Pester Esther
Advice on measuring culture, taming the MD's wife and shaming the colleague who won't flush properly
Q. Any ideas on how we can quantify the success of our culture?
A. My first question would be: to whom do you need to quantify your success? Is it for a shareholders meeting, for internal stakeholders, or just to generally demonstrate the effectiveness of the work of the HR team?
My advice would also be to gather as much data as you can on some of the following. Then, be creative in terms of how you present it.
- Employee engagement surveys: what do the last few tell you? Are people engaged and happy at work? Are they proud to work for you and would they recommend you as an employer?
- Recruitment and retention statistics: are you inundated with speculative employment applications? Are you able to retain your people and show good stability indicators? Check out absence rates too, as these can be an indicator of poor culture and poor management if they’re high.
- What do your customers/clients say about your organisation? Do they enjoy doing business with you? Do you have data on customer satisfaction?
- Productivity and standards of work: do people go that extra mile? Do you constantly win new business?
Once you’ve identified some key components, gathered the evidence and presented the data, good for you – go and celebrate.
Q. Is it OK to close a shop in Northampton because the MD’s wife had bad service there?
A. No. This would be a knee jerk reaction, and almost certainly not in line with your company values.
You need to properly investigate what happened. What was it about the service that was so bad? Get as much detail from the MD’s wife as possible. Her definition of ‘bad service’ may be different to what you have set down in your company policies.
It may have been one member of staff that served her, and was not as deferential as she expected. Maybe it was a product being unavailable or a poorly handled situation that she observed – you need to find out first.
Then talk to the staff involved. Get their views before you make a decision.
It may be a case of apologising to the MD’s wife, and informing her that appropriate action will be taken. It might be a case of retraining the store team, reminding them about customer service standards. Maybe it was more serious, and might lead to a disciplinary.
Sadly, you do hear of cases where there is an abuse of power and position. I hope that MD has more sense than to react so dramatically to just one incident. That would be poor business judgement, and probably extremely unfair to the wider store team.
Q. Someone who uses the HR department toilet isn’t flushing properly. Advice?
A. This lack of consideration really annoys me, too. I think a simple sign on the back of the toilet door, with some humorous pictures of toilet etiquette, might help. (I’m sure you don’t want to resort to policing your loos.)
Bring everyone together one morning for a team huddle and show them the signs you’re putting up. This way, you are not singling out the guilty person. But you are saying that enough is enough.
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