More and more, we are beginning to recognize that a key to the customer experience is highly engaged employees. Gallup has lots of data on the correlation. Building a digital business will require strategies and initiatives to improve employee engagement. It should also be a key lagging indicator for the customer experience.

People are central to all we do. Goals are important but engaged people make it happen.

Engaged employees are the backbone of an organization. But while business leaders recognize the importance of an engaged workforce, several organizations have been facing high levels of disengagement for a number of years. In fact, numerous reports have pointed towards a serious problem in the United States. According to the latest Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace, only 30 percent of employees in the United States are engaged, while the other 70 percent are not reaching their full potential. While there is no magic recipe to achieve and retain high levels of employee engagement, there are certainly a number of ingredients that, when combined, will steer organizations in the right direction. These components are not dissimilar from the ones needed to have a successful relationship and manage a household.

via Employee Engagement | Rules of Employee Engagement.

Employee engagement is foundational to customer engagement. It is highly unlikely that an employee who hates their job or who is disengaged from what they do will create a great customer experience.

Employee engagement, by any number of studies and research reports, leads to higher levels of business results. Most notable is Gallup’s work in this area evidenced by Gallup’s own Q12 engagement survey. Gallup scientists spent decades writing and testing hundreds of questions, because their wording and order mean everything when it comes to accurately measuring engagement. Their research yielded Gallup’s Q12 survey: the 12 questions that measure the most important elements of employee engagement. Gallup has studied survey results from more than 25 million employees around the world.

• The lost suitcase and a grumpy old man’ – a story about employee engagement – Blog post by Ian Golding  – Customer centric organizations tend to have a number of things in common. They typically have management teams who collectively believe in the importance of doing things with customer’s interests firmly in mind. They usually design their customer journey(s) to meet and exceed customer expectation. They often recognize that getting things wrong may happen, but that correcting them is a vitally important skill. One thing you can guarantee, is that customer centric organizations do not just put customers first – they also put their employees first as well.
• Customer Experience Leadership Requires Engaged Employees – One of the Six Laws of Customer Experience is “Unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers.” That’s why Employee Engagement is one of Temkin Group’s four customer experience core competencies.
• The 5 Factors that Ruin Employee Engagement – Experts outline the five main drivers of employee disengagement that business leaders need to steer clear of at all costs. Employees are the backbone of organizations. But despite having the knowledge that an engaged workforce correlates to positive customer experiences and growing sales, high levels of disengagement still plague many organizations. In fact, the latest Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace notes that despite changes to the U.S. economy since 2000, these have not been translated to the American workplace. The recent recession led to a decrease in employment opportunities, making workers less inclined to leave their job because of low engagement and employers less incentivized to ensure that their staffers were happy. However, while the tide is slowly changing, many workplaces are not changing their practices and investing in initiatives that ensure a high level of employee engagement.
• What engages employees the most or the ten C’s of employee engagement –A professor in a recent executive education program on leadership elicited a lot of laughs by telling the following joke: “A CEO was asked how many people work in his company: ‘About half of them,’ he responded.” After the session, several participants put a more serious face on the problem when, while chatting, they bemoaned the fact that, in their organization, a significant number of people had mentally “checked out.”