Commodity or value add?

The inverse relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profitability shown in both studies is directly opposite to that cited in much literature today: 'employee loyalty and customer loyalty reinforce each other, making jobs more satisfying and further increasing the potential for superior customer value'. ^[8] 'In a nutshell, if employees are more satisfied then so are customers.' ^[9] However, 'fifty percent of people in business refuse to accept the strong evidence that good people management practices lead to higher profits in the long term'. ^[10]

The respondents from this study certainly individually embraced the values of CRM by making sure that they focused on customer needs, regardless of whether these were primarily internal or external customers. It was often the customer interaction, and the satisfaction of doing a job that customers appreciated, that kept job satisfaction and morale as high as it was shown to be. However, in contrast, the same respondents were often cynical about the company's attitude to CRM and also were unhappy about the way they were treated.

One thing that became clear was that generally morale is lower than it used to be because of lack of resource, budget and managerial concerns. Further research is needed to discover why this is, but certainly working practices have changed radically in many industries over the last two decades. Strong-knit communities have been replaced by virtual teams, remote working and communication via e-mail, Web and telephone rather than mainly face-to-face. Efficiency has been improved enormously, to the point that many people have become superfluous and have been let go by companies during lean times but not replaced when economies have strengthened again.

Another research question to come out of this study is, 'Are employees becoming commoditized?' Reichheld discussed the economic models of why long-term employees create value to a company and how layoffs have a destructive effect on employee loyalty. ^[11] According to this survey, the effect of investing in employees (via education and good packages) to encourage retention and loyalty was not the positive one that Reichheld argues; because the employees were not using their training, it negated feelings of being valued by the company, thus reducing morale. Combine this with the fear of redundancy and high workloads, and employees feel as if they are a commodity rather than a high-value part of the business.