Accord's Five STEPS to Success

For any company to succeed, they must engage their employees. No engagement. No success. It's that simple -- at least according to numerous companies who have done extensive studies in this area, including our own studies. The question, of course, is how do you engage your employees? Accord has a proven five-step program as follows:

Select: Selection is the first step to success. If you don't select the right people, you'll never maximize your level of employee engagement. Accord uses a sophisticated employee profiling system to define the personalities that are most suitable for your key jobs, and to assess how each candidate matches the profile. When companies use this system for new hires and promotions, they often see turnover drop by more than 25% and the level of success of the employees increase significantly as well.

Train: The second step in the process is to make sure that your managers and employees are trained about the importance of engagement. Accord works with each customer to help them define and implement training requirements.

Engage: The most successful way to engage employees is to formalize the process of systematically listening to your employes and implementing the changes that will help keep your organization working with optimal effectiveness. Accord does this via a customized employee engagement survey, which is typically done yearly. The purpose of the engagement survey is to identify on a workgroup by workgroup basis the things that your managers and employees think should be done to make the organization more effective.

Perform: The fourth step is to take the results of the engagement survey and make sure they're implemented. In a landmark study on employee engagement, The Gallup Organization found that it is worse to survey employees and to then not implement the results than it is not to survey at all. In short, you not only have to talk the talk, but you also have to walk the walk. Accord works with its clients to help them identify strategies that assure that the results of the engagement surveys are implemented correctly.

Sustain: The final step on the path to success is to sustain the results. It's not enough to do the process once. Instead, you have to make it a part of your standard operating procedures. You should use employee profiling for virtually all of your management and employee positions, especialy ones where your employees interact with customers or have a lot of interaction with other employees. You also should do an employee engagement survey on a regular basis. We recommend doing it at least every other year, and, preferably, yearly.

The Bottom Line: How well does the Five Step Process work? To cite just one of our examples, a leading mid-sized franchisor learned through an employee engagement survey that there was a direct correlation between the amount of royalties generated and how well their personalities matched the franchisor's ideal personality. Optimum personalities generated an average of $52,000 in annual royalties, good personalities generated an average of $24,000, average personalities generated $14,000, and wrong personalities generated $6,500. The franchisor is now giving each prospective franchisee personality profile surveys before accepting them into the system, and is also starting to work with its franchisees to implement the five STEPS in their operations.

But don't take our word for it. Give us a call and ask us to prove it, and then talk to us about how we can implement the five STEPS in your company. You can also download our case study on the franchisor.