The 21st Century Magazine,at South Florida's www.miami-dade-online.com.
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Listening to customers and staff: What business can learn
Dr. Jeffrey Pickens, Ph.D.
DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION
© 2001 Dr. Jeffrey Pickens, Family Central Inc. TM
The following report will address several important issues that relate to how you promote your business:
This article will look at some general and useful principles that can guide your business to greater success. In the present case, we use the child care business as an example. This may come as a surprise… since most articles on business focus on manufacturing giants or large companies providing a wide array of services. In contrast, child care is a huge industry made up of literally thousands of smaller individual businesses. Yet few businesses are more attuned to the needs and peculiarities of their local communities and customers than child care. The child care business is a useful model to examine because these companies are taking care of one of the largest and most important groups of consumers - namely PARENTS - and providing services that affect these customers most precious possessions - namely, their CHILDREN! For this reason, all types of businesses can learn much by taking a closer look at the child care industry.
Very little is written about the business of early education. The vast majority of articles on child care focus on quality of facilities, staff training, age-appropriate curricula and children's outcomes. Few articles are written about the best ways to operate and market a child care business. But child care is a good example of a business that has had to adapt quickly to today's diverse and ever-changing marketplace. In today's society, more parents are working than ever before. Parents are faced with limited time, and increasing stress from their jobs. Placing children in appropriate day-care is a difficult decision faced by a majority of parents in today's culture. Child care customers are those same customers that your business is interested in. It will be of interest to examine what parents consider when placing their children in someone else's care, and how child care businesses attempt to influence this critical purchasing decision.
Our research examined factors and perceptions that influence child care operations. We looked at the ways that owners/directors of child care businesses view their budget and staffing decisions. We also examined what parents consider when deciding to enroll their children in a particular center. Was the decision simply one of "location, location, location" or are there other factors such as pricing, scheduling, quality benchmarks and others issues that influenced the decision of parents to place their child in a particular facility? These are the types of questions that can also be applied to any business or organization.
Perhaps you can conduct some simple customer surveys or market research to investigate. The answers to these questions may surprise you. If you are interested in improving your organization, read on for some useful tips!
Does your business have a learning disability?
Many businesses are operating on the same organization principles, mission and methods as they did 10 or 20 years ago. However, in today's dynamic, international and technology-driven marketplace… it can be a serious mistake to remain static in our thinking. An important concept of good leadership that has emerged in recent years is the idea of the "learning organization". Learning organizations are those where people continually expand their capacity to meet new goals, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990).
This may seem simple at first blush, but in fact, most companies are NOT true learning organizations. Many companies hold tightly to old-style notions of "leadership from the top down", where managers seek only to fulfill the CEO's vision. However, it is no longer sufficient to have one or a handful of individuals learning and thinking and setting the pace for the entire organization. Instead, we must create teams that learn how to produce excellent results. This means that we invite participation and ownership at all levels of the company, we build a shared vision, and we foster a corporate culture where risk taking is accepted and rewarded. Some organizations still "punish" employees for taking risks that fail, through reprimand, blame and termination. Learning organizations embrace and learn from failures and collectively adapt to build a stronger process that will promote a successful company. This type of paradigm shift and change of internal culture is not easy… and can involve a lengthy and difficult process. However, many companies are finding that a learning organization is best able to adapt and succeed in today's diverse and dynamic marketplace.
To illustrate this issue, let us examine two fictional businesses.
Tiny Learners was a large child care facility that was owned and operated by a group of talented early childhood experts. The management team consisted of a director of the center, a lead teacher and a financial manager. Faith Academy was a church run day care business that for over 10 years was managed entirely by the pastor's wife, Eunice.
Both businesses had a good history of successfully enrolling young children and helping to prepare them for grade school. Both businesses were about the same size… each enrolling about 100 children between the ages of 2 to 5 years. Both businesses were located in busy urban areas that had undergone a large demographic shift in recent years. Large numbers of families from Mexico, Dominican Republic and El Salvador had recently moved into the area. A number of high technology industrial plants had been built nearby, with many foreign workers employed there and in need of child care. These plants operated on three shifts, and so workers on the night- shifts were having difficulties locating child care during the evening and weekend hours.
