Employee Engagement « The Blog of Marcia Xenitelis

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Employee Engagement: How changing process changes behaviour

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

For most organizations employee engagement is not just about the majority of employees but also about leadership teams. This is the greatest challenge, because if you have a disengaged leadership team you have no chance of engaging employees. The reasons why are clear:

Employees look towards their leaders for direction – if they are not interested no amount of communication efforts will change that
You need to change process to change behaviour – unless you put in place systems and processes which force the behaviours of leaders to change, any attempt at change management will fail
What gets measured gets done – clearly if the systems are focussed on something other than the focus of your engagement strategy there is no incentive for the leadership team to change

Now we should all remember that change is hard, and it is scary for individuals, no matter what level of leadership. The other point is that just because someone has made it to a leadership role that does not mean that they have the skills to engage their teams. People generally learn from role models and whilst people might be technically brilliant at their role and achieve outstanding results they may not bring out the best in their teams.

Here a few ideas of how process can change behaviour and therefore achieve employee engagement at all levels:

Focus on the leadership team and put in place a process for them to engage their teams. In one organisation the leadership team was unsupported of a new software system that was going to be introduced, and all communication with staff was left to the IT area. By making one simple change and requiring the business leaders to find out how the system will work and impact on their area they have the confidence to speak about it. Then put in place a simple format and support them in designing a brief presentation on the system to their teams. Like a sports team, one win and momentum and enthusiasm increases but you need to make sure that they feel “safe” about taking this step and don’t set them up to fail.
Build on this momentum by identifying business decisions that need to be made and hold the leadership team accountable. Bottom line is that once they feel that they have ownership they will be more comfortable and confident talking about changes. By letting all team members know what is happening, what the focus is of the leadership team on the changes and what decisions they are focussing on will require the leadership team to come on board.
Open communication channels so that team members feel confident to ask questions about changes and make sure you provide real answers. So again put in place a new process whether this is a dedicated email address, formalised team briefing process or regular change updates. Most importantly it is not only two way communication but across communication talking with their peers and conveying the merits of change.

Without change in process there is no formal reason why behaviours will or should change. The only way employee engagement at all levels will be achieved is when something in the way they reach decisions, do their work or are measured changes and requires them to behave differently. Change communication on its’ own will not achieve the level of employee engagement that brings about sustainable change.

Posted in Change Management, Employee Engagement | No Comments »

How To Get Traction With Leaders And Employees On Business Strategy

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

The greatest challenge any CEO faces with a new business strategy is getting traction. In terms of developing an engagement and change strategy, determing strategies for how to deal with leaders that publicly support the change but in reality don’t is the first issue you need to deal with.

Here are some reasons organizations fail to get traction with leaders and employees on business strategy and what to do about it.

1. A divided leadership team

2. Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or achievement

3. Change fatigue – organizations that appear to constantly change direction

4. Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change

5. Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies

So let’s tackle each point and identify some things we can do as employee engagement specialists to minimize the impact of these impediments to successfully implementing change.

A divided leadership team

One of the most overlooked aspects of change management is alignment of the leadership team with the new business strategy. One quick tip is to facilitate a session on how the successful implementation of change is largely dependent on a united leadership team. They need to understand their role in engaging employees in the change process and what employees will be looking for in terms of signs of support and commitment. This is the key message, whilst the leadership team may not all be in agreement, and it should be noted that they rarely are, they must be aligned. That is, they will give 100% commitment to the new strategy and what they need to communicate and do to engage their teams. This is important because the first thing employees look for is a divided leadership team to discredit the new strategy.

Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or traction

Another important tip is to make sure that as the “expert” on change management you are able to convince the CEO and their executive team of your strategy. Often they are so excited that they tell you what they want in terms of employee communication and usually this involves major announcements and forums when they have finally reached alignment on the new business strategy. However the significant risk is that the time between the launch and the actual first visible achievement of some change is too long and employees begin to believe that change will never happen. Loss of credibility is an enormous risk for the leadership team when implementing change so you need to provide convincing reasons for your employee engagement approach. Drawing a timeline indicating the gaps between the launch and expected first actual achievement of a project milestone should be enough to convince any leadership team of the importance of taking a strategic approach to employee engagement.

