Employee and customer engagement – the keys to competitive advantage

Successful and sustainable strategies that organisations use to forge the link between employee and customer engagement, performance and profitability in these turbulent times were bought into sharp focus at the latest Customer Engagement Club Directors Forum. Directors Forum chairman Steve Hurst, editorial director of the Customer Engagement Club reports

Delegates at the Customer Engagement Club Directors Forum on Employee and Customer Engagement saw the lid lifted on the employee engagement strategies that are helping some organisations become winners and where the links between employee and customer engagement are being leveraged to provide benefits to all stakeholders and to gain competitive advantage.

David MacLeod, Chair of the Government sponsored Task Force on Employee Engagement and author of the highly respected and influential MacLeod Report ‘Engaging For Success’ delivered the opening keynote. He noted that employee engagement is becoming an increasingly important boardroom issue and in both the public and private sectors.
 
David made the case that employee engagement is the critical first step to engaging our customers, before outlining the four key enablers of sustainable Employee Engagement – these are strategic narrative, engaging managers, giving employees a voice, and integrity and trust.

He also touched on the work of the employee engagement Task Force which was launched by the Prime Minister earlier this year and is due to report its findings in the Spring of 2012.

David was followed by Peter Flade, Senior Managing Partner, Gallup Consulting, who looked into some detail at the nitty-gritty of the event, the
strategies for employee and customer engagement that deliver competitive advantage.

In service sectors value is created or destroyed when customers and employees interact. Being deliberate about managing the employee-customer encounter can deliver sustainable competitive advantage. Based on Gallup’s latest research Peter also explored how truly customer-centric organisations enjoy sustained success through consistently delivering on the brand promise and engendering confidence, integrity and trust in both employees and customers.

Next came an inspiring case study from Peter Sinden, Director of Sales and Service of insurer LV= which was a failing company until it introduced a strategy of putting its people at the heart of the business. Peter outlined how LV= has completely turned around its fortunes from a loss maker into healthy profitability and vastly increased market share in a highly competitive sector.

This includes driving  continuous improvement by listening to the people who are talking to your customers, how engaging with staff can pay huge dividends and how to embed company values – achieving all of this whole at the same time reducing costs to serve.
 
Next up came Angela Baron, Adviser, Engagement and Organisation Development, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) who asked simply ‘What do people engage with’?  Much has been written and debated about engagement, its role in driving up performance and ultimately closing the UK productivity gap. As yet far little attention has been paid to what it is that people actually engage with and Angela based her presentation on two pieces of research which suggests that people engage most strongly with the work they are doing.

Further the CIPD has found that a failure to understand where and how people locate the focus of their engagement can result in over engagement and underperformance. Angela also forecast that in the current economic climate that transactional engagement would come more to the fore as employees attitudes change.

Next came Francis Goss, Head of Commercial Operations, Reward Grass Root sand his colleague Learning Services Director Ian Luxford who looked at the key role line managers play in employee engagement which was to become one of the key themes of the day
 
They reiterated the point that ‘Engaging Managers’ is one of the four key enablers of engagement identified in the Engaging for Success report. It is widely recognised that the line manager has a crucial role in achieving an engaged workforce. They explored some practical tools and solutions that will enable line managers to achieve a truly engaged team, drawing on Grass Root’s experience across a variety of organisations including GAME Stores and Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts..

Following lunch there was a lively panel debate looking at the core theme of the day – namely how organisations can use employee engagement strategies to boost employee engagement, performance and profitability

Then Professor Katie Truss, University of Kent gave a fascinating presentation around the overarching theme of 'Employee Engagement in Turbulent Times'. The current economic climate means that employee engagement is more critical than ever. Kate examined the key actions that firms can take to raise and maintain engagement levels even through tough times. She also focussed on some of the core strategies and interventions that have enabled companies to manage engagement effectively even when faced with turbulent conditions including issues around trust, integrity, safety and being listened to

Next to present was Nigel Ferrier, Executive Chairman at employee communications specialists Ferrier Pearce whose presentation ‘Treating employees as internal customers’ looked at personalised and segmented communication to improve employee engagement. Nigel showed how to get the right message and channel for the right generation ensuring employee benefits are used as a retention tool.

Last but by no means least came a fitting case study from Gary Tomlinson, Head of Human Resources at Kia Motors UK who demonstrated how linking employee engagement to customer engagement does indeed improve performance and profitability. The business focus on engagement on both the employee side and the customer side proved to be a key differentiator in the Kia success story.

In his summing up Directors Forum Steve Hurst and delegates agreed this was the perfect way to end a most stimulating day of debate and high level presentations. The link between employee engagement, customer engagement, performance and profitability can form a virtuous circle when organisations get their strategies right.

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Next Forum: Multichannel for Contact Centres, Directors Forum, 26th January, London

 

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