Month: August 2017

If your employees aren’t engaged, then it’s only a matter of time before something, somewhere down the line goes wrong. Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “I pay them to feel engaged.” And to a certain degree, you have a point.

Why should you worry about their level of personal engagement, right? We’re all adults here… engaged or not engaged, work better get done.

But think about it this way: you and John Smith down the street sell the same product, you have the same technology and you have the same resources. So why are you the one out back digging a hole six feet deep for your business while John Smith keeps raking in the Benjamins?

The answer is simple. John has some pretty engaged employees. He pays them well, but he treats them even better. They are the key to his success and they are the nail in your coffin.

But what exactly is an engaged employee and how do you spot one in the wild? An engaged employee feels an emotional connection to their work and the organization they belong to. They work harder and better than the average employee and demonstrate a significant degree of loyalty towards you and your company.

And on the other hand, a disengaged employee feels no emotional connection to their work or to your business. As soon as an opportunity like John Smith comes around, they snag it. Loyalty is a word they do not know when it comes to your company. And when it comes to the actual work they produce, it’s mediocre at best.

If you’re panicking about the zombie hoard at your business, I’m sure you’re wondering… what now?

Luckily, there are four key components that create an engaged employee: communication, trust, stimulation and recognition. Focus on these four areas and you’ll take the walking dead out of your office.

Communication

People should be able to come to you with both their work issues and their ‘A-Ha Moments.’ If you fail to take their problems and ideas seriously, then they won’t take you seriously. And the more they feel like they don’t have a voice in your company, the more likely they’ll jump ship when John Smith sails by.

Trust

While communication is a very important factor, your employees need to trust you even more so. They need to believe in your ability to manage that communication effectively. In other words, can you follow through with ideas, issues, complaints…? Better put, are you leading or are you just there?

Stimulation

There has to be some stimulating aspect of their job and their relationship with your company. Can they grow from their position? Are you giving them the tools and resources to do so? With all this growth, can they move up, take over more responsibility and become a greater influencer? People are constantly looking for new ways to grow, even if they don’t openly admit it. It’s human nature and the reason why we’re at the top of the food chain.

Recognition

Everyone likes a little recognition every now and then, especially on the job. If they don’t feel like their work or their presence is worth anything, then they will go somewhere where their abilities will be appreciated and valued. If you’re thinking monetary reward, then you’re missing the point. Try emails shout-outs for employees who crush their goals or get a new certification. The simplest of gestures can make a world of difference.

Recruiting and retaining top talent isn’t easy. Even after the hiring process ends, there are several metrics your Human Resources (HR) specialist(s) should keep tabs on to ensure top performers stick around long enough to deliver meaningful results for your company.

Here are 3 metrics highly effective HR organizations measure:

1. Productivity Over Presence

Some HR organizations focus heavily on absenteeism. Maybe that’s because countless studies have shown that higher than average absentee rates—anything above about 2%—equate to lower productivity. And yes, in a general sense, increased absenteeism could be an early warning sign of employee engagement issues.

That said, organizations lose top talent by making the simple mistake of equating productivity to showing up for work.

Here’s where this breaks down …

Highly productive and efficient employees are significantly more productive than those just phoning it in. By simply lumping everyone together into one bucket that values attendance over productivity, organizations inadvertently cause top producers to disengage.

Tip: To identify and reward top workers, consider creating a Productivity Index that’s tied to an incentive program. This way, you’ll have line-of-sight to top producers, as well as the ability to reward their hard work and improve retention rates.

Ways to Measure Productivity:

• Quantity produced (error-free)
• Revenue generated
• Profit generated
• Number of people helped ÷ satisfaction rating

2. Turnover

Some turnover is expected, but if it exceeds 18%, you might want to find out why. As a caveat, if your company has less than 10 employees, take that percentage with a grain of salt. Losing a couple employees per year doesn’t necessarily mean you’re headed for trouble.

