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“How do I engage front line staff as a highly productive and committed part
of an organization?”
There is little doubt that customer service impacts a company's brand identity. There is also little doubt
that happy, satisfied employees translates to happy, satisfied customers.
Effective, two way employee communications is a key factor in ensuring that staff are motivated and
effective. However, this sector of the workforce is usually remote from main offices and may experience
higher staff turnover than other parts of the business. These factors can have several implications:
· Training is a constant and on-going challenge
· Staff don’t always know where to go for the right information
· Establishing effective feedback channels can be difficult
· Engagement is constantly being built from ‘the ground up’
To make the situation even more complicated, staff may be employed indirectly, for example via a
franchise, and therefore even harder to reach.
Please note) this article is targeted at organizations with ‘connected’ employees, i.e. staff who use
computers from time to time during their working day.
Use simple, easy-to-remember, messages. Make sure that there aren’t volumes of messages already ‘out
there’ talking about the same concept, but expressing it in different ways.
Boil down the key messages into a few key priorities. Think about:
· How can you sum this up in one sentence?
· What language do people typically use?
This can help focus thinking and simplify what you are trying to communicate.
Tom Harvey, Head of Internal Communications at Nationwide, argues that the role of internal
communications ‘is akin to the narrow part of an hour glass’ - there is a vast quantity of information that
exists which could be communicated to staff, but only a small amount makes it through the ‘narrow part’
to be read.
The trick is to make certain that the filtered information is that which is most likely to draw interest.
Staff can feel deluged by information and it can be a major source of workplace stress for them. In
addition, an overload of information means staff may be unable to effectively identify and assimilate
important information due to excessive background ‘noise’.
As new forms of communication have grown, internally communicated messages have to compete with
more and more traffic; if there is no appeal, internal communications will simply not be read.
Listening is an essential part of good communication. Effective communication is not a top-down, one-
way exercise, but involves listening and demonstrating an inclination to act in response. ‘Listening’ can be
a real challenge in this sector.
Staff suggestion schemes can encourage ideas and the best ideas can be singled out for praise in the
staff newsletter or at an awards event. Small prizes can be offered to encourage participation. The
scheme needs to be well publicized and managed for it to be effective, with evidence that staff
contributions are being implemented.
Other ways to listen include: attending local team meetings, formalized feedback sessions, open forums
and opinion polls.
Staff who are working in remote locations, such as branch offices and stores, can often feel cut off from
the wider organization. When they have questions or issues it can sometimes be hard to find quick and
convenient support.
Local supervisors and managers play a vital role in providing support to, and communicating with, their
teams. They can also ensure that employees have a ‘line of sight’ between the organization’s vision and
their jobs
To ensure managers are effective in their role as communicators:
· Help managers understand how effective communication contributes towards achieving business
goals
· Clarify expectations with regard to communication
· Define desired behaviors
· Provide appropriate training tools and support
· Measure effectiveness and, if possible, make communication a key performance indicator
· My supervisor / manager effectively explains how company initiatives will affect our departments
· My supervisor/ manager is good at speaking in front of groups
· Who did you hear about XXX from?
· Do you understand how your team /role’s activities can contribute to XYZ initiative?
…can help you assess how effective managers are at communicating key messages. Benchmarking this
capability allows you to set standards, reward good behavior and provide training to those managers who
are not performing well.
It’s getting harder and harder to achieve message penetration with so much “noise.” This is particularly
an issue for busy, customer facing, staff who use computers only intermittently during the day. For
important updates, such as pricing changes, notification of system outages or major business
announcements, message cut-through can be a priority.
A good knowledge and understanding of products, services and key business processes is essential to
developing effective, satisfied staff and delivering good customer service.
The next time you roll out a training program, remember, in 30 days people typically forget 80% of what
they have learnt if it is not reinforced…
Snap Quiz is quick to set up, easily targeted to specific groups and is really easy for people to answer. It
‘pops up’ on the employee’s computer and provides options to complete now or defer until later. You can
specify how frequently and how often the quiz will reappear until it is completed. ‘Silent Quizzes’ that
staff can opt into via a hyperlink can also be set up. Embedded hyperlinks allow answers to be
researched on the intranet and an optional display of the correct answers and scoring can provide further
reinforcement of learning.
Research consistently shows that confidence and trust in leadership is a top driver of employee
engagement. It is important that employees believe in and relate to senior managers and see how their
role fits within and contributes to the wider organization. Find ways to make senior managers more
accessible to staff.
This is a great tool to use in times of change or crisis management. One of the key rules around
managing change is to ‘communicate, communicate, communicate’. It is really important to have face to
face time and provide opportunities for staff to ask questions and express their views. However, it can
be tricky to get everyone in a room at the same time as staff still have jobs to do and can be very busy.
Snap RSVP can help.
of disengaged staff. Under these circumstances, Snap Mag can be a great alternative. Snap Mag
enables you to distribute ‘safe discussion’ directly to the employee’s computer screen.