Senior Executives can commit vast resources and money to manage their employees, but if the staff does not feel valued or engaged in the business, it's likely that the desired results may not be achieved.

According to a study from Gallup Inc, titled "The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for U.S. Business Leaders", effectively engaging and retaining employees is one of the biggest challenges that leaders can face. Over a three-year period, from 2010 to 2012, the research firm surveyed more than 350,000 respondents, Forbes magazine reports.

The findings indicated that 70 percent of American workers are "not engaged" and are disconnected from the workplace, which in turn can make them less productive. This lack of engagement can be significantly detrimental to business profits. Gallup estimated that disengaged employees can cost companies between $450 and $550 billion per year in lost productivity. These employees can also negatively influence their fellow employees, drive clients away and miss workdays completely.

With only 30 percent of employees working at their optimal potential, leaders need to begin improving their engagement strategies to retain staff and bolster their productivity as a business.

Trickle-down Engagement
Rather than focus strictly on lower levels of the organization, Gallup suggest that management leaders center their efforts at the top and have it disseminated throughout the company. As mid-level managers and employees feel empowered, they can begin to identify barriers to effective engagement and help develop methods for organizational improvement. Staff members can be the most knowledgeable when it comes to the company's processes and clients, which might result in better performance when given the right tools for the job.

The training process can be an area where leaders engage their employees directly for the betterment of the company, according to Training magazine. Merit Career Development offers a range of teaching techniques that engage employees and increase learning retention. To learn more contact us by phone, 610-225-0193 or send us an email.

A two-step learning experience to boost listening skills.

What do you do when your own field technicians cant' seem to communicate effectively with your customers? That was the challenge faced by a large global technology company who came to Merit Career Development with a solution.

The answer was a two-step process: measure employees' listening skills and follow-up with a two-hour webinar reinforcing the key aspects of listening and interacting with customers.

The goal: empower field technical personnel to manage client conversations to ensure accurate communications and to create satisfied customers.

Measuring
We first asked employees to complete a simple assessment to gauge their listening skills. The Listening Skills Assessment (LiSA™) measures three related aspects of listening: understanding the overall situation, attention to detail, and inferring personal interpretation.

Students watch realistic technology-related video scenarios and answer questions about the big picture, details about the situation and what they think was really going on in the example. It's interactive and fun.

Before the webinar, students receive the results of their listening assessment. This establishes the baseline for the training session, the focus of which reinforces the key aspects of listening measured by the assessment.

Learning
The goal of the two-hour interactive webinar is to increase students' self-awareness of their verbal and written communication styles as they work with customers. But it's more than that. How can employees show they are really attending to the customer and want to leave both sides of the interaction satisfied?

Students learn how to observe non-verbal communication cues and follow-up on them, strengthening the customer relationship by showing good, attention skills. Important listening skills like asking open-ended questions, reflecting back to the speaker, paraphrasing and summarizing help the individual obtain accurate information from the customer and make sure the employee is getting the real message.

And the webinar covers more than just verbal communication skills. It also highlights effective electronic communications. Students learn how to create effective and appropriate electronic messages, write messages that are clear, concise, coherent, and project a positive voice image. These are all crucial communication skills in today's business environment.

In the end, participants leave the course being more self-aware and carrying some new tools to use in effective customer communication.

To learn more about how Merit Career Development can solve your business challenges, please contact us.