Employee Engagement Dialogue: Sybil Stershic and David Zinger

A conversation about employee engagement and nonprofits

Employee Engagement Dialogue on Nonprofits with Sybil Stershic and David Zinger from David Zinger on Vimeo.

David Zinger: Hi, my name is David Zinger and I want to welcome you to an employee engagement dialogue. Today, I’m talking with Sybil Stershic who really is… This is into her second book, maybe it’s even your third, Sybil; I’m not sure about that. We have a slide with a little bit of background, but let’s get right to it. Sybil, maybe you could say a few words about yourself? [00:21]

Sybil Stershic: Oh, great. Thank you, David, and thank you for having me. Actually, what’s interesting is I got my career started in banking, and that’s where I first learned the importance of employee engagement, although we didn’t use those terms back then. One of the things I found out early on, especially in a service-based industry like banking, is that if the employees were not included in the thought process in terms of what work do we require of employees, in terms of delivering on the brand promise or delivering the brand to customers, all the work was for not, because I remember doing a bank promotion and we were giving out posters or umbrellas or something for customers bringing in new deposits, and I kept saying to management well, when are we going to let the branch people know, when are we going to let the branch managers and customer service people in on this? They said oh, don’t worry about it; we’ll get to them eventually. And all I kept thinking was what a terrible thing to keep them as an afterthought, because all we needed was a customer to walk into the branch the day the promotion started and say, you know, I’ve got a new deposit, and I’d like to get this toaster oven or whatever they were giving away, and the teller to say I don’t know anything about it, and all I kept thinking is it’s a waste of marketing dollars, it’s an embarrassment to the bank and to the customer, and didn’t say much in terms of how we respected the branch people who are responsible for actually delivering on the promotion. So, that’s how I got started with all of this what I call internal marketing – take care of the employees so they can take care of the customers. [01:57]

David Zinger: Yeah, and that takes care of the business, and those employees then are able to take care of the family out of there. You wrote in the book about your three lessons. Why don’t we just take them one at a time? First one is mission matters. [02:12]

Sybil Stershic: Well, this book in particular, David, is specifically targeted towards non-profit, and what I’ve learned in my work with non-profits as both a volunteer and as a marketing organizational advisor is that mission is so critical to a non-profit, because it’s the focus of all the work of the non-profit; what is a non-profit, why are they in existence, what are they trying to do? Whether they’re trying to save the world, they’re trying to promote a healthy lifestyle or, you know, help people who have issues. Whatever it is, the mission is the focal point that brings it all together and it’s also what attracts employees and volunteers to work with and support a non-profit, so mission is absolutely critical. [02:59]

David Zinger: So, we’re talking much more than a mission statement that the executive goes off on a little retreat and then puts up on a wall and says well there’s our mission statement; it’s you’re really talking about a very engaged mission, which gets to point #2: the people behind the mission also matter. [03:15]

Sybil Stershic: Absolutely. Every employee, every volunteer, anyone whose dedicated to the organization’s cause, they are as important as the mission, but sometimes they’re considered an oversight; it’s like yeah, you do your jobs, and you know, let’s take care of the consumers we serve or the patrons we serve, and of course we’ve got to be very nice to the donors, and then employees and volunteers are an afterthought, and what I’ve really found fascinating, David, is in the work of employee engagement there’s been very, very little research on the non-profit sector other than healthcare and government, and I hope you don’t mind, let me jump up to point #3, which is people’s passion for the mission should not be taken for granted. Just because employees and volunteers are attracted because of the mission and just because they’re excited about the mission, that does not guarantee or ensure their engagement. [04:12]

David Zinger: Yeah for sure, and you know one thing I’ve kind of witnessed, and it’s not universal, but I’ll go in some corporations, very for-profit corporations, and they seem to really be looking after their employees, and then they go to a non-profit whose mission is look after a certain segment of the population or a group, and I find them struggling to look after their employees. [04:34]

Sybil Stershic: Well, what’s amazing is just because you’re passionate about the mission doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good manager, and I’m sure you know people as well as I do; I know a lot of people who work in non-profits where the workplace culture is actually toxic. You know, they’re there because they’re driven, but they don’t treat their staff very well. [04:55]

David Zinger: Yeah and that seems so ironic in that industry. It’s a beautiful cover out on the new book, and Katya really loves your book; she said a pithy, potent survival guide to making good things happen. Could you talk a little bit about, before we get into the book, what engages you most in your work right now? [05:13]

Sybil Stershic: What engages me is the opportunity to help create a workplace that’s committed to employee and customer engagement, and employee and customer satisfaction, whether it be in a for-profit or non-profit. How can we make the workplace a better place where everyone is more engaged and feels good about the work that they do? [05:36]

David Zinger: OK. [05:38]

Sybil Stershic: That’s what engages me. [05:39]

David Zinger: And so you’re obviously engaged quite fully in this book and it breaks down into about three sections. Do you want to talk about each section, just touch upon it, Sybil? [05:49]

