How do you deal with volatile employees and clients? In the last decade, this has been the question of managers and business development executives. From manufacturing industry to service industry, employees and clients are pushing for better value as businesses capture value too. As the agitation continues, businesses are also feeling the impact of macro and micro economic changes due to constant policy change of government and unexpected artificial and natural disruptions.

Employees want tasks and responsibilities that would give them opportunity to have sustainable work-life balance. Business owners and managers believe that as governments become more unpredictable in the area of policy and laws making there is a need for having employees that can multitask and deliver superior value. In our experience, to the employees, multitasking is not an issue. The issue lies with the fact that career progression is slowing in addition to poor remuneration and condition of working.

Clearly, there is a tug of war going on in the corporate world.

In this piece, our analyst examines how the issues raised by employees impacted their expected role of being marketers, by recommending products and services to prospective clients and managing existing ones sustainably. We considered the issues within employees’ feelings and customers’ expressions.

Core Issues

From our data, we found that employees do not like constant change of directors of their units or departments. A number of them believe that this is contributing to poor group think as the new directors’ personal values and norms shape collective working culture. For example, understanding the leadership style of the new directors is always difficult.

Since business owners expect the managers to deliver what they promised at the beginning of every quarter, employees do not like the increase in workload considered by the directors as one of the ways of realising the stated goals by quarter. “…unrealistic expectations on timeline mean you are expected to work ridiculous hours. No such thing as work life balance at this place with a very ‘old school’ mentality of how a working environment operates. A very hard nose management approach from the top down, reluctant to change and drag itself to 2019!”

In this case, managers need to work out a template that would ensure attainment of productivity and profitability objectives. Such template should have appropriate social interaction, working relationship, flexible nature of work and supportive attitude elements. Positive physical and psychological work environment should also be at the heart of every manager, especially manager that leads a team with low sense of belonging.

Despite the negative feelings of the employees, some customers are still found to be contended with the kind of services they have received. They were satisfied with the behaviour of the employees and the quality of the homes they have bought. However, they decried the bad behaviour of some employees and customer service process.

These insights have reestablished the existing understanding that when employees are satisfied with their companies, the outcome would be high productivity and customer loyalty. However, when they are not happy with the systems, structure and processes, the turnover would be increased and business unit profitability would be dipped. Solutions to this problem include work-life balance and enhanced morale through proper remuneration and other benefits.

What is at Stake?

One percent of happiness of the employees decreases customers’ angriness by 15.2%. In spite of this result, one percent of the employees’ happiness reduces customers’ happiness by 26.4%. This could be explained within the context of the specific issues both the employees and customers experienced. It could also be understood in the context that level of happiness among the employees is low, below the expected average of 50%. Analysis also reveals that one percent of employees’ happiness increases customers’ sadness by 11%. Taking this from the perspective of employees’ sadness and customers’ happiness, analysis suggests a 13.6% increase. This could also be understood within the earlier position that the employees’ level of happiness is low. Analysis further establishes that the sadness of the employees reduces employees’ angriness by 6.5%, while the sadness of the two actors (employees and customers) resonated negatively (-9.4%), which also indicates a 9.4% reduction in customers’ sadness.

These insights indicate that managers need to work with the emotional intelligence of the employees because customers do give specific attention to the emotions of real estate agents or sales personnel. In addition to ensuring emotional intelligence, employees should be encouraged to share new customer engagement and relationship ideas in groups.

Recommending Brand

In our data, 88% of more than 100 customers did not recommend products and services of the company we studied to new customers, most importantly their colleagues and family members. This is hinged with the way employees managed them. The poor customer relationship management is an off-shoot of the poor treatment of employees by the business and functional managers. Our analysis suggests that employees with high commitment to the realisation of the company’s strategic goals and objectives felt disappointed and withdraw their loyalty when it was needed the most.

Strategic Options

The key solution to the issues is a resilient transformational-transactional leadership system. This is the appropriate system at a time employees and existing clients are grumbling due to internal and external factors. Addressing issues within job requirement, role expectations, and group and corporate’s norms should be the strategic work of every manager at the business and functional levels. At every stage of project execution or service delivery, employees and existing customers should be informed of shared value capturing.