Your staff can help you to solve
business and performance
issues you might not have even
thought about. They’ll be also
more engaged as a result.
Graham Jarvis explains.
Human capital is the most important
asset of any business, but it is also
undervalued. That’s because most firms’
managers still take a traditional
authoritarian view of their employees,
which can demotivate staff, create an
atmosphere of resentment, lead to higher
churn rate, as well as reduced individual,
team and corporate performance. It’s time
for change because progressive
organisations have realised the value of
talking to their staff and investing in their
human capital.
The issue is particularly important in an
organisation where a high level of
customer-employee engagement is
required. The Gallup Organization studied
ten US companies in 2003, each of which,
understood the value of their human
capital and how customer-facing staff can
either create a poor or rich customer
experience. The outcome depends on how and whether staff are given ownership over
their roles and empowered to make
decisions that fulfil customer needs.
These companies, by applying Gallup’s
Human Sigma customer-engagement
methodology, achieved amazing results:
sales grew by 85 per cent and gross profit
margins by 26 per cent. This is as much due
to the increased confidence that staff feel
when they are trusted to do their jobs well,
as it is about managers offering them a
more collaborative approach to the way
they think and work with their staff. Part of
this equation should involve managers
asking staff the right questions, treating
them as adults rather than as children;
enabling them to discuss issues and deliver
feedback about their jobs, their customers
and about how organisational processes
might impact on their ability to perform.
“Invest in your employees and show
them respect, and they will be a powerful
tool for you,” said Mark Stuart. head of
research at the Chartered Institute of
Marketing. He added that training is one
way to “prove to your staff that you value
them, as well as giving them knowledge to
increase their productivity, broaden their
career prospects and help them on their
way to better job satisfaction.”
Nurturing and recognising the value of
their human capital will help to prevent
employees – particularly your best ones –
from jumping ship to a competitor. The
consequences of this are lost intellectual
capital, skills and experience – invaluable
assets that are both costly and hard to
replace.
“Managers must take the perspective that
organisations succeed because of their
people,” said Ashley Semmens, director of
change management consultancy, WCL.
“They should be doing everything they can
to understand what improves their
performance and working on those aspects
to improve value.”
His colleague Cindy Bush added:
“Organisations are made up of people who
make the work happen. The remaining
assets are enablers.” But some managers fear adopting new
approaches to managing their employees,
and that includes opening up dialogue with
them.
“There is a belief that managers should
have all of the answers, and so they fail to
facilitate good communication with their
staff, which would enable them to provide
solutions to problems and raise issues,” said
John Curtis, managing director of people
management and leadership consultancy
MC2.Yet, by opening a channel of communication
without causing employees to
fear that they might be reprimanded for
their comments, managers will enhance
their reputations and deliver improved
team and business performance.
Good managers understand the
importance of asking their staff for
feedback. In customer-facing environments
they can provide invaluable customerinsights, which can be used to improve the
quality standards of the organisation,
enable them to develop better
organisational processes, staff training and
customer strategies. They know that the
key to success partly lies in the working
environment that they create and in their
ability to motivate their ‘human capital’ –
their staff. This includes understanding
what WCL calls the emotional quotient
factor (EQ), which can be a barrier to
ongoing organisational, team and
individual improvement.
Those who forget that they are only
human beings and think they have all of
the answers, could find themselves
becoming a bottleneck rather than the
enabler of ongoing performance
improvement.
Gary Schwartz, vice president of product
marketing at Confirmit, an online survey
and reporting tool that can deliver
employee and customer feedback, said:
“Managers who think they know all of the
answers need to ask more questions.”That means that managers also require
training to ensure that they can constantly
maintain or deliver improved performance,
to get more out of their people. They need
as much support as their own staff if their
own individual human capital is to bear
fruit. So, while they should be accountable
for the decisions they make, they, too, will
require the support of their own superiors
and organisation.
It’s not all about going for a stick when something has gone wrong. Both managers
and their team members might have
unresolved issues that affect their
performance. That’s why an environment
of open communication is so important. It
enables an organisation to realise where its
strengths and weaknesses lie and to fix any
issues. Without dialogue, they could
remain buried – diminishing overall
performance.
Dialogue should be rewarded and
encouraged, as indeed should the ability of
staff to have more control over their jobs
and decision-making. Most people want to
do their jobs well, although Gallup has
found that 71 per cent of employees are
often disengaged and a further 20 per cent
are actively disengaged from their roles. The
latter are the ones who will dismantle the
work your best employees do. So managers
need to ensure that their staff are fully
engaged with their organisations, with their
roles and customers. This requires managers
to trust staff more by giving them more
ownership of their jobs, asking them the
right questions, showing that they are
valued and mentoring them to achieve more
in their jobs. In comparison, the traditional
authoritarian, know-it-all management
approach will fail to
deliver.
By Graham Jarvis
First Publishing by Human Capital Management magazine
