Episode 189.5 – Green Apple Slice

Good morning. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices where every Monday, I call Rachel and we all hold our breath collectively. There she is. Yes.

Rachel: I don’t think anybody holds their breath. I think it’s like, “Oh, it’s her again?” Yeah.

John: Actually, that’s what I say. I’m like oh, yeah. That’s who I called. Just kidding.

Rachel: Yeah, right.

John: No, but it’s always great to chat and talk through an article. Where are you off to this week?

Rachel: Napa. I’m in Napa. Yeah.

John: Oh, boy. Buckle up. The police have been alerted already.

Rachel: I know I never been here before. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

John: There’s wine. You know, there’s that.

Rachel: So much wine.

John: It comes out of the faucet. You brush your teeth with it, I think. But yeah, but found this article on LEGEND Talent Management. It’s an article about Disney. So Cindy Schroeder’s ears are burning right now. She was on our podcast.

Rachel: They’re perking up. Yeah, definitely. Her mouse ears are perking up.

John: Yes. She’s a “Disnerd.” That’s what she calls it. But four things Disney says you need for employee engagement. Yeah, I thought this was interesting and it’s bolded just for you, Rachel.

Rachel: It doesn’t have numbers but it’s bolded and it’s nice and simple. Disney is kind of known as the gold standard of customer care. They have Disney University, they’ve got — like you can do Disney focus sessions and stuff like that.

I think that people who haven’t experienced one of the sessions before is just like oh, so you have to laugh and be happy and just be nice to people all the time? But there’s so much more to the kind of the Disney experience and of course if you’ve ever been to Disneyland or Walt Disney World or on a Disney cruise, you know how much they really go above and beyond to take care of the consumer so they know what they’re talking about.

John: Yeah, absolutely and right there in bold in the middle. There’s a direct correlation between high employee engagement and high customer satisfaction.

Rachel: Absolutely, yes. Absolutely.

John: Which goes back to something we talked about just a couple of weeks ago. If you take care of your people, your customers will be more than taken care of which is great. One of the employee engagement surveys that they did for Disney employees, 77% said they understood how their job fits the goals and strategies of their business segments and how it rolls up into the big Disney picture which I feel like is missing a lot in a lot of organizations.

Rachel: Yeah. I think we talked about it a week or two ago where basically, it’s like engaging your staff in your purpose and in your plan and aligning them, making sure that they feel like they are part of what you’re trying to achieve. That sense of belonging and purpose is so critical to the success of employees. But again, I feel like a lot of companies just get that wrong where it’s like no, no, we’re the executive. We make the decisions. It’s everybody else’s jobs to roll it out.

Well, if your staff don’t understand how they fit within what you’re trying to achieve, then they aren’t going to be engaged at all.

John: No, for sure. Absolutely. The four Building Blocks of Engagement as what they called them, employee selection, hiring people that are the right fit, training, ongoing training, communication, and care, which I mean the one for me that stood out most was care, just genuinely caring about your people beyond incentive programs and standard benefits and whatever is just caring about each individual, sure, it takes more time to do but the dividends are huge.

Rachel: People also recognize when that care is genuine or not where it’s lip service, where it’s a foosball table in your cafeteria or where it’s no, no, we are committed to your success here.

John: Here and outside of here. It’s so huge. I was talking to somebody a bit ago and they were saying that they always ask their people how things are going because if your life outside of work is crazy then your life at work will never be good ever. You can’t divide the two. You need to take care of your life outside of work and make sure that you’re happy there in order for happiness to come into the workplace which I thought was really profound.

Rachel: Absolutely. I’ve talked to people who just seemed to be unhappy no matter where they are and it’s kind of like okay, but if you quit this job and go to another place because you think that will solve your happy issue, you’re still taking yourself with you.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Rachel: If there’s still issues there then no matter how much you get paid, no matter what the organization is, it’s still not going to help these fundamental issues. I do like again, going to the one on the top of the list, employee selection, we’ve heard it over and over again how important it is to hire for fit and then train for skill.

Because if you’re just hiring to check off the boxes of the skillset you think the organization needs without bringing into consideration how they fit within the team or what else they’ll be able to bring to the organization, then you’re kind of missing out on a big chunk of who this person is so absolutely.

John: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s been really interesting to read the article.

If you’d like to see all four and a little more of the details and just how caring about your people matters so much, then you can go to greenapplepodcast.com and you can click on the link there and the article’s there.

Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes every Monday with Rachel or every Wednesday interviewing someone. Have a great rest of the week, Rachel.

Rachel: You too, John. Talk to you later.