122. Why is employee commitment important?

Transcript – Episode 122: Why is employee commitment important?

Joe: Every metric you care about is pushed up or down in your organization by employee commitment. Let’s talk about what that entails and how to move the needle on it where you work. [Music]

Joe: Welcome to Boss Better Now, the show that teaches business owners and leaders how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. So why is employee commitment important? Well, employee commitment is the intersection of employee engagement and retention. Employee engagement is the emotional and psychological buy in that people have to their work that leads them to part with effort. That leads them to care and try and give it all they’ve got on the job. Retention on the other hand is people choosing to stay with an employer again and again over time. And it’s not because there’s nothing better out there. True retention comes from people wanting to be a part of what you do. Now, we’ve treated both of these as separate goals often as leaders and business owners. That engagement has one set of practices and initiatives that we deploy in order to keep it high or to improve it. And retention is a separate thing that we that we chase that we work on that we try to either improve or maintain. But when you dive into the research around what activates commitment in the workplace, what you discover is that there is considerable overlap between the two, many of the factors that lead someone to join an organization and stay long-term also impact the degree to which they care and try and vice versa. Now, I’m someone who’s been speaking and writing about employee commitment for nearly 20 years. So, I nerd out on all this social science research around what leads people to love a job and to give it all they’ve got and to want to be a part of what you’re doing in the workplace. And what we know, what we’ve seen and established over years of study and research, and understanding is that engagement and retention or employee commitment has a significant impact on every single thing that you care about in your organization. First and foremost, if we’re not getting employee commitment, there is a significant cost. There’s a cost to service quality, to the customer experience, right? If people aren’t committed to their work, it’s much more likely they’re going to be going through the motions. That doesn’t lead to outstanding client service. And if you’re not delivering outstanding client service, then reputation’s going to dip, revenue is going to dip, client retention is going to dip, or at a minimum, it’s not going to be where it could be. We also know that a lack of employee commitment leads to problems with quality, with safety, with revenue, with innovation. People aren’t coming up with new and better and creative ways to improve what you do or how you do it if they don’t have an emotional and psychological buy into what you’re doing, and they don’t choose to be a part of what you’re doing over time. The other thing that we know is that when you get employee commitment, when you understand and engineer the conditions that lead to employee commitment, everything about what you’re doing gets a little bit easier and a little bit better. That’s why I tell leaders in keynotes and in our boss hero school experience that every metric you care about is influenced by employee commitment. For example, if you have customers having a world-class customer experience, that’s not coming from somebody who’s just going through the motions and doing the minimum. That is coming from someone who is deciding consistently to part with effort on behalf of your brand, on behalf of your organization. What we know is that there is a space between doing the minimum and giving it all you’ve got. This gear, this sort of top level of effort is referred to as discretionary effort. And we know that only employees who operate with employee commitment part with discretionary effort. We also know that there are so many invisible costs related to a lack of employee commitment. For example, we know that if you aren’t able to retain people in a position that it typically costs between 1 half to two times that position salary to replace that person. So, if you have a lot of churn, a lot of turnover in a particular role, there are a boatload of costs relative to dealing with that churn that may not always show up on your balance sheet but are certainly impacting your organization. Part of that might come, for example, from the manager’s time. If I’m a leader and I have people in my team or a particular role in my department that is constantly turning over, then I’m constantly posting positions, doing interviews, retraining people, mentoring people in the elementary parts of the job. I also have an impact on morale and effort for the other people on the team, the folks who are staying because they’re constantly picking up the slack for those folks who constantly leave. So, we know right now in the United States workplace that about 31% of employees meet the definition for engaged. They meet the definition for that emotional and psychological buy in that leads them to care and try and give it all they’ve got. Think about that for a minute. That is one out of three employees. That is not good enough. Let’s put that in context. I’ve got three kids. They’re all under the age of 16. And kids mess up. They make mistakes. They’re clumsy. They fall down. And something is going to happen to one of my kids at some point, and I’m going to need to take them to the pediatrician’s office or to the hospital. And when that happens, when I walk through the doors of the emergency room, for example, because my kid got sick or they got injured, and I hand what is most precious to me in this world over to someone in that emergency room, I know that I’ve got a one out of three shot of encountering the person who is fully engaged, who is emotionally and psychologically committed to giving it all they’ve got in their job. And that means I’ve got a 66% chance of not. And that’s terrifying, isn’t it? Or think about your car the next time you take it to a mechanic that when you pull into the garage and you’re asking for the tuneup or you’re asking for something to be repaired, you’ve got a one in three shot that the person working on your car is emotionally and psychologically committed to their work. It’s not good enough. Not just from a business development perspective in wanting to run a successful