It's a tough thing to achieve, but it's an unstoppable force when it finally gets moving.
Synergy does amazing things.
By publicly declaring your intent to improve employee engagement in your company, you'll soon find yourself propelled by the power of the declaration and the pull of the expectation of the delivery of the outcome.
Committees will form to study and interpret your engagement survey. Action plans will fall out of these committees. Good things will begin to happen, and some people will begin to feel a sense of 'electricity'.
The challenge will be distributing this sense to every staff member in a disciplined, accountable, and sustainable manner. It gets tougher when other realities set in, such as customer priorities, meetings, financial pressures, and production deadlines.
We recommend that sustainability be engineered into the design of your engagement plan, and consideration be given to hiring external coaches to help guide the synergy.
Showing posts with label Employee Engagement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Employee Engagement. Show all posts
8/31/10
Engagement, service, and sustainability.
I've been writing alot lately about how improved communication from managers can benefit the manager's direct reports as well as how this can have an impact on the collective engagement levels in an organization.
As employees become more engaged in their work, they are more likely to expend their discretionary effort in the performance of their jobs...which increases productivity.
...but what of the impact on service?
No matter how pre-defined service levels may be in an organization, by its very nature, service relies on the consistency-of-energy expenditure of the server. Low-energy expenditure, low quality of service. High-energy expenditure, higher quality of service.
At a macro level, managing service really is an exercise in managing the energy expenditure of service deliverers (regardless of the enterprise). If we assume that (nearly) every service deliverer who shows up for work is ready to expend some level of energy, the challenge for managers of service quality is to consistently maximize both effort and ability expended during a shift.
The importance of this challenge is amplified in settings where service errors can be directly quantified as lost market share, revenue, or Medicare reimbursement (as outlined in the value-based purchasing provisions under healthcare reform).
Service workers that understand their role in the organization also understand the organization's objectives, get clear task direction, consistent and frequent feedback, understand safety procedures, and have a healthy relationship with cooworkers are more likely to be involved in their job at a level approaching 'self identification'.
If your staff would say 'yes' to each of the attributes listed above, you're well on your way to enjoying the benefits of engagement, and so are your customers, as higher-than-market service scores accompany market leaders in employee engagement.
...so when you've arrived at this lofty plateau, your challenge is sustaining it!
It's not as daunting a task as it might appear, but it does require consistent focus and determination to remain in your leadership position. Regular organization-wide engagement surveys are a good way to keep this focus, and at the same time signalling to the staff that this is a priority.
Best practice is to punctuate annual surveys with periodic 'hot spot' surveys, to assure that performance improvement plans are being carried-out effectively.
As employees become more engaged in their work, they are more likely to expend their discretionary effort in the performance of their jobs...which increases productivity.
...but what of the impact on service?
No matter how pre-defined service levels may be in an organization, by its very nature, service relies on the consistency-of-energy expenditure of the server. Low-energy expenditure, low quality of service. High-energy expenditure, higher quality of service.
At a macro level, managing service really is an exercise in managing the energy expenditure of service deliverers (regardless of the enterprise). If we assume that (nearly) every service deliverer who shows up for work is ready to expend some level of energy, the challenge for managers of service quality is to consistently maximize both effort and ability expended during a shift.
The importance of this challenge is amplified in settings where service errors can be directly quantified as lost market share, revenue, or Medicare reimbursement (as outlined in the value-based purchasing provisions under healthcare reform).
Service workers that understand their role in the organization also understand the organization's objectives, get clear task direction, consistent and frequent feedback, understand safety procedures, and have a healthy relationship with cooworkers are more likely to be involved in their job at a level approaching 'self identification'.
If your staff would say 'yes' to each of the attributes listed above, you're well on your way to enjoying the benefits of engagement, and so are your customers, as higher-than-market service scores accompany market leaders in employee engagement.
...so when you've arrived at this lofty plateau, your challenge is sustaining it!
It's not as daunting a task as it might appear, but it does require consistent focus and determination to remain in your leadership position. Regular organization-wide engagement surveys are a good way to keep this focus, and at the same time signalling to the staff that this is a priority.
Best practice is to punctuate annual surveys with periodic 'hot spot' surveys, to assure that performance improvement plans are being carried-out effectively.
"Hey guys, you need to see this!"
When was the last time you heard that sentence, or a variant of it, during the rounds of your operation?
It's an important little sentence, because it conveys importance, urgency, and personal line-of-sight, as it sets up an ad hoc communication platform for a skilled manager to communicate to her/his staff.
Why is this important?
It's an important little sentence, because it conveys importance, urgency, and personal line-of-sight, as it sets up an ad hoc communication platform for a skilled manager to communicate to her/his staff.
Why is this important?
- Through increased communication, the manager will reap the rewards of increased discretionery effort/engagement
- When staff become accustomed to these ad hoc forums, virtually anything can be communicated, from corporate/organization directives, to unit performance improvement requirements
- These ad hoc sessions, by nature short (5-10 minute standup meetings), once used to communicate non-operational/transactional information are a natural opener to improved communication to the unit manager, providing the manager with a better sense of the pulse of the operation, and the needs of her/his staff
To integrate this simple transition into your daily routine, or into the routines of the managers reporting to you, I suggest adding it to your PDA schedule now, scheduling the activity for 30 business days, and sending the invitation to each of your direct reports (to get it on their schedules).
...tell me your impressions in 30 days!
"You've Really Got a Hold on Me" - The Benefits of Effective Communication to Employees
I this blog discusses the benefits of effective communications - from an employee's perspective.
So, assuming that as managers, we've been able to correct our ineffective communication by making sure that our staff do not hear about our actions/initiatives 'through the grapevine', the benefits to our people will include:
So, assuming that as managers, we've been able to correct our ineffective communication by making sure that our staff do not hear about our actions/initiatives 'through the grapevine', the benefits to our people will include:
- Role clarity. They'll have a greater sense of their role in the organization, and how it contributes the unit's and the organization's goals
- Through this clarity, they'll find personal alignment between their contributions and the organizational requirements
- Increased sense of 'who the information leader is' (that'd be you!)
- Increased sense of feeling heard
- Increased sense of feeling part of a team, and a higher performing work unit
These attributes affect employee retention, and how they expend their discretionary effort on the job, creating a high performing work unit, improving engagement, and increasing retention.
8/30/10
'Communication' for really, really busy managers.
Every manager knows that communication is central to her/his job. We're taught it in B-school, and it was drilled into us way-back when we were still wet behind the ears.
What they didn't tell us was what the impact of good communication would be.
Did you know though, that a management team that is (uniformly) a group of great communicators links to a 29.5% market value premium of their company? Or, that companies with better organizational communicationl earned shareholder value 50% better than industry peers.
Watson Wyatt, in an '06 report, goes so far to say that communication is a central key to employee engagement, itself a leading indicator of market value.
Yet rotten communication persists.
We see it when branch offices are 'out of the loop' for months on corporate initiatives, or one or more departments are apparently marching to their own drummer when it comes to service, safety, or other items of strategic importance.
It's so common, that as consumers, we've become agile enough (or is it just patient enough?) to navigate around many company's service policies just to complete basic transactions (such as servicing our cars).
As managers, we can improve the communication in our organization, by:
What they didn't tell us was what the impact of good communication would be.
Did you know though, that a management team that is (uniformly) a group of great communicators links to a 29.5% market value premium of their company? Or, that companies with better organizational communicationl earned shareholder value 50% better than industry peers.
Watson Wyatt, in an '06 report, goes so far to say that communication is a central key to employee engagement, itself a leading indicator of market value.
Yet rotten communication persists.
We see it when branch offices are 'out of the loop' for months on corporate initiatives, or one or more departments are apparently marching to their own drummer when it comes to service, safety, or other items of strategic importance.
It's so common, that as consumers, we've become agile enough (or is it just patient enough?) to navigate around many company's service policies just to complete basic transactions (such as servicing our cars).
As managers, we can improve the communication in our organization, by:
- Recognizing the critical nature of communication to the bottom line, and personally committing to improving our skills, discipline, and focus in this area
- Position company communications to our employees through the filters of what they're interested in hearing:
- provide a clear line of sight to your company's strategy, so that your employees know how their work affects the 'big picture' and how the big picture affects their work
- provide knowledge so that your employees can affect their performance within this context
- provide recognition, guidance, and accountability, so that your employees know that their effort matters
Comments?
5/14/10
Improving the Patient Experience Through Collaborative Action Planning
Improving the patient experience is the right thing to do, on every level.
The added wrinkle is the new level of complexity soon to be presented through HCAHPS, which will introduce a financial imperative as described in the PPAC Act with Value-Based Purchasing.
While process improvements can and will make significant improvements in the patient experience (assuming that the myriad of interlocking and often complex root-causes can be isolated and systemmatically removed), there remains a critical 'missing link'...the human element.
....and it is here that almost every process improvement fails.
Let's learn from our colleagues in our other service industries who've mastered complete organizational transformation. Every single case has involved a process redesign, as well as an organization-wide, top-down/bottom-up commitment to service and solving the non-flow-able problems that routinely occur in service businesses.
If it's a people business, the transformation solution must involve the organization's people (or it will stall).
Successful organizations in the service sector (not just healthcare) make service a foundational element of the culture of the organization. It's part of the DNA of the place:
The added wrinkle is the new level of complexity soon to be presented through HCAHPS, which will introduce a financial imperative as described in the PPAC Act with Value-Based Purchasing.
While process improvements can and will make significant improvements in the patient experience (assuming that the myriad of interlocking and often complex root-causes can be isolated and systemmatically removed), there remains a critical 'missing link'...the human element.
....and it is here that almost every process improvement fails.
Let's learn from our colleagues in our other service industries who've mastered complete organizational transformation. Every single case has involved a process redesign, as well as an organization-wide, top-down/bottom-up commitment to service and solving the non-flow-able problems that routinely occur in service businesses.
If it's a people business, the transformation solution must involve the organization's people (or it will stall).
Successful organizations in the service sector (not just healthcare) make service a foundational element of the culture of the organization. It's part of the DNA of the place:
- Dissatisfaction is taken personally and resolved quickly, with deep and sincere apology
- Once the dissatisfaction is resolved, the case is reviewed, traced and every stakeholder or potential stakeholder is brought into the performance improvement team with an equal voice...to assure the situation never arises again
Other service organizations with vibrant (fanatical?) devotion to their customers implement a 'preventive' collaborative action planning process that might take the form of daily huddles that address the issues of the day, rumors, things that may cause disruption, etc. This highly effective communication process takes no more than5-10 minutes, and can serve the dual purposes of communicating news and problem avoidance.
These daily 5-10 minute huddles are:
- Inexpensive
- Amazingly effective at enhancing communication
- Excellent forums to 'get the antennae up' related to key performance indicators
- Not conducted by 99% of all service organizations
We'd be happy to share an outline of a process for this method of engaging frontline employees in problem avoidance and resolution, to create a vibrant service-driven culture that reflects in your HCAHPS performance and (very soon) in your Medicare Reimbursement under Value-Based Purchasing.
For more info, please visit us at http://www.customlearning.com/ or call us at 1800.667.7325.
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