198: The Value of Outspoken Employees

 

summary

In this episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast, John DiJulius discusses the critical role of employee feedback in shaping company culture and improving customer experience. He emphasizes the importance of encouraging outspoken employees, differentiating between divine discontent and negative attitudes, and the necessity of effective employee engagement surveys. DiJulius also highlights the significance of investing in employee development, creating a culture of accountability, and understanding the dynamics of employee turnover. The conversation touches on innovative training approaches and the impact of generational differences in the workplace, ultimately advocating for a holistic view of employee experience.

takeaways

  • Outspoken employees can provide valuable feedback.
  • Complaining customers act as free consultants.
  • Employee engagement surveys must be acted upon.
  • A strong company culture reduces turnover.
  • Investing in employees leads to better performance.
  • Caring for employees enhances retention.
  • The Disney boss concept highlights superficial engagement.
  • Emotional intelligence is crucial in leadership.
  • New employees often feel lost and unsupported.
  • Understanding turnover helps improve hiring practices.

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John DiJulius is considered “The Authority” on customer experience.  His keynote presentations have motivated and inspired audiences from Entrepreneurs Organization, YPO, Nestle and Marriott to Chick-Fil-A and many more.  His real life stories are lessons long remembered by attendees.  Learn more about John and how to book him for your next event at:  https://johndijulius.com/

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Denise Thompson (00:00)
Hey, Revolutionaries, welcome back to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast with John DiJulius. I am not John. I am Denise Thompson, managing partner for the DiJulius Group. But on the screen with me here is the authority on customer experience, John DiJulius. Welcome, John.

John DiJulius (00:20)
Thank you, Denise. How are you?

Denise Thompson (00:21)
I’m doing great. Thank you. How are you?

John DiJulius (00:24)
good just sick of the snow in Cleveland yeah it was six days this week and now woke up to snow but that’s Cleveland

Denise Thompson (00:26)
Yeah, it came back again.

Yeah, so you are in Cleveland today.

John DiJulius (00:36)
I am, I am.

Denise Thompson (00:37)
I know you’ve been traveling a lot, speaking everywhere, so it’s good to have you back in town.

John DiJulius (00:41)
Good to be back.

Denise Thompson (00:42)
John I want to talk about an article that you wrote recently for the blog on outspoken employees. So I think this is a topic that some managers might have a beef with you on this one. Outspoken employees being a good thing. I think a lot of managers think, hey, I have enough drama day to day. I don’t need the squeaky wheel coming to me, challenging me.

and the way things are being done, but you have a different take on it.

John DiJulius (01:10)
Well yeah, but I always have it, you know, it’s, we have so much that on our plate and the last thing we want to hear is that so-and-so’s bitching in the back room or not happy about this or not happy about this, but you know found that there’s a lot of valuable employee feedback and if we stifle it, if we get them to only share positive or only

Excuse me, only share during employee survey time. You know, that’s not good. And they will have something very valuable to say. They are passionate and they’re doing us a favor. It’s, they, you know, there’s an old quote that

Complaining customers are like a paid a free consultant telling you what’s wrong with your business that you’d hire a consultant to come in and do so That’s no different from an employee and what triggered me on this was in one of my businesses there was an email going back and forth about An employee who was disappointed in certain things and

listed what they were upset about. Their manager had a meeting with them and discussed what those things were and why. And also said they coached that person employee on not being so negative. But they said they don’t think they got that across. They weren’t successful with that last piece.

And so I was like, why are we deterring employees from speaking up? Why do we have to consider that being negative?

John DiJulius (02:40)
Yeah, mean, these team members care enough about the company’s success in their job and the customer to speak up. We need those team members. Otherwise, like a customer who doesn’t speak up, they’re just going to end up going somewhere else. And I don’t think they should be shunned. I don’t think they should be looked at as negative. And they need to be celebrated.

