Archive for Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement = Improved Financial Performance
Posted by: | Comments
A highly engaged workforce translates into improved financial performance for companies. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? Yet many companies with command and control structures still don’t get it.
Because jobs are scarce now, senior management of these laggards don’t feel the need to engage with employees to reach the shared goal of making the company great. As a result, according to an Aon Hewitt study, companies that don’t fit its “Best Employers” category are losing shareholder value.
Smart companies understand, however, that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce. Read More→
Enlisting Employees as Brand Ambassadors Can Burnish Your Company’s Reputation
Posted by: | CommentsSlowly, but surely, more companies are seeing the wisdom of enlisting their employees as brand ambassadors. I’ve written about this several times, including the post 7 Steps to Making Your Employees Brand Ambassadors.
Employees are eager to help because if their company succeeds and grows, they will too. Employees who are actively engaged on social media as brand advocates help to burnish the company’s brand, they are motivated by being asked to take on the assignment, and customers receive better service.
CommProz.biz has identified 10 companies with outstanding brand ambassador programs. What companies would you add to their list?
The Power of Small Wins in Our Inner Work Lives
Posted by: | Comments
Do you ever wonder if all the work you’re putting in is making a difference? I know I do. We envy the “stars” in our professions. But they got to where they are with a succession of small wins that add up to major progress and their huge success.
In her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, co-author and Harvard professor Teresa Amabile describes how even small, incremental wins can have a major positive influence on what she terms an employee’s “inner work life.”
Finding Meaningful Work
Perceptions, emotions and motivations influence inner work life, but the single most important factor “is simply making progress on work they find meaningful.” Even the most trivial wins can affect performance. On the flip side, a trivial negative experience can have two to three times the impact as a positive experience. Read More→
Small Companies Unleashing Their Employees on Social Networks
Posted by: | Comments
Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang via CrunchBase
More employees of small companies are advocating for their companies on social networks than their much larger competitors.
That’s what the Altimeter Group found in its recent survey of 140 companies. By ratio, smaller companies in the 1-5k range had one 1 out of 195 employees publishing compared to 1 out of 356 in companies with 100k or more employees (see graph below).
More flexibility, less red tape
More flexibility, less red tape, and evolving cultures may be among the reasons.
As I wrote in a post 7 Steps to Making Your Employees Brand Ambassadors, the internet allows companies to empower their employees to promote the company and its products. Small companies can’t compete with the monster advertising and social media budgets of their biggest competitors. But small companies can enlist an army of their own employees to go viral with positive comments on social networks.
I’m glad to see this happening and as the company’s web strategist, Jeremiah Owyang, said in announcing the survey results, “Over time, expect all ratios to drop, as a prolific next generation rises into senior roles. We’ll be measuring this periodically, but for now, I would assert that more employees will be using the official accounts over time, as the younger generation learns their way around the business, climbs up the ladder, and is granted ability to publish.”
The director of operations for Gunwel Associates, a boutique tax and bookkeeping firm with only four employees, wrote a post earlier this year, describing how his firm is building customer loyalty and attracting new customers through the activity of its employees on social media. As Christopher Sheehan wrote, “If you’re not connected then you must get connected…becoming active in social media can and will grow your business as well as build client loyalty. We’ve seen it happen.”
So let your employees publish, you big companies out there. Small firms are nipping at your heels!
Altimeter research on employees on social networks
