January, 2010

Pilfered Lunches Point to a Bigger Employee Problem

By Barbara Burke. January 25th, 2010

Stealing lunches from the office frig could be a symptom of a more serious problem – low employee engagement.

“Hunger does crazy things to you,” was the comment made by an employee interviewed in this morning’s Today Show segment, “Pains in the Office.” While physical hunger is one reason employees pilfer lunches, I suspect that employees who steal from each other have a different kind of hunger.

If your office is experiencing a rise in the number of stolen lunches, you are not alone. Recently several call center managers told me that they’re getting a lot more “stolen lunch” complaints. It’s no coincidence that these are the same managers who are plagued by low employee morale.

Low morale can have disastrous effects. When employees are dissatisfied and chronically unhappy they are less committed to delivering great customer service. Low employee engagement translates into sub-standard productivity, too many customer complaints, low customer satisfaction scores, negative turnover, and high operating costs.

If you have an employee morale problem, you have an employee engagement problem. Start by measuring engagement with a survey. I predict that one of the things you will learn from the survey results is that your employees yearn for a different, more personalized type of support from their immediate supervisor. Research by Gallup and others have proven that supervisors have the greatest influence on employee engagement. When supervisors provide each employee with the right blend of coaching and mentoring, they feel more valued. When front-line employees feel valued, they make their customers feel valued.

I guarantee that once you satisfy your employees’ hunger for quality face time with their supervisor, they’ll have less reason to pilfer lunches from the office frig.

Read more about employee engagement.
There are four ingredients every supervisor needs in order to achieve and maintain high levels of employee engagement: time, accountability, training and tools. This case study describes a project in which my client Vertex achieved a 10% improvement in engagement scores within three months. Their secret to success was training supervisors to utilize a fable book (The Napkin, The Melon & The Monkey) as a tool for engaging CSRs in “conversations that matter.” When trust increased, so did engagement.

If employee engagement improvement is a goal for 2010/11, lets have a conversation.
I’m talking with several customer care organizations right now about implementing a project similar to the one described. I’d like to gather more data on using the book as a tool for improving employee engagement. You can get in touch with me via: Contact.

Doing More With Less? Improve Morale with Regular Team Meetings

By Barbara Burke. January 18th, 2010

According to the latest research by the Conference Board job satisfaction in the US is the lowest it’s been in 22 years. In fact, job satisfaction has gone down 61% since 1987. While the report provided plenty of insights worth pondering, the piece that worried me the most (aside from the fact that 22% of the respondents said they don’t plan to be in their current job in a year), was that only 56% said they liked their co-workers. That’s a huge red flag, the report says: “The downward trend in job satisfaction could spell trouble for the overall engagement of US employees and ultimately employee productivity.”

Your employees depend on each other for unconditional support when facing constant change, set backs and increasingly demanding customers. Those friendly informal conversations are the glue that holds relationships and organizations together. When the basic need for mutual trust and peer support is not met, front-line employees feel less motivated to do their best every day. Esprit de corps plummets. When morale goes south, performance soon follows.

Unfortunately, one of the first things to go when managers and supervisors are under pressure to do more with less (fewer experienced reps to handle higher-than-usual call volumes, for example) are regularly scheduled team meetings. This is a major mistake.

I know, even under the best conditions it’s hard to carve out the time for one-hour meetings twice a month (recommended minimum). Granted, you have to be plenty creative and committed to be able to get your staff in one place at one time and meet the needs of the business. Workforce management often sees these meetings as “nice to have” vs “have to have.”  Bosses who don’t understand the correlation between high employee engagement and high customer satisfaction can be difficult to sell on the idea.

Want to meet your business needs while fostering a healthy work environment in which your people aren’t just surviving — but are thriving? Then do what you can to meet the basic need we all have to spend some time face-to-face. Conduct regular, intentional team meetings. Even if you have to fight for it, hold those times on the schedule sacred.

If you run the meeting right and by that I mean creating a safe container in which your employees can share their ideas and discuss mutual challenges, I guarantee that after a few of these get-togethers you will see a rise in esprit de corps, as well as productivity.

I leave you with this thought: When a group of work mates lack the opportunity to meet with each other regularly so they can get to know each other and discuss mutual challenges — and potential solutions, they are not a “team” in the truest sense. What you have is a collection of boxes on an org chart.

[In fact, I believe in the importance of skillfully conducted, intentional team/staff meetings so much that I have developed a series of DIY (do-it-yourself) training modules based on the ideas in my book. Designed to help supervisors, managers and trainers conduct meetings that build employee engagement these DIY kits are fun and easy to use. The first module will be available FREE with the purchase of the new hardcover book in early February. Look for more details soon.]

This Aha! and SODA are from my book,
The Napkin, The Melon & the Monkey.
Available in bookstores on February 1.

Click here and you can peruse the inside of the book!

Stop Dissing Customers: 8 Ways to Address Toxic Trash Talk

By Barbara Burke. January 11th, 2010

There is a lot of clucking going on and it needs to stop. Like chickens in a crowded chicken coop, service representatives often cluck about their customers — laughing at them, calling them names and making disparaging remarks. Everybody does it. It’s a harmless way to let off a little steam, right?

Wrong. The fact is, dissing customers is another form of gossip. Gossip breeds negativity. Negativity kills morale. Low morale creates a toxic work environment. A toxic workplace creates high levels of stress, degrades performance, leads to employee dissatisfaction, impacts customer satisfaction and contributes to turnover. And that’s just for starters. Here are some things you can do to squelch the dissing and clucking.

8 Ways to Stop Toxic Trash Talk

1. Have a frank discussion about the harmful effects of dissing customers.
Without pointing fingers to anyone in particular, bring up the topic at your next staff or team meeting. Don’t be surprised if there plenty of employees who share your concern; are tired of it and want it stopped.

2. Tie dissing customers to a core value.
No doubt one of your company’s core values is to “respect others.”  Point out that dissing customers is a form of disrespect and that behavior will not be tolerated.

3. Determine whether dissing customers is a symptom of a bigger problem.
Be aware that there could underlying issues that are driving negative employee behavior. To name a few: ineffective supervisors, lack of rewards and recognition, punitive performance monitoring, dissatisfaction with work schedules or recent changes in policies or procedures.

4. Coach on ways to maintain emotional control.
For some people making a disparaging comment about a customer is displaced anger. Train customer-facing employees to use SODA = Stop. Observe. Decide. Act. This simple four-step formula for maintaining emotional control is a highly effective way to see situations clearly and resist reacting automatically.

5. Point out that customers pick up on their negative attitude.
Disrespect breeds distrust. A distrustful customer is impossible to please.

6. Change the vocabulary.
There is no such thing as a “bad” or “good” customer. A customer is a customer.

7. Stop it when you hear it.
After you have made it clear that dissing customers (or anyone else) is not to be tolerated, you need to hold people accountable for their behavior. Hopefully, one or two visits behind close doors with the chronic cluckers will be discouragement enough.

8. The fact is customers pay our salaries.
For those few employees who need a reminder….

Kudos to you for doing what you can to create a positive, inclusive environment where everyone is valued and respected.

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This Aha! and SODA are from my book, The Napkin, The Melon & the Monkey. Available in bookstores on February 1.

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