Employee Engagement

There has been a lot written lately about this topic of employee engagement.  I frequently hear comments from business owners like “good people are hard to find”, or “people don’t seem to want to work anymore”.  There are several ways to interpret comments like these.  It could be a generational disconnect, for example, meaning that the younger generation just acts differently, and the owner is not comfortable with those behaviors.  (Didn’t our parents tell us we weren’t going to make it?)  Or it could be that the comment is simply an excuse for a poor employee recruitment strategy. Or, it may be that there is accuracy to these comments due to changing social expectations about work.  Whatever the meaning, the fact is that businesses still need dedicated, engaged workers to help the business accomplish its mission.  And the responsibility for making that happen rests primarily with the leader/owner of the business, no matter how difficult the worker environment might seem.

A recent Gallup study, “State of the Global Workplace Report (2013”) reported an amazing and disturbing finding that “actively disengaged workers — i.e., those who are negative and potentially hostile to their organizations — continue to outnumber engaged employees at a rate of nearly 2-1.”  Per Gallup, the engagement rates in the United States and Canada are the highest in the world, but even in those two countries only 29% of employees are engaged in their jobs.  No wonder business owners and CEOs fret over lack of worker engagement!

So what is a small business owner to do when even large businesses struggle with this problem?  Well, like many other aspects of business, sometimes getting back to sound basic practices can yield a solution.  There is no single “silver bullet” here, but rather the answer seems to lie in a collection of important practices or “systems” that collectively encourage engagement.

·        Strategic Planning – Often done only be the small business owner themselves, or a couple of key managers, strategic planning can aid engagement if the whole team is involved, by communicating openly the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, challenges, goals and strategies of the firm.  Getting individual employee commitment to personal strategies in support of the organization’s direction is also amazingly helpful in generating employee interest.

·        Team Meeting Rhythm – I know, I know, meetings can sometimes seem counter-productive.  But that is usually a sign that the meeting is being poorly organized or managed.  A rhythm of team meetings is crucial for strong communication, continued alignment of effort to objectives, and accountability to make sure individual performance is supporting company direction.

·        Key Performance Indicators – The numbers make a difference.  Sharing the right numbers with a team acts like a dashboard that helps everyone know how the business is performing.  KPIs have the amazing ability to create a desire to improve, or “beat the numbers”, so that overall management becomes easier and employees tend to act in unison to achieve higher results.

·        Employee Recruitment System – Hiring in small business is no longer as simple as running a classified ad and hiring the first or second responder.  Hiring should be done with more care, supported by tools such as a well-thought-out Position Description, and behavior analysis, as well as two or three interviews and checking of references to make sure that initial impressions are valid.  Think of the important mantra, “Hire Slow, Fire Fast”.

·        Training – It doesn’t seem as easy as it once was to find the candidate with exactly the right set of skills to match company needs.  So be prepared to spend some time training for the skills you need.  It is more important to hire for attitude, work ethic and aptitude than specific skills.  Put yourself in the mindset of many professional football teams who draft “for the best athlete”.

·        Sound Leadership – Ultimately, employees who don’t work out, do so not because of the job requirements, but because of the relationship with the boss.  How we appear as leaders makes a big difference in the level of engagement our employees exhibit.  It’s important to look in the mirror once in awhile, or get some outside, objective feedback about our own leadership style and how that might impact employee performance.

Although these basic systems represent an important, fundamental part of the solution, there are other more in-depth strategies that can be considered as well.  But if you’re looking for a place to begin in creating a stronger level of employee performance, take a look at your usage of these critical areas.

Sold Any Beaver Pelts Lately?

Let’s suppose you have a modestly successful business.  It has supported your life for a couple of decades.  You have a competent staff, a strong reputation and little remaining business debt.  The things that have made the business strong are well-ingrained habits that have made the business easier to manage in the last few years.  You and your accountant have realized that the business has a value that may one day be a significant part of your retirement savings.

Yet, lately something doesn’t feel quite the same.  Sales have been flat, costs keep rising, and your resulting profits are dwindling.  It seems harder to hold prices at your traditional markup levels.  A new competitor has emerged who doesn’t seem to have the quality you provide, but is making inroads into market share.  Your key supplier hasn’t kept up with some of the newer features that competitors have introduced, but they have always treated you well, and your sales rep’s advice has helped you grow to where you are today.  As you put together your financial projections for next year, you sense that your numbers are too optimistic, yet the picture they paint is for another gloomy year.

