Page 60 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

Crosswind Factors C47

less busy times of the day. The interesting thing is that our
guest satisfaction scores and percentage of profit are both
up. We believe that’s because our Stars have responded
to the challenge with an all-hands-on-deck mentality. They
have stepped up like good athletic teams do when a star
player is injured. We think they are more engaged than they
were before. They also know we’re doing everything we can
to bring in new business. One way we do that is to have a
map showing where our salespeople are traveling on any
given day to call on corporate customers. The locations light
up electronically, and there’s a small photo of that salesper-
son, so our people can see that they, too, are on a mission.”

We’ll offer more practical tips for managing in difficult times as
we present each of six key engagement drivers in later chapters. For
now we want to be clear about one thing: a highly engaged workforce
is important when business is going well, but your efforts will be dou-
bly rewarded in a crisis.

: WHAT’S NEXT? HOW THE BEST EMPLOYERS ADDRESS
THESE REALITIES

So now we have an understanding of the depth of these crosswind
realities—how employee size, generational diversity, and economic
turbulence can throw us off-course. We also know that some em-
ployers are trimming their sails, plowing head-on into these cross-
winds, and continuing to succeed in our ever-changing business and
social landscape.
But how do they go about doing this? What approaches have they
found most successful in dealing with these challenging realities?
What principles, practices, and practical actions do they take to attain
and sustain their elite-employer status? What do they avoid, know-