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Honesty in the workplace is a hot topic. Employers continue to face difficult decisions in our economic state. With the challenging environments comes a heavier focus on honesty from employees. Organizations want honest employees, but how do employees always know their honesty will be well perceived? Continue Reading →
What happens when a customer has a great experience and leaves a store? This is not meant to be a trick question. In most cases, a happy customer will come back. And this is a very big deal in our world today. Competition is huge and customer’s can easily seek out competitors.
It is easy for companies to get caught up with trying to make their stores fancy and spend tons of money on elaborate marketing plans. While these are all important, an article I read today does a great job talking about focusing on the basics. Fancy floor layouts do not mean much when a store’s customer service is poor.
What should organizations be focusing on? Here are some tips to help your organization focus on the basics to improve customer retention:
Know your customers. What is the demographic of your customers? Are they young or old, female or male?
Priorities. What do your customers value? Do they enjoy a length consumer experience or are they in need of a quick stop?
Study your customers. It does not good to make guesses about what your customers want or are looking for from a particular store. Ask them! Try not to bombard customers the second they walk into the door as this can be irritating. Instead, ask some regular customers if they would take part in a focus group to discuss the brand.
What other suggestions have you found to be useful?
As organizations continue to run lean in terms of employees, what happens to the employees? For starters, they definitely take on more and more responsibility and more tasks. Unfortunately, the new normal is to expect to work long hours, but for what? Continue Reading →
I don’t know of any organization that doesn’t want anything but happy and positive employees. What organization would want unhappy and disgruntled employees? The truth of the matter is that having positive employees with good attitudes is a great thing for organizations. Continue Reading →
How many of us have had one experience with just one employee at an organization that suddenly makes us form a single opinion about the brand or organization? All it takes is one employee for us to go from loving a brand to suddenly feeling very angry or upset. What can organizations do to ensure that each interaction is the best possible? Continue Reading →
Do you remember being a kid and being told exactly what to do? As a kid growing up, it was common knowledge that after school I was to get my homework done and be at the dinner table when I was told. Much in the same way, we all have similar guidelines at our jobs. We have guidelines we have to abide by such as to be at a meeting at a certain time and to meet project deadlines. Continue Reading →
Most employees want to have positive relationships with their managers. After all, employees’ managers can dictate the success of an employee moving up or moving down. What happens when managers cross the line? What is the impact on employees? Continue Reading →
When the topic of turnover comes up in organizations, most organizations believe they have this concept all figured out. Managers will tell you their thoughts about why employees leave their organization. If you have ever heard some of the reasons, like me, you may laugh to yourself thinking that they are missing the ball. Continue Reading →
Individuals are often presented with situations that require a decision with little available information. For example, hiring managers must make quick and accurate decisions regarding who would be best to hire for an open position. In circumstances such as these, heuristics often come into effect. Heuristics are a part of normal human judgment and decision making in that they serve as a cognitive shortcut to arriving at a solution (Bazerman & Moore, 2008). While sometimes using heuristics can be a good thing, such as a situation in which an employee chooses a future employer based on the company’s reputation in order to ensure a good fit, heuristics can also lead to unintentional bias which in turn leads to poor decisions. One type of heuristic is called the “availability heuristic” in which one makes a judgment based on the availability of relevant data. Continue Reading →
The university I attend for my graduate coursework has recently appointed a new president that is making efforts to change much of how the staff and faculty do their work. That is, he is placing a very real and urgent emphasis on collecting data to assess the impact of anything and everything employees do for the university. While some might see this as a pain, those of us who love assessment are breathing a sigh of relief because it means that not only will the programs for student success on campus improve (because those working in them know they will be evaluated more closely) but we will know much more about how each program affects students who are the university’s customers, after all. Continue Reading →
Whether you subscribe to the idea that there are or are not generational differences in employees, it is important to make an effort to try new methods for retaining employees of all ages. However, when considering the massive ambition that Millenials are said to have, it is hard to ignore that employers are looking for ways to hold onto younger talent that may be likely to leave for advancement opportunities. The following are a few quick tips for communicating with Millenial employees in such a way that they feel valued and empowered to achieve great things at your company. Continue Reading →
We often think about customer service in the most obvious way, we think about direct contact with the customers. It is also important to think about what customers’ value outside of the store they may visit. In other words, organizations win when they pay attention to values of customers by giving back to the community. Continue Reading →
In business, making appropriate decisions is absolutely crucial to the organization’s success. Decision-making is so important that many researchers have even devoted their lives to understanding what leads people to make the best decisions possible. For example, is it better to make an important decision using the long-term expertise of those who have worked closely in the organization or is it better to use an outside perspective? Continue Reading →
Employee engagement is a positive for a lot of different reasons. Organizations not only want engaged employees, but they want highly engaged employees and they want the behaviors of engaged employees to rub off on those employees that are lacking. What exactly is the power of employee engagement on performance in the work place? Continue Reading →
In the world of work, it is difficult to get other employees to buy-in to whatever you might be advocating. Many employees find themselves in situations in which others disagree with a certain policy or procedure that they are trying to implement. For example, if an HR manager is trying to get staff members to buy-in to the implementation of a performance appraisal system when there was none previously, the manager is likely to be met with some disapproval and skepticism. In this circumstance, the manager must find the best way to “sell” the idea to other managers and employees so that the new initiative has a fighting chance of success. If very few employees buy-in to a new organizational change initiative, the project is almost sure to fail regardless of how well-planned it was otherwise. This is when a manager can use some simple tools to help persuade others to understand, accept, and hopefully welcome a new organizational process. Continue Reading →
Just as any other industry, the hospitality industry faces many of the same challenges with multiple generations in the workforce. However, some admit that finding great talent within the Millenial (or Generation Y) group can be difficult. One might think that many positions in the hospitality industry would be a great fit for a young adult as it is common to begin with little experience and to receive on-the-job training (except for upper level positions). It could also be beneficial for college students to work in the hospitality industry as seasonal employees during breaks from school while gaining business experience. So why is it still so hard to find and, more importantly, keep Millenial employees?