And I think one of the people make, leaders make, we’ve been guilty making is well, they have vehicles of their quarterly employee engagement. And those are good if you do them correctly, but.

just like a customer survey. The survey comes out, you know, March 1st, but you might have an issue on March 5th or March 15th. You’re supposed to wait till the next quarter survey. You know, so I think, you know, divine disconnect, discontent is a valuable thing. And we have employees that,

I used to roll my eyes every time they’d call, because I knew if they were reaching out to me it was something that I didn’t want to But they weren’t wrong. And one of them is a partner in one of our businesses today. it wasn’t a… No one wants to hear it.

Denise Thompson (03:51)
Thank

John DiJulius (03:54)
You know, it’s like when someone says, you know, can I give you some constructive feedback? You say yes, but you’re just like, no. Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you. A hundred times, a hundred times that I’ve been told constructive feedback, whether it be on a survey or face to face. In any situation.

Denise Thompson (04:01)
And then you go, la la la la la.

John DiJulius (04:14)
a hundred times I got, not maybe to that, I think I was, know, you’re right, thank you for bringing it to me, but in my head I’m like, you’re wrong. Like, I got defensive and you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I will say probably close to 90 % of those times, hopefully more, within a couple days a week, I thought about, thought about, and realized, you know, they were right. It’s just, it’s human nature, but it’s my, you know.

first defenses to dismiss it. You’re a one-off. You don’t really know what you’re talking about. So I just thought that way. I didn’t like that that was something that we were talking as a management team about employees who we broad stroke as negative because they speak up.

Denise Thompson (04:56)
So you mentioned divine discontent. What is that?

John DiJulius (04:58)
You know, Jeff Bezos is a famous, famously referred to the divine discontent when describing Amazon’s customer obsession, emphasizing that customers will always want something better and businesses must continually evolve to meet those expectations. So, but it’s anything, it’s just constantly seeing the opportunity. As entrepreneurs, we’re celebrated for that, right? That we are, you know,

constantly breaking the wheel, breaking something because we know it could be done better. But employees, if they question or something, they’re casted as complainers, bad attitudes, negative nancies.

Denise Thompson (05:39)
So what is the difference between someone who has divine discontent and someone that actually does have a bad attitude, negative?

John DiJulius (05:47)
Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously if someone’s just always unhappy, shows a lack of respect for the company or leader or employee, that’s, you know, I believe a different versus just saying, you know, why hasn’t, why have we had a broken hot water faucet?

for six months or three months and I keep on hearing it’s gonna be fixed. We charge these prices yet customers come in and that’s an eyesore, that hasn’t been fixed or this or whatever they may be bringing up. To me, that’s divine discontent. mean, it’s like they’re 100 % right. And then we’ve had a…

So one thing I say about employee engagement scores, surveys, which I think are really important, is the second worst thing you can do.

or not do with employee engagement service is not do that. Right, that’s the second worst thing you could do. If you’ve ever heard me or guessed what’s the worst thing.

Denise Thompson (06:45)
Well, I would say the worst thing would be to do them but do nothing with the information you get.

John DiJulius (06:49)
Right. You know, and then the next survey comes out next quarter and you get them and you’re like, really? Like, you know, the woman’s bathroom, you know, whatever still leaks. And I said that in the last one and, you know, all the other things that are legitimate. You know, we’re just doing this to make ourselves feel better or something. that’s one thing. And then like we were guilty of it. So I would say, you know, put it all up there.

address it, you know, we can’t do it all. Don’t say, you know, don’t lie. Don’t say, yeah, you know, some might be unrealistic. you know, might, but like we had a situation a couple of years ago where employees were complaining about one of our location, salon locations, and it was run down. And we, you why isn’t the shampoo ball fixed or why isn’t the,

ceiling fix where there was a leak and all those things. Well, we didn’t address it in the employee engagement and we didn’t address it period. So, you know, it’s like why? And it’s because what we were moving locations, we hadn’t announced it or signed the deal yet, but it was, you know, coming.

