Employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement can result in higher customer satisfaction, organizational productivity and revenue growth. An Arcus organizational survey links internal performance strategies to market and financial outcomes. The study found a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance. The key organizational characteristic for explaining employee satisfaction is organizational communication (a measure of the downward and upward communication in an organization).
Contact Arcus for a copy of the Arcus Employee satisfaction survey report.
This is one of the few studies that does not involve face-to-face relationships between employees and customers. Those employees engaged in face-to-face interaction with an organization’s customers often comprise a small number of the organization’s overall human assets. For those employees not actively engaged in face-to-face relationships with customers, their attitudes and behaviors with respect to these customers are still vitally important.
Interaction between managers and employees with regard to supportiveness and goal setting, as well as job design were also key drivers of employee engagement. Organizational culture was another significant driver of employee engagement, where employees must be expected to cooperate and work together, but also to take charge and provide a voice for the customer within the organization. A fully cooperative culture feels the need to reach consensus on a single option, where a culture promoting healthy competition provides multiple choices which are then balanced against one another in an attempt to develop an optimal solution.
An Arcus survey also found that organizations with a clear understanding of their corporate identity tend to be more successful. In Good to Great, Collins examines companies that made the leap from good results to great results and were able to sustain those great results for at least 15 years. He then compares these “great companies” to a control group to identify the factors that distinguished these businesses, factors that can be used by entrepreneurs looking for a path to build a great business.
From these factors Collins developed a model that summarizes how these great companies were able to consistently match their business strategy to their core competencies and business model. Collins’ “Three Circles” model is a useful tool to help any organization renew its business focus by assessing three key areas:
Passion — What do you care very deeply about?
Ability — What are you really good at?
Economic Reward — What is your potential for economic gain?
When individuals and teams are competing to implement the optimal behaviors oriented to the market and its customers, such competition can work to the advantage of both the organization and its customers. Organizations with engaged employees have customers who use their products more, and increased customer usage leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction. It is an organization’s employees who influence the behavior and attitudes of customers, and it is customers who drive an organization’s profitability through the purchase and use of its products. In the end, customers who are more satisfied with an organization’s products are less expensive to serve, use the product more, and, hence, are more profitable customers. A focus on market outcomes, e.g., customer satisfaction, is warranted as they were found to mediate the relationships between employee attitudes and financial performance.