Are Disengaged Employees Negatively Impacting Your Brand and Bottom Line Profits?

Recently, I had an unpleasant experience with Hewlett Packard that translated into me being on “telephone support” for over five hours with three different technical support specialists, all offshore, each being disengaged in their own unique way. By the time I got off the phone, I would have preferred to have spent the time in a dentist’s chair having a root canal. Sound familiar?

I had replaced my printer with a brand new, upgraded version from HP. For years, I had been a loyal and raving supporter of the HP brand. After setting it up and installing the software, I noticed I was missing some major functionality. I pulled out my user manual and started to trouble-shoot the situation, to no avail. Finally, I had no choice but to call technical support.

How many of you dread this experience? Well, I’m the type of person who usually strikes up a conversation and finds out the customer service representatives entire life story. Unfortunately, this was not my experience. After sitting in a queue for 25 minutes, my technical support specialist came on the phone and the first question he asked me with an authoritative voice was, “Are you on a speaker phone?” I assured him I was and then asked him the same question and he assured me he was as well. The playing field was leveled, and based on the unwelcoming tone in his voice, I was not ‘feeling the love’.

I explained my situation and he immediately wanted remote access to my computer. I asked him if this was a known issue and he just said, “Yes”. After an hour of crashing my computer three times, he told me that I was going to have to call him back because his computer was not working properly. I gently explained to him that he was providing me with support, I didn’t want to sit in the queue again and he should call me back. He agreed though I felt doubtful he would ever call back. He didn’t.

Understanding human nature, I would have been inclined to overlook the first experience—unfortunately, my encounter with the second technical support specialist located in the same office was even more of a nightmare. He made chauvinistic remarks, suggested that I should hang up and call Dell support after he had crashed my computer and then disconnected the line when his shift was over, even though my issue was unresolved—thus, the need for a third support specialist. The rest of this never-ending horror story is best shared over a cup of coffee.

Did I Twitter and Facebook about my experience? You bet. Did I tell everyone that I ran across that week about the maddening experience with HP? You bet. Will I ever be loyal to this brand again? Highly questionable.

Every good leader knows that every customer touch point in your organization supports or breaks your brand, and one of the most critical touch points in your organization are your outward-facing people. Employees that are not emotionally invested—whether they are disgruntled technical support specialists, disenchanted salespeople or exhausted leaders have a real impact on a company’s profitability and brand equity.

How important is employee engagement? According to a study by the Human Capital Institute, Recessionary Management: The Top DOs and DON’Ts for Managing Talent in the Current Downturn, “the biggest risk to your bottom line and brand is low employee engagement and productivity.”  The research firm, ISR conducted a study on the impact of engagement on the bottom line. They found that in companies with high levels of employee engagement, operating income improved by 19.2 percent over 12 months, while in companies with low levels of engagement it declined by 32.7 percent.

What do you do when your employees are not engaged? Invest in talent and dedicate the resources to develop the soft-skills – emotional intelligence, communication strengths, passion, energy, etc.– it’s more important than ever, particularly in the people who represent your brand in these difficult and competitive economic times.

What’s So Engaging About This Engagement?

I love reading articles with titles like: Top Local Firms Use Creativity to Motivate Staff. This one focuses on how gimmicks such as providing employees with a Belgian waffle breakfast, served by the firm’s principals, for hitting the firm’s quarterly numbers. Other ruses include “honoring sales success stories each month”, and holding a “funky shoe day for all workers”.

While the fun of something new certainly jars the groundhog’s day cycle, and these tactics are a bit creative, they miss the mark by a mile. Once the Log Cabin has been washed off your hands, the glory of the story’s has been digested, and your learn that Herb, the accountant in the cubicle across the hall likes to wear vintage, vinyl 70’s Go-Go boots, it is back to the daily grind of politics, pressure, and needing (versus wanting) to get stuff done.

What people want is their efforts to be part of their Life’s Work–not just a job. People gain the greatest satisfaction when they emotionally engage and are the best at whatever tasks they face, individually and collectively. They want to be able to draw on their personal missions, passions, values, talents, experiences, priorities, and dreams. They want their work to have meaning, other than merely collecting a paycheck, to give their employer their unabashed, no holds-barred focus, commitment and loyalty.