And so we didn’t want to put $10,000, $15,000 into a space that we weren’t going to be there in a few months. That’s all good, but the employee would understand that, but we failed to tell them that. you know, it’s, know, so, so I think, you know, that’s important. I think, you know, you gotta address it and own it and say why you can’t do that today or ever, or whatever it is. Arnie Malham.

a great speaker you know and heard and spoken at our conferences and author of Worth, Worth Doing Wrong, meaning do it wrong and then fix it, like instead of waiting until it’s perfect. He had built, he’s built so many businesses and their culture is, it was so amazing. One thing he did,

when he had his businesses before he sold them, he would do employee surveys and then post all the employees what they said for everyone to see. I hope he’d do this. I’m not sure if we do. Yeah, yeah. He also did this with clients, their surveys, and posted it for all his clients to see.

Denise Thompson (08:54)
Everyone internally.

John DiJulius (09:05)
And you know, when I asked him about that, he said, yeah, people said I need to get my head examined. But it holds us more accountable. It’s out there. But he also said something that was really interesting, you know, that whether it be other clients or other employees, depending on which he was doing, they would defend, you know, and you might say, you know, I don’t like something here.

and then all of a sudden six other employees say, you haven’t worked anywhere else. you if you think that’s a, you know, the grass is not greener. not that you want, you know, but it is nice when it’s not just management telling you why it can’t be one thing. But I just really liked that. You could take it to, you know, kind of Amazon. Amazon, think, was the first business ever to post reviews on the products they sell.

Right? mean, isn’t that crazy? I’ve always wanted to do that, you know, to post reviews and ratings on our consultants and on our hairdressers. And you could, you know, if you’re thinking about, know, there’s 10 hairdressers you could choose from. Well, she has a 10, you know, a 9.9 rating, but she has a 7.2. And then here’s why. Uber does that, right? It’s brutal.

But I think it’s great accountability.

Denise Thompson (10:23)
Uber does that reverse also.

John DiJulius (10:24)
Right, right.

You know, which I kiss the Uber’s ass because I want my rating to go up. I still haven’t found another business, at least that we’re in, that we could do that, where we post our clients how we rate them. But how good, good, cool would that be? Our clients would be working hard to please us.

Denise Thompson (10:45)
I like it. like it. So employee surveys, is there a best practice on how often they should be done?

John DiJulius (10:47)
Yeah.

Again, if you’re going to address them and have the means to post them, address them publicly, publicly to all the employees, you know, I think quarterly is really, really well. So, you the Gallup has, I forget what their survey, they’re one of the most notable one, 12 questions, and those are really good and popular, and one of them is,

Do you have a best friend at work? And I like, I think we probably do something similar. We’ve probably customized it, but we probably ask 10 to 12 questions. And then we try to change the questions a little bit each time. So it’s just not, you know, old, but there is something like, have a, so that’s on the company, let’s say. But I have two other surveys I like to ask.

periodically about your direct boss. And the three questions are, and you answer it from one to five, one being the lowest, five being the best, is does this leader care about the company? Does this leader care about me, you know, as a person, and does this leader care about my success?

And so when you answer a scale of one to five on each of them, if you’re an average of lower than 4.5, right, that should be something to look into. And then you could tell where. But then there’s another question I would love to ask, and maybe this is on all surveys.

How excited are you?

on Sunday night? I love that question. Or, you know, I don’t know if it’s, you know, and I know not everyone works Monday through Friday, but, you know, are you as excited, you know, what’s your excitement level Friday at 5 p.m. compared to Sunday night at 5 p.m.? Now, yes, I understand that most people are going to enjoy the weekend or their days off, but it’s still a benchmark.

Denise Thompson (12:19)
I think it’s a great question.

John DiJulius (12:42)
And whatever that may be, like the Ritz-Carlton, one of their survey questions to their customers is, can you imagine a world without a Ritz-Carlton? That’s a stretch, but maybe it’s a very low score that 8 % of our customers cannot imagine a world without a Ritz-Carlton. Only 8%, but it’s 8%. But at least you got a benchmark, and now can we get that to double digits? And why does the one location

Denise Thompson (12:51)
Mm.

