How Bad Is the Waste at Your Organization?
While Elon Musk takes a chain saw to government waste, it may be a good time for all organizations to look for waste in their own organizations.Click here for links to information about EEA sponsors; here to subscribe to ESM weekly; here for an ESM media kit.
Waste abounds in capitalism, often because management lacks metrics or prefers to ignore them. When it comes to managing customers, employees, distribution and supply chain partners, and community relationships, management rarely has the same precision of metrics used to unearth waste in manufacturing.
The EEA has created a growing library of the sources of people waste in business and how to address them, featured below.
Causes of and solutions for unmeasured waste in people management, covered in the articles below, include:
Poor customer service. The true impact is rarely measured, or it wouldn’t be so prevalent. Companies bombard customers with surveys but Americans still give customer satisfaction a C rating in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which helps explain the current low levels of loyalty.
People management. Few companies use such human capital metrics as turnover, attendance, human capital return on investment or human capital value add to measure productivity, willingness to recommend, etc.
Marketing. Despite hopes that the Internet would improve efficiency, organizations are still grappling to find efficient, measurable processes for tracking results, not just activities. Many CEOs seem to believe that marketing is intangible and that even corporate meetings or incentive programs can’t be seriously measured.
Labor relations. Major companies continue to grapple without labor unions over pay, benefits and working conditions because many prioritize stock buybacks over investing in people to avoid costly strikes.
Job design. All the engagement tools in the book will have little impact unless jobs are designed with respect for the human being by providing task variety, job-sharing, voice, a sense of ownership, etc. Without meaningful human capital metrics, the cost of this waste just gets buried in the financials.
Culture. Without a culture based on efficiency and quality, it’s easy for people to take their eye off the ball and tolerate inefficiencies for years.
The following EEA articles and YouTube shows address these issues.
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.
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 one of the world's most recognized authorities on human resources management.
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.
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.
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). This show highlights another serious source of waste: poorly designed jobs that foster low engagement, productivity, and high turnover.
How to Create a Culture of Cost Savings and Cost Consciousness
This Enterprise Engagement Alliance Effective Practices report provides a road map for cost efficiency.
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 15th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:
1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