Tiny Learners and Faith Academy both noticed the shifts in the types of customers coming into their neighborhood and facilities. More and more parents were from born in other countries, and teachers complained that they were experiencing some difficulty communicating with parents in English. Requests for evening hours of operation and weekend care increased.
Faith Academy continued business as usual. Eunice was convinced that her basic principles of operation were sound. After all, she had been caring for children for over 10 years! Eunice heard staff comments about increased issues of culture and language barriers, but she argued that the curriculum based on wholesome values was appropriate for all children of all languages. Eunice's own parents immigrated from Ireland and she believed this wave of new computer industry workers would adapt the way that her own parents did. Eunice's heart was in the right place. She cared deeply and equally for all children in her care. She simply did not embrace the concept of the learning organization.
Tiny Learners initiated a series of new programs for staff and parents. A series of regular staff meetings were held, with all the teachers and managers encouraged to discuss any new problems. Ideas were shared for creating more multi-cultural projects for parents and children to work on together (story times, cross-cultural holiday activities). A budget was created to update classrooms to add computer workstations. All of the teaching and management staff participated in a "Spring Cleaning" weekend where they repainted and decorated classrooms with multicultural materials. An incentive plan was suggested by a teacher, wherein she would agree to work evenings and weekends in exchange for increased pay. A contract was developed to pay staff an increased salary if these employees change to the evening shift. This turned out to be a very good idea!
The two businesses faired very differently. In the next year, Tiny Learners increased enrollments by 50% by incorporating evening and weekend shifts. Due to the culturally diverse decorations and freshly painted environment, the center increased parent's demand, and a waiting list for enrollment was established for the first time in its history. Tuitions were increased slightly, and all of the staff enjoyed a modest pay raise. Faith Academy, in contrast, experienced a decline in enrollments, and was operating at 80 percent of capacity. Two staff were reduced from full-time to part-time, and staff morale declined. Plans to renovate the kitchen were put on hold until a later time.
Why did these two businesses differ? It was because one held on strongly to old beliefs and methods of operation, while the other learned, adapted and succeeded. One organization held a top-down leadership style that resisted change, while the other created processes for new learning and new ideas. One organization became a learning organization, and the other demonstrated a learning disability. The learning organization excelled in the new marketplace.
The quest for quality
Quality is an often used and rarely defined term. We almost always speak of "quality" products, services, employees and organizations. But what does this mean? When we specifically begin to ask our customers what quality means to them, we find a surprising range and diversity of answers.
Surveys of parents revealed that they consider quality in child care to reflect:
Surveys of owners of child care centers revealed that they consider quality as:
It is interesting to see how different the customers' views were from that of the providers of services. What does this indicate? It means that the characteristics that owners highlighted in their advertising and marketing efforts were NOT the same characteristics that parents were looking for in choosing day care. Marketing research, such as the survey described above, can be very important to ensuring that we adapt good and services to customer demand. Apparently, parents were most swayed by the outward appearance of the facility as clean looking, and by the extent to which the center could accommodate parent's busy work schedules. This research tells us that it may be useful to a child care business to paint its rooms, choose facilities with adequate windows and ventilation and attractive open spaces. Centers that began to offer weekend and evening hours of care might also be able to attract more customers. Of course, this is not to say a business should ignore the other quality issues that owners think are important. The day care owners were more focused on those factors that ensure good outcomes for the children in their care. However, getting "tuned in" to the issues that the customers think are important is a vital component of running a successful business.