John DiJulius (13:07)
are they consistently 15 % and this location is consistently, you know, 5%. And so that kind of goes like this, you know, I don’t think, you know, people are gonna probably say they’re as excited as an overall group on Sunday night as they are on Friday night or whatever Friday afternoon looks like. But at least you get a benchmark. And how cool would it be that you could move that needle

that their excitement level was, you average a 3.5 and now it’s up to a five or whatever. that you have 100 employees, there was three that said it was an eight or more on a Sunday night. Well, now you’ve gotten it to 12.

It just gives you and then what is that? What are those things? And I’m just really disappointed still that coming out of the pandemic, the great resignation, quiet quitting, I thought it was really gonna boomerang with the employee experience revolution. And it still doesn’t seem to be much better. I don’t know, I don’t know. Because I think unemployment,

Denise Thompson (14:16)
Why do you think that is?

John DiJulius (14:22)
is is

I think it’s an, I don’t know. I still think it’s an employer market. I know it’s an employee market from a standpoint, but I just think maybe AI, I don’t know. Employers are not putting enough emphasis on culture. So I spoke last week about this at a conference about creating a better culture. And at the end, someone raised their hand and said, what do we do with,

nurses, our nurses, every six months they’re asking for a significant pay raise or they’re going to go elsewhere. And that’s just the reality of the market. There’s a shortage of nurses and all that. And while I can’t address or answer how you pay or, you know, that you can always match the highest bidder, I still think the better the culture, the less price becomes the only issue.

I just felt like they didn’t hear anything I had talked about in building a stronger culture that not only, know, some things, you know, from the book we just came out with, Employee Experience Revolution.

70 to 90 % of an employee’s professional development happens within their first three months. So if you’re going to work at a company for 10 years, day 91 through your 10th year, you get like 10 to 15 % of your professional development, right? And then there’s all these statistics of even Gen Z saying that they would have stayed around if they were invested in, if they were feeling that they were getting better.

and the mastery and all these things. you know, things like that. And then on the flip side, it’s you know, investing in your team members in personal ways, not just ways that makes them more efficient, more productive, more profitable. I think those things demonstrates a great culture.

Denise Thompson (16:08)
Is there a proven ROI on that?

John DiJulius (16:10)
The only thing I guess I can go from is where I’ve gotten these examples are from the companies like the Chick-fil-A’s and Zappos back in the day and great culture companies. The Arnie Malhams when he had CJ advertising, all these great brands that did do those things and they have lower turnover and they’re paying everyone, you know.

similar to the market.

Denise Thompson (16:36)
cost money to do those things.

John DiJulius (16:39)
today. 10, 15, 50 years ago, you had to hire someone to come into your company, might be once a year, might be once a quarter, or send a group on a plane to a conference. And great value in both. But that was probably…

you know, or send them for a certification or, those are all good. But I just think there’s so many other ways that are so inexpensive today with, you know, TEDx talks or great podcasts or, you know, sharing that, making it mandatory education. you know, the, you know, online, videos and learning management systems and, just sharing.

and in-house education from the experts. But then you take it also to the helping people with being better parents, time management, all those things. Same similar resources you go to, you could bring in speakers that probably will do it for free because of the exposure they get to your staff that could lead to.

you know, book sales or, know, I don’t know, when they buy their first house, they’ll use that mortgage on it.

Denise Thompson (17:47)
Yeah, those were always, I found, interesting topics, things that were personal, not just for your profession, that keep people around. And this employer cares about

John DiJulius (17:56)
So I call them the

five F’s, which are traditionally the most common New Year’s Eve resolutions. Fitness, finance, faith, fun, and a missing one.

Denise Thompson (18:08)
Friend, family.

