I have been reading a lot about the likelihood that there will be a large demand for talent as more and more people are vaccinated and businesses start to grow again. With new opportunities potentially opening up, and for those willing to continue to work from home providing access to opportunities beyond their local geographic location, it is ever more important to focus on engaging and retaining your talent.

Customer Experience is Impacted by Employee Engagement

If businesses want to succeed and thrive, being able to deliver a good customer experience is critical. Without engaged employees, the likelihood that they are delivering the optimal customer experience is low as customer experience is closely tied to employee engagement. And poor customer experience is going to negatively impact your business. It’s something no business can afford today, and sadly, is all too prevalent. Last week I had 2 separate negative experiences as a customer, with two different companies. I try to be understanding and realize many people are stressed due to the ongoing pandemic, but it will take a lot to rebuild my trust with those companies, if I even decide to give them another try. And one was for a big-ticket item that I can easily purchase from another company.

The Importance of the Relationship between Manager and Direct Report

What does it take to engage and retain employees? There are many factors. Let’s take a look at the importance of the manager and direct report relationship since this is one critical factor to drive employee engagement.

This recent article highlighting challenges between managers and employees due to the Covid-19 pandemic, reveals results from a study finding that a large number of employees “communicate with their manager less than when they were working in person”. And “20% of employees and 54% of managers think their relationships have worsened since the start of the pandemic.”

These relationships need to be a critical focus when trying to engage and retain talent. In order to understand why the relationships between employees and managers have worsened, it’s important to get to the root cause in an effort to help improve the relationships. The following quote “Gratitude, understanding their employees’ strengths, self-compassion, self-awareness – businesses at an organization level can not only survive but can actually come out even stronger.” is a reminder of the importance for managers to not only understand their employee’s strengths, but to tap into them and leverage them more often. It also is a reminder for managers to show gratitude and recognition. In order to be successful at any of this, a manager needs to be self-aware of how they are and what they might need to do differently. To be most effective, they also need to lead with compassion and empathy.

How is Employee Engagement Impacting Customer Experience at Your Company?

• Are you personally experiencing a strain between you and your direct reports or you and your manager?
• Are you noticing strained relationships between your managers and their employees in your organization?
• Are you receiving numerous complaints from customers?

When working with leaders, I start with an assessment to help them increase their self-awareness – understand how others view and experience them. Once completed, we focus on closing the gaps. Often my work with leaders includes focusing on communication and best ways to engage and retain their employees. If you answered yes to any of the above questions, or are experiencing challenges holding you or your organization back from driving healthy relationships, have a need for improved communication, are challenged engaging and retaining your talent, or are experiencing challenges delivering a good customer experience, let’s connect.

“The responsibility of a company is to serve the customer. The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, both customer and company will suffer.” – Simon Sinek