Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM MAY 2019 42 F or many years, I've helped organizations assess the health of their company cultures by administering employee engagement surveys. Recent surveys tell me that enthusiastic, involved, committed and fully engaged employees outperform their counterparts by 400 percent! Needless to say, that's not an insignificant difference. And then the next question becomes, how can we tempt our employees to be more engaged? With the promise of a 400-percent performance payoff, even a small boost in engagement is worth a great deal of effort. Improving engagement starts with learning to listen to the feedback we're receiving from our employees, and respond appropriately. The first step is to identify the issues that are preventing engagement – they may include issues of performance, trust, morale, job satisfaction, etc. In my work with teams, I use a variety of tools to help us identify the issues, including one-on-one interviews and surveys, etc. Once we know what the issues are, we can create action steps and prioritize them. Then it's a question of tracking the data and watching the engagement needle move. One of my key tasks is to get leaders to recognize what the data are telling them about their behaviors and attitudes – especially if they're receiving negative feedback. "We never know what's going on in administration!" "Management doesn't care about our concerns!" Statements like these are sending a clear message about perceived attitudes and behaviors. And, with profits on the line, they need to be taken seriously. Up front, I tell my clients that it doesn't matter whether the feedback is true or not, but that it's critically important to deal with the perception. Here's a recent example – a company where employee feedback said that the number-one reason employees wouldn't recommend the company as a place to work was that they felt undervalued. Now, clearly, that's feedback that needs to listened to and understood. No one on the executive team is setting out to say, "We don't care if our people feel like their contributions don't matter – let's just get the job done." At least, not unless the company is making the front pages of WSJ for all the wrong reasons, or it's a Hollywood film that's portraying the worst kind of organizational behavior. The point is, whenever there's a clear gap between how your company's leaders are behaving (or how others are perceiving their behaviors) and what the leaders actually think they're doing, you'd better sit up and take notice, because the best outcome will be confusion and the worst will be lost customers, lost revenue, and high turnover. It isn't just the leadership that can damage a culture. Your employees may be performing efficiently, but do they lack interpersonal skills? Are their interactions damaging the culture? How long is it okay to ignore the situation before discussing it with them or letting them go? Healthy cultures have a funny way of being more profitable than ailing, limp-along cultures. As a leader, this is why you must MIND THE GAP. You need to look at the space between people's good intentions and how others are perceiving them. You must identify those gaps and start to close them. And, most important of all, you need to assess your team's (and your own) beliefs, attitudes and behaviors and figure out how to better align your ideal image of the culture with what's actually being said and done. Let me assure you, it's never simple or easy. If leaders were more aware of the gaps and how to close them, I might be out of a job. Finding the gap will require that you hone your awareness, pay close attention, and listen deeply. You may find that the answers were right in front of you, and that it isn't hard to identify the engagement gaps that are preventing your company from enjoying the highest productivity, trust, morale and customer delight. And if the biggest gaps are at the top of the organization, you'll need to act with great urgency, before it's too late. MIND THE GAP PART 2: The long space between intention and perception Libby Wagner Culture Coach RO Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain profit cultures. www.libbywagner.com

• Cover