Sybil Stershic: Yes. The first one is to help non-profits understand that their marketing is actually based on the efforts of every employee and volunteer. Basically, marketing is everything as you know, David, so the way a receptionist answers a telephone, the way someone is greeted when they go to a fundraiser, you know, and they walk into and register for the event, whether they’re being taken care of by an employee or volunteer, every brand touch point that’s delivered by an employee or volunteer impacts the brand. So, people’s perception of the brand ultimately comes down to how well they’re treated by the people that they come in contact with, again, the employees and volunteers. That’s why their engagement is so critical, and again it’s something that non-profit leaders tend to take for granted. [06:43]

David Zinger: So, it’s kind of interesting when you look at and pair engagement and marketing. In some ways your marketing budget is the wages you pay employees, and the way you’re able to engage them, and it’s a fused effort, as opposed to thinking and marketing like there’s something additional or something outside of that scope. [07:02]

Sybil Stershic: Absolutely. You know it’s one of those things where I tell people everyone is a member of the marketing team; it doesn’t have to be in their job descriptions, and how do you convey this, the importance of why you need to engage them because they deliver on the brand, and they make the impact, and it’s kind of scary for marketers to realize when I tell them, you know, the locust of your responsibility may be in the marketing department, but your effectiveness is impacted by everyone in the organization, so you better make sure that they’re engaged. It’s not just from a marketing standpoint where you engage the external audience; you need as much to work with, communicate with, and be kind to the people within the organization, because they’re part of your extended marketing team. [07:52]

David Zinger: Yeah and so you have the marketing tools of engagement, and really point #3, facilitating your non-profit engagement is that it’s kind of calling forth or bringing out that engagement or the marketing that’s already embedded within the work that people are doing. Is that a fair summary of that? [08:10]

Sybil Stershic: Yes, I think you’ve captured it quite well, David. And again, when I talk about the tools of engagement, the bottom line is I’m not talking about nuclear physics here; there’s nothing really magical or mystical or complex about it. I’m talking about simple tools of engagement, and as you have so well noted, engagement is all about connecting, and the internal marketing framework I use for engagement is what can you do to engage your employees and volunteers and connect them, #1, to the organization? Do they understand what your organization is all about, do they know the mission, and again that’s something we can’t take for granted. Do they understand what’s expected of them in fulfilling the mission? So, we need to connect employees and volunteers to the organization. The second level of connection and the second set of tools are to connect employees and volunteers to the consumers or whoever the organization serves. For example, do employees and volunteers know why somebody will come to a non-profit, how they use their services, what they think of the organization, do they know what’s important to them? And you know you’ve heard people say even on the for-profit side well, you know, I’m in a non-customer contact position, but again they still ultimately have an impact on the customer, because they are serving someone inside the organization who is serving someone, the ultimate consumer. [09:51]

David Zinger: So, we’ve really come to that whole web of connection and you cannot not connect. [09:58]

Sybil Stershic: Right. You cannot not connect, and the third level of connection is to make sure that the employees and volunteers are connected to each other; do the employees know who the volunteers are and vice-versa, especially in large organizations that tend to be siloed. The bottom line here, David, is do people understand how their efforts and interactions correctively impact the organization and the brand? So, you know, does somebody in programming understand how what they do impacts somebody in donor development or in government relations or however the non-profit is structured. Do they also connect with the volunteers, do the volunteers connect with the board, do the employees connect with the board, and it’s how everybody’s collective efforts make a difference. [10:48]

David Zinger: And you know we see in the field of engagement often out of the non-profit sector is you should treat your employees as volunteers. Whether they’re being paid or not, people are… There’s no such thing as discretionary effort, because all effort is discretionary, and so it’s that respect for elements. I’m a B school dropout; I don’t think I’ve ever said that one of these dialogues. I remember like the four P’s of product, price, promotion, and place, and yet what I really appreciated in the book was your three R’s, and we go back to the three R’s in school. You’ve got the three R’s in non-profit engagement, and let’s take those one at a time. [11:31]

Sybil Stershic: OK. [11:31]

David Zinger: The first one, which is the Aretha Franklin variable respect. [11:35]

Sybil Stershic: Basically, I think of respect, recognition, reinforcement, to me they’re the foundation of internal marketing and engagement. Respect is basically to ensure that your employees and your volunteers have the tools, and the information, and the resources they need to do their jobs. You know, do you communicate what’s expected of them, do they know who they need to go to or who the people are? It could be something even as innocent as an organizational chart. In some organizations people don’t even have that or their job descriptions are so outdated they just kind of show up everyday and do their thing. So, I’m a big believer in respect – you give your people the tools and the information they need to do their jobs. [12:19]

David Zinger: And that goes beyond that kind of saw skill idea of respect as kind of a love, warm, fuzzy feeling for people; it’s making sure people know what to do, and have the tools, and are able to do it, and so the second R is recognition. [12:34]

