Service Brand Global’s our approach to employee engagement is to encourage ‘one view’ of the organisation. Our strategies and methods for helping companies to improve employee engagement are always based on this concept.
We cover this topic extensively in our recently published book, The Values Economy, and here are a few key takeaways you can implement if you’re looking to improve things in this area of your business.
What is the One View Approach?
In a successful organisation, the people who are actually delivering the service and engaging with customers and clients are a fundamental part of that organisation’s offer or proposition. This is the case whether we’re talking about full-time employees or outsourced teams.
As such, thinking of your whole workforce as a collective team of people who represent your brand and values is important for offering ongoing value to your market. Failing to address this aspect of business with a ‘one view’ approach can leave weaknesses in your customer service strategy and undermine the way that you interact with new and existing customers.
Unless you’re able to think about the whole employee experience and journey for all your employees, from the point of first engagement until the point of leaving (and perhaps even beyond this), it becomes impossible to guarantee that your company will continue to uphold its values and deliver the level of service needed to excel on multiple fronts.
Therefore, our ‘one view’ approach is focused on improving employee engagement by first reviewing the way people and people processes function in your organisation and finding ways to adapt your system so that your employees are more inclined to show passion for delivering excellent service to customers.
Who Are Your Ambassadors?
As mentioned, the people who represent your organisation are not just your full-time employees, they include all of the below too:
• Part-time contractors
• One-off freelancers
• Outsourced service partners
• Temporary workers
Whilst it is not possible to manage the experience of individuals who are not directly under your control, paying attention to all members of the team who are performing customer-facing roles is important because they have a direct influence on the perception of the organisation and your brand.
Why Does This Matter?
Ultimately, engaged employees are the starting point for many good outcomes for your organisation. Research shows that there is a correlation between employee engagement and customer experience performance – 74% of employees at companies with above-average customer experience in their industry feel highly or moderately engaged, as opposed to only 31% at other companies.
It’s also no accident that employees of organisations that are leaders in the field of customer experience are almost 2.5 times more engaged than employees in other organisations.
When compared with disengaged employees, highly engaged employees are more than three times as likely to do something good for their employer, even if it’s not expected of them; almost three times as likely to make a recommendation about an improvement at work; more than 2.5 times as likely to stay late at work if something needs to be done; and more than twice as likely to help someone else at work.
Want to Learn More?
If the above isn’t convincing enough, feel free to be in touch with us at Service Brand Global for more advice on improving employee engagement or addressing other fundamental aspects of your organisation.