Dell Customer Service Fail = Employee Satisfaction Fail = Bad Business

From Boing Boing:

To be fair, I rarely have a good experience calling toll-free customer service numbers for any company. But in the hour and a half that I spent on the phone with Dell, I spoke to about ten different people, listened to an hour of hold music, repeated my customer number, my order number, my address, my return authorization number, my purchase ID number, my phone number, and my computer's service tag number at least two dozen times total, and spelled out my name another dozen times. I got blackmailed into staying the phone with one person eager to make a sale and was commanded to get off of my headset (I'm not kidding — one guy literally yelled at me to get off my headset because he couldn't hear me) by another. At the end of the day, I was left with no idea whether I could exchange my 6-cell for a 3-cell and a conviction that these Dell customer service reps must be unhappy, untrained, underpaid, or all of the above.

Now boing boing has about a million readers. Nice job Dell! Let's face it - we have come to accept that "customer service department" means "customer dissatisfaction department.

It does not need to be this way.

Prestwick House Ranked as one of the Best Book Publishing Companies to Work for...Again!

Prestwick House is one of only two businesses to appear consistently on this prestigious list since the survey’s inception in 2007.

"The Employee Satisfaction Revolution" now available from Amazon.com

Here is the link.

The first copies of "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution" are here

These copies were rushed off the printing press. The release date is still November 1 - but this is flat out exciting.

Transforming "the" work into "my" work

Adam Hibbert posted this great comment over at
The EMployee Engagement Ning:

It's a useful way to look at the issue from the other end of the telescope - hopefully will help us get the engagement debate out of the old carrot/stick mindset, which I try to remind my colleagues is truly only appropriate for Donkey work. But let's not mistake that for a fundamentally different theory.

The point is, the stereotypical old Theory X organisation had one value for employees - pay. In keeping with that mode of relationship, they just brought their labour time in, and kind of acquiesced while the organisation figured out ways to pump it out of them. The model Theory Y organisation we're all in this place to create has many values for employees, which ideally combine to stimulate and satisfy our creative urges and help us make ourselves more useful, as a willed choice (btw, a self-enriching experience).

Primary among these values, I'd argue, is having our skills and experience recognised by seeing how we're able to contribute to the decisions of the organisation - that value transforms "the" work into "my" work, at which point you can expect me to engage all of myself with it.

Must Read NYT Editorial

Bob Herbet's NYT editorial attacks the most pernicious and damaging political & economic myth of the past 20 years - that if we work to enrich the wealthy, that wealth will " trickle down" to the benefit of working Americans. He begins...

We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.

Read the whole thing.

What's Your Company's ES (Employee Satisfaction) IQ?

Take the test by clicking here and cut and paste the results in the comments section here.

Don't Ditch Your Mission & Change Your Culture (even if your customers want you to)

Wow. Here is an interesting story about Business Week Magazine going under.

Magazine for sale!

Times are tough when an iconic magazine like BusinessWeek is up for sale. After reporting on business for nearly 80 years, you’d think they would know enough to turn it around. Kind of ironic.

Here’s an interesting video from Bruce Nussbaum, editor of Nussbaum on Design, for BusinessWeek. As an insider, he says it was the culture that took BusinessWeek down. Not the internet. Not declining advertising. Not the financial collapse. But culture. That's interesting stuff, considering the year we just had.

He points out that the shift in culture happened when they instituted customer surveys to better meet the needs of the BusinessWeek reader. A good example of why surveys can be dangerous. The editors at BusinessWeek broadened their scope to include more topics the readers wanted. This was a fundamental shift in culture from a specialist with indepth coverage on a few important topics to a generalist approach with less coverage, on a wider variety of topics.

In an attempt to broaden their audience they changed their culture and lost what made them valuable to a loyal band of readers. BusinessWeek lost what separated them from the pack, what made them unique.

This doesn’t make good business sense, any week.

From a Courtney & Company newsletter.

Spoiler Alert

Here is a graph from the back of the book.



We surveyed two groups of customers on two occasions and got very similar results each time.

"The Employee Satisfaction Revolution" Coming To an Online Bookseller Near You

Entering the home stretch. The book is still on schedule to come out on November 1st.

"Leadership" Lessons From an Unlikley Source: Carol Burnett

Our cultural view of leadership was, to a large degree, poisoned by the early industrialists who built a system in which all decision making is pushed up the chain of command to a decision making class. All the thinking about how to do a job (everything that makes work nourishing and fulfilling) was the province of managers. In fact, Frederick Taylor famously said that anybody who has the physically ability to handle pig iron cannot have the mental ability to think about how to handle pig iron. I think that there is plenty of evidence around which testifies to the fact that “post smoke stack” industry is struggling mightily to undo the damage that Taylor’s thinking has done to labor management relations.

At Prestwick House we look to the example of more modern leaders like Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang. Huang recently commented that he doesn’t even like the term "leadership" because it makes leadership sound like a quality that only certain types of people are blessed with.

