SecTrainer
12-22-2010, 10:34 AM
For about 30 years, the Gallup organization has been measuring employee engagement with (or commitment to) their jobs. This is no idle undertaking, because the relationship between employee engagement and organizational performance (including profitability) is well established.
Companies with engagement scores in the top half of the Gallup ranking, when compared to those with scores in the lower half:
* Have 86% higher customer ratings...
* Have 70% lower turnover rates...
* Have 44% higher profitability margins...
* Have 78% better safety records.
(Quoted in The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reasons-Employees-Leave-Recognize/dp/0814408516/) by Branham.)
Gallup has identified 12 elements of engagement and measures them by asking employees to indicate how strongly they agree or disagree with these 12 statements:
* I know what is expected of me at work.
* I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
* At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
* In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
* My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
* There is someone at work who encourages my development.
* At work, my opinions seem to count.
* The mission or purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important.
* My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
* I have a best friend at work.
* In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
* This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
Based on their answers, employees are categorized as "actively engaged", "engaged", "disengaged" or "actively disengaged".
The bad news: 75% of America's workers are either "disengaged" or "actively disengaged". And those disengaged employees will cost you plenty - not only when they leave, but well before they leave, and it might take them a long time to leave. They have:
* Higher absentee/tardy rates.
* More workplace accidents.
* Greater tendency to steal or damage company assets.
* Higher supervisory demands.
...and you know what else? They cost you other employees in two ways - either by driving good employees out OR by taking other employees with them when or after they move on to another job.
What they do to your client relationships is another whole story altogether. Suffice it to say: Employee disengagement leads to client disengagement.
The good news is that if you'll run your eye over the list again, you'll notice that these elements of engagement are mostly about management/supervisory practices and the corporate culture. They do not necessarily require MONEY to be fixed. They do require a different attitude about, and a different approach toward, your employees.
You might also begin to see that line managers can, should and must be trained in these skills - AND that they must be held accountable for turnover.
Hold line managers accountable for turnover??!! YES! It is a fundamental business principle that for every aspect of a business operation, someone has to be the "owner". Someone has to be held accountable. And that "someone" must be whoever is in the best position to affect that aspect of the operation. Here, it is the line manager. Line managers include both direct supervisors and their immediate superiors.
Or, let's put it another way: Up to this point, just WHO in your organization HAS been held accountable for turnover?? I'm guessing the answer is "No one...it's just been treated as a fact of life that can't be influenced. It never occurred to us to make anyone responsible for it. It's just a cost of doing business."
Funny. I bet you hold someone responsible for all of your other costs, don't you? (If not, be sure to send us a postcard from bankruptcy court.)
Many security companies believe that turnover is inevitable - and some is, but how much is really inevitable and how much is avoidable? No hard number can be offered, so we might throw up our hands, thinking there's no target to shoot at.
A different approach is to use our own turnover rate as the basis for establishing a target. Can we reduce our turnover rate by 5%? 10%? 20%? Choose a reasonably achievable reduction goal, and hold line managers accountable for achieving that objective.
Of course, you have to give them the tools, which might have to start with some changes at the level of the corporate culture itself (a culture that encourages retention is different from one based on an expectation of high turnover and low employee engagement), and will likely impact other units (HR's hiring practices, for one).
And what about the "wage issue"? Just be sure that your compensation package is competitive, and stop blaming all your turnover troubles on that. In exit interviews, employees often list "more money" as the reason they're leaving, but this is deceiving. The fact is, most employees don't want to "burn their bridges", knowing that they might need a reference from their rotten supervisor. They mumble something about money, sign the exit sheet and run out the door rather than saying why they're really leaving.
In a carefully done study, 89% of executives thought that money was the main reason that people leave, when in fact money is actually the primary reason why around 12% of them leave. Compensation is important, but if you're paying a competitive wage and you have high turnover, that isn't the reason.
Here's my prediction: When a company has never really addressed turnover, it's a high-yield activity once it begins to do so. In other words, the early gains in retention are pretty easily achieved, because they're the low fruit that no one has been picking. I'd predict that by even starting to address the issue with the attitude that it is something you can change, you'll probably see some immediate results. The first 5% or 10% reduction in turnover will be easy, so why not pick the fruit? You'll have to climb higher for the rest - but you'll begin to understand the reasons for doing so.
Here's a thought that's worth taking a week in the woods to ponder: We work in a service industry, and in a service industry there is finally nothing but your people that matter. Not your patrol vehicles. Not your fancy logo. Not your website. Not your "client reporting system". Not your uniforms of whatever style or hue. Not your promises. Not your prices. Not your client-schmoozing.
Your people. At the end of the day, that is all that a service company has to offer.
No people, no service.
Bad people, bad service.
Indifferent people, indifferent service.