Change fatigue – organizations that appear to constantly change direction

Leaders and employees become increasingly disengaged when they do not understand why the organization seems to continue to change direction on business strategy without giving the prior change strategy enough time to work. Often these are not new strategies but enhancements or the next progression of the original business strategy. When developing your employe engagement strategy you need to establish the links between each business strategy and be able to demonstrate to leaders and employees what these links are. The best way to do this is to design activities that engage employees in the process of change as it relates to them. There are many change strategies that you can implement that are focussed on activities that will ensure leaders and employees will finally say, “Aha, now I get it!”

Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change

Employees have a long memory and if the organization has a poor track record of successfully sustaining change they will be quick to justify why they shouldn’t become engaged with this latest change in business strategy. Therefore part of the engagement strategy needs to include specific data and facts about what is different this time and how the changes being introduced will be sustained; reverting back to the “old ways” of doing things will not be possible. Where ever possible real examples that demonstrate the each step of implementation need to be communicated, not only emphasizing why employees can’t revert back to previous processes but also the benefits of the new changes.

Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies

Finally waiting too long to engage leaders and employees will also risk traction on business strategy. At the outset of any discussion of change in business strategy, the employee engagement expert needs to be involved to understand timeframes, key milestones and impact. It is only then that you can develop meaningful strategies that focus not just on information and key messages about what is happening and when; but also engagement strategies that focus on the individual and how the changes will impact them and the way they do their work. By implementing employee engagement strategies early on, rather than what most change strategies focus on which is information, employees will feel some ownership and connection to the new business strategy from the beginning.

Whenever an organization embarks on a new business strategy, whether for a division or the whole of organization, and this includes government departments, leaders and employees react in exactly the same way. There will be those groups that support the new strategy even without all the facts at hand, those that preach the mantra, “it will never happen” and those that wont support the strategy until they see some commitment and evidence that it will happen. The challenge for change managers is to focus on the leadership team first and develop a strategy to deal with each of these three groups.

I look forward to hearing more about how you have managed to ensure traction with new business strategy.

Tags: business strategy, Change Management, Employee Engagement
Posted in Change Management, Employee Communication, Employee Engagement, business strategy | 2 Comments »

How To Create A Service Culture

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

One of the critical factors that distinguish an organization from its competitors is the quality of service – the customer experience. Let’s take banks for example, basically they all offer exactly the same products, and at the same interest rates. So why do customers choose to deal with one bank over another and how can you be sure that your people will deliver the customer experience that keeps them coming back and recommends your organization to others.

Innovation: The smart companies during this economic downturn are using this time to engage employees in coming up with innovative ideas to set them apart from competitors when times turn good again. The key here it to examine customer satisfaction feedback and determine exactly which attributes customers value the most – for the banking sector it may well be convenience, friendly and helpful employees and ambiance of the branch. If this is the case then the focus is on how to think outside the square and offer convenience in banking over and above what competitors do, which may not be about hours but might be about location. Similarly with friendly and helpful employees – how well do you staff understand what the customer experience is like, have they tested it as a customer? And with regard to ambiance, are employees encouraged to become involved in design and facilities and comment on those little things that they have noticed would improve the customer experience?

It goes without saying that if you want to create a service culture you need to engage employees in the design of that culture. So how can you do this for the least cost but highest impact? One way is to form teams across divisions and levels, communities of interest that come up with innovative suggestions for improvements. Tap into employees’ collective knowledge about the customer experience, what they have noticed, what customers have complained about to them, some of the best research is not the survey that researches customer satisfaction but the comments made to employees during their actual encounters with the organization. If you take this information, divide it up into segments, pilot, evaluate and implement and then reward employees for their contribution you are well on the way to creating a culture focussed on service and not just focussed on turning up to work and not contributing.

