We tend to listen to respond and not to understand. This story from Karam K. is a great lesson for leaders who seek a seamless and cohesive work environment.
During my first couple of months working in a retail organization in Dubai, I came across different nationalities and cultures in a local yet international environment – across departments and teams. All of them had their reasons to move to Dubai – from moving for a better future to working and living in a country that accepts all religions & cultures with a focus on tolerance and equality.
I remember being tasked with setting up focus groups with the staff members in our retail stores. The project was to understand why the attrition rate was high and what exactly made these members of staff leave. Focus groups vary in effectiveness – a lot of the time it is just to ‘tick a box’ so the Head Office knows HR have done something. It was a highly competitive and fast-paced sales environment where sales numbers and targets were key — we had staff who would sell products but not provide a ‘service’ to a customer. During my store walks I noticed most of the employees standing there completely disinterested and demotivated.
I knew for a fact that the store morale needed to be uplifted and the staff needed to understand the benefits of working as a team even though the targets were individual.
I immediately scheduled meetings with staff to understand the core issues. What will help them to get motivated? How we can support staff who need a little more guidance than others – as opposed to calling them out in a team briefing. We worked on a plan to ensure that teams understood each other and accepted how different cultures function – how a simple thing like Rota planning if done well and in advance can get the team to plan their days off, how to support a colleague when targets aren’t being met prior to taking it to the store manager.
I remember the introduction of recognising our ‘Star Performers’, celebrations and even celebrating promotions and career progression milestones.
The main takeaway for me was if you hear your people, guide, and support them and recognise their efforts, they will look after your customers. You will see the ROI in due course. By taking this course of action, we saw an immediate drop in employee attrition – which saved recruitment costs, and new joiner induction costs – plus a better experience for our customers as we retained more knowledgeable people as opposed to having newer employees serve them with limited product information.
The starting point to success – is people. You learn so much just by listening to what people say. Do not make assumptions sitting in an office – the answer is out there. Just create an environment where people are not fearful of telling you what they think – then create a platform where you can listen to and then capture feedback – then you can build effective actions to address the issues.
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