Most switched on business owners and Chief Executives know that happy employees are more productive; doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that a workforce is disengaged and unmotivated they’re more likely to take sick days and underperform. But what many don’t realize is the important role that happy, employee engagement plays towards creating a positive customer experience too.
Employee engagement makes sense when you think about it. If employees are engaged, positive and feel appreciated, they’ll generally be happier. People who love what they do are naturally more emotionally attached to their work, which in turn helps them to provide a better standard of customer service.
We’ve all been served by miserable, rude sales staff in our time, and it can have a hugely negative impact on our overall opinions of the store or brand as a whole. If staff are happy, smiling and genuinely interested in their customers, those customers are far more likely to come back for more.
To create a culture of employee engagement and happiness, it’s important to make every individual in your team feel like they matter. From volunteers and domestic staff all the way up to managers and beyond, we’re all human and all need to feel like our opinions count and our lives are important. It starts at the recruitment stage- match people to jobs they’ll enjoy and are skilled in, then nurture their development and allow them to grow. Nobody likes to feel like they’re doing a bad job or unable to meet the required standards of a particular post, and this can be a major cause of apathy and low motivation in the workplace.
Recognition goes a big way too. A simple thank you for hard work or a box of cakes on a Friday morning can make all the difference to how employees feel about their jobs, and if they feel happy they’re far more likely to go above and beyond to serve the company well and keep customers smiling.
So, obviously this all sounds great, but simply deciding you’re going to create a workplace that your employees will all love isn’t enough. To create employee engagement environment at workplace it is important to see all your employees as the individuals they are rather than taking a one size fits all approach- and that takes time and commitment. Building in regular one to ones, team building days and employee satisfaction surveys are all really important, but you have to remember to take it seriously. Staff will be able to tell if you’re simply paying lip service from a mile off, so make staff development and satisfaction a core part of your business model.
To gain a full picture of how people really feel about your company, you’ll need to ask some difficult questions about how they see you and other senior staff too. It’s not always easy to have those kind of conversations, so giving your team the opportunity to reply to surveys and comments forms anonymously will help you to gain a much more honest and transparent picture of what they really think.
Master the art of happy, engaged employees and create an environment where they feel like they matter, and the customers will follow.
