As an SME, reap the benefits of employee and customer research

By following up on results, this will make you better and “attractive” as an organization. You can also distinguish yourself better in the marketplace. How can that be? I’m happy to explain that.

Let’s start with the employees. In practice, the “pain” of SME organizations is readily apparent. Like just about every other sector, business and organization, SMEs are struggling with personnel shortages. These shortages affect the workload of employees. Work must be divided among (increasingly) fewer employees. On the contrary, the (increasing) workload affects absenteeism. Returning to labor shortages, the number of vacancies recently exceeded even the number of unemployed. In addition, there are major societal challenges, such as the housing task and energy transition that affect operations. For example, there is a shortage of technicians and ICT workers. This creates an obstacle to growth and the sustainability process. In general, there are few advancement opportunities for employees within SMEs. Furthermore, inflation and a non-moving salary create dissatisfaction in the wallet, and thus (high) turnover. Smaller organizations are often financially unable to compete with the big players who have more to offer employees.

Employee survey reveals much

Working on employee job happiness contributes to organizational efficiency. Happy employees are 31 percent more productive and three times more creative than others. The bottom line: job happiness improves an organization’s profitability by 147 percent. In addition, employees, who in some cases are presented with better and more attractive proposals, will reject these alternatives because they do not want to give up their job happiness with the current employer. An increase in employee happiness leads to a lower intention to leave the current employer and leads to lower absenteeism (EX 2023). Making employees happy at work requires insight. Employee surveys provide this insight and reveal where internal pain points are. With the obtained feedback, points of improvement can be grasped, but also strong points can be strengthened even more. When it comes to employee retention, for example, as an organization you can invest in advancement opportunities, training opportunities and organizational renewal. Let employees think about this and give them a voice: after all, they know the ins and outs of the organization and have relevant expertise to contribute in this area. Especially in SMEs, the scale is often such that it is easy to organize employees to participate in thinking about certain issues. Take advantage of this! Coming back to increasing your employees’ job happiness; remember that this is free PR for recruiting new employees. An enthusiastic employee will pass it on to potential new employees. Count your winnings! By the way, you can calculate this profit yourself using our EX ROI Calculator.

“Workplace happiness improves an organization’s profitability by 147 percent.”

Enthusiasm-enhancing action items

There are several options for employees to further their development with the employer. For example, horizontal mobility, in the sense of a job change, can provide just that one boost that makes an employee feel more comfortable and enthusiastic. Moreover, it increases the connection with the organization. And speaking of connectedness, share and celebrate the organization’s daily and joint successes with each other via a group app, for example.

Having employees work together on projects also increases the interconnectedness between employees and thus with the organization. Also, as a director, regularly show your face in the workplace. Organize a “team-connecting” outing. Further action items that could increase enthusiasm within the team include giving perks that you don’t expect as an employee: profit distributions – especially in these inflationary times – and focusing on sustainable employability by encouraging employees to keep thinking about how to maximize their talents and qualities within the company.

“Share and celebrate your company’s daily and collaborative successes.”

Get the best out of your customers too

Employees and customers are inextricably linked: employees who can do their jobs well facilitated by their employer will become enthusiastic over time. Enthusiasm and loyalty go hand in hand, and employees who become more loyal over time will walk that extra mile for the organization in the future. By working just a little harder for their employer, employees will serve customers better, which in time will make customers excited about your organization as a service provider.

What applies to employees also applies to customers. In addition to employee research, customer research can contribute to organizational success. By understanding your customers’ opinions, they can be monitored individually. As a result, customers’ needs are better served and they will eventually become enthusiastic about the appropriate service. Through research, you know what customers get excited about. The result of enthusiastic customers is that they stay and they really do more business with your organization and actively recommend your organization as an ambassador to potential customers. But so the customer research phase is also extremely important. For this, insight into both employee and customer is desired. Use the ROI Calculator to calculate what your organization could save with an increase in your NPS.

Enthusiastic employees and customers are ambassadors of your organization. For example, employees will proactively recommend the organization, such as during a birthday or other gathering, as an employer, while customers will recommend the organization to others as a service provider. Word-of-mouth marketing is the cheapest and most efficient form of marketing; which is incredibly important for SMEs. A beautiful and important challenge to achieve this form. And not once, but continuously and constantly. Given the time of competition and labor market tightness, this is essential. Fortunately, I see in SMEs that not only Employee Experience, but also Customer Experience is becoming more commonplace. This is where real difference can be made. Go for it!

“Through research, you know what gets your customers excited.”

Why Integron?

Integron conducts employee and customer surveys for both large and small organizations and provides standard solutions in addition to customization. For SMEs, we have a research solution specifically for both clients and employees. A pragmatic approach with an industry-specific benchmark questionnaire. This gives you quick, clear insight into your customers’ or employees’ priorities and action items. Because of Integron’s now 30-year experience, there is a large body of data available. This allows the results from the surveys to be compared to the benchmark, and the comparison can be used to determine which aspects the client scores higher or lower than other organizations in the industry.

Are you curious what Integron can do for your SME company? I am happy to engage in a conversation to look at your challenges and tell you more about our SME solutions, approach and appropriate budget. Feel free to send me a message or call me at the number below.