Building an enduring brand and engaging and retaining your workforce cannot happen without commitment and connection. Both are also influenced by seasons and cycles. What can a beloved fall beverage teach us about further engaging and retaining our workforce? Grab your seasonal beverage of choice and let's get started.
Let's focus on one season in particular: Fall. The season brings us cooler temperatures (yes, please), changing leaves (for some), fall sports, and the return of the heralded Pumpkin Spice Latte. This drink, and the expanse of seasonal beverages that followed, now holds a cultural cornerstone in a little over two decades since its creation. In fact, the phenomenon is so powerful you can say PSL and many understand your reference to the famous nutmeg-cardamom-infused beverage. The level of engagement and excitement around the beverage share a special connection with the season. What if we could take some of the mechanisms of its success to engage further and retain our workforce?
Your latte and employee engagement start with culture.
What's happened is that the PSL is part of many people’s love of the fall season. The return of sweaters, scarves, fall colors, and the anticipation of the holidays ahead are deeply entwined with the PSL. Starbucks, and the food and beverage industry, engineer their marketing and imagery around these sensations to appeal to this core meaning.
How can we capture this magic for engaging our teams? Start with what makes you unique. Specifically, your cultural values and connecting them to the goals, objectives, and imperatives you're seeking to accomplish.
- Consider Patagonia. By consistently communicating and deeply embedding environmental stewardship into its culture, and by doing its core practices and operations, they've captured the trust and enthusiastic commitment of employees and customers. This approach not only aligns with the personal values of many team members but also inspires active participation and effort to reach the company's sustainability goals. As a result, employees feel a strong sense of purpose and motivation, which drives them to push these environmental initiatives forward earning the trust and positive regard of the public. This commitment has not only fostered a positive and engaged workforce but has also translated into tangible business benefits, such as increased market share and improved financial results.
- It's impossible to overstate the importance of earning trust and creating a culture of safety that provides the freedom to fail, especially when undertaking something dually tough and extraordinary. When Netflix unveiled its 124-page “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility” in 2009, it wasn’t just an internal guideline – it gave people the freedom to take risks. Created by CHRO Patty McCord and CEO Reed Hastings, this document asserted Netflix’s intention to hire only the brave, or in McCord’s words, “fully formed adults.” This meant bringing on board employees who could handle freedom with responsibility, without needing a long list of rules to guide their behavior. Instead of a strict set of guidelines, Netflix their culture statement articulated the expectation that they always "act in Netflix's best interest." By carefully evaluating oversight with an eye towards autonomy, Netflix aimed to build self-motivated teams, fostering a culture of trust and responsibility, and freedom to act broadly as long as the heart of the company was top of mind.
A Recipe for Engaging and Exciting Employees
Results and commitment can spiral upward when we're connected to our culture and values, but the PSL gives us other strategies we can maximize to earn the excitement and energy of our workforce.
For a Limited Time Only.
The limited nature of the PSL is key to its success. When our time to act is finite, like with limited time offers, our desire and need for that option can increase. In psychology, this resistance, and action, in response to constraints is called reactance. Timeframes, and incentives for staying within them, create a sense of urgency and greater commitment and urgency to act in return. How can we do this in practice?
Case in point: build time-sensitive goals into your performance management programs. Support employees in setting time-bound performance and development goals. Then share, reward, recognize, and reinforce employee success and behaviors towards those goals. The sharing part is particularly key. It's not new news that we're more likely to pick up a seasonal treat when we see others enjoying it. Similarly, we're 76% more likely to achieve a goal when we see others doing the same.
What's the engagement strategy?
Take Starbucks or your favorite cafe or restaurant. You probably have an idea of the cadence and timeline of events and specials they deliver over the year. The specific offerings may change, but you have an idea of what to expect.
The takeaway? Effectively communicate a vision and plan of what the year ahead entails for your organization. This involves not only outlining the key objectives and milestones for people functions, (think employee listening and feedback, performance reviews, and professional development initiatives), but also detailing the operational goals and projects that will drive the company forward. By establishing a clear, detailed, and consistently communicated calendar and strategic plan, you create a roadmap that aligns with your overarching business strategy. It also creates valued stability when the unpredictable happens.
This approach not only fosters a sense of direction and purpose but also builds energy, enthusiasm, and a strong commitment among employees toward your strategy. It ensures that everyone is on the same page, working collaboratively towards shared objectives, and it empowers teams to take proactive steps in executing tasks efficiently and effectively.
Earn early adopters and momentum.
Whether we enjoy it or find it tiresome, it's hard to escape the vibes of whatever season we're in. What if your culture, strategy, and goals were as contagious?
For our seasonal favorites, consistent frequent reminders combined with the popularity of the product (in this case, our PSL) make for a powerful one-two punch. How can we make this happen?
Gaining early momentum for performance, engagement, and retention programs is key. Putting in extra effort and intentionality to secure as much participation and investment as you can early on is worth it and can prevent a program from stalling. If you're leading an initiative where you can track participation, get after areas where participation lags as soon as you can after launch. We suggest talking through the cadence you'll use for tracking participation and taking action before launch so it's not a reactive afterthought.
This early intensity will help you quickly reach a tipping point where participation becomes the norm. For example, we worked with a group that started openly sharing their goals for the quarter. Once a few employees started to share their goals, progress, and benefits the rest of the group quickly joined.
Grande with two pumps of meaning, please.
Just as the PSL represents a love for all that is cozy and warm about fall, your engagement initiatives should be directly tied to the purpose and vision of your enterprise - and employees. Take, for example, one large national retail organization we support. They found a strong link between team member meaning and purpose and customer loyalty (measured by repeat sales) across locations. After understanding the main ways employees found meaning and purpose in their work, they took action to remove barriers that got in the way and opportunities for job crafting to build greater purpose. Learning and development leaders created programs that coached and taught skills connected to meaning-making and purpose further strengthening retention and engagement in ways that elevated both the customer and employee experiences.
At its core job crafting is simple. We're providing the opportunity for employees to shape their roles and responsibilities to connect and nurture their strengths and interests. It's an often overlooked but powerful way to increase engagement and job satisfaction. Two prime focus areas for job crafting are relationships and job tasks.
Crafting within relationships could involve mentoring new employees, collaborating on projects, or enabling employees to create a more personalized customer service experience. While cross-training and competence across all tasks is key, job crafting means we provide opportunities for employees to specialize and build their strengths in personally meaningful areas.
This can be achieved by encouraging employees to take on projects that interest them or by providing opportunities for skill development. In a retail environment, this could mean time to focus on merchandising, customer service, or training new employees.
The Recipe for a Remarkable Employee and Customer Experience
Everything remarkable, from an organization to a consumer product, starts with a clearly articulated definition of the why. What is the why behind your actions and strategies for the employee experience and engagement? Driving an employee experience that increases commitment, retention, and the success of your enterprise starts with goals supported by intentional messaging, opportunities for learning and development, and reinforcing experiences. Ultimately, your success is determined by how well your program focuses on the critical driver of performance for any organization….your people.
