Five EEA Webinars Highlight Enormous Waste of Shareholder Capitalism
During autumn 2023, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance held successive webinars on customer service, marketing, human resources, labor management relationships, and job design that inadvertently help reveal the source of so much waste organizations large and small bake into their business models.The State of Efficiency in Customer Service, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Labor-Management Relations, and Job Design
Read the Article Summaries If You Don’t Have Time to View or Listen to the Shows
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According to the Gallup Organization’s latest estimates, low levels of employee engagement collectively cost the world economy $8.8 trillion, and that does not account for the equally low levels of customer engagement, which in the US at least are currently at near historic lows, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Without intending to do so, five Engagement Alliance YouTube Shows this fall summarized as well in ESM articles highlight five major areas of waste that companies simply accept.
The State of Efficiency in Customer Service, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Labor-Management Relations, and Job Design
To better understand the state of efficiency in many areas of stakeholder management, the EEA regularly holds and records YouTube shows with leaders in marketing, human resources, and customer service, and other areas of business, all available in its extensive information library. Their candid and authentic responses in these five shows are eye-opening: organizations waste huge sums on practices in customer service, marketing, human resources, labor-management relationships and job design, often with the wrong metrics and little to no meaningful return-on-investment measures or continuous improvement processes. The waste involved is by no means petty: together, fixed expenses for these resources and services account for nearly 50% or more of an organization’s top line revenue.
Though not one of these shows (all produced in fall 2023) was intended to do so, all provide a clear indication of the source of waste: poor customer service leading to reduced positive word of mouth and lower sales that is rarely measured and not disclosed to investors; low employee engagement leading to lower productivity, quality, service unbeknownst to investors; greater safety, theft, and absenteeism issues and less innovation with no idea of the cost; ineffective marketing often in the form of boondoggles with no serious return-on-investment measurement; antiquated labor-management relations that lead to enormous waste and unnecessary strife and disruption, and uninformed job design that burns out and/or under utilizes people capabilities, because most executives don't even know there's a science to job design.
As more investors begin to realize the cost of this waste, expect securities analysis and other shareholders to begin to ask more questions about these subjects so relevant to overall performance.
Read the Article Summaries If You Don’t Have Time to View or Listen to the Shows
Those without the time to watch these shows can read the summary of key points in the articles highlighted below. All point to the enormous waste that most organizations simply build into their profit and loss statements and balance sheets. It is no different than the state of quality in US manufacturing in the 1980s, until competition from the Japanese forced organizations to address a more strategic approach known as total quality management.
CX Experts: Service Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Four experts in customer experience, each with decades of practice, believe that customer service has reached all-time lows while prescribing practical solutions on how to improve it. All agree that companies are focusing on the wrong measures—evaluating processes rather than actual impact, and that if they could visualize or measure the impact on sales and brand equity they’d take greater action.
Panelists are: Graham Hill, Founder, Janus svp, an advisory firm which manages transformation projects for clients primarily in the retail financial service, telecommunications, automobile and aviation industries; Ramon Portilla, Founder, HumanX Insight, a customer experience analytics firm; former Director UX Research, Meta; former Senior Director, Customer Insights, Walmart; Alex Mead, Global Customer Service Experience Director, working with multiple companies through Alvarez & Marsal and directly, and Allan Steinmetz, Chief Executive, Inward Strategic Consulting, a global agency specializing in marketing, branding, change management, and communications.
Dave Ulrich on the State of Strategic Human Resources Management
About 20% of large companies are on the path to a more strategic and systematic approach to stakeholder management, 60% are receptive, and about 20% will always prefer the short-term approach of profit generation, says Dave Ulrich, University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business
Rensis Likert Professor at the University of Michigan Ross School and Co-Founder and Principal of The RBL Group. He agrees that most companies lack basic metrics linking the cost of employee disengagement and turnover to their bottom lines or achievement of their corporate purpose.
Marketing Is Generally Broken But Can Be Fixed
The panelists agree that marketing is fundamentally broken but there is a clear framework for success that has existed for decades. Their conclusion: organizations waste vast sums on marketing that doesn't work measured by the wrong metrics. As with customer service, they contend, most companies measure the process, rather than the actual outcomes: the number of engaged and disengaged customers and why.
Panelists are: Rachel Cogar Yeakley, Founder and CEO of North Carolina-based RCY Labs; Eric Holtzclaw, Founder and CEO of Liger, in Georgia; Bret Starr, Founder and CEO of the Starr Conspiracy in Texas, and the program host Bruce Bolger, Founder and CEO of the New York-based Enterprise Engagement Alliance, the think tank for stakeholder management implementation, and a specialist in permission-based content marketing.
EEA Show Explores Negotiating Labor Agreements in Era of Stakeholder Capitalism
This interview with four experts in labor-management relationships highlights the enormous cost of the current adversarial model between labor and management and what can be done about it. Was triggering a strike in the automotive market to determine wages and benefits the smartest way to use the company’s profits, of which $5 billion or more were recently allocated for stock buybacks?
Panelists are: The panelists discussing the potential for mutual gains results are: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Florence G. Heller Professor and Social Impact MBA Director; Dennis Dabney, Senior Vice President for National Labor Relations, Kaiser Permanente (retired) and Labor Relations Director, HR Policy Association; Kris Rondeau, Co-Lead Organizer of the Harvard Clerical and Technical Union, the SHARE union, and others; Director of AFSCME, New England; Søren Viemose, Advisor, Mediator, and Co-Founder of Denmark's Kalovig Center for negotiations and conflict resolution.
EEA YouTube Show--The Overlooked Art and Science of Job Design
This session with job design experts focuses on the nitty-gritty elements that have significant impact on engagement: the tasks and autonomy given to people. The expert panelists are Thomas Bertels, Founder and Principle of Purpose Works Consulting LLC, and Ellen G. Frank-Miller, PhD, Founder and CEO of WORC (Workforce & Organizational Research Center). One key finding is that most business leaders not only have no serious training in job design, one of the most critical means of engaging people, they lack fundamental awareness of the important role it plays in enhancing productivity, quality, and innovation.
Click here for the full library of how to and reference articles and other resources on all aspects of stakeholder capitalism implementation through enterprise engagement.
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