Actions Speak Louder than Words: Understanding the Power of Symbolic Action

How companies communicate with their employees, explicitly and implicitly, is crucial to employee engagement. While employee engagement is considered a "soft" consideration in many workplaces, in a customer-service industry it is directly tied to financial considerations. So how do companies communicate with employees, when is it effective, and why or why not?

Symbolic Action and Dissonance
I frequent a couple of national coffee chains for my daily latte. One chain, let's call them "Green Coffee" has a good product, and excellent staff. No matter how long the line, I can get in and out in under ten minutes, and my embarrassingly complex order is always delivered correctly. The employees are relaxed and friendly, and they're diverse in age, race, and personality.

Occasionally, I frequent "Red Coffee". While I like the coffee better, the employees, who are less diverse, are disengaged. Sometimes they're friendly, sometimes not, and my order is frequently messed up (even when I'm the only customer). They generally seem more interested in talking to each other than to me.

Visiting the websites for the two companies, I notice an immediate difference on the employment page. While Red has the standard boilerplate about "putting people first" and competitive pay and benefits, Green has personal testimonials, documentation of fairly advanced training for the food service industry, and itemized available benefits including retirement and insurance for employees who work twenty hours a week or more.

From this I surmise that leadership at Green Coffee wants to present the impression that employees are valued. However, while many companies present themselves this way sometimes impressions and reality diverge. Organizations that talk a good game about employee appreciation and investment don't always demonstrate those values, where less flamboyant companies may have values that dictate good employee/organization relationships.

For example, I have a relative who works for a national retail chain that has its home office in the Southwest. The temperature in her store (on the west coast) is regulated from the home office, so it's often out of sync with the weather outside. If it's 95 degrees at headquarters and the AC is cranked way up, customers and employees may be freezing in the store on the west coast where it's only 75 degrees outside. Corporate does not allow store managers to adjust the temperature in their own stores. So while the company's website details extensive career development and benefits available to employees, the appearance of employee value does not align with how they are treated. The organization does not demonstrate trust in employees, so it is unlikely that the employees trust the organization.

Green Coffee talks a good game, and the values they espouse seem to be active in the organization. Key indicators are the fact that they provide useful training and benefits for employees. In turn, employees seem engaged and relaxed, and provide the company with good customer relationships. These indicators are symbolic actions - ways organizations and employees act out their values, regardless of external PR or internal propaganda.

The other day when I was at Red Coffee the employee who took my order was discussing company policy with his co-worker. It seems company had issued a new list of employee edicts, including one where employees were only allowed to come in through the front door (the side door is far more convenient for cafe employees). Without knowing why the company issued this restriction, it was clear that the employee found it frustrating.

For me, this revelation made perfect sense. Regardless of what the employer said about their value for employees, their actions indicate (at least to this particular employee) that they don't trust them. If I were to translate this action into a statement, it would say, "I (the company) do not trust you (the employee) to make basic decisions about how to behave around customers, so I will dictate how you should behave." As an employee, I would feel that my individual value to the organization was negligible.

Is it a surprise that Red Coffee employees don't seem to take pride in their work? Company policies towards employees communicate far more about their value than employee value statements, or titles like "partner" or "team member".

I suspect Green Coffee's employees seem happy and engaged because there is little conflict between what the company says about how they treat employees and how they actually treat them. This translates very directly into satisfied repeat customers and revenue.

Putting it to Work
Do your company's values align with the policies in practice regarding employees? If you cite respect and honesty as core values, but monitor employees' every move, you're creating  dissonance (conscious or unconscious discomfort with the contradiction between statements and actions) that affects the quality of work. If your stated values were instead consistency and quality, then close monitoring may be more appropriate. It is this dissonance between words and actions that can cause problems like employee disengagement, low productivity, and high turnover.

If your organization, like a coffee shop, relies on consistent, attentive customer service for its revenue stream, then this internal dissonance may also create discomfort for the customer. Imagine taking you kids to Disneyland and being ignored by grumpy, disengaged employees. The slogan "The Happiest Place on Earth" would become a parody, rather than a promise. Consider then that your employees represent the values you communicate to them to your customers.

Here are some suggestions to help you craft appropriate employee policies:

• Be Consistent
  If you have a company vision and values statement, check it against your employee policies and see if they contradict each other. If so, consider changing policies to reflect company values, or even revising your values statement if it is outdated or underdeveloped.
  
  
• Be Authentic
  If you haven't developed a values statement, spend some time considering what values your company demonstrates, and how they inform employee decisions. This will help you recognize if policy and values begin to diverge. Core values are a map of your company's DNA - they should inform how you treat customers and employees.
  
  
• Look at the Big Picture
  Consider the long term impact of short term decisions. When times are tight and cutbacks are necessary, don't be caught unaware when layoffs lower employee morale, productivity, and commitment. Remember the power of symbolic actions, and find ways to mitigate the negative impact of difficult decisions, or risk losing the benefit of short term gains to long-term problems.