Employees

how do i know what to do? priorities for success

It is possible to show up early, stay late, be busy, and work hard on all the wrong things. It’s possible to give it your booty kickin’ all on some pretty stupid things. Spend enough time and effort on the in the wrong places and you can turn the bottom line into a sieve.

So, how do you know if you’re focused on the right things? Only you know your business, goals, and priorities, but I can share some guidelines to help you sort things out.

ONLY spend time, thought, and effort on actions that are:

* Legal, moral, and ethical. This is a baseline given. If you can’t get this one right, the others don’t matter. I realize that only taking actions that are legal, moral, and ethical would shut down major chunks of entire industries, but we find over and over again that the short-term gains of taking legal or moral shortcuts are crushed out by the potential long-term consequences. Cut corners long enough and someone is going to find out and make your life absolutely miserable.

1. Beneficial to the customer experience. Take care of your customers and they’ll take care of your business. Hurt the customer and they’ll hurt your business. Be indifferent to the customer and they’ll hurt your business. My tip to all businesses: Spend your time and effort worrying about the fifth sale to me, not the first. I might buy from you once but if you make it painful or forgettable I probably won’t buy from you again and I certainly won’t recommend you. Make the process so remarkable that there is no question that I’ll be making my second, third, fourth, and fifth purchases from you.

2. Beneficial to the employee experience. Ultimately, your business lives or dies based on your employees. Treat your employees as though you need your them more than they need you. Operate from that philosophy and you’ll be fine. Treat your employees as though they are easily replaced cogs and you’ll soon have your company staffed with the people who have so few options left in their lives that they are easily replaced cogs.

3. Beneficial to the long-term success of the business. Yes, certain reports and paperwork must be done. No, you can’t buy every employee a Porsche as a signing bonus. No, you can’t operate without a balanced budget. Yes, decisions and tradeoffs and compromises must be made according to the mission and vision of the business. Just don’t confuse “convenient and short-sighted” with “long-term success.”

Anything else is box-checking bureaucracy. If you can’t justify an action under one or more of these conditions, why are you working on it? If you can’t show a direct connection between an action and a legal and ethical benefit to the customer, employee, or business, that action is doing far more harm than good. Stop it.

[Note: this is an expanded version of a response I made on Laurie Barkman’s “Passionate Performance” blog post People Say (and Do) The Darndest Things. She had a great example of a manager whose actions probably followed policy but were a stupid waste of time and hurt the employee experience (which hurts the customer experience, which hurts long-term success).]

was it the right decision?

[NOTE: the other day I did a post on customer service called ‘why did you bother?’ I had a great conversation yesterday that reminded me that the same issue applies to HR and onboarding.]

First day at work and almost everyone suffers buyer’s remorse. Was it the right decision? Would it have been better to stay at my old job? Will I like my co-worker? What’s my boss like? My old job wasn’t perfect – I hated parts of it – but there was some good stuff, too. I wonder if they’ll take me back if this doesn’t work out? I don’t know anyone here.

Was it the right decision? That’s what almost everyone is asking themselves when they come in to work that first day. Was it the right decision? Even when it’s a step up in pay, title, responsibility, or moving to a great company. Was it the right decision?

Based on the first hour of the first day on the job at your company, how do you think they would answer that question? How would they answer it at the end of the first day?

Some factors to consider:

Did they know what to expect?

Did they know how to prepare, what to bring, what clothes to wear?

Was someone there to greet and welcome them? Was that person excited to see them?

Were they given a tour of the building so they know where to park, find the bathrooms, and get to the cafeteria/break room/vending machines?

Was their boss there to welcome them, introduce them to the team, show them their workspace, discuss expectations, and help them get settled in?

Was their workspace clean and ready for them? Or did they have to spend time figuring out where everything being stored there needed to go?

Did someone offer to take them to lunch? Or did they have to eat alone?

Was there a plan in place for what they would be working on or doing the first day, and then the first couple of days? Did that plan make sense?

Was someone responsible for creating a fantastic onboarding experience? Is there even an onboarding plan or process in place?

Basically, it comes down to: did they feel expected, welcomed, important, and successful that first day? Did they leave feeling like they made the right decision to work at your company?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions, give serious consideration to this one: Why did you bother?

It’s like a car dealer spending huge money on advertising and promotions getting you to come down to their business, set you up to get a car that you think you’re going to enjoy, and then make the actual negotiating and purchase experience miserable. So miserable, that even though you love the car you vow to never buy from them again. And you tell all your friends to never go there. Why did that dealer even bother?

You (hopefully) put a lot of time and effort into advertising for positions, finding candidates, interviewing, and putting together an attractive offer. You have a lot invested in them before they even walk in the door. After all that work to hire them, why not set them up for success from the first moment?

Did they make the right decision? They’ll know after the first day. What’s their answer going to be?

tale of two burritos

Customer service makes or breaks a business and good enough just isn’t. This weekend, I ended up having burritos from two competing franchises. Let’s call them Good Burrito and Better Burrito. Both offer super fresh ingredients, make them with specifically the ingredients and toppings you ask for, are pretty quick, and are very tasty. I never really thought about the differences until sampling them back to back.

Good Burrito asked what toppings I wanted and shuffled me from person to person as the burrito moved down the line. By the end of the line, three different people had contributed to my dinner. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency. Better Burrito had one person who put my food together and what a difference that one person made.