organization, but just in terms of the promise that we make to whoever our customers are for the quality of what we deliver and how we deliver it. We have to do better. I actually heard the most extraordinary story about employee commitment recently. It took place overseas in Dover, England. There were two brothers who own a boat ferry service that run uh passengers back and forth across the English Channel. And one day they were ferrying passengers from the French side to the English side, and something happened on the boat. The engine became damaged. It started leaking oil and the boat started sinking. In a panic, the brother piloting the boat grabbed the ship to shore radio to his brother on shore and said, “You need to get help immediately. We’re in trouble.” The brother in a panic pulls out his cell phone, punches in a search for Dover Emergency Response, gets the phone number, dials it up. A woman answers on the end, Dover Emergency Response. But in his panic to find the right number, the brother didn’t realize that he had not called emergency response for Dover, England. He had called emergency response for Dover, Delaware. Now, take a minute to think about what your employees might do. What most people do when they get a wrong number. Most people say, “Hey, I’m sorry. You’ve got the wrong number.” Think about those rockstar superstar employees on your team, the people who go above and beyond. In a best-case scenario, what is that person likely to do? Well, they might say to the person, “Let me try to get you to the right place.” And maybe look up the right number for them to call or maybe even connect them. But on this day, when the brother dialed the wrong Dover emergency response number and the phone was answered by McKenzie Atkinson in Dover, Delaware, she did neither of those things. You know what she did? She coordinated emergency response. She figured out very quickly what had happened and she grabbed a partner in the emergency response center, a gentleman named Connor. And both of them quickly got to work pulling the coordinates from the caller, figuring out where they were, figuring out where the ship was. And within minutes, they had gotten on the phone with three different emergency response services over in Dover, England. And in less than 16 minutes, boats were in the water arriving at the side of the ship that was in trouble. And every person on that ship was rescued. Now, McKenzie got some coverage in local media for this and talked about, “Hey, listen. That’s my job. My job is to coordinate emergency response and to help people. It doesn’t really matter where they’re calling from.” Think about the rockstar superstar employees on your team. We say that every metric you care about in your organization is influenced by employee commitment. And you know that’s true because when you think about those rockstar superstar employees and all the ways in which they positively impact your workplace culture, your customer experience, the quality of what you do? It’d be nice to clone those folks, wouldn’t it? Well, you can if you understand and engineer the conditions that lead to employee commitment. What leads someone to become a rockstar superstar employee? What leads someone to show up in the workplace the way that McKenzie Atkinson does every day when she answers the phone at Dover Emergency Response? I spent 20 years studying this topic, and I recently wrote my book, Employalty, to help answer this question. We analyzed more than 200 studies and articles on why people quit a job or take a new job or stay long-term with an organization. And we married it together with all of this social science research around where that engagement factor comes from, that emotional and psychological buy in. And what we found is that it becomes significantly easier to activate employee commitment in the workplace. If you are consistently winning in three areas of the employee experience, we call them ideal job, meaningful work, and great boss. If people are in a job that fits into their life, where their workload is right, their compensation is right, and they get a certain amount of flexibility around when, where, and how they work, their commitment goes up. When they find their work meaningful, they get to do work that aligns with their strengths. They believe it has a purpose, and they are a part of a team where they experience belonging, their commitment goes up. And that third factor, that great boss factor, is about the person who oversees my work and the quality of the relationship I have with them. And when I have a boss who trusts me, coaches me, and advocates for me, commitment goes up. Employee commitment matters in every way that having rockstar superstar employees giving it all they’ve got matters. And if you want to move the needle on employee commitment in your organization, start working on making sure people are in their ideal job doing meaningful work for a great boss. This is in part why my favorite definition of the term leadership is quite simply creating the conditions at work for people to thrive. I would tell you that is the single most important role of a business owner or a leader inside an organization to figure out what your people need to be at their best every day and fight like crazy to give it to them. Now, I’d love to hear what you think. What questions do you have about activating employee commitment in the workplace? Drop a comment in the box below the video here on YouTube or shoot me an email at boss bettergmail.com. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: It’s rooms like this one where when we gather together for a couple of days at a time to really understand what it takes to activate employee commitment in the workplace that leaders experience profound transformation. If you’ve been wondering how to take your leadership knowledge and skills to the next level, if you want to go deeper on what it takes to be successful at leading people in today’s everchanging workplace, then you should check out Boss Hero School. Over 3 days, I’m going to teach you both the methods and the mindset for activating employee commitment in the workplace. This is not theory. We are getting into the weeds. We are upleveling your skills. We are giving you scripts. We are giving you blueprints and frameworks that you can take back to your workplaces to meet people where they are and propel them forward doing whatever it is you’re asking them to do on the job. For more information, visit bossheroschool.com. [Music]