As a business coach, I am frequently guiding business owners to work on developing strong systems in their company that help them get things done more automatically and consistently, regardless of who is running the “system”.  Systems have proven to lead to higher profits, more value in the business, and a happier lifestyle for the owner.  Yet there often comes a time in the life of the business where something more than systems are required to get to the proverbial “next level”.  Sometimes that means re-tooling or re-directing a business that has simply become too ordinary and predictable while competitors scramble vigorously to catch up, and then pass the one-time leader in the market.  Just as with the old definition of insanity (If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got), you can’t keep doing the same old things.

Yet, change is hard.  What if you don’t have any good ideas?  What if you’re afraid to step away from the successful habits that have made the business what it is today?  What if you don’t have the same appetite for risk that you once did?  After all, this business is your retirement, and you want to protect it.

Businesses that last, really last, well beyond the lifetime of the current owners can only do so if they re-invent themselves from time to time.  Recently I saw a picture of the logo of the Hudson Bay Company, and it reminded me that I used to read about them when I enjoyed stories of the trapping and voyageur days of North American history.  Hudson Bay is still going after all these years, now known as Canada’s most prominent department store operating under well-known names such as Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue.  My guess is that there is not a lot of beaver pelt trading going on these days at Hudson Bay Company.  Somehow, through the three-and-a-half centuries since their founding in 1670, they realized that they needed to adjust their business model to be relevant to the market they were serving, or wanted to serve.

In your business, an important part of your leadership is “steering the ship”.  If it’s time to change course, perhaps enlisting the help of advisors, or a coach, would stimulate some thinking, and even some excitement, over a new direction.  An analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and trends that is a part of any good strategic planning effort may point out obvious areas where you could shift gears and create a new revenue stream or profit center.  And it doesn’t need to be a drastic, wholesale change, either.  Evolutionary business change can often make all the difference, and be accomplished with less risk and cost than a complete makeover.  The important thing is to scout out new opportunities, since in the end, it may be more risky to do nothing than to strike out in a new direction.

Reach Out and Touch Your Next Employee

“Good people are hard to find.”  I hear that phrase all the time.  Did you know that finding good people is now considered the #1 challenge of business owners today, as reported in business surveys by Manpower, E-Myth Worldwide, and others?  Solving this dilemma will take a lot of adjustment in ways too numerous to discuss in this blog.  But one adjustment we can make as individual business owners is in the way we promote our job openings.

It used to be that when a job opened, an ad was put into the classifieds, generating several letters and resumes from interested candidates, two or more of which were well-qualified for the position.  Today, this method has much lower success.  First of all, fewer people are reading newspapers, much less classified ads.  Second, we don’t see too many well-written letters or resumes, if they are received at all.  And the qualifications for our jobs don’t match up as well as we may have seen in the past.

We are hearing more stories of business owners who are so frustrated with the hiring process, that they are giving up and putting any growth plans on the back burner, preferring no growth to the hard work of finding the human resources they could use to meet growing customer demands.  Actually, “hard work” might not be the right phrase.  What is really required is a new process for finding good people.  Our old tried and true methods aren’t working, but giving up doesn’t seem to be the right option.  How about we change our methods?

There is a very good book on this subject titled “Who – The A Method for Hiring”, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.  It discusses some common-sense, but new, thoughts about hiring that I believe are required for success in talent acquisition.  One of the simplest strategies, is really not new, but also not frequently used, and that is networking.  Within our networks (and even more so now with social media) is a powerful connection to third and fourth degree contacts that puts a pool of millions of people within our reach.  Certainly within that pool exists someone with the talent and within the vicinity we seek.

I had a great example of this power recently.  A client had a need for an Assistant Manager in a specialty business.  Within my network, there were three people in the staffing field who I felt were positioned to know of someone that might be a qualified candidate.  I felt that their professional network had a good chance of containing the candidate we sought.  The surprise (and this happens all the time with networking) was that one of them knows a close personal contact who was a great fit.  The interview was set up, and the candidate was hired on the spot, all within two days!

Another client recently posted his job need on Facebook, and within hours had several candidates, three of whom were well-qualified, and one turned out to be a perfect fit.  Whereas in the past he might have felt the need to be more private about his job opening, the success of this tactic on such a public forum was immediate.

My point is that although we are used to a process of finding people that is somewhat impersonal and “confidential”, a more open and shared approach might be exactly what we need these days.  Your next great employee might be someone known by your employees, customers, suppliers, or even family and friends.  You will be surprised at what you find if you just ask.