Supergregarious, he seemed to truly be interested in my day. How was my Saturday going, was I working or off, where did I work, did I like it there? When adding ingredients he’d brag on them a little: These vegetables are great, we cook them with… You can’t go wrong with that salsa, it’s great on everything…

A couple of important points. This took NO MORE time, in fact it was probably quicker because I didn’t have to repeat what I wanted like I did when getting passed from person to person at Good Burrito. He never got bogged down in the conversation. I never felt like I was being interrogated. It never felt fake or forced. Instead he gave the impression that he was really interested in my day and in making me the perfect burrito.

Then when I got to the register to pay I asked to get a brownie. The woman at the register (also superfriendly) said, “Let me find you a good one. They put the old ones on top.” And she dug through the basket until she found one. It looked like all the others, but she proclaimed it worthy. When I decided to get a brownie to take home for my wife, she dug through the basket again.

Here’s the most important point: Whether they cared about me, my day, and my lunch doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made me feel like they did. It took no more time, cost no more money, and made all the difference.

The HR and business lessons I take from this:

Hire right! Here’s the secret to hiring people: hire people who give a damn. Nothing else matters unless they care. If they care, the rest is largely irrelevant.  I’ll take under qualified people who care over qualified but apathetic people any day. Qualified and they give a damn? Score! I suspect that the guy making my burrito was following a semi-scripted patter. But he was so fluid and did it so well that it came across as very authentic. And, he was clearly a very outgoing person and a good fit for a customer facing role. The woman at the register went out of her way to find a good brownie. It’s hard to train people to care or go above and beyond. Much easier to hire for it.

Train right. Again, I suspect that much of it was patter, but done so well it felt natural, not forced. That requires a lot of practice, role playing, feedback, more practice, etc.

Think twice about your dress code. Employees at both places were clean and well groomed. Except that the three workers I saw at Better Burrito had long hair (male), blond dreadlocks (female), purple hair (female), and a heavy emphasis on tattoos and face piercings. And they were supernice, not too cool for you, not angsty, not indifferent. Let’s see, person who gives a damn and has nose rings or one who is unpierced and indifferent? Hmmm, easy choice.

Sustained business performance requires great customer service. Great customer services requires great people. Great people requires an intense focus on hiring right and training well. That requires leadership that truly gets the DIRECT connection between people and performance.

The final lesson? Great customer service trounces good customer service every time. Good enough customer service never is.

people will talk

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: people are talking about you.

Managers: at night, around the dinner table, your employees are telling their families all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Employees: at night, around the dinner table, your manager is telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Everyone: at night, around the dinner table, your co-workers and your customers are telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

No matter what level you are in the organization, no matter whether you serve internal or external customers,  the people above you, below you, and alongside you are talking about you. You can’t stop them from talking about you, it’s just the way things are. But if they are going to talk, what do you want them to say about you? How do you want them to describe you?

Be that person. Be someone worth saying great things about. Be the co-worker, employee, and leader that inspires and develops and makes a difference in the lives of all those around you.

why are your employees leaving you?

A friend posted this on Facebook recently: “People don’t leave because things are hard. They leave because it’s no longer worth it.”

I tried unsuccessfully for three or four seconds to track down the source, but it seemed to be anonymous. Most of the places I found it were using it as relationship advice, but the first thing I thought of was leadership and employee turnover.

It’s not hard work or tough situations that causes good people to quit. It’s rare that people find easy, simple work satisfying or fulfilling. Think back to the times when you were most satisfied and fulfilled at work. Chances are you had recently earned a hard fought success, pressed hard, stretched your abilities, and just generally kicked booty. Think back to the times when you were just coasting along – how satisfied were you? People don’t leave because work is tough. People leave because the upsides don’t balance the downsides.

They leave because of fire drills, knee jerk reactions, lack of appreciation (or even acknowledgement), thankless efforts, frustrating co-workers, stifling bureaucracy, arbitrary decisions, favoritism, patronizing attitudes, harassment, and even apathy. When people leave because of “more money” it is often not about the money. The extra dollars are nice, but what they’re really saying is, “I don’t get rewarded enough to put up with this job (and/or my manager). This new job looks like it won’t have these headaches and, even if it does, I’ll at least be paid more to deal with it.”

If you’re experiencing unwanted turnover, the question to be asking is: “What would make it worth it for people to stay?”

 

 

Employees are the most important asset of a company? Maybe not.

We hear it all the time. It makes a nice sound bite. Leaders say, “The most important asset of our company is our employees. Yet, judging by the limited amount of time, money, and effort most companies invest in selecting, training, and coaching their people, I would guess that people were about #97 on the most important asset list. Leaders say it and HR types gripe that leaders don’t really mean it, but what if it is not true at all? What if people aren’t the most important asset?

I’ve been kicking around an idea and would love to hear other’s thoughts on this. What if the most important asset of a business isn’t its people, but its customers? It’s an interesting idea to consider. I suspect that if companies embraced that idea then they would actually end up focusing more attention on the employees. If customers are the most valuable asset, then we want to hold on to them, invest in them, and grow them. How do we do that? By developing systems and processes around the customer. By making them feels special, important, and welcome. By putting the customer first. And how do we do that? By carefully and deliberately finding, hiring, developing, and retaining the best people to deliver that experience.

Is more than just semantics? It seems that when we put great processes in place solely for the sake of the employee then it’s often just a half-hearted effort; vague altruism sucks money away from profits so employee programs don’t get the attention they deserve. However, when we hire, develop, etc.great people for the sake of the customer (and the customer’s dollar) then HR becomes strategic because it is directly correlated with profit. What do you think? Is this just wordplay or is there something to this idea?