John DiJulius (18:09)
Family, if I didn’t say family, that was it. Yeah, finance, fitness, family, faith, and fun. So those are usually things that people are working on or have strengths and weaknesses. by providing, sometimes you might have someone in-house that is a yoga instructor or really good at time management or money management. Great.

you know, Denise is going to be doing a seminar next meeting or a zoom for anybody that is interested in this topic. She’s going to share some best practices, but, you bring in, you know, a financial advisor, there ain’t a financial advisor that would turn that opportunity down to get in front of, know, you know, a dozen to 300 professionals or a mortgage lender or a fitness instructor or

You know, whatever, it could be book clubs. It could be, you know, how have more fun, you know, those are all those things I struggle with. But I will tell you, as Al, if you’ve had this, in your position of meeting employees, family members, but those are always the things that a parent or a spouse will tell me that they’re most impressed by what we do for them, you know?

you know, more so than the big trip to the five-star hotel that we took them to, which is great. But I always think of that as being a Disney dad, a Disney boss. Is Disney dad a universal concept? Do know what it means?

Denise Thompson (19:33)
isn’t that the dad that’s the fun parent that takes the kids to… Okay.

John DiJulius (19:36)
Yeah,

yeah, he sweeps in on the weekend, takes them to Disney, brings them home. They’re all jacked up from sugar and candy and, you know, other things. But he leaves them at the doorstep, but he doesn’t deal with the homework, the, you know, being grounded, you know, getting in trouble, the, you know, all the things that, you know,

Denise Thompson (19:57)
So are you a Disney

boss?

John DiJulius (19:59)
So

you’re a Disney boss because you can brag that once a year you take all your employees to this spectacular cruise or event or you have a black tie event or whatever. You hand out at the awards night great prizes, money, iPods, whatever. And those are nice, but what about the other 12 months?

Right? And that’s the way I’ve felt really good or loved when I hear from a parent or a spouse that will say, you I’ve never heard of a company that cares about their employees the way you do and they’ll give the example of like, you know, the mortgage lender or fitness instructor or whatever that is.

Denise Thompson (20:42)
Although there is something to be said about those events, taking people to conferences, going to events.

John DiJulius (20:47)
100%. Those are great, but you don’t have to

limit at that. But I do believe there’s nothing replicates getting people in a car or on a plane to go to a conference. Because as you know, the conference starts the moment you get on the plane or in the car. And you start talking about, which speakers are you going to see tomorrow?

you know, and and then, you know, the lunch and the networking and you go out to dinner that night and you’re still talking about it. It’s not like, you know, for your employees, you send the education stop at five o’clock when the conference stops. I they’re so hyped up and talking about that night and sharing, and then they’re meeting other people in their industry or whatever it is, and they’re learning as much, if not more from

those hallway conversations they are from the speaker on stage.

Denise Thompson (21:40)
in the team building that occurs.

John DiJulius (21:42)
Yeah, all that, 100%.

I’m discounting the traditional ways, but there’s so many more opportunities today to inspire and share and send out. Did you see Timothy Chalamet? Am I saying that right? Chalamet.

Denise Thompson (21:59)
Chalabé.

John DiJulius (22:00)
His acceptance speech for the SAG award.

Denise Thompson (22:03)
I did not, no.

John DiJulius (22:04)
You

gotta watch it, I’m sharing that in a blog. Because surprisingly, it was controversial. And maybe small, small. But he said, I’m paraphrasing, but said, listen, I’d like to be humble and underscore what it took, but this was five years of my life and I gave everything. And he said, I am in pursuit of greatness.

and I know people aren’t supposed to talk about that, but I am. From Daniel Day to be like Daniel Day Lewis or Viola Davis or Michael Jordan and maybe some Wayne Gretzky. And I just love that he said that. I couldn’t believe people were criticizing it. Those are thoughts you have, but you don’t say out loud.

Denise Thompson (22:46)
So they were critical because he said it about himself versus someone else saying it about him. Because if someone else said it, that he’s, you know, the danger.

John DiJulius (22:52)
I guess.

But I like that he’s

willing to put it out there. He didn’t say he was great. He said, I’m in pursuit of greatness. And that’s a big statement, right? It’s like our Jewish group mission statement, employee mission statement, leadership mission statement that we have that I constantly want to, it’s be said.

Denise Thompson (23:00)
but he’s in pursuit.