...well, you can finish it. The question is, can you face up to what it means? It means this: When a service business treats its people like expendable commodities, it has no room to complain when its services are also treated like expendable commodities.
Companies with engagement scores in the top half of the Gallup ranking, when compared to those with scores in the lower half:
* Have 86% higher customer ratings...
* Have 70% lower turnover rates...
* Have 44% higher profitability margins...
* Have 78% better safety records.
(Quoted in The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reasons-Employees-Leave-Recognize/dp/0814408516/) by Branham.)
Gallup has identified 12 elements of engagement and measures them by asking employees to indicate how strongly they agree or disagree with these 12 statements:
* I know what is expected of me at work.
* I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
* At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
* In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
* My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
* There is someone at work who encourages my development.
* At work, my opinions seem to count.
* The mission or purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important.
* My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
* I have a best friend at work.
* In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
* This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
Based on their answers, employees are categorized as "actively engaged", "engaged", "disengaged" or "actively disengaged".
The bad news: 75% of America's workers are either "disengaged" or "actively disengaged". And those disengaged employees will cost you plenty - not only when they leave, but well before they leave, and it might take them a long time to leave. They have:
* Higher absentee/tardy rates.
* More workplace accidents.
* Greater tendency to steal or damage company assets.
* Higher supervisory demands.
...and you know what else? They cost you other employees in two ways - either by driving good employees out OR by taking other employees with them when or after they move on to another job.
What they do to your client relationships is another whole story altogether. Suffice it to say: Employee disengagement leads to client disengagement.
The good news is that if you'll run your eye over the list again, you'll notice that these elements of engagement are mostly about management/supervisory practices and the corporate culture. They do not necessarily require MONEY to be fixed. They do require a different attitude about, and a different approach toward, your employees.
You might also begin to see that line managers can, should and must be trained in these skills - AND that they must be held accountable for turnover.
Hold line managers accountable for turnover??!! YES! It is a fundamental business principle that for every aspect of a business operation, someone has to be the "owner". Someone has to be held accountable. And that "someone" must be whoever is in the best position to affect that aspect of the operation. Here, it is the line manager. Line managers include both direct supervisors and their immediate superiors.
Or, let's put it another way: Up to this point, just WHO in your organization HAS been held accountable for turnover?? I'm guessing the answer is "No one...it's just been treated as a fact of life that can't be influenced. It never occurred to us to make anyone responsible for it. It's just a cost of doing business."
Funny. I bet you hold someone responsible for all of your other costs, don't you? (If not, be sure to send us a postcard from bankruptcy court.)
Many security companies believe that turnover is inevitable - and some is, but how much is really inevitable and how much is avoidable? No hard number can be offered, so we might throw up our hands, thinking there's no target to shoot at.
A different approach is to use our own turnover rate as the basis for establishing a target. Can we reduce our turnover rate by 5%? 10%? 20%? Choose a reasonably achievable reduction goal, and hold line managers accountable for achieving that objective.
Of course, you have to give them the tools, which might have to start with some changes at the level of the corporate culture itself (a culture that encourages retention is different from one based on an expectation of high turnover and low employee engagement), and will likely impact other units (HR's hiring practices, for one).
And what about the "wage issue"? Just be sure that your compensation package is competitive, and stop blaming all your turnover troubles on that. In exit interviews, employees often list "more money" as the reason they're leaving, but this is deceiving. The fact is, most employees don't want to "burn their bridges", knowing that they might need a reference from their rotten supervisor. They mumble something about money, sign the exit sheet and run out the door rather than saying why they're really leaving.
In a carefully done study, 89% of executives thought that money was the main reason that people leave, when in fact money is actually the primary reason why around 12% of them leave. Compensation is important, but if you're paying a competitive wage and you have high turnover, that isn't the reason.
Here's my prediction: When a company has never really addressed turnover, it's a high-yield activity once it begins to do so. In other words, the early gains in retention are pretty easily achieved, because they're the low fruit that no one has been picking. I'd predict that by even starting to address the issue with the attitude that it is something you can change, you'll probably see some immediate results. The first 5% or 10% reduction in turnover will be easy, so why not pick the fruit? You'll have to climb higher for the rest - but you'll begin to understand the reasons for doing so.
Here's a thought that's worth taking a week in the woods to ponder: We work in a service industry, and in a service industry there is finally nothing but your people that matter. Not your patrol vehicles. Not your fancy logo. Not your website. Not your "client reporting system". Not your uniforms of whatever style or hue. Not your promises. Not your prices. Not your client-schmoozing.
Your people. At the end of the day, that is all that a service company has to offer.
No people, no service.
Bad people, bad service.
Indifferent people, indifferent service.
...well, you can finish it. The question is, can you face up to what it means? It means this: When a service business treats its people like expendable commodities, it has no room to complain when its services are also treated like expendable commodities.