Do you have the stomach for employee engagement?

(2016年11月9日)

By Tom Roth

Early in my career, I worked for an NFL quarterback who is now in the Hall of Fame. Late in his career he was having trouble throwing the long passes downfield, and his production dropped off dramatically. The team feared his arm was “dead.“ They ran every test possible to diagnose and fix his arm to no avail.

Come to find out, he had a torn stomach muscle, which affected his throwing motion and eventually his arm strength. So to fix his arm problem they had to fix his stomach problem.

Everyone understands in today’s challenging economy, you need to deliver a truly compelling and differentiated customer experience to actively engage customers. Most organizations have focused on what needs to happen at the customer interface to create the kind of customer engagement that builds loyalty and deepens relationships. While actions like these are clearly critical, they are not sufficient. It is like trying to increase customer engagement by fixing only the “arm problem." What about the “stomach problem”?

We’ve probably all seen the same research that shows two very important points. Managers understand the first very important point: If you want engaged customers, you need to have engaged employees! Second, the same research continues to show unacceptably low scores related to fully engaged employees. Organizations talk a good game about understanding the connection between needing engaged employees in order to have engaged customers, but they are not rising to the challenge to do enough about it.

I think the “stomach problem” that needs to be addressed is leadership effectiveness. Leadership has the greatest opportunity to influence the energy of the organization. Leaders either give energy to, or take energy out of, the organization. My experience tells me that most leaders fall woefully short in creating a culture of employee engagement that:

• Inspires an emotional connection to the organization’s vision and purpose.
• Leads employees to commit their full energy to work and contribute to customer engagement.
• Creates loyalty and commitment to the organization.

One reason I feel so strongly about this is that I often present this point of view to groups of HRD executives at various conferences or marketing events. They very quickly agree that employee engagement is critical to customer engagement. And, they are quick to recognize the link to leadership as all they want to discuss is what they need to do to improve their leadership effectiveness. I guess the idea that leadership effectiveness must improve if they expect to have more engaged employees—and therefore more engaged customers—hit them right in the gut, pardon the pun.

That’s what I think…what do you think?

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作者介绍

Tom Roth

Tom Roth担任Wilson Learning全球首席运营官。他负责Wilson Learning全球战略发展方向和经营业绩的运营，并带领全球的市场服务团队和研发解决方案团队。同时，他还曾担任Wilson Learning美洲区的总裁。他协助全球管理团队解决员工敬业度、领导力发展、战略调整和业务转型方面的相关问题。

Roth先生在开发和实施人力绩效提升解决方案的研究上有着超过35年的经验。他是《创建高绩效团队》的合著者，并在众多商业出版刊物上发表过文章。美国、各类国际会议和客户活动经常邀请Roth先生进行演讲。他的演讲涵盖多个方面的议题，包括领导力、员工和客户敬业度、变革和战略实施等。

阅读更多， Tom Roth