Last week, I had a conversation with a financial advisor, who recently left her company along with her incredibly talented team, and a host of valuable clients.
Her team brought in millions of dollars of revenue a year. What was a nightmare for one company was a lottery ticket for another.
With all the talk about the continuation of the "Great Resignation", I was keenly interested in why one company can easily attract and keep great people. And, another struggles with hiring and turnover.
So, I asked her - What made you leave the old company and join the new one. She replied - because their management created a great workplace culture. My next question was... well, what makes a great workplace culture?
Here's what she said . . .
1. I have a voice. The head office really listens to us. There is an open line of continuous communication between head office and our client facing team.
2. If we tell them something is broken... they fix it- fast! They embrace bottom up management and are dedicated to making things work for us. They enable success by removing any barriers to providing great client service.
3. They respect our skills, knowledge and creativity and leave us alone to do our work. They don't try to put us in a systemized box. They trust that we are doing our best to deliver with excellence, within the established company guidelines.
4. They make it easy to communicate with our peers. If we need answers, we can direct message, video chat or conference call to quickly get the information or advice we need.
5. I enjoy the community. There is a great group of professionals to connect with and exchange ideas. I like being part of that.
It may seem like a no brainer, but it's amazing to me how many companies create an environment where it's just "no fun" to come to work. Management becomes their own biggest impediment to employee satisfaction and success.
Although this was a financial services firm, the principles are universal to all industries. After all, we are all human beings looking to be affirmed and acknowledged for who we, what we do, and our expertise. Everyone, whether a store clerk paid minimum wage or a highly paid executive wants to be valued, cared about and given an opportunity to make a difference!
Engaging, acknowledging and collaborating with front line employees to streamline operations is an essential strategy to rise above the competition. Clearly, companies that create "magnetic work cultures" experience huge financial gains.
Brands that put relationships first find it much easier to attract and keep talent, optimize productivity and ultimately realize higher than industry average profitability.
Traditionally, there has not been a metric to measure how well businesses are leveraging their customer and employee relationships to grow sales and profits.
At DriveCX, we have developed a KPI to measure that. We call it your "Return on Relationships", or ROR™. If you would like to do a self assessment of your ROR, we encourage you to take this quick 2 min quiz. You'll get your overall ROR score along with a report on each of the 8 key elements of a highly successful experience and relationship management implementation strategy.