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This week, I'm going to switch gears and, instead of relating an anecdote, I'd like to share some things I learned in a recent webinar given by the Canadian Management Centre.
In August, 2012, Ipsos Reid prepared a report on employee engagement in Canada. They interviewed 1,200 employees at over 500 companies, as well as 484 human resources managers. The report covered 25 industry sectors.
As managers, we'd love to think that our employees absolutely enjoy working for our companies. However, the Ipsos-Reid study indicated that only just over a quarter - 27% - of employees consider themselves engaged. Disturbingly, 23% classed themselves as totally disengaged.
I think it's safe to say most employees would be quite content to stay with the same employer throughout their careers. However the study suggested only 37% of employees think their employers are doing a good job of retaining good employees.
What are the economic effects of employee engagement?
One school of thought is that the cost of employee disengagement is the product of one year's average salary times the rate of voluntary turnover (i.e., employees who resign)
According to Ipsos-Reid, employees who are highly engaged in their jobs are 2-1/2 times more likely to consider themselves satisfied with their jobs - and 1-1/2 times more likely to excel in their jobs. To me, this suggests that companies who foster engagement among their employees will have a team that outperforms their competitors.
This correlates with popular wisdom among sales managers that sales people who strongly believe in the product (or service) they're selling are the ones most likely to succeed. Their passion about the product is infectious and helps them persuade customers to buy. Their passion - and success - make the job fun, and that makes it a lot easier to get out of the office and make calls on customers, which, in turn, generates even more sales.
A key factor in building employee engagement is for managers to actively get out of their offices and spend time getting to know the people on the front lines. Really, this is a matter of communication, and the Ipsos-Reid study dealt also with how communication impacts engagement.
Interestingly, another payoff for developing engagement is that, by moving an employee from actively disengaged to highly engaged reduces the likelihood of them leaving the organization by 92%. If your best and brightest aren't engaged, cultivating positive relationships with them could be your best way to avoid losing them.
According to the study, overall, 68% of Canadian workers are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs. When workplace issues (such as working conditions, business cycles, potential layoffs etc.) are seen by employees as being communicated in a timely manner, job satisfaction increased to 88%.
The interaction of "management by walking around" probably is one of the best ways of building engagement because it promotes regular flow of information back and forth between manager and employee. It permits some key company initiatives to be conveyed informally (which may also be perceived as more sincere) and allows employees to express concerns before they build up to a crisis.
The webinar is posted on YouTube. Here's a link to take you there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89NTnL6ilYI&utm_source=Campaigner&utm_campaign=2013_Post_NTLS_August_8_webinar__&campaigner=1&utm_medium=HTMLEmail&utm_content=2013_Post_NTLS_August_8_webinar__
Another CMC webinar from December 2012 presents highlights of the study.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go7MKm4WjC0
Anyone who has traveled internationally has encountered customs officials.
Usually they look stern and impassive and, when we meet up with them, we feel like we're being interrogated (which I suppose we are). To most of us, they're intimidating. We look on customs officials as wooden, bureaucratic and cynical - people who can find guilt in the most innocent of people.
However, there IS a human side to customs personnel if you give them a chance to show it.
One of the companies I worked for sold equipment and I regularly carried a demonstration system with me whenever I traveled.
On a couple of occasions, when I was going through US Customs, I was asked to get a document called a carnet, which is basically like a passport for equipment and which demonstrates that the material listed in the carnet is only entering the country for a limited time and would be returning to Canada with me. The carnet came with a cost (which was not huge), but my boss did not see the need for the carnet because he had had no problems taking equipment across the border himself.
One morning, I was going through US Customs for a week-long trip to the East Coast and was refused entry because I did not have a carnet and it had been documented that I was supposed to get one. I had never been refused entry to the United States before, so this was a major personal blow, though I did end up driving down and managed to see all the customers I had planned to visit on that trip.
If I thought I had it bad, another person going through about the same time as me was heading to a trade show in New York with a number of hand-tooled saddles. She had no documents to declare the value of the saddles and was unable to satisfy the customs official that the saddles would not be sold at the trade show and be returned to Canada. He told her the only way he would allow her to enter the United States was if she used a box cutter to cut into the saddles to make them unsalable. She obviously wanted the saddles in pristine condition to display at the show. I don't know how here experience played out - whether she declined to go to the show or if she damaged her merchandise to be able to participate in the show.
My case for getting a carnet was now much stronger, and we got the document.
Using a carnet requires the carnet-holder to clear Customs in his/her home country and then Customs in the destination country, reversing this on the return journey. Each time Customs takes a fiche or page from the carnet and stamps the document so the other customs officers can verify that procedures have been properly followed.
When flying, the carnet can only be cleared through designated international airports that have a customer office, which restricts where a carnet-holder can depart. At Laguardia Airport in New York, the US Customs office is about a half mile walk from the terminal in a separate building, but usually Customs is somewhere inside the terminal building.
