CEO and Founder, The EQ-i Coach; author of Emotion at Work: Unleashing the Secret Power of Emotional Intelligence; public speaker and coach.
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What do you do when you have numerous stores to run, loyal customers to keep satisfied and a pandemic that causes people to drop out of the workforce in droves?
This was the question on the minds of owners/operators of a major fast-food chain, 26 of whom I worked with in southern Illinois and the eastern central Missouri area. Much like many restaurant owners across the nation, these regional owners were understaffed and facing high turnover rates of more than 200% over the past 12 months.
Even though about three years ago they anticipated hitting the “People Cliff,” a workplace phenomenon anticipating the rapid loss of employees and retention rate decline, this group of owners/operators was finding it difficult to hire and retain workers in their restaurants. When they did fill open positions, it was often with unseasoned workers who required a deeper level of training to become skilled at multitasking in the fast-paced food industry. While grateful for additional staff, the owners saw the high stress levels put on the current staff to train new crew members while keeping up with increased business and supply chain issues.
These issues are not isolated to this group or this industry. Other business leaders know they need to do something to help support their fluctuating staff and reduce high employee turnover rates. How can employers improve their workplaces to create an environment where someone wants to stay for years to come?
Fortunately, we can look to five emotional intelligence skills correlated to customer service and address the employee retention problem.
Stress Tolerance: Leading this type of business effectively requires a great deal of high energy. Managers in today's industries need to be well-prepared and be able to properly position their teams for the best customer service experience on multiple shifts. Quite often, someone doesn’t show up, and the manager needs to be ready to pivot while working more than one station themself. In addition, the overstretched manager is responsible for holding rigorous adherence to safety checks, motivating staff to maintain high performance levels, engaging with customers, fixing anything that breaks and keeping things moving while addressing supply chain shortages.
The managers who are able to perform the best are those who quickly adapt to changing and uncertain situations while managing their stress levels. To practice flexibility under stress, managers can make a list of their common emotional triggers, think about how they could behave differently and role-play new behaviors with another manager before trying them out. Learning to see things from a growth mindset can help build this skill.
Self-Actualization: To create longevity and success in any career, it’s important to know why you are choosing to work where you do. To be happy and fulfilled, managers need to have heartfelt, inspirational goals for why they want to continue at their job. To understand what activities bring the most passion, managers can make a list of daily activities and tasks. They can put a plus sign next to the ones that bring them the most joy and dig deeper to see how that activity corresponds to their top values. By studying this list and looking for opportunities to perform these tasks, managers can discover their personal "why."
Assertiveness: In order to perform at their best in today's fast-paced, uncertain environment, managers need to be able to directly express expectations in a non-offensive way. It is common for managers to indicate they don't have trouble confronting or giving direction when necessary but struggle with the delivery style of their message. Often the problem is they fail to think of the situation as an opportunity for a win-win conversation.
Managers can feel triggered when confronting an employee calling in to say they won’t be at work. This can be addressed by practicing curiosity, compassion and calmness. Managers who listen with empathy and patience can conduct these types of discussions in a more open and receptive way. This has the effect of helping the employee feel safe enough to discuss real concerns with their manager. Clear and direct communication from a manager may prevent an employee from prematurely resigning.
Interpersonal Relationships: In the customer service industry, most managers know that both short- and long-term success depends on their ability to build positive relationships with both staff and customers. When the majority of customers are happy, the staff is happy, too.
To assess your organization, take note of who is doing the heavy lifting: Is it the manager or the team? If it is the manager, why is the team not meeting them halfway? Often the root cause comes down to how well the manager has or has not trained their team. Is the manager adept at communicating the rules, boundaries and expectations in a clear and direct way? These need to be communicated more than once and in different ways because everyone has different learning styles.
Happiness: Self-regard, optimism, interpersonal relationships and self-actualization all influence how happy a person will be. And whether a workplace feels psychologically safe is influenced by who is at the top and how they are behaving. The owners/operators in the regional group I helped coach work hard to nurture a workplace culture that supports happiness, positive energy and customer service—all to a diverse group of people.
Happiness is the key, a significant part of the glue, to fostering positive employee retention. When a manager is happy with who they are as a person, this trickles down to the rest of the crew. A happy, self-aware manager means they are in a better position to positively motivate a crew member—emotions are contagious!
Because of the focus on the EQ skills above, this group of owners/operators is already seeing positive results with increased employee retention and a gentler culture within their stores.
These skills aren’t singular to the fast-food industry. Any business in any industry can adopt these skills (and other EQ skills) to improve customer service and company culture and increase employee retention.
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