I was grocery shopping recently. It was midday and hot outside – and I was in the checkout line. The cashier had started sliding my purchases through the register, when suddenly I noticed a bag left over from the customer before me. She had left and gone to her car.
The woman doing the bagging noticed it at the same time. She grabbed the lady’s bag and dashed out into the heat. She was making pretty good time for a woman in her 60s, and we could all see her out the window as she finally caught up, handed over the bag, and started back.
Then the cashier suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, she left two other bags as well!” Looking quickly at me and the woman behind me in line, she said, “Will you two please excuse me for just a minute? I’ll be right back.” And she too took off after the forgetful lady, with two bags in tow. She was in her 20s, and made very good time.
It occurred to me I could slide a few groceries over the line and into my bag and escape without paying. (I don’t do such things, but the idea did show up in my mind). Then the elderly woman behind me in line said: “You know, I don’t mind one little bit waiting for someone who’s doing a good deed like that.” Neither did I, I said, neither did I.
When the cashier and the bagging lady came back, we both complimented them, and they blushed a bit and said thank you. I sent a complimentary email to ShopRite’s HQ later that night with the store number, employee name and cash register number, all of which were on the receipt.
So my question is: how do you get employees to behave like that? I mean generously, based on principle, willing to take certain risks, confident to act in the moment. How do you keep from getting sullen employees who talk about “career-limiting moves,” who won’t lift a hand or take a risk to help another?
How Do You Induce Values-based Behaviour in an Organisation?
Earlier that same day, I had the opportunity to briefly visit three other chain stores. the first was awful – employees keeping their distance from customers, 100 feet away, pretending not to notice. The next was a little better, but still sullen, under-staffed, and radiating not-helpfulness.
The third was a huge contrast. Several employees, busy doing other things, asked me if they could help. I asked two for help, and they both went out of their way to do so.
How does this happen? The standard answer in most businesses is to focus on the wrong things: typically incentives, communications, and procedures.
The more I see of business, the more convinced I become that the single most powerful way to create values-based behaviour is none of the above – it is to do it yourself, and to talk about it with others.
The Usual Suspects
Incentives appeal to the individual’s rational economic or ego-satisfying needs. Fine and dandy, but if you’re trying to incentivise selfless behaviour, the concept of rewards is just a tad self-contradictory.
There is probably (I’m guessing) more money spent on communications than on any other “solution” to issues of trust, ethical behaviour, and customer-focus. Companies love to pronounce their values to their customers, and reinforce them internally in posters, newsletters, and blogs. The problem is, impersonal companies communicating about personal relationships is some kind of category mistake.
And procedures? The whole point of values-based behaviour is that the employee extrapolates from principles in the moment. Rehearsing and drilling doesn’t help extrapolate values, it replaces that process with rote memory.
Role Modelling
Think of how we learn from our parents. Think of the sports or public figures we admire (there are still a few). In all cases, we are influenced by what they do – not by what they say they will do, or did do, or wish they’d done.
When it comes to values, I suspect the store mentioned above where I was offered attentive and enthusiastic service has leaders in their operations organisation who both walk the talk, and talk it too. People who lead by example, and who are convinced that values like customer assistance are valid only if kept sharpened by use.
I suspect Angie the cashier at ShopRite was hired partly because she exhibited values. I suspect that the folks managing her store make a point of being helpful and customer-focused, and engage customers about values like that. I suspect it didn’t occur to her that she shouldn’t take the risk of leaving her cash drawer and my groceries unattended – because her leadership would have trusted their customers and done the same thing – and she knew it.
We have overdone the behavioural, incentives-based, needs-maximising best practices model of human resources. We have under-estimated the human power of changing humans. After all, the business of relating to other people is personal.
