System for Success

By: Renée Cormier
Did you know that an important part of securing employee engagement means making sure your employees have the tools to do their jobs effectively? In spite of this, a surprising number of companies force their employees to wing it. It seems ridiculous that sales managers would send their reps out without the benefit of a presentation binder or a script to work from, but many do. Similarly, it is pretty common for employers to force their people to work with computers that continually crash, or software programs that do not quickly and effectively produce necessary reports. Ineffective tools and systems waste time and money and will most certainly lead to employee frustration of mammoth proportion. Those frustrated employees become quickly disengaged and will ultimately harm your business results!

If you think you are saving money by not purchasing top notch equipment for your employees to use, then you are sadly mistaken! As an employer, anything you do to help your employees be more effective is money well spent. Here are some areas to keep an eye on in your company:

Sales: Since I spent many years working in sales roles, I know how important it is to have a structure to follow. Now, I know many sales people complain about having to follow structure, but you will find that the most successful sales people will tell you they use a presentation binder and they know exactly what they are going to say when they go into a sales meeting. Professional selling is a process. It doesn’t happen by accident. Skilled sales people follow a finely developed process that works. If your company hasn’t developed a process, then doing so is a must! It is also important to make sure your people stick to it. If you have developed a process that doesn’t seem to work very well, then get input from your people to help you fine tune it. You’ll be glad you did!

Customer Service: Sales people always complain about the gap between what they promise customers and what actually gets delivered. Interestingly, Customer Service people complain about the same thing! Part of providing excellent customer service is getting everyone on the same page. Each department in your company is dependent upon the other. No one can function efficiently without the support of others, and your customers will most certainly be let down if your various work teams are not in sync. Successful companies have solid systems in place for taking orders and delivering products and services to their customers (both internal and external). If something is not working, then the whole team needs to get together to see what tweaks can be made to the existing system to make it more effective. Striving for continuous improvement is a vital part of creating engaged employees and securing customer loyalty!

Continuous Improvement Systems: Toyota implements 99% of the suggestions received from employees. The result of doing so has paid off significantly. The people who actually use your systems and equipment are in a much better position to tell you where you need to improve than any “Lean Expert” or consultant. Just look at GM and Ford. They employed tons of Lean Manufacturing experts, and most likely forgot about the people running the equipment. The moral here, is develop a system that allows employees to help you improve all of your processes, and then implement the best suggestions. You will be more likely to have effective systems, and your employees will know they are valuable to the business. Valued employees are engaged employees, and as long as you are striving for continuous improvement, you will continue to rise above the competition!

Meetings: In many companies meetings are a great way to waste time and talk about what needs improvement. Meetings should be a springboard for action, not a forum for inaction! Structure your meetings so that you have objectives. Do not have a meeting just because it’s Friday and you always have meetings on Friday. If you’ve got nothing to address, then you don’t need to have a meeting! If you do have issues to address, don’t add too much variety to the agenda. In fact, the fewer items you address in a meeting the better. Many companies save a whole bunch of items for a long and boring meeting and then wonder why they never act on anything that was discussed. The reason is that you will be more likely to take action on the one thing you discussed than on the twenty different items you discussed. It is far better to have several short meetings that end with an action plan, than one big one that ends in, “I can’t wait to get out of here!”

Remember, successful companies are all about structure! Develop systems that work, support your people, and give them the opportunity to be the best they can be. Of course, you can always call me if you need my help!