An organizational culture will only change when you set up systemic practices that support the change. So you need to ensure the following is in place for to achieve optimum outcomes:

1. That managers and team leaders have specific accountabilities in encouraging new ideas from their teams and understand the concept of communities.

2. That a process is developed for selecting those ideas to improve the customer experience that can be implemented as a pilot.

3. The evaluation process is determined against business results and that successful ideas ARE implemented.

4. Employees are rewarded for those innovative ideas that customers truly value - the reward system may not be about money – it might be about dinner with the Executive team – therefore again reinforcing the culture of having access to people who make the final decisions and that innovation in customer service is valued.

5. Finally the communication strategy needs to focus on the success of the program and continually reinforce the positive impact on the customer experience and business outcomes.

So something to think about, how are your strategies in employee engagement and change management encouraging employees to make a positive impact on the customer experience and create a service culture?

Looking forward to hearing about the strategies you are implementing.

Posted in Change Management, Employee Engagement | 1 Comment »

How to Reposition Employee Communication

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Employee communication is an interesting field because it is based on the premise, among others, that the more tools we use to communicate with employees the greater chance that the message will be understood. This may be the case, however what CEO’s want more than ever before is that employees are engaged with that message and deliver the business strategy.

If you really want to make a difference and to have a seat at the table when strategy is discussed then you need to move away from talking about the information tools that will be used to communicate and think about how you can contribute to achieving organizational outcomes. So where do you start and what is the difference?

Well first you need to understand business strategy. This is not a difficult thing to do, but once you have mastered this then the questions you ask about employee communication change. Typically they should include the following:
* What aspect of the business strategy could an employee communication plan impact?
* How will the business strategy be measured?
* How can my employee communication strategy be measured and linked to the business measurement?
* Can I devise a low cost yet high impact employee communication strategy that will engage employees?
* How can my employee “information” communication strategy compliment this?
* What will be different for employees and the business if this strategy is successful?

The most important question you really are asking is how can I reposition employee communication in the mind of the CEO and the Executive team so that it always has a place at the table from the beginning and not called in once decisions are made and asked to simply get the message out there. The only way to do that is by demonstrating what you can do. And the easiest way to do this is the following:

* Not everyone is going to be supportive so in the first instance identify a business unit or division with a manager you get on well with who understands and believes in the contribution employee communication can make in achieving business outcomes
* Next once you’ve read up on business strategy and understood the business and customer needs of the division make a time to meet with that manager to discuss the business strategy he or she is working on
* Ask what the business targets are, what will mean success?
* Ask for the opportunity to research how you might assist in developing an employee communication plan that will engage all employees including managers in that division to achieve the business outcomes
* Go away and research many different strategies and come back with a plan including examples of case studies where business outcomes have been measured and achieved through employee engagement

In the consulting world it is a commonly understood belief that you need to “earn the right to advance” you can’t just go in and expect understanding of what you have to offer if you can’t demonstrate it. Similarly you need to have a solid example for the CEO and the Executive team to stop and take notice, and most importantly demonstrate how you contributed to the achievement of business outcomes.

Once you can demonstrate this you have successfully repositioned Employee Communication and have earned that seat at the table.

Look forward to your comments.

Marcia

Posted in Employee Communication, Employee Engagement | 1 Comment »

How To Communicate Organizational Values

Monday, June 1st, 2009

I don’t think I have ever met a leader that wasn’t serious about his or her intent to communicate the organization’s values. There it was on the list of what a leader must stand for, and the intent is admirable. It is the execution of the intent and the follow up behaviours that cause concern.

So here is an example of how NOT to do it. The CEO of this organization decided that a new set of values was essential for the business. His reasoning was based on feedback from the staff survey, poor communication skills of manager’s, a general lack of trust, a perceived lack of focus on the customer, both within the organization and externally.

