Companies spend so much on acquiring new customers, hiring the best talent possible, taking chances on innovative marketing concepts. But engaging employees often seems to a stepchild, loved, but in a less passionate way.
Given the influence of employees on customer loyalty, maybe the priorities need to be altered. At yesterday’s Conference Board conference Engelina Jaspers, HP’s vice president of corporate marketing, shared three stats that can help focus management’s attention on employee engagement:
- 68 % of customers leave a company because of poor employee attitude
- 41% of customers are loyal because of good employee attitude
- 70% of brand perception determined by experiences with people from the company
Brian Ray of McDonald’s is quantifying the value of committed employees in revenue and profitability for McDonald’s owners/operators. (85% of McDonald’s are franchises), and has just completed an project to create an employee value proposition.
(So interesting that every company seems to have a customer value proposition and mission, but not so for employees.)
To develop this “EVP” McDonald’s spent just $65,000 and asked two simple questions, which got an amazing 79% response rate from frontline workers in 33 countries:
- What do you love about working for McDonald’s?
- What do you love the least about working for McDonald’s?
What do your employees love the most and least about your company? These two simple questions asked at least annually can provide the insights you need to understand how to make your employees your best marketing advocates.
Great post, Lois – I love the McDonald’s example in two way: first, that they’re investing in building a value prop for employees, and second, that they see the value of really simple surveys (similar to the Net Promoter approach). I totally agree that companies should spend a lot more time focused on improving the employee experience. When I worked at ITSMA we always found that better performing tech companies typically dedicated more of their marketing resources to internal marketing. EMC these days is a great example of a company putting serious energy into the employee experience (with a big dose of social media to support that).
I recently sent out an anonymous survey monkey to all the staff asking for answers to 2 questions: What’s working the best? What most needs to improve? I learned a great deal from the responses. I like the wording of your questions even better because there is emotional investment in them. A valuable post – thank you.