Keep communication rolling
Johnson’s relationship with his employees begins as a steady communication loop.
And that communication often starts as an outgoing message.
“You really have to outwardly communicate to everyone what we’re doing and how things are going so that they have a sense for the business in total,” Johnson says. “You’ve got to communicate outwardly in order to get anything back.”
Johnson has several methods for doing that, from webcasting town-hall meetings to Fidelitone’s 22 locations throughout the country to taking his senior management team out to lunch. There’s also the regular staff meetings and quarterly reviews. But as long as you find ways that work for you, the key is that you’re reaching your employees. How you reach them isn’t that important.
There are a couple of staples that Johnson’s message always includes. Basically, they boil down to two things: whether you’re making money and whether your customers are happy.
Johnson supports those points with statistics. So his messages usually circle around the “ultimate scoreboards” of net income and customer satisfaction ratings.
You can make that data more meaningful to employees by putting it into context. This could mean comparing metrics across time or simply breaking them down to areas that affect employees. For example, Johnson explains profit by comparing this year’s to last and makes the company’s fiscal status more tangible by putting it into terms of hiring or firing.
“You talk to each audience as to what’s important about them,” Johnson says. “You’ve got to know the goals of each department when you’re in front of them. You’ve got to tailor [your message] to what they do every day.”
For example, Fidelitone’s purchasing group is focused on improving customer service through proper inventory levels. So Johnson pulls data out for them about backorders and on-time shipments to help illustrate how their goals feed into the company’s overall mission. If employees understand their role, they’ll be able to make more sense of the company’s progress as a whole — not to mention have a stake in it.
Keeping employees up to date is an important part of establishing communication with them. But really including them in the loop requires silence. In other words, don’t dominate meetings without opening the floor for input.
“I try not to talk at my staff meetings,” Johnson says. “It’s really more of a presentation from the people that work for me to me about what’s going on. I think that’s how you learn how to listen to your business.”
Johnson extends the invitation for input in other ways, too. One of the simplest is his take on the suggestion box. It’s a bucket labeled Coffee Stains, where employees can submit observations of anything in the business, from the way the phone is answered to the way customers are billed to an actual carpet stain defacing the lobby.
While it’s good to have outlets like that for input, an open invitation often isn’t enough. You have to combine that with an active approach to seek it out.
“You’ve got to have a management style that you’re not just sitting on your butt all day behind your desk,” Johnson says. “Getting out and visiting them and shaking people’s hands and looking them in the eye is critical to building that rapport to where they feel comfortable talking to you about the good and the bad.”
Start building those relationships with employees early because it will take time. Johnson sets the foundation as soon as employees are hired by making a point to find out who they are and what they’re doing. When they know you at least know who they are, they’ll be more comfortable sharing in the future.
Johnson keeps information flowing through regular reviews with his department heads, and they, in turn, hold frequent staff meetings to keep their employees in the loop. Ideally, your town-hall meeting won’t bring the first mention of metrics. Employees should already know where they stand, as a company, a department and an individual.
“The interesting thing that I’ve learned about running a business is that it’s not rocket science. It’s about communication,” Johnson says. “You come up with game plans; you talk about how you’re going to do the things that you want to do. Communication is always the goal that you have to have: to communicate with one another what’s going on.”
