Employee Engagement

How to improve employee engagement

Brand Identity is the starting point for the SERVICEBRAND approach and a key question following on from this is “How is the organization’s brand identity going to be represented and brought to life?” The employees delivering the service and representing the brand play a fundamental and crucial role. With effective employee engagement in place, there is evidence of decisions being made at all levels of the organization in the interest of the customer and a general understanding of how the whole organization needs to support the representatives who engage directly with customers. There is a widespread misconception that employee engagement is the same as employee satisfaction, but a satisfied employee isn’t necessarily an engaged employee. An engaged employee puts their full heart and mind into their work whereas an employee who is merely satisfied or ‘happy’ may be doing the bare minimum to remain employed.

Representatives v employees

The point about including everybody who represents the organization in employee engagement solutions is important because not all the people who represent a company are full time employees. Sometimes they are employees of the outsourced service partner companies or part-time workers who are employed in line with demand. Significantly, these representatives who are not directly employed full-time employees are often in customer facing roles where their behaviour has a direct influence on the perception of the organization and its brand – the receptionist in a corporate office, the car park attendant, the call centre handler, the delivery person, the IT engineer etc. The SERVICEBRAND approach encourages a ‘one view’ of the organization in its entirety and an appropriate employee engagement response.

We offer a range of employee engagement services from co-creating an effective employee engagement strategy in much the same way as we create a customer experience strategy. We take an employee experience journey approach to improving employee engagement and use the following tools amongst others:

  • 31Practices approach – to convert employees into brand ambassadors by bringing to life the organisation’s values every day
  • Omotenashi: the practice of heartfelt hospitality – a customer service training programme
  • Velocity – a leadership team workshop to agree the SERVICEBRAND plan and specific initiatives
  • VALUES.ALIGN – improve the recruitment process effectiveness by using values-based recruitment
  • Recognition – when this is done well, we believe it is one of the best returns on investment you can make. We can help to co-create your own tailor made programme

It is also important for the employee engagement activities to be aligned with the brand identity.

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” Stephen R. Covey

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