Tip: To measure annual voluntary employee turnover, take the number of employees who left your employment in the last 12 months, then subtract any layoffs/firings, and divide the remaining number by the average number of employees you had during that 12-month period. Here’s the equation:

Annual Voluntary Turnover = Voluntarily separated employees ÷ Average Number of Employees – Involuntary Separations

For example, let’s say your average number of employees was 130 last year, 15 left voluntarily, and 5 were let go. Here’s how to determine your turnover rate based on these figures:

130 – 5 = 125

15 ÷ 125 = 12%

In this case, the turnover percentage is below average and no cause for concern.

3. Cost Per Hire & Early Turnover

It’s important to consider these two factors together. Here’s why: You might be able to achieve a relatively low cost per hire, but your early turnover rate—departure prior to one year of employment—could be costing your organization more than $40,000 in productivity each time a new hire exits your organization early.

Tip: To measure the cost of a new hires, divide recruiting costs by the total number of new employees.

Measure, Analyze, Act

Simply measuring productivity, turnover, and cost per hire, isn’t enough to improve your retention rates. You must also commit to reviewing and analyzing the findings to identify areas of improvement, and then create an action plan to address shortcomings.

The key to long-term success is the technology services industry is to continually engage and satisfy customers so that they trust and rely on you for every new technology need. A critical component of nurturing sticky customers relies on having an effective, responsive Service Desk.

Do You Need a Service Desk and a Help Desk?

Have you heard the terms ‘Service Desk’ and ‘Help Desk’ used interchangeably? Or perhaps you think of them as equivalent yourself. However, both a service desk and a help desk are vital to your company’s success as a technology services business. So what’s the difference?

According to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL):

• The service desk is a key component of managing the overall process from a strategic ‘big picture’ cross-organizational perspective. It reviews the overall IT processes and functionality.
• The help desk feeds into the service desk with a tactical, day-to-day role in responding to end-user needs. The help desk is a component of the overall service desk. The help desk’s mission is to be the single point of first contact for your customers when it comes to problem resolution.

What Are the Functions of an Effective Service Desk?

The service desk functions as the first point of contact within your business for all IT questions. Service desk personnel are focused on processes and company strategy, and should include a Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Supervisor, and Service Desk Analyst. Some of the functions fulfilled by an ITIL service desk include:

• Incident management
• Problem management
• Configuration management
• Change management
• Release management
• SLA management
• Availability management
• Capacity management
• IT service continuity management
• Security management

3 Best Practices for Service Desk Support of the Customer

The responsibilities of the service desk are enormous. Books can be written about what it takes to run a really effective service desk, but let’s start with some basics. Establish these three critical service desk best practices up front, before moving on to finer points of service desk optimization.

1. Establish an Effective Onboarding Process

Once a customer chooses your company to provide their technology solutions, your service desk must execute an efficient, thorough on-boarding process that ensures a smooth launch of services for the customer. Anything other than a well-oiled onboarding process will frustrate new customers and quickly erode satisfaction and trust. An essential step in the process is collecting the required data in order to set up the client’s account and configure the remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, professional services automation (PSA) solution, billing and communications systems to support them. You’ll also need to conduct a thorough needs assessment and ensure that your provisioning process runs flawlessly.

2. Train Your Team and the Customer Before Go-Live

Training should be a regular component of your process for spinning up new customers. Prior to go-live, your help desk and service desk staff need to be trained so they become familiar with the new customer’s infrastructure and support requirements. The customer and end-users need to receive training about how to work with your organization. This should include how to open service requests, details about their SLAs and reporting they should expect, and how your service desk processes and incident management processes will work

3. Leverage the Value of Automation

If you can insert more automation into your service desk processes, you’ll enable your service team to operate with greater efficiency and productivity. That can add up to better profitability for your business overall—with the happy side effect of extremely satisfied customers! Automation to consider includes an RMM tool, PSA system, communication aids such as chat support, and solutions that enable remote support of your customers.