John DiJulius (23:16)
to our employees because of the accountability it puts on us. We want you to make paychecks more than you ever thought possible, right? We want you to make paychecks more than you ever thought possible. However, we want you to feel that the money you made was the least valuable thing you received from this company. So that’s, you know, putting it out there in two ways, you know? Are we helping people make really, really good livings?

living, living, but that’s not it. That’s one piece, but we want the money to be the least valuable thing. So what are we doing to help you in other areas of your life, personally and professionally?

Denise Thompson (23:52)
That’s great. Is there a, going back to employee surveys for a moment, is there an NPS of employee surveys? EPS. So is it a…

John DiJulius (23:59)
Equals.

I’m sorry, might be ENPS. I’m sorry, ENPS. Yep, and it’s the same, how likely are you to refer someone? And again, that’s fine, that’s great, but like NPS for customers, I don’t care about your intent. I care about if you actually did. So I don’t understand why we have to ask that. Why not track it?

Denise Thompson (24:06)
Okay.

someone.

John DiJulius (24:25)
You know, the hundred employees we have, how many have referred family or friends? And what does that say? You know, just because you answer that top line box, but now you’ve worked here 20 years and have never referred a family or friend, what’s more, the smoking gun? You actually haven’t. So, you know.

And that’s not the employees’ fault, that’s the company, culture, leaders’ fault. But I think that’s more important to track.

Denise Thompson (24:51)
like to know if you didn’t work here, where else would you work? I’d be curious who our competition is.

John DiJulius (24:58)
And so, you know, it all depends, I believe, on the position, right? So if they’re licensed, if they’re a CPA, a consultant, not the consultant, sorry, licensed, lawyer, hairdresser, pilot, it’s gonna be more directly in the industry, which is still good to know.

If it is a support position, customer service, receptionist, admin, bookkeeper, so to speak, I’m sure I’m missing a ton of other, HR, marketing, those things, then it could be any industry. But I don’t think that really changes the answer.

Denise Thompson (25:34)
No, but I would be curious to know who.

John DiJulius (25:34)
I agree with it. agree with it.

And why? The more important reason why.

You know, the why, why that company? And that’s where the gold will be because, you they offer, they do this or they do that.

Denise Thompson (25:47)
So in tenure, think is a good indication too when you have people that have been with you for many years.

John DiJulius (25:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. what we always preach in our training is, surprisingly, not enough companies know their turnover, but most do. I am surprised that people say they don’t know. But the companies that do, they’ll know as a company.

you know, last year. But where they where they don’t.

Denise Thompson (26:12)
And not just, I was gonna say

not just the turnover, but where the turnover happens.

John DiJulius (26:18)
So a couple things, department, location. So is it management as home office? it in sales? Is it support? That’s department and or that location, our location in Hudson has higher turnover than our location in Willoughby Hill. That’s important too. Besides what departments they work in.

But the one that was really telling, and they’re all telling, is by tenure. So first 90 days, you know, one days to first year, know, two to five years, five years to 10 and 10 and beyond. And they may be slightly different depending on, you know, type of business, but you know, those were eye opening, at least for me, when we found out where…

where the turnover we had, where the majority of it was happening. Then you start to find out why. And a lot of companies, think this isn’t unusual, we have, and probably still do have our turnover, is in our first 90 days in the salon business. Why? Well, several reasons. One, might’ve been a hiring, right? And we weren’t filtering and we’re like, this is the greatest place in the world. And we all sing kumbaya.

you know, get promoted every week and you know, all that. And then you find out it’s nothing like that. It’s a higher job. And you want to get the hell out because you were sold a bag of goods. And we might’ve been sold a bag of goods because the interview process wasn’t that tough and they were able to wing it for a half an hour, right? So that’s a key reason. But the other key reason that, you know, is that the newest employee is that your dumbest employee.