Whether you’ve heard it from a colleague or read about it online, you’ve probably heard a few hiring horror stories. But as shocking as these stories can be, chances are you probably believe you’re immune to the repercussions of a bad hire. I don’t mean to put a damper on your day, but even the most experienced interviewers are at risk of making a poor hiring decision.
Let’s take a look at some hiring horror stories, and how they could have been prevented:
“We hired a summer intern to help with office work. We asked him to send an audiocassette to a client. He just stuck it in an envelope, and in a week it came back smashed to pieces. We asked him what he was thinking. His response: ‘It didn’t look like that when I sent it.’”
“We also asked him to mail about a dozen 9 x 12 envelopes. He put the postage on the flap, instead of the upper right hand corner. They all came back. BTW, he was the valedictorian of his college class!” — The Grindstone
Assuming a large portion of this intern’s day was performing administrative duties, it’s questionable why he, a college graduate and valedictorian, would be working as an intern. It also seems strange he was assigned tasks that don’t necessarily require a degree to complete. Nonetheless, had this company conducted a pre-employment skills assessment to evaluate the intern’s office administrative competencies, they probably would have made a different hiring decision. The skills assessment would have shown that despite his status as valedictorian, he didn’t have strong administrative skills.
“I was heading up a hiring committee to hire an executive director for a social service agency in New Hampshire. I led him into the interview in front of the six or so committee members. I asked him to tell us a little about himself. The first thing he said: ‘I just want you to know that I can’t be hired for less than “X” amount of dollars. I think you should know that first of all. Since his request was $10,000 more than the highest amount we could offer for the position, I said, ‘Thank you for telling us that. Let’s not waste your time with an interview today. Thank you for coming.’ I got up, shook his hand and led him from the room.” — Sun Journal
With a panel of six interviewers, there’s no doubt this interview was a challenge to schedule. Additionally, the time each interviewer spent preparing for the interview went to waste – and in a society where time is money, companies just cannot afford to operate that way.
If the head of the hiring committee had conducted a phone screen, the concern regarding the position’s salary likely would have come up. It’s proper phone screen etiquette to end the conversation asking if the candidate has any questions. Because salary seemed like a significant concern to this individual, he probably would have brought it up then. This would have saved the committee head time that could have been dedicated to interviewing more qualified candidates.
To avoid becoming a character in the next hiring horror story, do your homework. Before an interview, make sure you know just whom you’re bringing in for an interview. Phone screens are a great way to do this. It gives you the opportunity to talk with the candidate, and to address any concerns before bringing them in for an interview.
Once you do conduct an interview (or two) with the candidate in person, and you think you’ve made a hiring decision, don’t hand over the offer letter just yet. Even if you are just hiring an intern, it’s important to conduct pre-employment skills assessments and other verification services, such as background checks. This verifies (or disproves) the claims your candidate has made so you know exactly whom you are hiring.
There are lots of options out there when it comes to skills tests and background checks, so shop around. Take a look at the features each product offers as well as customer reviews. Happy hiring!
Employees typically spend much of their time at their desks working. I often joke that I spend more time at my desk than I do in my apartment. If we are spending so much time at our desks, what is the least we ask from our employers? How about the ability to add a few personal touches. Continue Reading →
For retail-based organizations, the reality is that turnover is rather high. Unfortunately, this can be a frustrating reality to organizations. Often it seems the second a new employee is trained, they are already out the door. What is it about retail employees that causes high turnover? Continue Reading →
In one of my previous posts titled, “Make Better Decisions Today,” I shared some information on how to make better choices by being objective and unbiased. Now, I would like to share an interesting tip for helping others to make better decisions. In many organizations, leaders hope to develop their staff to be the best employees they can be by training them on specific tasks relevant to their work. While job-specific training is certainly very important, it is also important to offer other tools for helping employees to transfer what they’ve learned to other situations on the job that may not have been covered in training. Continue Reading →