In a Stanford University Podcast on entrepreneurship, Huang said that he thinks of it more in terms of “perspective” than leadership. Everyone can have a perspective and anyone who trusts their perspective can be a leader. Someone with a surprising story that illustrates that type of leadership is Carol Burnett.

I liked the Carol Burnett show when I was a kid, but I had not paid much attention to her and certainly never thought of her as a kind of leadership guru. Not until I was watching the Biography Channel one night and heard her tell the story of how she got her start in show business.

She was living in New York at a place called “The Rehearsal Club” which was didn’t hold rehearsals and wasn’t a club. It was a hotel or boarding house for aspiring actresses.

It was where she and other talented young women from around the country lived between trudging back and forth to the dreary kinds of auditions that are depicted in so many movies. You know the type. The performer sings two words of a song only to have a voice from the back of the darkened theater yell, “Thank You!” or “Next!”

It was on her way back from one of these demoralizing encounters when Carol Burnett decided to trust her talent and her perspective. She said something along the lines of, “This is crazy. We are all talented here. We can sing and dance and act, so why don’t we put on a show?” This is exactly what the residents of “The Rehearsal Club” did. They rented a theater and put on a show that was wildly successful. Burnett signed with the William Morris Agency and her career was off to the races.

I love that story and Carol Burnett’s telling of it made me love her as a leader. She had a business insight and trusted her perspective. She didn’t have to bully anyone into putting on a great show because the simple power and clarity of the problem solving epiphany spoke for itself.


Cross posted at "The Employee Engagement Network"

Countdown

Getting Closer

Here is a bit from the preface...

This book provides an overview of the business case and practice of building a high performance organization through a disciplined approach to improving employee satisfaction.

There are a great many companies that pay lip service to “customer satisfaction.” However, where these companies neglect to build a culture of employee satisfaction those claims are hollow at best and destructive at worst. The book is a hybrid composition. For each topic covered you will find a discussion of the current research outlining the impact that employee satisfaction has on companies, and a real world case study of Prestwick House, a Delaware publishing company that has enjoyed tremendous growth by focusing on employee satisfaction.

This book takes a new approach to strategic employee management that will be valuable to business owners and HR managers who are responsible for contributing to the organization’s bottom line – and understanding how better employee management practices can help achieve that objective

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The Employee Satisfaction Revolution will be available Nov. 2009.

Employee Satisfaction Taps into the "Practical Genius" of the NCO

I shy away from "business/war" analogies, but if you are looking for leadership lessons from WWII - I think the single most important lesson is that the American Democratic system allowed the practical genius of the Non-Commissioned officers (Sergeant's & Corporals) with the battle field experience to inform the decision making.

Creating "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution" is a Company Wide Undertaking

Derek Irvine at EEN has a great post up (Who’s Responsible for Your Engagement?) in which Bret Simmons notes that Employee Satisfaction is not something that resides in the HR department and is dispensed like paperclips.

"Here is my concern: if we send our employees the message that their engagement is our responsibility, we create the conditions for dependent relationship. Employees assume the posture of waiting to be engaged because our rhetoric and systems teach them this is what we expect. I think we should send the message that self-engagement is everyone’s responsibility. Employees and managers share the responsibility to partner with each other to continuously improve processes and conditions necessary for peak performance to flourish."


The post was sparked by "Venting HR Guy's" rant. (Or what would be considered a rant if he were not so utterly burned out.

Closing in on a cover for "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution"

This is the cover we are leaning toward.






The Employee Satisfaction Revolution will be available Nov. 2009.

Getting in touch with a healthy bit of "Employee Satisfaction Revolution" skepticism

Here is a great video that provides a handy toolkit for evaluating claims. It reminds me to continue to challenge the claims of "ES" and not allow it to slide into a faith based ideology.

Here is the good news. The Employee Satisfaction Revolution provides the tools anyone would need to test our claims and try to recreate out results. One of the greatest strengths of American style capitalism is that it is a vibrant and energetic laboratory in which ideas are constantly tested and retested.

42 Rules for Employee Engagement is 42 Too Many

In a response to a review of 42 Rules of Employee Engagement by Susan Stamm, Peter Hunter waxes poetical and underscores the duality I see present in the "EE" community. First the comment...

Thanks too Alan but the title for me indicates that this view of engagement is simply another book of tricks to manipulate the workforce.

The quote " ‘how do I get people to do what I need them to do" indicates that the author is approaching the idea of engagement from entirely the wrong direction.

The power of engagement come from allowing each individual to make a choice to engage in their work.
When this happens the performance is phenomenal and is measured on the bottom line in numbers that make grown accountants weep.

Love is a way that people feel.
The literature that has been written about love, how to do it, how to do it to someone else, how to avoid it, would denude a handy sized rainforest but none of that well meant advice counts for anything when you put two people together and just let them get on with it.

