instituted. It has been suggested that corporations should allow employees to choose where their donations go. This, in turn, will increase engagement. So far, the best way to create engagement is to create an atmosphere of community in the workplace. This brings the employees together to solve problems, interact and create stronger working relationships. This hits on many of the major points where engagement tends to fail in Corporate America. Contact us at Insightlink Communications for help with employee engagement surveys and strategies.  

A recent survey taken in India has offered some interesting results that might cause a downward trend in employee morale surveys. It followed several different sectors that included telecom, IT, healthcare and manufacturing. What researchers found was that the amount of regular employees were shrinking each year. In many sectors, contract employees are replacing regular employees as the main source of new workers. This means that permanent jobs are becoming less commonplace, affecting job stability across every sector. Job growth and corporate growth is also affected, leaving experts to believe that employee morale will be next to take a dive.

Though the survey applies to India, the same trend is starting to happen some in the United States. Companies are afraid to grow due to the current state of the economy, which has not fully recovered from the 2008 collapse. What this means for many employees is that jobs are becoming scarce in many fields, and lateral movement is less likely. Employers already struggle with morale and engagement in the US.

Disengaged employees make up close to 70% of the workforce, something that employers want to fix. However, many do not have the tools to do so. A plan of action is needed to strengthen the bonds between managers and employees. This process starts with an employee morale survey. The information gleaned from this survey will help employers to know what their weaknesses are. To learn more about how an employee morale survey will help your business, contact us at Insightlink Communications for viable options.  

Disengaged employees are a problem in the United States, more so than many other countries around the world. It seems that so many companies either do not know what their employees want or need, or they just do not care.

However, when the bottom line starts to suffer, it may be time to take heed and look into why the employees are not happy. There are many reasons why an employee might leave an organization, but here are some shocking facts: Only about 12% of employees leave for more money 75% leave to quit their bosses Barely 25% of businesses have an engagement strategy Less than half of engaged employees receive feedback More than 70% of all employees are disengaged Only 40% of employees knows their company’s goals These facts on engagement are sobering.

According to the statistics, many companies are broken. Their employees are just not happy, which leads to high turnover and lackluster sales. Many other countries around the world have engagement rates near or above 60%, while in the US we are at 30%. There are ways to solve the engagement issue. Studies have shown that engagement strategies have a positive impact on business success.

In fact, businesses who have mostly engaged employees have sales that are 2 to 2.5 times more than a company who has mostly disengaged employees. Engagement will take time to fix. An employee survey will help companies to understand what their employees desire. Then, it is up to them to put a plan in action.  

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