As we realize, well-treated people are better employees. And these people are better motivated. And they achieve more productivity. In addition, they are more customer-friendly. For today’s post we study optimizing employer-employee relationships to motivate. In the next section, we show an employee engagement loop.
Among our past posts on employee motivation are:
- Glassdoor’s 2018 Best U.S. Employers [and posted just last week. 🙂 ]
- Best Firms to Work in Tech
- Being Motivated at Work
- Be a GREAT Colleague
Optimizing Employer-Employee Relationships
In sum, let’s address this question. In what ways can employers optimize relationships with employees?
Overall, a good tool is the employee engagement loop. And it was devised by customer experience expert Ian Goulding. As he observes for Customer Think:
“To succeed, treat employees how you want them to treat customers. If a leader aspires to ‘put the employee first,’ it is important to have structure and rigor. And yes, it is common to find businesses with frameworks to manage the customer experience. But we do not often see this principle applied for the employee experience.”
“And the ’employee engagement loop’ is a simple framework. Also, it supports the employer journey – a framework with six steps. If well designed and managed, it should help you deliver the desired employee experience.”
Before noting the steps, look at the following flowchart.
Implementing the Employee Engagement Loop
At this point, let’s outline the engagement loop’s steps. And look at its focus on optimizing employer-employee relationships:
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- “Attract. If a firm wants a customer-centric culture, it must hire the right employees in the first place.”
- “Infuse Brand DNA. In everything you do, infuse your brand DNA. To keep the right engagement with employees, infusing brand DNA must be ongoing.”
- “Inspire Excellence. In most cases, people must be encouraged to excel. To be ‘just good enough’ is ‘not enough.’ At Ritz-Carlton, employees ‘make memories.’ Because it is not sufficient to just fulfill tasks.”
- “Encourage Curiosity & Learning. As a good example, Amazon infuses its brand DNA via 14 leadership principles. Of importance is ‘learn and be curious.’ And a leader who understands the value of learning encourages the same from others.”
- “Innovate & Co-Create. If you encourage curiosity and learning, you also encourage innovation. At customer-centric firms, employees should not just bed ask their opinions. In addition, they should co-create new products and initiatives. And those who best know the desired customer experience are those who interact with customers.”
- “Reward. If we want to inspire employees, we must show we value them. Yet, this is not always monetary. As with customers, employees want to know their employer cares about them. And they want to be thanked for their effort.”
I think that this post is very on point. Personally, the reward aspect is a huge part of it to me. I feel that if employees/customers don’t get recognized for their efforts after a while, than that makes those people feel less of importance. I think it’s a crucial aspect and one that should have significance. I’ve had an actual experience where I’ve been working at a store for several years with a lot of dedication. I was never given a raise or even recognized for efforts that no one else in the store does. Because of that, I recently left for another store that I felt would recognize me more.
The importance of a good employee relationship cannot be overstated. Customer experience, especially in the service industry, is key to loyalty, and since your employees are the window through which customers get to judge you, they must do an excellent job representing the business. A resentful attitude is extremely off putting.
All throughout our lives, we have been taught to “treat others how you want to be treated,” and I believe this is a theme that people should carry throughout the rest of their lives. If an employee is treated well and his/her happiness is maximized, then he/she will naturally work harder and more efficiently. Satisfying your employees is just as important as satisfying your consumers.
The steps were very compelling and made a lot of sense. The attract made so much sense just on the basis of not wanting to work with crappy people that dense attract customers what so ever. Inspire excellence shouldn’t be so soft it should be hard because in my opinion pressure makes diamonds.
The employee engagement loop does seem to be pretty accurate from what I have experienced, human nature is the culprit. Employers providing incentives for employees creates better work ethics and increased productivity, which realistically shouldn’t be the case. When a job offer is accepted, employees should commit the best of their abilities to their work, they shouldn’t require inspiration through incentives!
The employee engagement loop should be learned by most employers because the six steps it contains should all be followed. The workplace is an environment where both employees and employers spend most of their time and employees should not dread coming to work because they feel like it is something they have to do to survive for economical reasons. The employee should want to go to work which is why each step of this loop is so important because it emphasizes to motivate the employee and make them feel included by learning the brand, growing a curiosity for it to learn more, and get a reward from their employee. The reward does not have to be monetary it could be anything just to show that your employer cares about and recognizes the work you do.
Given the fact that people who work will typically spend more time at their job than at home with their own families, it’s critical for employees to be happy in order to excel. People who are unhappy with their jobs will have no incentive to perform outstanding work. Employers should work on engaging their employees and helping them achieve a flow state in which they can achieve their work and end the day with positive and rewarding feelings. In this flow state, employees will be more effective and the output of the company will likely improve.