Practice What You Preach
You cannot tell your employees that clients and others must be treated with respect and dignity if you do not treat them with respect and dignity. When you create an environment that is built on mutual respect and dignity, associates do not need constant reminders of how important those qualities are. We do not tolerate, for example, clients who are abusive to our employees. Moreover, we are willing to lose revenue in order to adhere to this core value of ours.
Not too long ago, a new client who was paying us a retainer of $12,000 per year was criticizing a team member for something she had failed to do, according to the client. I called the client and discussed the problem with her (the employee was actually following my instructions) and requested that, in the future, if she had issues with any of our employees, she tell me about them and not vent to the employees. She basically told me that she would do as she pleased since she was paying us. I politely asked her to find another advisor. The important thing about this incident and others like it is that our associates know that we value them and their dignity. When necessary, we are willing to sacrifice revenue to prove it.
Praise Publicly
Who among us does not want to be told when we are doing a good job? We need to be very generous with our praise, because people want to know when they are appreciated. This may seem obvious, but so many of us go about our day and take the things our employees do for our clients and us for granted. I once had a person tell me, "That's what I pay them to do!" Of course it is, but there are many other firms that are willing to pay just as much or more for their services. Of course, your compensation needs to be competitive. However, employees normally don't leave because they are looking for more money. They look for new jobs when they are unhappy, and not being appreciated is a major cause of job dissatisfaction, and we cannot tell them enough how much we appreciate all they do.
Educate On The Value Of Financial Life Planning
Is it enough to train a receptionist on how to answer phones and greet people? We think it is not. If we expect all our employees and associates to understand the value we bring to our clients, we need to educate them. Educating our employees on the financial planning process, of course, helps us to be more efficient and reduces the likelihood of error. But it also helps to make them feel like the integral parts of the firm that they are. We give them a great deal of responsibility and they know that we trust them to do good work. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if you look for good in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
Create A "Family" Atmosphere
If people are to spend almost half of the time they are awake on the job, it should be as much fun as it prudently can be. We strongly believe that at our firm, and we do whatever we can to make them feel a part of our "family." We are all business, but why can't business be fun? We do our best to ensure that our firm is a pleasant place to work, and we all genuinely like each other. Our employees refer to our firm's "family" atmosphere without coaching from us. As we mentioned earlier, happy employees perform better. It is our job as managers to create the atmosphere that makes it possible.
I am grateful to the prospective associate planner who asked me the question about what I was most proud of about our organization. It reminded me of how much I enjoy working with the people in our firm. Having a new client acknowledge that it was an integral part of his decision-making certainly reinforces what I've known all along-extraordinary people produce extraordinary results.
Roy Diliberto is the chairman and founder of RTD Financial Advisors Inc. in Philadelphia.