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4 Steps to Building an Empathetic Organization

Posted: 29 Feb 2020 04:30 PM PST

Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person – is a critical part of building emotional intelligence as well as being a powerful leadership skill. The ability to put ourselves into another person's shoes means we understand how our actions will impact others, which in turn helps us manage our behavior according to their needs.

The importance of empathy carries over into the modern organization too. I've seen incredible change happen when executives strive to better understand the feelings and concerns of their team members, customers, vendors and other stakeholders.

In a brilliant example, new hires at Ford Motor Co. don weighted "empathy suits" that simulate what it feels like to be an expectant mother or an elderly driver. It's easy to understand how this helps them design better car experiences. This focus on understanding the needs of others has a bottom-line impact too, especially in a tight labor market. As research from Business Solver demonstrates, your team is more likely to stick around if they feel their employer exhibits empathy.

Yet building an empathetic organization goes way beyond strapping on a pregnancy suit. It requires strategically implementing change in several key areas. And while most CEOs say the state of empathy needs to evolve, most of them struggle with exhibiting empathy in their organization.

Consistency is key and improving the atmosphere in your organization can have an immediate and far-reaching impact. Let's look at four strategic ways to build more empathy in your organization at the system level.

1. Grow people … the right way

In my work as a career coach for entrepreneurial individuals, I often hear them speak about their desire to grow, expand, learn and develop new skills. Smart, capable people want to constantly improve their skill set, and expect positive challenges in the workplace. Empathetic companies understand this desire and provide appropriate training experiences and career development.

Too often, there is a pre-existing and rather rigid training program in place, where people get slotted into "management training" or "sales training," etc. That can work, but if you really want to build individual success and job satisfaction, you'll want a better way to identify training needs.

The first step, as the team at Mind Tools explains, is to review and update job descriptions on a regular basis. As people grow into their jobs, they'll often work far beyond the stated job description, and that expansion should be documented.

Secondly, it's important to understand that everyone's training needs are different. For example, if you need to train your team on new privacy legislation, for example, don't just lump everyone together in a conference room for the afternoon and go over the endless details. Instead, be strategic about what each person on the team needs to know – i.e. how it impacts their work – and train accordingly. This will help you avoid pulling people off high-value projects to needlessly spend time "learning" things that have no practical relevance.

A solid training needs assessment is a good place to start, giving you a way to compare existing skills to need competencies in a thoughtful way. Ultimately this will help you provide the right information in the right way so your people truly benefit from the experience.

2. Pay them on time

This might seem obvious, but your team deserves to get paid accurately and on time. This is, after all, the tangible measure of what you feel their work is worth and any delays or inconsistencies won't just mess with their bank balance – it will mess with their opinion of your organization.

The reality is payroll is getting increasingly complicated. I see it all the time in the tech industry, where I often consult on digital transformation and brand building; company payrolls often include regular salaried and hourly employees, contractors, and overseas employees being paid through an Employer of Record (EOR). All of these have different regulations and requirements attached, and "different" means "more room for error."

The key to preventing errors in payroll is data accuracy. An example of missing or incorrect payroll data can be; a commission being skipped due to reporting delays, a consultant missing out on their payment due to record-keeping issues, or a partner bonus being skipped due to a change in internal policy. See, there are a lot of working components (read people) in an organization and all of them are not always well aligned. But the negative impact that these payroll errors on your key stakeholders is not something to take lightly.

The best way to avoid these preventable delays is to use an automated global payroll system. This doesn't just simplify the reporting process for payroll; an automated system will help ensure all payroll data is accurate by flagging missing info early in the process. It will also streamline the process for employees and managers and provide a real-time dashboard for team members so they can feel more in control of their financial affairs.

3. Make them stakeholders to your success

When you treat everyone on your team as an important stakeholder, you demonstrate an understanding of their need to be recognized for the contributions they make.

With respect to any asset, if it is undervalued by its investors, it has a negative impact on its long-term value with you. Treat your employees unfairly and they will make you notice (with respect to their performance, their support of you on key issues, or their exit)

When Gallup's 2017 State of the American Workplace was released, the business community gave a collective gasp at the level of disengagement and discontent in the workplace … and the billions of dollars companies were leaving on the table by not addressing the problem. Since then I see more focus on workplace culture and engagement initiatives, a positive sign for the future. Yet close to half of the current workforce has thought about leaving their organization, and workplace culture is often cited as the reason why.

To boost engagement in your organization, begin by understanding the depth of the problem. Do your workers know what is expected of them? Do they have the materials and resources they need to meet those expectations? Do they consistently receive recognition for good work, and are their opinions valued? Do you offer planned performance reviews and give them an opportunity to share their goals as well as their frustrations?

Empathy begins with listening, so make it a common practice throughout your organization to ask the tough questions and go about fixing what's broken.

4. Reward them

Recognition is a vital component of an empathetic organization, and it must go beyond the weekly paycheck and the year-end bonus. Implementing a peer-initiated employee recognition program can help you sustain and grow a positive culture.

It can be as simple as recognizing birthdays with a small gift, hosting "lunch with the CEO" for individuals or team members or gamifying a recognition program that lets coworkers build each other up in real-time. SaaS recognition programs like Assembly can even integrate into Slack for ease of use.

Some people can generate empathy more readily than others, and some organizations are just naturally more tuned in to their people. Regardless of where your company is, there are strategic ways you can learn from, listen to, and more fully engage your employees. And that means a better result in everything your company produces.

Building an empathetic organization begins with small and seemingly simple steps like paying your employees on time and being cognizant of their needs. Yet it can soon grow into a culture that is passionate about personal value, employee growth and widespread buy-in. Change starts simply, yet the repercussions can be massive if you make empathy a strategic priority.