Sybil Stershic: And that’s one of my favorites, and that’s basically, you know, catch your people doing something right. We are so, so good at criticizing, and growing up in a workplace culture of banking, now granted that’s very operations-focused, and it has to be, you know, you have to make sure that you have everything down to the penny, but it also had this kind of environment, David, where, you know, they’re always catching you doing something wrong. Well, what about catching you doing something right? What I tell people is I often find in organizations that positive reinforcement as a form of recognition is really a lack of negative reinforcement. If you didn’t get your hand slapped for messing up today, you might have done a good job, but how would you know when nobody takes the time to actually tell you great job? [13:25]

David Zinger: Yeah, so you break that word recognition into recognition, as rethinking the workplace, and what we’re noticing, and then I guess going the step beyond, what we’re saying to the people around who are our internal marketing efforts. [13:41]

Sybil Stershic: Yes, absolutely. [13:43]

David Zinger: So, the third R is reinforcement. [13:46]

Sybil Stershic: And that’s to continually support your message, your values, being engaging, being customer-focused, being employee-focused, and there’s so many opportunities for that, but basically what it comes down to, David, is does management, does the organization, you know, walk the walk and talk the talk? You can use internal communications to reinforce the importance of your consumers, and your volunteers, and your employees. You know, again it goes back; some of the involves recognition, some of it is providing the tools and training people can use, giving them opportunities to learn and grow, and it’s constantly sending the message and living the message that everyone is important to us. Again, our employees are volunteers and ultimately the people we serve. [14:40]

David Zinger: And you know I can see some heads of non-profits as something that I know would go oh yeah, but these are basic things, we all know that, and you know that too, and I love the little section in your book on practice, if I could just read that for a second. [14:55]

Sybil Stershic: Sure. [14:55]

David Zinger: The concept of internal marketing isn’t difficult to comprehend in theory, however, what seems to be logic and commonsense doesn’t take care of your employees and volunteers and they don’t take care of your customers doesn’t necessarily translate into common practice, and you have a real encouragement to people – be intentional and proactive with internal marketing. [15:18]

Sybil Stershic: What’s interesting, especially with non-profits, and you can apply this to the for-profit world as well, is that you know people are wearing so many hats these days and they’re stretched so thin, and I think I learned this from one of your workshops, which I absolutely love – the phrase that employees are frustrated and they’re disengaging because they’re tired of being told, you know, do more with less, and now they’re at the point where they’re being told do everything with nothing. So, they start to withdraw, and it’s one of those things that because of that, people again being stretched so thin, you know, who’s got time to think about well, gee, we’re changing our strategy, who do we need to know about this, who do we need to communicate this with? So, it’s the basics of communication that, again, maybe it’s so basic it falls through the cracks. [16:12]

David Zinger: Yeah, maybe it’s so basic, and yet as you say, the basics sometimes seem to escape us or elude us at various periods of time. One thing in talking about your book is that you make sure there’s practice by having the action plan starter notes, so it’s not just a conceptual book; you’re giving people some very specific guidelines or invitations to practice. Go ahead. [16:36]

Sybil Stershic: I do that in all of my workshops as well, you know, I’m not a talking head. It’s one of those you’ve got to be able to apply the information and do something with it; otherwise it’s a waste of time. [16:48]

David Zinger: OK. [16:47]

Sybil Stershic: So, I’m a big believer in application in terms of what does this mean for you and how will you use this information? [16:55]

David Zinger: So, if people wanted to learn more about your perspective or get a hold of your books, they can go to www.QualityServiceMarketing.com, and you have quite a wonderful blog there, and a lot of up-to-date information. Any final thoughts? [17:11]

Sybil Stershic: Final thoughts, yes. [17:16]

David Zinger: I put you on the spot, right? [17:17]

Sybil Stershic: Yes. To be as proactive as possible, and as you said, to be proactive and intentional, and I think a lot of it comes down to empathy as well, you know, how do you feel valued, what does it take for you to feel valued in doing your work? It takes recognition, it takes respect, it takes reinforcement, it takes someone caring about you enough to say this is what’s important to us, this is what’s important to our customers and the people we serve, and you’re just as important. That’s what I’m talking about in terms of the empathy, and feeling, and integrating, and sharing that sense of value. [17:58]

David Zinger: Well, you certainly carved out a niche there with the non-profits in an area that engagement isn’t just for one industry or for one area, and it’s nice to have something, you know, a little bit more specific and specialized for them, as opposed to just a general resource. So, on behalf of myself and the 5,000 members of The Employee Engagement Network, thanks very much, Sybil, for taking about 20 minutes of your time to help us look at engagement in the non-profit sector. [18:27]

Sybil Stershic: And thank you, David. [18:29]

David Zinger: Oh, you’re very welcome. [18:31]

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David Zinger is devoted to employee engagement. You can reach him for information, speeches, workshops, or resources by emailing: david@davidzinger.com.