Despite all the layoffs in companies nationwide, now is not the time to take employees for granted. Just because employees who are left behind are grateful that they still have their jobs, it doesn't mean they feel good about the company.
With unemployment rates rising, work is harder to find, but "headcount reductions" don't translate into improved performance. In fact, fear and discouragement have a negative impact on the employees that the company needs to absorb a bigger workload.
Employee reactions to a layoff range from mistrust of company leadership to blame. In a perverse twist, some employees will also feel a tinge gratified - Those who were angry at management before the layoffs now feel vindicated. They get to be right about management being wrong - Or to put it another way, the company's failure is their success.
How do employees behave when they fear their livelihood is in jeopardy? They escape, avoid and get even - the behaviors of disengagement.
Fear may produce a short burst of activity. But employees also look for an escape. Rates of voluntary turnover rise after a layoff.A study by Charlie O. Trevor and Anthony J. Nyberg, published in the April 2008 edition of The Academy of Management Journal,found that a layoff of 0.5% of the workforce was followed by an average 13% voluntary turnover - including some of the companies' top talent.
Employees leaving the company isn't the worst thing. What about employees who stay on the payroll but avoid doing anything more than the minimum, or actively work against company goals - undermining, bad mouthing the company, or instigating conflicts? Those are the kinds of behaviors you can expect from employees who are angry and trying to get even - The backlash from a feeling of powerlessness.
"The Myths and Realities of Downsizing" by Sami M. Abbasi and Dr. Kenneth W. Hollman is the most comprehensive review of the human and financial costs of layoffs that we've seen yet. It gives results from numerous studies that show an increase in disability claims, employee litigation, and even workplace violence following layoffs. These are the very same behaviors that the EAGER assessment predicts - Escape, Avoid, Get Even.
What is the final set of behaviors in The EAGER Factor? Riveted - The behaviors of engagement. We've found that creating a culture of engagement in an organization reduces both the likelihood of layoffs and the backlash if layoffs occur.
What is your organization doing to prevent layoffs? Or - if layoffs have occurred - what are the effects you've seen?
For a chance to cheer their numbered duckie to the finish line, people adopted duckies at $5 a piece. Then the duckies were launched into Tampa's Garrison Channel. All 20,000 of them!
How did Second Harvest rivet their audience?
The whole experience was a novelty. The reasonable price made this great family fun accessible. With prizes like Super Bowl tickets and a Toshiba laptop, even grown ups got invested.
And $95,000 is nothing to quack about.
Take a tip: Use novelty, fun and relevance to capture your audience.
Friday night is an engagement success at the local Checkers restaurant. We were driving by and the crowd caught our attention. People were standing in line at the outdoor order window, and setting up lawn chairs on the grass next to the parking lot.
What was all the excitement about?
The auto show. Souped up shiny cars with the lids popped open and people leaning in to take a look while they ate their burgers and fries. It was like a cultural event! Like going to the drive-in. And the whole theme is a match to the Checkers brand.
What is Checkers doing right? They're not just selling fries - They've created an experience! A fun novel experience that people want to share with friends. It's entertainment.
Accessible fun, novelty, community. Those are the rivetmakers that have Friday night sales there running on all cylinders.
How can you create a novel fun experience for your customers?
When I read Offshore Rig Workers Call the Shots in today's Wall Street Journal, one question was on the top of my mind, "How can oil companies make dirty jobs more attractive to employees?"
You would think that $100,000-500,000 per year is pretty attractive! But we're talking about dangerous hard labor on 14-21 consecutive shifts, isolated off-shore with a bunch of other rig workers, with relentless mechanical noise, vulnerable to the weather, at risk of losing a finger or a limb. A bit of a recruiting and retention nightmare, huh?
And the oil industry is finding labor - not oil - in short supply.
In his speech at the CEO Energy/Power Conference, Andy Inglis, chief executive for BP's exploration and production (E&P), said, "Demand may be growing, but there are more than enough resources to meet it...Turning these resources into reserves and then production is going to require ingenuity, innovation and technology. Indeed I believe that capability is now the industry's greatest challenge."
The oil industry may work in "the frontiers of geology, geography and technology", as Andy Inglis elegantly described it, but the human resources are what bring it all together.
If you've got a problem with recruiting and retention, you've got an employee engagement problem. The money is honey - It's attractive, but how do you keep these employees? How do you boost safety? Reduce conflicts in tight quarters? Create a smooth operation?
Two of the important lessons we've learned from our clients and their employees: First, money is not the top priority for employees - There are many intangibles that are far more important to employees, are valued much higher than pay, and cost companies little to nothing to implement (but do require a change in perspective). Secondly, employees don't get angry about doing "dirty jobs" - they know the job is dirty when they apply for it - but they do get angry about poor communication or group dynamics that make those jobs riskier or more hostile than they need to be.
Want to hear more about what employees value more than money? How to improve your employee recruiting and retention efforts? How to improve group dynamics on an oil rig? Click below to leave us a comment, or give us a call. We'd love to discuss it with you.
Anyone who doubts that engagement is a group phenomenon should look at the videos of Grant Park, Chicago last night, where President-Elect Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech.
If you still question the value of engagement, look at how an emotional connection mobilized voters. Strategic planning alone would not have been enough. The hope and optimism in the crowds that assembled across the country were stunning. The victory overwhelming.