4 Smart Keyword Research Tips for Generating Sales and Traffic

Posted: 29 Feb 2020 03:30 PM PST

  • Keyword research is an integral part of generating traffic to your website. 
  • An estimated 50% of all online searches will be voice-based by the end of 2020. 
  • LSI keywords can help you find new ways to connect with potential consumers. 

Do you want to drive more organic traffic to your website? Keyword research is perhaps one of the most critical factors you should consider when you want to improve your visibility on Google. There are 5.14 billion Google searches every day, so it's more important than ever that consumers can find your website. 

The more opportunities people have to click on your website, the better chance you'll have of increasing your sales and website traffic. A surprising 95% of people don't navigate past the first page of Google after clicking enter on their search. It's our job as business owners and marketers to reach the top of the list for our chosen keywords so we can show as many people as possible what we have to offer. 

Today we are going to take a look at four smart keyword research tips you should keep in mind if you want to improve the visibility of your website. Let's start with the foundation of every keyword research campaign, user intent. 

Understand user intent 

User intent plays a huge role in how many people land on your website because of your product or service. If you get this aspect of your strategy right, you'll likely see a significant boost in traffic and sales. 

You should take user intent into consideration when brainstorming for keywords. Think about what someone that needs your product would type into Google if they never heard of your company. If picked properly, you can improve your visibility for those consumers, thus improving traffic. Failing to match intent could result in consumers that want what you're offering never find your website. 

The best way to understand user intent is by compiling data from your customer personas, feedback forms, and reviews. Collecting positive and negative feedback can help you understand more about why people come to your website. 

For instance, if you own an online pet store and a majority of your reviews are from dog owners, you can bet that consumers are searching for keywords that are connected to dogs. Now you can take this information and use other keyword research tips to refine the list of words and phrases you want to use on your site.

You could also use this as an opportunity to build keywords for less popular pet categories in an attempt to boost overall visibility. Once you start gathering words based on the intention of your customers, you can begin building long-tail keywords.

Build keyword combinations

Now that you understand the intention of people that land on your website, it's time to start thinking about how you can break down various keywords and phrases. As a general rule, there are three different types of keyword combinations. These variations include: 

  • Head - Short, usually consists of one to two words. When you use a keyword planner, you'll see that these words have a high search volume. (Example: dog food)
  • Body - Adds one to two words to the head keyword. Generally, these words have a medium search volume. (Example: Purina One dog food) 
  • Long Tail - Long-tail keywords have four or more words, and usually have a low search volume. (Example: Purina One savory shreds dog food) 

While long-tail keywords see the lowest number of searches, these phrases are responsible for the majority of your traffic and sales. Let's look at the search results for the examples we used above. 

If you search "dog food" on Google, you'll see about 4 billion results. However, if you search for the long-tail variation we created, you'll only see about 122,000 results. Consumers that use the long-tail keyword have a particular goal in mind. They want to buy dog food. Because you targeted this long-tail keyword, consumers interested in buying this specific brand of food have a better chance of finding your online store. 

Building and discovering keyword combinations can help you match their intent, so you can convert the percentage of people who do use those words and phrases while searching Google. 

Plan for voice search

Projections show that by the end of 2020, half of all searches will be voice-based. Understanding what consumers might say instead of speaking can play a significant role in your keyword research strategy. 

There are plenty of voice-activated devices, including the smartphones we have in our pockets. Add Window's Corta and Amazon's smart home device line to the mix, and it's hard to imagine a world without a voice search. Consumers can complete purchases, check the weather, and yes, search Google, all without looking at a screen. 

When you're thinking about reaching these customers, you have to think about the verbiage you use throughout your content. Obviously, not every post will get optimized for both traditional text SEO and voice search, but you can create multiple pieces of content that focus on both sets of keywords. 

For instance, someone with a marketing website might target "How can I grow my lead list?" for an article designed to pull in consumers through voice search. If they wanted to target people who are typing into Google, they might use a long-tail keyword such as "grow new email list fast." 

Context is essential for your users and Googles' algorithm. Next, we are going to look at an aspect of keyword research that will help Google categorize your content correctly, LSI keywords. 

Use LSI words and phrases 

Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, words can help guide Google when deciding to display your content to users. When you create a list of primary SEO keywords you want to use, start researching other ways consumers might search for the phrases you chose. 

Essentially, the search algorithm uses LSI words to figure out the context of your content. The more you connect the words in your content to one particular topic, the better chance you'll have at ranking higher in the search engine and seeing more traffic. 

There are several ways you can find LSI words to include in your keyword research strategy. First, go to Google and search for your primary keyword. Before you hit enter, look at some of the autofill options. Google associates all of these different combinations with your keyword. If you see that some of the selections match your intent, you can strategically rank for those words by using them sparingly throughout your content. 

You can also use Google's Keyword Planner to discover the search volume of specific keywords. Under each group, you'll see similar keywords and the volume for those phrases. If you can find words that relate to your niche, start brainstorming ways to use those new phrases in future content. 

All of the connected words help build context around the content you create. As a result, your content will appear in a more relevant search position when someone types in your keyword.  

There are plenty of overlapping themes when you're researching keywords for your site. The most crucial factor to remember is your keywords should always relate to the intent of your potential customers. When people see that you're on the first page of their search, there's an excellent chance that they will visit your website. If you offer what they are looking for, you've likely just landed another sale. 

Matching intent with relevancy will help you work your way into Google's algorithm, especially as more consumers find your site. The more time you spending looking at your target audience and their pain points, the better chance you'll have at creating a comprehensive list of keywords that will help you drive more traffic to your website. 
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