From a Customs officer's perspective, the carnet is a professional way to handle temporary importing of equipment or tools. It demonstrates the carnet-holder's openness about declarable items as well as being properly prepared for customs inspection. And you get more of an opportunity to interact with Customs personnel.
One one trip to the US - just before Thanksgiving - I had a pleasant chat with the customs inspector about holiday preparations and got his recipe for smoking a turkey.
One time I was driving and declared to the primary inspector what I was travelling with. He asked, "Plasma. As in the 4th state of matter?", which caught me a bit off guard. It turned out he was a science buff and watched a lot of Discovery Channel. I asked if he'd like to see the equipment and I could explain to him how it worked. We spent a pleasant 15 minutes together. He could show his supervisors he'd done a thorough inspection, he learned something new and I got my equipment across the border so I could make my sales calls. We both won on this exchange.
On a return journey from the US, the time getting customs documents was taken up by comparing notes on operations the customs officer and I had had.
Coming back into Canada one time, I was standing in line in secondary waiting for my turn and one of the officers called out, "Is that a carnet you have there?" When I confirmed this, I was whisked to an officer who I guess had had a full day of going through passenger's luggage looking for prohibited food, alcohol and tobacco and for her, it was a welcome relief to deal with someone who had things in order.
Customs people have a tough job to do to protect our countries. They are trained to be wary so they can spot potential smugglers or criminals and often this wariness is what we see when we go through Customs. But they are still people. If you treat them with respect, it's possible for the human side to shine through.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed for a job as a General Manager for a manufacturing company.
When I was briefed about the position, I was told their employees were on strike and that I'd have to cross the picket line for my first interview. I'd never crossed a picket line before, but there had to be a first time.
On the day of the interview, I drove out to the plant, and allowed some time to get there early enough that I could see the picket line and observe the procedure for crossing it. The company had told me to allow 15-20 minutes just to get through the picket line.
The strike was an issue for the company. They asked me if it would have any impact on their ability to acquire new customers. I told them it would, in my opinion, convey a company that was dysfunctional. Even more so because the strike had gone on for two years without a settlement. The union involved in this case was the steelworkers, and I knew they had a reputation for being nasty.
I approached the picket line with trepidation. One of the picketers came over to my car and formally told me there was a strike in effect and that I would have to wait for 15 minutes before I could proceed to the parking lot.
At this point, I thought about what I should do. These picketers could potentially be employees I would have to work with on a day-to-day basis. I could stay in my car for the 15 minutes or get out and talk to the picketers to see what I could learn about the strike. I chose the latter.
Having told one of the picketers I was there for a job interview, I asked what the strike was all about. They were very open in explaining the key issues behind the strike. I asked them how they managed to cope with living having been out on the strike for such a long time and I heard stories about how some moved into other jobs or companies to be able to support their families. They told me about what they had to sacrifice to make ends meet. Somehow our conversation segued into talk about golf, football and other things.
The 15 minutes went by pretty quickly and the picketers gave me the go ahead to drive to the parking lot and gave me directions on how to find the entrance to the office.
The formal part of the interview was comparatively tame - a plant tour and discussion with the plant manager and the company's HR manager. I was subsequently invited for a round of interviews at the company's corporate offices.
For this phase of interviewing, I met with people from R&D, Finance and Sales. My final interview of the day was with the CEO.
He asked me how the day had gone and about my interest in the position. Eventually, he got round to asking about the strike. The CEO proudly stated the company had brought on replacement workers who were exceeding the productivity of the union employees and the company was able to keep pace with demands of exiting customers. He asked, as I'd been asked before, if I felt the strike would adversely impact their ability to attract new business.
I told him the strike definitely WOULD give potential customers some concerns about the company's ability to supply them in a reliable manner. Settling the strike had to be the top priority for the new GM.
The CEO told me, in no uncertain terms, he had absolutely NO intention of settling the strike. They'd made offers to the union and the union was unable to sell those terms to their members, so the union was the problem.
From my viewpoint, I now had a clearer idea of why the strike had gone on as long as it had and who was responsible for that situation - and it wasn't the union. At this point, I made up my mind that this was not a position or company I wanted to work for.
The Leadership of a company sets the tone for how it runs. In this case, the leadership of this company was confrontational and this had created an atmosphere of distrust among the employees. As it turned out, the plant I interviewed at was closed down and sold off within a year of my visit there.
They may be picketers, but they still are people. If you treat strikers on an adversarial basis, you'll probably get a lot of push-back. Approaching them as people and showing some empathy helped me make the best of what could have been a bad situation. My approach was to treat crossing the picket line as a first interview. I was almost 100% certain there would be some feedback to the company about how I behaved on the line, and I wanted that feedback to be positive. I think I took the right approach.