You can serve up the best Williams-Sonoma-battered waffles the world has ever tasted and their intent will dissipate at the same rate as they slide down your throat. It may sound radically creative but taking the time to understand what gets your employees out of bed in the morning will most certainly help you, their leader or manager, sleep better at night.

The Imperative of Kicking Off With Emotional Engagement

Research: DONE. Focus Groups: GLOWING. Business Requirements: IDed and PRIORITIZED. Market Need: GLARING.  Internal Resources: SECURED.  Potential Company (and Personal) Gains If Successful: KICK ASS on your ISO 9000 certified Impact Meter.

 You have done EVERYTHING right so far, including interfacing with marketing and sales from the get go, and your agency has already been working overtime preparing for the launch. 

 Yet things aren’t working out the way they are supposed to.  GOSH DARN IT! The development cycle has sputtered and a substantial percentage of the team seems to be stuck in neutral.  Marketing just started screaming for more features.  Internal factions, sensing the chaos, are hijacking key resources.  Sales is terrified they won’t make their numbers because of the delay.  The agency is more confused than usual.  SHUCKS.

 Sound familiar?  What can save this potentially costly engagement? 

 Any project, from product launches to backend IT integration to taking your company/team in a new direction, can immediately and tremendously benefit from developing a collective vision around its goals, and the earlier on, the better. 

 Getting everyone on the same page is critical, particularly to those initiatives where a large amount of funds to develop and/or market the deliverable, or waver in the revenue winds, are involved. 

 And aside from the obvious “If-we-all-are-on-the-same-bus-no one-will-be-left-behind” reason, there is another, more subtle, dynamic at play.  These types of efforts can oftentimes require an underlying culture shift to support the new processes, features/benefits, organizational structuring, and/or positioning required to enable the project’s desired outcomes.

 Getting the team emotionally engaged by drawing on the missions and passions of the leaders and team, developing a future state with actionable and accountable steps, formulating values-based communication rules, developing a personal project tag line — these are the portents of success that can appear way before the first milestones appears on your dashboard.   

 Most importantly (and perhaps from personal experience?) the up-front investment required to get the project thumping on the right foot pales (by a log?) to the adverse financial and cultural impacts of watching an unleashed launch date haughtily prance by.

The Power of a Mission

A recent study seems to have confirmed the following intuitive thought: if you have a mission, odds are you will live longer. 

 ”What [the data] is saying is, if you find purpose in life, if you find your life is meaningful and if you have goal-directed behavior, you are likely to live longer,” Dr. Patricia Boyle, the study author concluded. 

Why? A prevailing theory is that “having a greater sense of purpose helps multiple systems of the body function better, conferring protection in the face of illness” though additional studies will be required to explore and test this causation.   

Regardless, from personal experiences, focusing your efforts on something—anything—so long as you are committed to it, makes the journey of getting there incredibly more satisfying while also perhaps accelerating it.

In fact, Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute, has written a follow-on book entitled, How to Find Your Mission in Life. Per his experience and research, having a mission is the most important ingredient in experiencing a fulfilling existence.  (My book, Passion at Work: How to Find Work You Love and Live the Time of Your Life, also directly broaches this topic). 

According to Ingage’s Seven Laws of Cultural Alignment, we state that, “It’s all life! Work is a part of life; there is no such thing as work/life balance.” Our theory is this same dynamic that applies for individuals in having a mission applies to organizations (from work groups on up) as well, so long as the mission comes from its leader’s cores and aligns with those of its constituents.  If you find purpose in your work, your work is meaningful, and if you have goal-directed behavior, your organization is likely to live longer. 

Why? Having a greater sense of purpose helps multiple systems of the organization work more productively together, conferring protection in the face of adversity and awe-inspiring cohesion, innovation, accountability, and performance in meeting its goals. 

Developing a mission as part of a collective vision to get everyone on the same page to help your unit survive and thrive may sound simplistic or naïve… but then again, it could be just what the doctor ordered.