Employee Care for your Brand
Shifting from solely monetary motivation
I co-chair the People Ecosystem at B4, a fantastic organisation that builds bridges between organisations. This is about real connection, collaboration and growth; the Ecosystems are a great way of exploring specific aspects of business with people responsible for those areas.
This short article outlines some of the key outcomes emerging from this month’s discussion about real-world people-challenges.
If you want to know more about B4 and to get involved, contact Tina Rosser or Richard Rosser. For help with the people side of your business, drop me a line and let’s chat. If I can’t help, I’ll point you in the direction of someone who can.
Increasing employee care about your brand, more than simply their pay cheque
Poorly paid roles need different ways of motivating people to care about the service they provide. That was one of the conclusions arising from this problem-solving session.
Sounds obvious but ‘how’ do we encourage people to care about the way they show up and engage with customers? How do we get them to care about the impression they make and the wider company reputation? Here are some key points that emerged from the discussion:
- Clarity about expectations (e.g. behaviours, presentation) and how people can move towards more rewarding activities when they demonstrate minimum care standards, is essential. The consequence of not being conscientious in terms of care is missing out on better-paid opportunities.
- Find out exactly what motivates your workers; avoid making assumptions. What constitutes an incentive will differ from one person to the next, so ask and make it relevant. That way you know they are motivated to achieve what is important to them, and as such, are more likely to achieve it.
- Collect feedback from customers that includes both positive comments as much as what could be better. Gaining that feedback from staff about their experience too, is important, as it demonstrates you value your employees’ views. Negative feedback from a customer could say more about that client than the person working for you, unless you know more about the context.
- Sentiment analysis is a helpful way of understanding the emotional meaning behind customer interactions; it has been shown to be a particularly useful measure for phone-workers.
- Training and development opportunities to support workers to stay in control of their emotions and behaviour is useful. That helps prevent one challenging experience impacting on the next activity. Being able to stay grounded with what is important, grounded in company values, is essential to maintain the level of professionalism that employers seek.
To be involved in future discussions about better ways to resolve your people challenges and to learn from guest speakers talking about topics requested by the group, contact Tina Rosser at B4.