What does quality mean to you in terms of your own business? Of course, this depends on the context we are speaking of. Quality may mean something very different when we are speaking of purchasing a car versus buying a pet. Quality infers something different for everyone and everything. But it is important to remember that business owners may hold different views of quality than do their customers. Simple market research efforts, such as surveys of customer perceptions and satisfaction, can help a great deal to bring business values in line with customer expectations
One secret to staff retention and lower staff turnover
Today's busy workers are taking on more work than ever before, feeling more stressed by their jobs, and feeling like they have less time for "quality of life" pursuits. The National Study of the Changing Workforce, completed in 1998, reported that U.S. workers are putting in longer hours at work, and taking work home more often than 10 years ago. Up to 26% of employees reported feeling "emotionally drained" and another 36 % feel "used up" by the end of the day. Employees are stressed and burned out by their jobs, which puts them in a bad mood that jeopardizes their personal well-being. This impact on personal lives then sets in motion a chain reaction where bad feelings spill back into the workplace, limiting job performance. Therefore, businesses that pay attention to helping employees balance work and life, are going to be able to recruit and retain employees better than the competition.
The child care industry currently is in a staffing crisis. Preschool workers are typically low-paid, poorly trained, lack the professional identity that teachers of older children enjoy, and staff turn-over in this industry is very high. Most corporate thinking is characterized by paying close attention to the bottom-line, and this means that management tends to try to limit spending on employee benefits. After all, if we can reduce costs and overhead, we should run a more profitable business. However, staff absenteeism and turnover is one of the most expensive problems that can impact a business. For example, here are some facts about how and why absenteeism and turn over may affect your business:
• A company of 300 employees loses an average of $88,000 annually due to absenteeism
• Employees with children miss 8 days of work per year due to child care breakdowns
• The estimated cost of losing one employee per year is 1.5 times that individual's salary because of
recruiting and training costs
From these data, we can conclude that companies that provide child care benefits can vastly reducing absenteeism. Yet less than 20 percent of employed parents have access to dependent care benefits, referral services or on-site child care. Less than 11 percent of employees receive financial assistance for purchasing child care services from their companies. Businesses are increasingly partnering with child care providers to provide staff with affordable child care. Many states offer significant tax incentives for businesses that offer child care benefits to employees. Research now shows that companies that provide child care benefits have been more successful in recruiting and retaining employees.
Corporate interest in child care has been largely motivated by tight labor markets and the need for employers to compete for workers. To increase business productivity on a round-the-clock, global basis (24/7), a new reality of business is the need to provide child care services to facilitate staffing of all shifts. Other factors include increasing stress as a result of both parents working longer hours, job/career mobility, changing composition of households (fewer married couples), an aging population and the effects of downsizing and welfare reform are all impacting the way businesses think about employee satisfaction. As a result, companies have moved to offering more benefits to help employees balance work and life (family) issues.
The primary forms of corporate supported child care, in order of most commonly offered benefits among large and mid-size companies, are:
Employers can also make the workplace more "family friendly" by:
There are many other benefits that can make the workplace more family friendly, and help staff to balance work and life demands. From flex-time policies to personal services (language and other skill training programs, apartment locator services, office concierge, company cars, casual dress code) there are many things companies can do to make the workplace more friendly and attractive. This is turn will promote good staff retention, reduced absenteeism and lower staff turnover. The most important process for exploring the types of benefits that are appropriate for your business, is to listen and learn. Practice asking questions more and listening, and less "telling people what to do". Organize forums for employees and management to air grievances, exchange views and `needs will be more successful at recruiting and retaining employees in today's competitive marketplace.
Conclusion
Management can educate employees about budgets and bottom-line issues, and employees can educate management about their ideas and needs. Together, staff and management can participate in creating true learning organizations where teams cooperatively adapt and succeed in today's complex workplace. We must not only strive to produce quality goods and services, but we must also use market research techniques to learn how management's definition of quality may differ from that of the consumers. Business managers must try to place themselves in the mindset of customers to build mutually beneficial relationships. Managers should also pay attention and listen to staff complaints and ideas. We can reward risk taking, learn from failures, adapt to change, create family-friendly workplace, and move forward in an ever-evolving learning process. The learning organization is willing to ask and listen (and tell less). Organization must develop benefit strategies that encourage employee retention and low turn-over, and create a culture of learning to ensure success in the new millennium.
DO NOT REPRINT WITHOUT PERMISSION
© 2001 Dr. Jeffrey Pickens, Family Central Inc. TM
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