There are no rules, let alone 42.
Just an understanding that we want to work with the workforce instead of against them and are prepared to listen to what they need to make that happen.

Maybe that is a rule?

Peter A Hunter
www,breakingthemould.co.uk

Is it possible that there are only two species prowling the EE jungle? Esoteric, self-actualization through meaningful gurus like Peter and mercenary carnival barkers like Stamm? I'm sure that is an over-simplification, and yet I like Employee Satisfaction norms that speak to the middle ground of practicality for business, and I somewhat higher quality of work-life for the employee.

The Employee Satisfaction Revolution Can Lead to a Family Satisfaction Revolution

This article makes the case that satisfied employees have more satisfying family lives.

In short: good vibes that start at work can flow to the home and community. Therefor it is incumbent on business owners to create employee satisfaction and thereby help create a happier world.

The Savage Chicken View of Employee Satisfaction

www.savagechickens.com

"Forced Fun" and "Team Building" Propaganda Instead of Employee Satisfaction?

Watch the videos embedded in the linked Boing Boing post and marvel at the ability of a company to be so deluded.

From the post:

CIRCUIT CITY PLAYED CREEPY TEAMBUILDING PROPAGANDA TO SELF ON DEATHBED

Near the end, electronics retailer Circuit City produced a series of shiny, happy video dreams for its employees to watch.

Fantasy: presenting Circuit City as a corporate self-actualization cult ("We're going to take Circuit City and make that brand very cool and very emotionally contained") will make a difference.

Reality: Circuit City replaced its skilled workers with kids on minimum wage, then shriveled like a plastic bag in an oven.

In addition to giving a glimpse into Circuit Citiy's death spiral - the Boing Boing post headline gives a glimpse into how employee satisfaction programs are sometimes viewed by the general public. But he public (which is made up of people who work for a living) gets what some many large companies miss. You don;t need slick PR campaigns to create Employee satisfaction. You need to treat people well.

Do Rewards Work? Not Really.

Lots of food for thought here...

Do Employees Need to Feel that Their Work is Changing the World?

Will Marre thinks so.


My sense is that "employee engagement" that is driven by "a belief that their work is changing the world" puts mere employee satisfaction out of reach of most companies. Most people will only ever view their jobs as jobs - not as missions. In my experience that is okay. There are still a great many benefits to building an employee satisfaction culture. But this academic notion that people have to feel like they are "changing the world" probably inhibits companies from investing in employee satisfaction.

Vidoa Via employeeengagement.ning.com

Speaking of "IT" and the Employee Satisfaction Revolution

Google is using a new algorithm to calculate which of their employees are most likely to quit.

I, for one, welcome our computer overlords which will reduce our lives, DNA, preferences, "likes and dislikes" into algorithms and strip away the illusion of free will.

Via Winning Workplaces

Thoughts on Coming Employee Satisfaction Revolution and the Passing IT Revolution

"ES" (Employee Satisfaction) can be the productivity driver on the next few decades in the same way "IT" information technology was a productivity driver over the last few decades.

Just as in the '90's companies adopted forward thinking IT strategies to achieve efficiencies and create competitive advantages in the marketplace, today forward thinking companies who adopt forward thinking ES strategies will create a competitive their advantage over their competition as this century enters it's "teens."

"IT" has had a great run and in fact, it was the managers who came of age during the IT revolution who laid the ground work for the management thinking behind the ES revolution. However, IT has increasing become a commodity.

In 2003 Nicholas G. Carr became "the bogeyman of the information technology industry", by publishing an essay in the Harvard Business Review called ''IT Doesn't Matter."

In it he said:

"Technology ''is beginning an inexorable shift from being an asset that companies own in the form of computers, software, and myriad related components to being a service that they purchase from utility providers," Carr writes. ''Few in the business world have contemplated the full magnitude of this change or its far-reaching consequences."

Obviously deploying technology intelligently is going to continue to be important for any business - but deploying "ES" strategies intelligently will be what separates the winners from the losers.

Or as "rickman's posterous" puts it, "If IT has become a commodity, then only an organization's people and processes can make a difference.

The Employee Satisfaction Revolution Coming to a Company Near You

To get to recent posts, Click Here.

When discussing the link between ES and productivity, I think that this Corporate Leadership Council "Key Findings" PDF splits hairs differentiating between "employee satisfaction" versus "employee commitment", but it concludes...

Employee productivity depends on the amount of time an individual is physically present at a job and also the degree to which he or she is “mentally present” or efficiently functioning while present at a job. Companies must address both of these issues in order to maintain high worker productivity, and this may occur through a variety of strategies that focus on employee satisfaction, health, and morale.2

Possible Covers For "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution"

Larry Knox, the brilliant Art Director at Prestwick House has come up with some great concepts for the book (available Nov. 2009)

Welcome to the Employee Satisfaction Revolution

Over the next few months I'll be blogging about the forthcoming book, "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution."