According to salary.com unproductive time in the workplace costs over $544 billion each year on salaries paid for work not done. The top time wasters…

1. Surfing the Internet for personal use (cyberslacking) 34.7%
2. Socializing with co-workers 20.3%
3. Conducting personal business 17.0%

Respondents also listed taking long breaks to run errands, making personal phone calls and applying for a new job as other time wasting activities performed while at work. And WHY do 63% of those surveyed feel justified in wasting almost 20% of their work day…

1. Don’t have enough work to do 17.7%
2. Hours are too long 13.9%
3. Underpaid for amount of work 11.8%
4. Lack of challenging work 11.1%

While the 2005 version of the survey revealed that women and men were almost equal in their tendency to waste time (even though it was presumed that women wasted more time due to caregiving activities) – there were differences among the generations…

1. 20-29 year olds reported wasting the most time - 2-1 hours each day
2. 30-39 year olds reported wasting around 1.9 hours
3. 40-49 year olds reported wasting 1.4 hours

Shocking – maybe. Improving – definitely. Since the 2005 survey there has been a 19% decline in the amount of time reportedly wasted – down overall from 2.09 hours. This is likely due to increases in productivity and a shrinking economy forcing everyone to work more with fewer resources – simply put employees have less time to waste.

So what can an employer do to help get their workforce more productive at a time when productivity is vitally important? I’ll let you know next week…Happy Labor Day!

A recent federal appeals court ruling in Indiana proves that the customer isn’t always right. In this particular case a nursing home acquiesced to one of its resident’s requests to receive healthcare assistance only from white nursing assistants – racially discriminating against one of their black caregivers. While there are some patient rights issues ensnarled in this debate, in addition to charges of a hostile work environment, the bottom line is the nursing home is not permitted to accede to the racial preferences of its customers.

Aside from this very specific example, there are other situations in which a customer might demand something of you or your employees that breaks the law. What about a client requesting a female account manager – or requesting that their account manager is not female? While it might be obvious that to exclude the hiring of female account managers (to satisfy a customer) is a discriminatory hiring practice, what about the assignment of work within your organization based on such client requests – are you creating an environment hostile to females? And this possible scenario applies to all the protected classes: race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, family status, disability, veteran status and genetic information. Also remember that protected classes vary from state to state and some states also include as a protected class: sexual orientation, gender identity, source of income, and smoking status.

The takeaway here is that there are limits to what can be justified as “providing customer service”. The real trick to customer service is to make the customer “feel like” they are getting what they want, even if it may not be exactly what they had in mind. Sometimes you have to put your sales hat on and convince your customer that your approach really is in their best interest – especially when it comes to matters of the law or you feel ethically obligated to do so. Bottom line:  don’t let “customer service” compromise the core beliefs and values of your company; no customer is worth that.

I got a call from a web development company in Northern Indiana.  They were building a new website for a client that we had helped previously with their existing website.  Frankly I was happy to take the call because I had always felt that this client needed to get more engaged with their website and had delegated their e-commerce site to too many contractors and had no clue what was going on with their own business.

But as a fellow web professional,  I can’t help but feel for the folks in Northern Indiana, do they know what they are getting into?  My two year history of un-returned calls,  ignored emails,  overall lack of communication/direction and most importantly, payments that usually ran about 120 days past due,  would they like to know this?  If I was in their shoes, would I like to know?

I didn’t say anything but very pleasantly gave them the information they needed,  but maybe I should have?

Maybe we need a ratings site for customers?

Recently we had a contractor out to our house to do some landscaping work.  He was telling us about a $10,000 job that he was probably not going to collect on, because the woman in lived in the multi-million dollar house in a wealthy neighborhood in Cincinnati, was protesting the quality of their work and was not going to pay.  He ran into another contractor that he knows working at another client on that same street,  and  Contractor #2 knew the woman my landscaper was referring to and said it was known among other contractors that she always tries to get out of paying her bill by claiming the work was sub-par.  My landscaper wished there was some way he could have looked this up online and then decided whether or not to put resources toward this job,  instead of now worrying about collecting a $10,000 invoice.

Make Non-Payment of Bills Part of Online Profile

In the past year you have seen individuals on the evening news gleefully telling how they are walking away from their mortgages and we have all been watching our government trying to get BP pay for their oil spill,  so it is obvious that legal ramifications no longer work.   So what if you started seeing that you haven’t paid your contractor in the last 120 days showing in your Google results?  I always Google a new website client  before I begin working with them,  what if I saw a listing saying this business already has 3 contractors waiting for past due payments?  I might think twice before starting that project or at least have the chance to address it before we are already a month’s worth of consulting hours into the project.

Do you think this would be enough to get people to honor their obligations?   How would this effect the ability of this company to grow?  How would it effect their ability to hire people?

Do you have a side on this ethical dilemma?  Please post your comments.

Your brand, your customer service…

It’s a team effort: Everyone is creating and participating in the customers service and satisfaction experience. Don’t forget that your employees play a vital role in your brand. It’s not just about their interaction with your customers, but your interaction with them as well.

It’s an ongoing cycle: With each interaction the customer becomes a repeat customer. They turn into a loyal customer which is not only the pillar of a successful company but also an avenue for new customers.

It’s about communication: Spend some time with your customers. Listen and learn about their needs, wants and expectations and do this periodically – it changes over the months or years.

Are you building solid relationships by aligning your customer service with your brand?

“Coming together is a beginning, Keeping together is progress, Working together is success.”- Henry Ford

Laura Littlecott, PHR
Consultant with strategicHR, inc.

This is a continuation of the 4 Ways To Protect Your Company Against Worker’s Comp Claims! – Part I

3.  After a conditional job offer, an employer can ask about an employee’s Workers’ Comp history, sick leave usage, etc. as well as require a medical examination – provided that all candidates who receive a conditional job offer in the same category are required to do the same. Inquiries must be job related and consistent with business necessity. If someone is not hired based on their medical history, the decision must be directly related to their inability to perform the job up to a certain standard or because in doing so, they may harm themselves or others. ADA-covered employers are required to consider job accommodations. Medical inquiries should be done by a physician- results are considered confidential medical records and must be treated as such.


4. Train continually. Spence says, “Employees should be provided with appropriate safety training and the safety rules that apply to their job and their work areas. Create a training matrix that outlines the minimum safety training required for all positions.” Requiring training to perform not only the tasks of the job, but training in all safety aspects of the job is key. Training doesn’t end after the new employee learns the duties and safety precautions. Any time job duties, equipment, or safety rules change, employees must be trained on the changes. Additionally, refresher training on basic safety rules should be conducted regularly.  

If you evaluate the overall cost of one Workers’ Compensation claim, including the loss of manpower, the administrative cost to manage an injured employee, the W/C premium cost and the overtime to cover jobs that would have been done by the injured worker—you will see the cost benefits of integrating an effective pre-employment evaluation and safety train

You could just ignore them. Talk with the applicable ones, select your candidates and choose your new hire – DONE. But you may just have alienated 399 potential customers. And in the marketing world, it’s like the old Faberge shampoo commercial were one person tells two friends, and they tell two friends and so on, and so on…well, you get the picture. Today that concept is called viral marketing and when the viral message is bad it’s like a deadly virus spreading out of control. And like a virus, there is no easy fix – you just wait it out and hope it doesn’t get worse.

Appropriate follow-up and closure is essential to creating a satisfying recruiting process. Not every applicant will win one of your job openings, but that doesn’t mean that they all have to have bad feelings about employment with your company. We spend a lot of time and money on marketing and advertising in an effort to create a good consumer image about our products and services. It’s a shame that a company will obliterate all that hard work and expense with a small misstep like ignoring a job applicant.

Simply put the recruitment process IS closely linked to customer relations and customer satisfaction. Becoming an employer of choice is no easy task. But effective customer relations, with would-be employees or would-be customers, are fairly easy in today’s technological world. Most of those 400 resumes you received came through email or online. You probably have email addresses for 98% of the applicants you received. It just makes sense then that you utilize email as your communication tool.

When an applicant sends their resume make sure they receive an acknowledgement. This can often be accomplished with an auto-reply email; while not a personalized warm and fuzzy, it does let the applicant know that their resume has reached your hands. Likewise, when the position is filled, send out another mass-email letting all applicants know the position is no longer available. Providing closure will let the applicants know to move on, and in some cases, free up your staff from continual follow-up with applicants wanting to know their status.

My colleague, Cathleen Snyder, worked for the finance arm of a major auto manufacturer years ago. They would get hundreds of applicants for one job opening. Their office would hire temporary help just to assist with typing and sending letters to each and every job applicant (this was before email). That’s how valuable these applicants were as potential customers. Now THAT’S customer service!

Keep Customers & Boost Sales

Wondering how to gain loyal customers and stay ahead of the competition? Don’t miss this insightful conversation with New York Times best-selling author, Jim Champy.

Drawing on case studies, he shows how to keep customers coming back and reveals how to define a consistent value proposition about which your customers will become-and stay-passionate.

Jim Champy, Chairman of Perot Systems’ consulting practice, is recognized throughout the world for his work on leadership and management issues and on organizational change and business reengineering. His first book, Reengineering the Corporation, sold more than 3 million copies and spent more than a year on The New York Times best seller list. He is also the author of the best sellers Reengineering Management, The Arc of Ambition, Fast Forward and Outsmart!

To register and listen to the webinar,  go to http://www.score.org/keep_customers_boost_sales.html

Enjoy!

Laura Littlecott, PHR
HR Consultant with strategicHR, inc.

You have a hard-to-fill position that has been vacant for months. Finally, a seemingly viable candidate appears. After performing the recruiting due diligence, you hire and the new employee starts work. Then it happens…within days of starting work your new employee becomes injured on the job and is out on Workers’ Compensation. You ask yourself, “WHY did we hire that employee?”

Margaret Spence of the Workers’ Comp Gazette says,

“Employers often hire based on an unrealistic idea that all they need is a warm body in a position because ‘anyone’ can be trained to do the job.”

This is mistake #1 on the road to a Workers’ Compensation claim. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 13% of all workplace injuries occur within 90 days of hire – 23% of those happen within the first 4 hours on the job!

Legitimate W/C claims do happen, regardless of precautions taken, but what about the troublesome employee who either fails to observe safety in the workplace, or worse yet, exploits the W/C system? There are legal steps employers can take in the pre-and post-employment process to mitigate the risk of making a bad W/C hire:

1.  Ensure the job description includes not only the essential functions of the job, but also the non-essential functions, physical requirements and qualifications for the position.
2. Ask the candidate how they would perform specific job tasks. Pre-employment skills testing can include a “fit-for-duty” test (NOT a medical exam) involving the duties of the job, if the employer can show a compelling need to do so. You may require the candidate to demonstrate job tasks.  Observe for the ability to do these tasks as well as identify improper body mechanics. Any “fit-for-duty” tests used must be structured so that they comply with privacy laws and the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). Employers are also limited in the scope of allowable inquiries before making a conditional job offer.

Stay tuned next week for the second half of Avoiding Worker’s Comp Claims.

Blog – Church of the Customer-http://www.churchofcustomer.com/

This blog is written by the the co-authors of “Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force. “Check out the “Essential Posts” links on the left hand side to get you thinking seriously about the impact of your customer service.

Book – Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? by Seth Godin

This book comes off as a marketing advice, but if you really read it, the lesson becomes making sure your are listening to your customers and giving them what they need, not what you think they want or think they should have.

Article – “In a Tough Economy, Go to Battle for Your Customers” from Marketingprofs.com

This article is from 2009, but I still remember it from when it was first published. The message of this article rings true still, when times are hard focus on your existing customers and your business will thrive.

Need a Social Media twist? Try doing some searches on how Twitter can be an excellent customer service tool.

Do you have any must reads on Customer Service? Please share your suggestions below.

This very tight community of “farmers” harvests crops, tends animals, builds infrastructures, and trades goods and services on a daily basis. “Farmers” exchange tips on how to increase farms’ profitability or gain more “Farm Cash”.

According to a recent study, Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to buy the brand’s product or recommend it to a friend (www.imoderate.com). Can Farmville provide a similar opportunity? At the end of the day, with your marketing strategy you want to reach as many customers as possible, wherever they are. 

Assuming that your product appeals to this specific segment,  if your customers happen to be on social media (i.e. Facebook, Farmville) you want to engage as many of them as possible and entertain them. Few companies have already started marketing their businesses using Farmville. Here are few examples:

- Green Giant Each Green Giant packaged item (i.e. salads, tomatoes…) comes with a special sticker that allows customers to earn “FarmVille Cash” units. Consumers can then use earnings to maintain and expand their FarmVille projects.
- Cascadian Farms First company to provide a branded (both logo and brand) crop to appear in FarmVille. For limited time only, “farmers” were able to harvest organic blueberries and visit Cascadian Farms’ website to learn more about the company. The goal of this initiative was to increase awareness, as well as educate consumers, about the benefits of switching to organic produce.
- Elite Taami Nutz First company to sponsor a “crop”, peanuts, although without logo/brand (see Cascadian Farms).
- Bing.com, Microsoft With just one single advertisement on FarmVille, Microsoft gained over 400,000 Facebook fans on its Bing fan page. Users gained FarmVille cash by just becoming fans of the Bing Facebook page.
- Toy Story 3, Disney Customers get $2 FarmVille cash by simply watch the Toy Story 3 trailer.
- 7-11 The company set up a full fledge promotion strategy including: 1) Zynga branded 7-Eleven merchandise; 2) Zynga marketing posters exhibited at 7-11 stores; 3) Redempion codes for exclusive limited-edition virtual items.
- Kia Customers earn $2 Farmville cash by watching a video promoting the Kia Soul.

In conclusion, if your cystomers are on Social Media, build your presence on Facebook, Twitter or wherever they happen be. How can you find them? Here is a starting point. Facebook is now the size of the European Union (500+ million of members). Most of his members connect by exchanging videos, messages and inviting each others to events. Some of them engages in gaming. The top 3 games on Facebook? Farmville, Texas HodEm Poker and Cafe’ World (source: InsideSocialGames.com).