

Ask HN: How do you get your employees to care? - diminium

I know this site is for more web entrepreneurs but for service/retail industries where the customer must spend time with your employees - how do you get your employees to care about the company just as much as you do?<p>I've been doing a lot of Christmas shopping lately and had to do some returns and stuff noticed something, the employees don't seem to care.<p>Except for a very small list of companies, what I find is most employees who work don't really care at all about the company or any profit. Retail employee doesn't care, the store manager doesn't care, the 800 Corporate number doesn't care.  The higher the level I go, the more likely I am to get even madder for what should have been a small issue.
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thaumaturgy
I own and run a technology service business which is developing a very good
reputation. Although I don't (can't) do everything on this list, this is more-
or-less the formula I follow. I developed it while working as a manager for a
variety of businesses:

1\. Show them. Employees are less likely to care if their boss doesn't care;
taking care of customers starts at the top and works its way down. For a
little while I was able to manage a grocery store & restaurant with infamously
bad customer service, while the owner was seriously ill. By the time the owner
came back, the employees were constantly checking in with customers,
straightening shelves, cleaning the store -- all the things they never did
before. They did it because I would go out and do it and then ask for their
help.

2\. Don't be afraid of bad customers. Bad customers hurt employee morale;
probably one of the best things I did while managing the restaurant side was
walk over to a customer, kneel down to face level with them, and quietly
inform them that if they ever spoke to an employee like that again, I'd throw
them out. Employees will love the shit out of you if they think you have their
back when it counts.

3\. Get rid of bad employees. Everybody knows who they are; you don't have to
be cruel about it, just let them know that they aren't a good fit and help
them decide to move on. Bad employees are cancerous, they bring their friends
and their bad attitude spreads.

4\. Get good employees. I hire as much for an earnest and polite personality
as I do for expertise. The thing is, we can train expertise; in my experience,
you can't train good behavior.

5\. Take care of your employees. If you can reduce the number of things they
have to worry about when they're not at work, then they'll be happier to be at
work. Pay them well, get insurance for them (and don't make a big deal of it),
make sure there are clear rules in place for the occasional payday advance
(and use any such occurrences to re-evaluate whether or not you're paying them
well enough), be polite but firm with them, respect them. If they want to go
to school and need flexible hours, support that. During the holidays, give
them a little bit of paid time off, because the holidays are wickedly
stressful for your staff. Don't demean them, ever; don't make them wear
idiotic costumes, use stupid code words, sing jingles, or the other bullshit
that makes it hard for employees to take a job seriously.

That's about it. It's really not that hard. Most businesses just don't care
enough because the attitude at the top is that they can always use marketing
to find new customers.

~~~
abbasmehdi
“When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteoousness, and
reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be
happy to serve their leaders'.” ― Sun Tzu

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patio11
In broad strokes? Select employees carefully. Give them a reason to care about
what you do. Mold the company culture such that caring (and related things,
like personal authority to effect change) is prioritized over other goods
which would get in the way (such as getting the most efficient outcome 100% of
the time). Make it obvious to your employees that it matters to them that they
fit into that culture, in the way that it matters at some companies that they
file the TPS reports on time.

As a customer? Vote with your dollars in favor of businesses which invest in
customer service. Most people don't, and the market gives them _exactly_ what
they really want.

Quick tip for getting what you want from companies? 1) Buy a share of an index
fund. 2) If you have any issue which can't get resolved the traditional way,
send a letter on paper to their Investor Relations department. They will
leapfrog over all the firewalls put in place to prevent customers from talking
with people who have the authority to do anything. (A related trick: mail sent
directly to the Vice President of Customer Service, Office of the CEO, etc.)

~~~
littledude
Adding to your 'as customer' comments, I've had immediate success in person
with front line staff by saying "If you do X for me i'll write a very
complimentary email to HQ and mention you by name".

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georgemcbay
You get employees to care by compensating them well for the job they do. This
compensation isn't always money. It _can_ be money. It can also be good
benefits. It can also be interesting work, but working in retail is inherently
non-interesting for most people. So basically when it comes to retail the way
to go is to provide good employee compensation and/or benefits. With some
notable exceptions (eg. Costco), very few retail employers compensate their
employees well, so of course the employees aren't going to care about their
jobs.

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brudgers
> _"I've been doing a lot of Christmas shopping lately and had to do some
> returns and stuff"_

Give them meaningful work which makes a difference in other people's lives.

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_delirium
It might not be entirely accurate that it's specifically the employees who
don't care (though that is also often true), but the company as well. With
these kinds of customer-service runarounds, that's often the explicit goal of
the company's policies, to stall and exhaust complaints as much as possible.
Bored employees are just executing the "stall customer and don't deviate from
policy" script that they're required to execute, often with very little leeway
to make exceptions even if they truly did want to help you out.

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devs1010
Your employees will never care about the company as much as you do and why
should they.. obviously treating employees well goes a way towards getting
them to care more, its a two way street, the more you care about an employee,
and show it, the more likely they are going to care about the company. Also,
larger companies that have high turnover, etc don't exactly inspire warm fuzzy
feelings in employees, there isn't some magic formula, you have to realize
that people probably aren't as stupid as you take them to be, on average, and
you can't trick them into caring, you need to give them a reason to actually
want to see the company do well. The more responsibility / talent an employee
has the more they feel that they can get another job, if needed, and therefore
their fate isn't tied to the fate of the company.

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joezydeco
_"...what I find is most employees who work don't really care at all about the
company or any profit._ "

Is any of said profit being shared with employees, directly or indirectly?

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Joakal
Look at who you are hiring. If you're hiring people just for their skills to
work, you're forgetting that they will bring their own culture (attitudes
towards people, company, food, etc). You can't make them forget it without a
lot of illegal brainwashing.

It's also the very earliest way to doom your company from within (aside from
founders).

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thesash
This video about what motivates people is really interesting for this topic:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