An external consultant was called in to facilitate a values session with the senior management at an off site retreat. There was plenty of white paper, robust discussion and at the of the day they all agreed on the values and pledged that they would now walk the talk and display the values in their working day. These values were the usual, in this case Customer Focus was central and other themes were honesty in our communication with others, trust in the people we work with, teamwork is how we work, open communication and so on.

So then the employee communication team was called in and were asked to design a communication strategy around this. Posters were produced and framed, the usual graphics had the central value with the others around this, a booklet was printed and distributed to all employees and each manager was given the task of conducting a values workshop with their teams. The way this worked each group picked a value and then worked on what they thought the organization was doing well about this value and what could be improved. Many hours were spent on this and then they reported back to the whole team.

So far so good. And that was it. Nothing else ever happened, no-one ever heard anything else about the values workshops, the CEO ticked it off his list, a job done, employees were engaged because they participated in workshops right? Wrong.

In fact this process caused more headaches than anything else. This organization went on to restructure, downsize and expected employees to work longer hours and do more with less. The senior managers began to panic about their job security so they became more withdrawn rather than open and honest, the focus was on budgets and not the customer and the values became a talking point amongst employees for what they did not stand for.

This is how it could have been improved.

Once the value workshops were over then the information collated from the teams could have been discussed by selected employees and then the ideas for improvement could have been communicated face to face via managers to staff using team briefings. Each team could have been required to monitor the impact of those improvements and to build on those and measure the impact either via sales in the case of the customer, or via the staff survey in the case of employees, here I am talking about topics such as open and honest communication, teamwork and so on.

Engaging employees in the process of change by communicating a new set of organizational values only works if you construct strategy that is directly integrated with the work that they do. And most importantly you need to measure the impact of those activities. It is only by doing this that you bring values to life and real change to an organization.

Posted in Employee Engagement | 1 Comment »

Why bother with Employee Engagement Surveys?

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

One of the things that continues to surprise me is when times are bad organizations still spend money on employee engagement surveys. One would think that a general look around the organization and tea room discussions would make it obvious to all that wanted to see it that employees are not so much engaged as they are worried about their jobs. This leads us to two major issues to consider during tough times, the first is how we inspire confidence and innovation in an organization that appears to be in freeze mode. The second is what you should measure as an indicator of employee engagement.

Let’s deal with inspiring confidence and innovation in your organization. Well this boils down to a communication strategy that focuses on getting employees actively involved at all levels in understanding the business and how their ideas can have a positive impact. Here’s an example of what you could do. Take real business data and share it with groups of employees at all levels that deal with customers in specific sectors. Ask them for ideas on improving or innovating just one aspect of your service offering or product line and test in a specific market segment on a small scale, say a sales territory or state. Then after testing those ideas for a six week period ask employees to examine the business results. Take those ideas that have shown a substantial improvement in sales and implement either state wide or nationally depending on your organization. Design a reward and recognition program around the impact of these ideas on the business outcomes and start to energise your workforce. It really is that simple, treat employees with respect, stop telling them what to do instead listen to what they have to say, put some rigor around the framework for ideas and reward outstanding results. This is how innovation happens and how you can energise an organization to respond quickly to changing market conditions.

So what about employee engagement surveys? I say save your organization the tens of thousands of dollars they cost and invest your time in a well thought out employee communication strategy like that outlined above. This will ensure a climate where communication is open, ideas are valued and actions are implemented. All these steps are indicative of a workforce that is focussed, has purpose and feels a greater level of confidence about the future of their organization and therefore their role because they are actively involved in designing the future, not being told what do and when to do it. If you just change the paradigm from budget cuts, budget cuts and budget cuts to opportunities, growth and involvement your organization’s business results will be your barometer of employee engagement, no survey required.

Posted in Employee Engagement, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »