There are employees who get it and are highly motivated; they understand what their roles are and what is expected of them. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are other employees who don't get it.
They're often much more cynical and tend to focus on the metrics rather than what’s really driving the number. In terms of how you emotionally engage these disparate groups, it can be a big piece of work. Effectively, you’re pushing on an open door for some and you're banging your head against a brick wall for others.
Trying to have the same approach across these groups is not going to be effective.
Whichever group you’re talking to, the key to unlocking the right approach is rooted in the questions we ask; what motivates them, what demotivates them and why?
For some, it’s all about career progression; they want to be the next CEO. Likewise, there are some talented people who just want to turn up and do their job.
That's why I say you need to understand what motivates them and then measure against how well you do that. What's really important to them and how well are you doing it?
Getting Employee Engagement Wrong
I did a piece of work with a utility company. They were struggling to understand why they were getting so many complaints - in part because they hadn't asked their customers.
But, the whole time, they thought the problem wasn't about their people.
You know the type of thing: We have a highly engaged workforce, pride levels are really high etc. etc. That's not the problem. The problem must be somewhere else.
But, having spoken to the guys in the contact center, they were saying: “No, this is a rubbish place to work.” Their reasons were clear. They knew a lot of their processes were broken, the handoffs between teams didn’t work effectively and information was inconsistent. But nobody in the senior management team, in their eyes, was listening or was going to do anything about it.
Apparently, the managers didn't see why they should take people off calls just to understand what other teams do. It wasn’t viewed as a good use of people because they wouldn’t be answering phones.
The upshot was approximately 70% of the calls into the contact center was rework. In other words, “Where's the statement that you said you'd send me?”, “I'm still waiting for the engineer to turn up”, or “I was on the phone and you said you'd put me through to someone else who could help then I was cut off and had to go to the back of the queue” etc.
The issue was that the employees at the company knew what was wrong, but they couldn't get anyone to listen or act. Not only was the business carrying a huge cost of wasted effort, but the pride and engagement levels of the employees were through the floor.
I said to a couple of people, "If you were in a pub or a café and you met someone and they asked where you work, what would you say?" Many of them said they’d either make something up or say they were unemployed.
They’d given up and it showed in the customer experience and operating costs.
Employee Engagement Surveys Don’t Always Tell the Full Story
If you go back to the start of that story, the leadership team thought they had really motivated employees.
We asked the people working in the contact centre about this. We said, “Hang on, your leadership team think you're really engaged, why is that?”
They said, “Well, of course, when the employee engagement survey comes around we tick 10 out of 10, because without that we won't get our bonus.”
As it happens that was an urban myth. But it was a consequence of how nobody had tried to engage the employees let alone emotionally engage with them.
They were right, in a way – the problem wasn’t their people; it was a complacent culture that wouldn’t listen or act to what their people were telling them.
It’s a really good story in terms of what could've motivated them - was somebody genuinely listening and doing something? No and instead, the opposite was true and that was demotivating them. They were measuring the wrong thing; therefore, they weren't focusing on the right thing.
It’s about really understanding what is important in your employees' world and helping to fix it.
If you're looking to find out more about emotional engagement, our upcoming event is for you...
