Members of SAP SuccessFactors’ Value Realization Research team are constantly reading up on the topics most important to you, your employees, and your managers. Each week we will be sharing an interesting finding we’ve read about to give you innovative and data-based ideas on how to better structure your HR processes and more effectively manage your workforce. This week's post comes to you from amy.pytlovany, our Value Realization Research Consultant.
This week: Improve your employees’ service climate perceptions and enjoy more effective, profitable service delivery
Organizations that deliver services instead of goods are on the rise, but the intangible services they deliver are a lot more difficult to monitor, measure and manage. Recent research suggests that one key to successful service delivery is “service climate”. Service climate refers to employees’ shared perceptions that service quality is important to the organization they work for, typically gathered from company communications, policies, and individual employees’ experiences. In their recent study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Hong (Fordham University) and colleagues found that a healthy service climate leads to a variety of positive outcomes ranging from improved employee job satisfaction and performance to greater customer satisfaction and company profits, especially when the service is oriented toward a person rather than service of an object (such as laptop repair) These findings suggest that service organizations that pay attention to service climate and invest in practices designed to improve it (e.g., training, service-specific performance management, improving leaders’ service orientation, and regular measurement of service climate perceptions) may have a leg up on their competition in effective and profitable service delivery.
For more information, access the research abstract and full article here.
