Niki is director, service operations with Insperity. She specializes in employee onboarding, human capital management and HR infrastructure.
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Companies spend countless hours and endless resources on customer-related initiatives to help create customers for life—from identifying target markets, addressing specific wants and needs and developing effective marketing strategies to enhancing customer service, improving engagement and seeking feedback.
A natural progression for savvy companies that subscribe to the mantra, “people are our greatest asset,” is translating their customer-focused approach to their workforce by taking care of their people and treating them like customers. This helps to create employees for life.
Employers that flip the script and treat employees like customers will be better positioned to become destination employers—from hire to retire—with a solid talent pipeline that can weather any storm. Below are five areas for business leaders to consider as they evaluate how they can treat their employees like customers.
Understand The Business Impacts
Similar to the way customers have a significant impact on the bottom line, highly valued employees can have far-reaching effects on numerous aspects of business operations. Employees are the face of a company and serve as lynchpins that connect customers to a company’s products and services, facilitate the experience with excellent customer service and generate repeat business or referrals.
Employees embody desired values and behaviors that drive company culture, which affects the brand, sales and growth initiatives, and recruiting and retention efforts. Employees are the lifeblood of an organization and without them, there is no business, so it is critical for employers to treat them with respect and value their contributions for ongoing success.
Seek Employee Feedback
Just as companies continually seek feedback from customers in order to solidify relationships, refine tactics and improve offerings, employers should develop ways to gauge employee wants and needs. Doing so means employers can offer programs and benefits that are relevant to their workforce and consistent with or better than industry standards.
For example, although commuter benefits might be a popular offering for many companies, they are not feasible in areas without mass transportation, so the benefit is unused, and employees have not gained anything. Employers should conduct annual climate surveys to take the pulse of the workforce and determine areas, benefits and perks that can be improved or added to make a difference in employee satisfaction and retention.
Boost Professional Development
In the same manner that companies implement client loyalty events to improve engagement and educate customers, companies should develop robust professional development programs that keep employees engaged, learning and growing with the company. Professional development programs should offer a variety of resources that align with individual and business objectives. This might include on-the-job training, supervisory instruction, formal mentoring programs, instructor-led courses, online learning and conferences to help employees learn in a well-rounded manner that supports varying learning styles.
With professional development opportunities at the top of the list for many job seekers, companies that offer strategic, long-term learning that leads to career advancement will in turn foster tenured employees with institutional knowledge that can guide the company in the future.
Provide Good Employee Service
When customers have problems or issues, it is typically the quality of a company’s customer service that will make or break relationships and affect ongoing business and client retention. A well-known phrase that “people quit managers, not companies” supports a philosophy of providing good employee service, which should typically be a given in effective manager/employee relationships. However, not all managers are equipped to be leaders and supervise direct reports, which can cause problems with employee retention for companies trying to create employees for life.
Business leaders should ensure managers are properly trained and have the necessary hard and soft skills to manage employees. Leaders should periodically take the pulse of all employees associated with supervisors using 360-degree reviews. Feedback from all angles gives companies a more diverse view of leaders’ strengths and weaknesses. Based on the information, appropriate plans can be made for additional training, development or transfers to help improve situations and increase employee retention.
Support Employee Well-Being
Similar to the way company representatives care for their customers by building genuine relationships with them on an emotional level, companies should display care for employee health and well-being. With employee well-being becoming a critical area for many businesses, it is important for leaders to take a holistic approach that is embedded in the company’s DNA. This means raising the standards of well-being programs and meeting the expectations of the workforce. Well-being should be considered in all aspects of business operations from branding and productivity to performance and purpose.
Employers should also realize that many factors influence employees’ lives and their overall health, such as career, social, financial, physical, community and mental/emotional. Companies that place a sharper focus on employee health and well-being and put programs/processes in place to support employees are demonstrating their ongoing commitment to taking care of their people. This level of employee care elevates companies to destination employers and increases employee trust—an earned loyalty that can carry businesses through thick and thin.
Companies that take care of their people with a comprehensive approach that mirrors the way they treat customers should have a more tenured workforce that displays discretionary efforts for long-term success.
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