Engaging, empowering and enabling your employees
5 Nov 2020 03:35 PM
Blog posted by: Rasha Akar – Social Media Lead, AXELOS, 05 November 2020.
What drives employee engagement today and how can organizations and their people remain passionate about customer experience?
A recent AXELOS panel webcast explored how having motivated staff is good for business, customers and employee retention.
These insights were shared by AXELOS’ ITIL Ambassador, Akshay Anand, along with guest panellists Katrina Macdermid – ITIL Master and trainer, Chris Dolphin – former VP of customer care for airlines at Amadeus and Charmaine Bernal, chief of staff – customer experience and operations, Red Hat:
Shifting trends in customer experience
- Recent examples have shown amazing customer experience from agents as companies are investing in them to provide resolutions and answers up-front with empathy.
- Agents are given more autonomy, are focused on understanding the customer and are not being hamstrung by service level agreements.
- Recognizing staff, e.g. as an employee of the month, has a direct business link to increasing revenues and retaining customers.
Living the brand throughout the organization
- Every single employee has to be part of the brand vision and purpose.
- it’s important to know how someone impacts customer experience even when several steps removed, e.g. people working in back-office functions such as finance and operations.
- If an employee’s motivation has reduced, leaders need to understand why and help them to become re-engaged.
Employee motivation
- There are many motivators for employees and leaders need to be closely connected to a team to know what engagement looks like for them. Rather than just promoting people to management roles they either don’t want or are not suited to, it’s often more about growth and development, doing valuable work, making a difference and having stretch goals.
- While money is a factor, it’s also about organizations giving people freedom, the means to do their job and getting out of their way.
Taking ownership of personal development and change
- Employees need to own their career path and should define a plan for how to get there.
- They should grow and develop their own pathway, not just follow the linear path in an organization.
- Managers and leaders have to be open to change as much as their employees if they want to create a transformation journey.
Diversity, colleagues and team leadership
- Diversity is crucial for innovation and creativity; friction comes if there isn’t psychological safety for everyone to have a voice.
- When leading teams in different countries and cultures, if one group isn’t accepting of another then the leader has to step in to encourage diversity.
Defining personal growth in flat-structured organizations
- Within the same role an employee can have stretch initiatives and opportunity for growth rather than just relying on promotion for advancement.
- It’s not all about having a new job title but formalizing new scope in an existing role.
- However, employees want to have freedom to move between organizations and if their CV shows they’ve been in one role for many years it can suggest they’ve not progressed in their career. Therefore, there’s also a case for switching titles to show how someone has grown.
The full webcast is available to watch on the AXELOS YouTube channel.