In today?s rubric, I would like to touch on employee engagement. We all already had a bad experience being served by an unfriendly employee in a restaurant, shop or agency. The service can be so poor that we even forget how good the product was and we leave with a very bad impression of the company. On the contrary, it is not rocket science to understand that employees that are passionate by their job will provide better service to your customers and thus contribute to enhance your customer satisfaction. PwC defines employee engagement as ?the extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to business success, and are will ing to apply discretionary effort to accomplishing tasks important to the achievement of stated business goals?. That your employees are in direct contact with your clients or that they work in the back off ice, their engagement to you, their employer, is crucial for your success.

SOME FIGURES:

$11 billion: annual costs of

turnovers to companies

(Dalecarnegie)

87% : engaged employees

are 87% less likely to

resign (PwC)

6% : companies with

engaged employees have

higher net prof it margins of

6% on average (Forbes)

24% : less than a quarter of

companies say they have

highly engaged employees

(Harvard Business Review)

How to engage your

customers in 7 stepsPART 2 - ENGAGED EMPLOYEES

Engage - Amplify - Convert Pictawall

How to engage your employees?Clear communication:

Have you ever been thril led to work for something you had no idea about? Would you be will ing to invest your time into something that has no goal? Of course not! And guess what, this is the same case for everyone. So if you want your employees to be engaged, you should f irst make sure that they know where the company they are working for is going. The good news is that it is not rocket science to do. All you have to do is to communicate your plan to your staff and make sure that the right people are aware of the objectives of their own division. By giving your employees specif ic goals to be achieved, you give them a sense to their job inside your company. They can feel that they have a real impact on your company?s results which would not be only your company anymore but also theirs. This is really all that is about clear communication. Make sure your employees know why they work for, what are the objectives they have to reach.

Opportunity:

Having employees that aspire to work for you is amazing, but you should never forget that just working for you is unlikely to be their sole objective. What people generally want is career advancement. The Ivey Business Journal highlights that if you want to engage your employees, you would better provide them opportunities to grow within your company. Once again, that requires you to communicate new job openings to your employees rather than just advertising them online. Inside promotion does not only help you saving on costs, it will also help you increase your employee engagement.

Provide feedback:

We often hear that the Generation Y needs to be praised. But Forbes found that what Generation Yers are really looking for are clear crit iques to help them improve. As this generation is starting to push their parents? generation away, you should start providing more constructive feedback. Do not think you will make your employees happy tell ing

them they have done a great job. Forbes found that giving them tips and advice on how they can improve will help you engage your employees. You will give them a personal objective on which they can work and that will get them engaged toward their improvement and your company.

Involve in the strategy and decision making:

Who do you think knows your customers the best? Your company?s managers that read f igures gathered by external researchers? Or your employees that interact directly with the people that actually come to you and is will ing to buy from you?

Your employees are not just your best mean to convert leads into buying customers. They are also your best source of information. You must use them and integrate them into your strategy making process. Empower them to take decision so that they will see they make a dif ference to your business (Inc). By doing that, you will show your employees that their work matters to you and that in turn will encourage them to do well and better.

http:/ /www.forbes.com/sites/ joefolkman/2014/05/22/does-gen-y-really-want-honest-feedback/

Although you might be successful now, that doesn't mean that your employees are engaged. In fact, the more successful you are, the more dangerous the issue of employee disengagement is. As you wouldn't think you have internal problems when your company is winning, you simply don't even pay attention to the disengagement of your employees. Eventually, the effect can be deeper since you don't treat it immediately and your company's culture can be negatively affected, leading to the malfunction of your business.

I have introduced you several t ips of how you can engage or re-engage your employees toward your company. However, this isn't a exhaustive list and there is much more options you have in your hands to create a winning engaged team. Most important is that you understand that how engaged your employees are will depend on how you make them feel belong to your company.

Next Thursday, I will discuss the importance of online interaction. So if you want to improve the way you reach customers online, stay tuned.

See you next week