subject: How to Give Birth to a Happy, Healthy, Bouncing Baby Culture [print this page] How to Give Birth to a Happy, Healthy, Bouncing Baby Culture
Clearly, we are in the midst of incredibly challenging economic times. Sales, profits, and stock prices at even the best companies are at all time lows. This is leading to budget cuts, layoffs, and ultimatelydisengaged employees.
Let's face it, now is not the time for the whiners, complainers, and excuse makers to be running the joint. During times like these, they can close you down. How do you create a positive workplace culture and environment to get massive results? Read on to find out!
Culture by the numbers
Maybe you know culture's important, but you're thinking, "Not nowlet's do this culture transformation later, after the economy is on its feet again." In fact, you can't afford NOT to work on your culture, especially when the wind is howling outside. Hold on to your hair plugs and I'll tell you why:
Employee engagement scores regularly account for 45 to 50 percent of the variance in customer service scores. Three in four engaged employees think they can positively affect customer service. Only one in four disengaged employees think so.
Engaged employees are five times less likely to have safety-related incidents than disengaged ones. And when they do, the cost is six times higher on average per incident for the disengaged employee. Got your calculator? That means a disengaged employee can cost you 30 TIMES as much in safety-related incidents. Molson Coors saved over $1.7 million in safety-related costs in a single year just by improving their employee engagement program.
Disengaged employees are over 85 percent more likely to leave, leading to increased search, hiring, and training costs.
An industry-wide study of life insurance firms found that companies with a high level of employee engagement outperformed those with low engagement by a whopping 200 percent.
An internal study at one mortgage bank found that disengaged account executives produced 28 percent less revenue than those who were engaged.
This would all be fine newsIF most employees were engaged. But a 2006 study by the Gallup Management Journal found that engaged employees make up an average of just 29 percent of a company's workforce, leaving a startling 71 percent who are "not engaged" or "actively disengaged." And the numbers for banks are almost certainly even worse.
Culture is everything. Culture is the leading predictor of future profitability and growth across all industries. And employee engagement is the first and foremost driver of workplace culture.
NOW is the time to get your culture soaring!
Getting your house in order
Before you bring that baby home, you'll want to get your house in order.
First of all, know beyond a doubt that how you do anything is how you do everything. Commit to excellence across the board because EVERYTHING matters. Zenger/Folkman created a formula that captures this idea:
Success of Implementation = Motivation x Accountability x Visibility x Follow-up
Suppose for a given initiative you were to rank each of the variables on the right side of the equation on a scale of 1 to 5. Let's say your participant motivation, your culture of accountability, the visibility of information, and the follow-up were all flawless. You'd get a perfect score of 625. First-rate implementation.
Now drop just ONE of the categories to a 1. Maybe everything was great but follow-up, which was the pits. Your total score drops all the way to 125. By letting just one aspect of the implementation falter, the implementation plan is only 20 percent as effective as it could be.
Even so-so scores can kill an initiative. If motivation, accountability, visibility, and follow-up are all at 3 out of 5, you might think you're doing all rightuntil you do the math and realize your initiative is gasping along at 81 out of a possible 625!
As an organization, you need to get brutally honest with yourself about where you fall downwhether it's motivation, accountability, visibility, or follow-throughand shore up those weak spots to give your new culture the best possible chance of taking root.
First steps
A culture shift entails a series of ongoing and increasingly elevated roll-outs. So how do you get going on that very first implementation?
Start simple. Choose an easy roll-outa Moment of Truth such as phone standards or customer greetings. Create a training that motivates people and helps connect them emotionally with what's acceptable behavior and what's not. If it works well, use that training as a template for all the roll-outs to come. If it doesn't work well, FIX IT.
Be crystal clear on expectations. Put a handout in front of your people that says THESE ARE THE STANDARDS. Phone standards might say, "We answer the phone by the second or third ring, we always call the customer by name, we always ask how else we can help," and so onmaybe 10 standards in all.
Be accountable. Once you promise mystery shopping, make sure it happens, and make sure it follows the promised standards exactly. "These are the 10 things that you'll be shopped on from now on." Create a rhythmevery week those shops are back out, there's coaching, and there's celebration tied into it. Make sure the quality of the celebration correlates to the quality of the breakthrough.
Follow-up. Finally, at the end of the measurement time period (usually three different weeks measured over the course of six weeks), be sure there's a follow-up, and that the quarterly celebration is tied to that follow-up. Take ALL of your rollouts and continue to measure them so early gains aren't lost. This is where quarterly celebrations come in handy, making sure your cumulative progress is maintained.
Commit yourself to the impeccability of following a system with complete adherence to what matters and you WILL transform your culture. And once you've done it, you'll wonder why on Earth you waited so long.
