How to Inspire Your ESS Team to Focus All Day, Every Day
If you are seeking to hire education support staff, you will be wanting those individuals to care about the whole School Community and how they experience the School. From the moment ESS commence a position, you want them providing a level of service that has everyone speaking highly about the school to everyone they know.
The truth is that providing consistently high levels of service is not natural for all ESS. For some people, it takes a lot of energy and over time, even the most highly skilled and service-focused ESS can become complacent.
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They may forget how important the first 3 seconds are when they greet people face to face.
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They may forget how it’s vital to consider their tone of voice when speaking on the phone.
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They may forget that visitors to the School who are within eye or ear shot of ESS will assess the School on how staff interact with each other.
So, how do you inspire ESS to provide consistently excellent service all day, every day?
Ask them to identify their WIIFM: What’s In It For Me. Ask them, to ask themselves; “What’s In It For Me to provide excellence service, every day?”
This is a personal question. Some may say it’s so they get to keep their job so they can pay the mortgage, put food on the table, or save for something special. These are what we call external rewards as they are all related to money and status. Those goals are great, but this activity is about the internal rewards.
Some examples of internal rewards are:
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Getting to help people everyday – good for self esteem and for developing empathy
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Making work friends – sometimes they can be friends for life
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Improving soft skills (people skills) – great for now and wherever my career takes me
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Keeps me active – physically and mentally
Once you know each person’s WIIFM, never let these be forgotten. Talk about them at meetings, share them across the team, invite new staff to add theirs to the list and where possible, give staff an opportunity to refresh and improve their soft skills as they are transferable. To help you make it clear why seeking and completing soft skills development is worthwhile, tell them this:
“I/We may not be able to guarantee you a job for life, but I/we can guarantee you a career for as long as you want, as soft skills are in high demand by all employers.”
If you would like help creating a culture of service excellence in your frontline ESS, grab a copy of my book “The A-Z of Service Excellence”. It’s packed with ideas, insights and actions that will help you keep your team focused and inspired to reach their WIIFM.