What you'll see reflected in those crowds is the power of cohesive leadership - leadership that creates bonding and unity in a group. Leadership that pulls people together.
Customer engagement and employee engagement have a lot in common. When you meet needs, people get attached to you. The quicker you meet them, the better. And as far as timing goes, instant gratification is the gold standard. When you delay, people not only doubt you are going to satisfy their needs, they get frustrated, and then they get mad! Just ask JetBlue.
Companies that know how to deliver fast satisfaction make the customer connection.
Amazon's Kindle is a perfect example. It's a vending machine for books. No waiting to have books shipped. No waiting for your next trip to the bookstore. Just a wireless, instantaneous, and seamless download at the press of a button, usually for $10 or less per book or subscription, with search capability for the content of all the books on your device, and the ability to highlight text and write notes in the "margins". Instant gratification.
The Kindle is brilliant, but Amazon's new Frustration-Free packaging project shows that it doesn't take a new product line to boost customer engagement.
Ever had trouble opening one of those plastic clamshell packages? Amazon wants leading manufacturers to give us easy-to-open packages. Thank you, Amazon! And thank you to the companies who have the good sense to give us no-hassle packaging. (And the new packages are more eco-friendly too!)
Who else knows the value of instant gratification? The Geek Squad at Best Buy - No hold time, 24/7 support and their Remote Rescue means you don't have to drive them your hard drive or wait white knuckled for a visit from a technician. They take over your computer, fix it before your very eyes while you sit back and enjoy the ride, and then give you 30 days of support 24/7 - for almost any computer problem you have (they exclude hardware problems) not just the glitch that got you to call them in the first place. (Yup, I said no hold time, 24/7 support for unlimited problems! Remember that the next time you are waiting on hold for Microsoft's technical support or waiting 24-72 hours to get an answer by email from a software company that doesn't provide support by phone).
How do you create an experience that engages customers?
Find out what is frustrating your customers (your front line staff already know) and make that process frustration-free.
Find out what your customers love and give it to them faster.
Well it looks like Japan's corporate leaders are in culture shock. Suddenly, management positions are hard to fill. What's the culture shock all about? A change in values. Work's become a lower priority to Japan's next generation of employees.
Can you imagine? These young workers don't want to sacrifice time with their families to work long hours under increased pressures for just a little bit more pay; They'd rather have a life. And they've seen that devotion to work doesn't necessarily translate into economic security. Company loyalty isn't mutual when it comes time for restructuring.
What do you think leaders are doing to try to remedy the situation? The Wall Street Journal reports that Japanese corporations are trying everything from "compulsory career-training retreats for workers turning 30" to checking with legal to find out if they can fire anyone who refuses a promotion!
Okay - so I'm just wondering - Do these corporate leaders think they can hold back a cultural tide by threatening to fire employees who refuse to become managers?
Threats. Force. Mandates - Command and control is not going to fix it. What contribution will reluctant managers make to a company's success?
The first step to correcting this problem is to recognize it as disengagement. And coercive tactics, the use of force and attempts to control employees, only provokes those employees to escape, avoid, or get even.
Instead of trying to coerce employees into management positions, it's time to make management positions more attractive to this new generation. And that means giving the employees what they value (not telling them what they should value).
If work-life balance is a high priority for Japan's young workers, then companies that design their management jobs to accomodate and support work-life balance will have a competitive edge. If trust in company loyalty has been violated, then companies that succeed in rebuilding that trust will earn the chance to cultivate the next generation of corporate leaders.
If you want to improve employee engagement, we're here to help. Give us a call.
I love Toyota. Yes - I've driven Toyota vehicles for the past 10 years, but lately it's their employee engagement strategies that I've come to appreciate.
Business Week did a spread on how Toyota is handling the global economic slide. Apparently, Toyota has a long standing history of avoiding layoffs, a source of pride in the organization. In 2006, The Washington Post wrote, "Toyota has avoided layoffs or major labor disputes for more than half a century". This year, Toyota is continuing that tradition. Employees who are not needed to build cars are receiving additional training including interdepartmental cross-training, instead of losing hours or losing their jobs.
How else does Toyota earn employee loyalty? And how does it affect their profitability?
Here is an excerpt from Kevin Meyer's recent post about his visit to Toyota's Kyushu plant - with over 6,000 employees. He describes it as a "manufacturing ballet":
This is Toyota's most profitable plant by a dollar/vehicle standpoint. It is not the best in terms of labor productivity. That simple fact should immediately throw some cold water on the "hours per unit" type metrics commonly used in multiple industries. More time not applied to work can lead to improvements in plant productivity that increase profitability. They understand that labor is a value, not a cost....Toyota automates only what is dangerous (welding) or too heavy for humans. Everything else is done by humans... because humans can create ideas for improvement...This is why this facility is so profitable... without being the best in terms of labor utilization. The human-created improvements more than offset. Read more of Kevin Meyer's post on his Evolving Excellence blog.
What are the rivetmakers - the experiences that engage - employees at Toyota? What makes the emotional connections that drive performance?
Loyalty. Security. Learning. The exhiliration of making creative contributions on a daily basis and seeing those changes implemented. (There isn't just opportunity to make contributions, it is an expectation!)
How can your leaders apply these rivetmakers to engage employees in your organization?