They don’t know anything. They don’t know where your bathrooms are. They don’t know your acronyms. They don’t know your terminologies. And they don’t know anything they haven’t been trained on yet. And that sucks. And they’re an awkward freshman, day one, looking for friendly people. And they’re getting beat up. And they’re going home discouraged in the beginning because it’s hard. And something that we did very wrong was we gave them too much training in their first 90 days.

fire hose. And not only that, but more than 50 % of training didn’t need to be done in the first 90 days. It wasn’t stuff that was going to apply to them until six months, maybe a year. But we were just taking advantage of, you know, having them, you know, and now we’re cannibalizing the stuff they do need to know to be successful right now.

which teach him on stuff they aren’t gonna know and they don’t know either. And then when it does come six months or a year, we don’t train them because we already trained them. And then they’re not doing the job right. We trained you that a year ago. Why don’t you know that? All our mistakes, slowing it down, giving them victories, helping them along the way, their journey.

celebrating, I’m getting a mentor that can help them and say, you know, I’ve been here and, you know, a lot of things and making sure that the training is better, the training is slower, crawl, walk and run and, and, and think really helps. So when you, when you investigate, when you find out where your turnover is, whether it’s at a department location or specific period of their tenure, you can address why and 90, 100 % of

Our problems were our fault. Even the bad hires was our fault.

Denise Thompson (29:33)
John, I know that interviewing, recruiting, onboarding is all part of the Employee Experience Executive Academy. Is what we’re talking about today part of what’s taught in the academy as well?

John DiJulius (29:41)
Mhmm.

Yeah, we

spend a day on the recruiting experience, interviewing, making your interview process un-gameable. Then we spend a day on the onboarding, which is really just the first 90 days. But that’s so critical, because most new employee orientation should be called how not to get fired, right?

And so how important that those first 90 days are. And then the third day of the Academy is retaining. know, it’s a lot of stuff that we talked about. 91 days to hopefully the day they retire. And there’s so many new nuances to being a leader today that I think they’re new.

that for a thousand years you didn’t need to know about. having five or six different generations in the workforce at the same time, and they are different. That’s one of them. The second one that correlates with that is close to 50 % of employees work for someone who’s younger than them.

Denise Thompson (30:46)
Wow. Wow.

John DiJulius (30:46)
Yeah,

yeah. Well, it’s because of the digital revolution and our requirement on digital intelligence that is needed, but at the cost of emotional intelligence. And you can’t microwave emotional intelligence. So that’s another aspect that these kids, they could be 30 years old managing 50 year olds.

So that’s the second thing. And then the third and fourth thing is leading from a distance until the pandemic, never, know, most companies didn’t have virtual employees and right or wrong or all that about it. You agree with it or disagree with it. If you have it, you have to figure out how to combat the, you know, out of sight, out of mind. If I don’t see you.

you know, if you don’t come into the office and someone else does, you know, you’re going to create that relationship and stronger. And I’m reminded how smart they are that they’re still here at six o’clock. You might be working until 11 o’clock at night, but I don’t see it, you know, when, know, if you’re a work from home and how to build those curate replicate those curate conversations that, you know, we would have.

or we’re waiting for a meeting to start and, you know, how’s your dad doing? Or did Noah is sick or whatever that is that doesn’t come up in Zoom meetings. And then the, I think it’s the fourth, is we’ve never had to worry about mental wellbeing before. I that was never anything any company I’ve ever worked for, you know, worried about, nor was it my expectations of them.

Denise Thompson (32:18)
Thank you for sharing that. And I also want to mention we have live streams coming up on the onboarding experience and creating a recruiting experience. And I’ll put links to those in the show notes, but creating a recruiting experience is happening on September 8th.

and creating an onboarding experience is happening on December 1st. And those are two hour live stream events with John and Dave Murray, our VP of Consulting.

John DiJulius (32:48)
We miss anything?

Denise Thompson (32:49)
And with that, no, I think you covered a lot today and gave us some topics for a future episode as well. I love the work from home topic.

All right, thank you, John.

John DiJulius (32:59)
Thank you, Denise. Have a good rest of the week.

Denise Thompson (33:01)
You too.

 

 

About The Author

John DiJulius

John R. DiJulius is a best-selling author, consultant, keynote speaker and President of The DiJulius Group, the leading Customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on Customer and employee experience trends and best practices.