I think the sign of the end of the recession is when we go back to focussing on the key assets of the company; the people. The great workplace use information gathered from surveys from over 2 million people in 6000 companies from 40 different countries. Alan talked about the book on Newstalk. You can listen back here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7g_aEg1in0
You should take note! In studies by Russell Investment group financial performance of the traded 100 best companies against the S&P 500. It shows that for 1998- 2008 the 100 best achieved annualised stock returns of 6.8% with the S&P 500 only having a stock return of 1.04%. Other stats show that best places to work have lower staff turn over, have more people applying for jobs and have lower absenteeism.
And it is not rocket science either. What do staff want? They want credibility and belief in their leader. They want respect and feel they are valued members of their organisation.They want fairness. They want pride to feel pride for their work and their company. They want comradeship and feel part of a group. They have 3 questions;
• They want to know how they’re doing.
• They want to know what their career path is.
• And the third question is: “How does what I’m doing matter?”
Quite a lot of our clients using Bookbuzz to address these issues. Some use it as part of their staff engagement, other use us to address the challenge at management team level. Books we have used are Talent Masters, The Shift, Workplace 2020 and even The New Normal.
If you want the marketing argument, I suggest you read Marketing 3.0. Your staff and your culture are the core of your brand. If the core is not right, social media will expose your company as a fake and the damage can be considerable.
So not only does looking after your staff giving you a good ROI, it will sustain your brand and is a good insurance policy against the exteme transparancy that social media is creating.
