Billions of dollars are spent by business every year to attract and retain customers. On a daily basis, owners and managers shout, "Whatever it takes, we need the business!" When a good customer makes a request, we bend over backward to fulfill it.
Yet, how quick are employers to treat their employees with the same consideration as a top client? All too often, as employers, we forget that our first customer is our employee. How we treat them is exactly how they in turn treat our clients!
If this truth is a bit too philosophical for the pragmatists, one only need look at the extremely tight job market, coupled with the high costs of training and turnover, to connect a bottom-line reality to the nurturing of employees.
During a workshop at Automation Management Group's High-TECC Conference, I compiled a number of ways that a company could enhance its employee relationships while also providing a learning climate for ever-changing technology. (Please note that many of these ideas assume the reader's acceptance of the fact that the Internet is changing the way business does business.)
* Provide and allow Internet access for all employees. This is the communication tool of the future--no different from a telephone. Yet, most employers today are still resistant to providing individual access.
"What if they play around on it?" they ask. "So what!" I reply. Any time spent on the Internet can be construed as learning, and I've yet to meet an employee who fastidiously works every minute of every day.
* Establish individual e-mail accounts. This costs virtually nothing and is a tremendous morale booster. I recently found a major association in our industry that still utilized a central e-mail address for everyone. No privacy and total inconvenience. Plus, your cyber-effective clients expect to be able to contact your people by e-mail.
* Provide laptops for outside personnel. Your clients expect your outside people to be "virtual offices." Their entering the client's office without a laptop would be akin to our being checked out of the supermarket with an abacus instead of an electronic register. If you are positioning yourself as a cutting-edge company, use the tools that are available.
"One only need look at the extremely tight job market, coupled with the high costs of training and turnover, to connect a bottom-line reality to the nurturing of employees."
* Use company-wide e-mail to honor employee performance. Everyone likes to be recognized, and this reinforces the company's commitment to the electronic world.
* Design Internet scavenger hunts to promote electronic research. Once you've implemented point #1, this is a fun way to motivate employees to learn their way around the cyber world.
* Establish an electronic suggestion box. This offers the younger, more computer aware members of your company an opportunity to expand your technological horizons. Many of them were born into the computer generation and can offer you some excellent and creative ideas.
* Publish an electronic version of your employee handbook. Again this reinforces your commitment to automation and truly ties in with the "paper-free" concept for efficient operations.
* Honor an electronic employee of the month. Maybe it's the person who offered the best suggestion, maybe the winner of the scavenger hunt, maybe the person who gained the most ground in learning new technology, or maybe it's the in-house trainer or automation mentor. Whatever the reason, acknowledge their efforts in expanding their technology horizons.
* Publish an electronic newsletter. Make it a joint effort of all your employees by having them submit articles of interest electronically.
* Investigate computer-based training programs and classes. This is proving to be a highly efficient and cost-effective method for both training and CE credits. Plus, it again helps to make your personnel more computer savvy.
* Put your employees in your contact management system. Just like your clients, let your database help you to remember birthdays, special events, anniversaries, and other appropriate moments of contact.
These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg in improving relationships with your employees, while solidifying your organization's position in an ever-changing world of technology.
The topic of Web sites is an article in and of itself, maybe even a book. However, if you do have a company Web site, here are two thoughts that can be beneficial with your internal customers (employees) and your external customers (clients).
* Provide each employee with a personal page on the Web site. Employees provide the information, pictures, or other items that are to be included on their page. This enables your clients to get to know your employees, creates a sense of self-esteem for employees, challenges their Web creativity, and...they will tell their friends and neighbors, which will bring more traffic to your site.
* Establish an employee-based community page on your site. Poll your employees about their community activities and memberships, then promote the various events on a community page. This will: a) again create more traffic for your site, b) allow your employees to bring a value-added factor to their community activities, and c) dramatically underscore your company's commitment to the community.
On a closing note, moving away from the electronic side, no article about the employee as a customer would be complete without a few of my more personal thoughts on this issue:
* Take an employee to a convention. This is perhaps one of the greatest educational and bonding events that can occur between employer and employee.
* Walk and talk. Employees need to feel connected. Employers should make a point of walking the premises on a daily basis, talking with the employees. Get to know them, their families, their values, their concerns, their hobbies. You already do this with your top clients, and too many employers know more about their clients than their employees.
* Establish an alliance benefit program. This one is for all of your customers, internal and external. Create a nurturing business climate, where everybody wins, by establishing a discount alliance. This can promote business for all of your clients from your employees, as well as from other clients. If you insure a hardware store, or a video store, or a dry cleaner, or a restaurant, negotiate a standard discount that can be accessed by all of your other clients and employees. Everyone truly sees this as a value-added benefit, and you get the credit!
Treat your employees as the valued customers they are to you. In fact, they should be your most valued customers! *
The author
Jack Burke is the president of Sound Marketing, Inc., a marketing and communication company specializing in custom audio and video programs for business. The author of Creating Customer Connections (Merritt, 1997) and hundreds of trade articles, he is also a speaker and consultant on marketing and communication issues. He can be reached by phone at (800) 451-8273, by e-mail at jack@soundmarketing.com, or visit the Sound Marketing Web site at www.soundmarketing.com.
©COPYRIGHT: The Rough Notes Magazine, 1998