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.”