Put staff first - happy customers will follow

KEEPING employees engaged is a constant challenge that has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the resulting mass shift to remote work. This has shown businesses how critical employee engagement can be to an organisation's success, due to its impact on productivity, loyalty and customer satisfaction. The continued preference for remote work in Singapore following lockdown orders have signalled potentially permanent changes in how work is done, and how employee engagement is maintained in a distributed workforce. With the gap between the physical and digital workspace narrowing, businesses are looking more closely at how technology can help employees perform their jobs more effectively.

Studies have shown the correlation between engaged employees and satisfied customers - which can also contribute to higher customer satisfaction, loyalty and, ultimately, sales. A recent Harvard Business Review report commissioned by Freshworks found that more than half of global respondents (54 per cent) believe that better employee engagement results in happy customers, while 53 per cent noted that the quality of the products or services are better when employees are happier.

WHAT MAKES EMPLOYEES HAPPY?