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Driven by an economy ripe with job opportunities, in-creasing numbers of part-time positions and other factors which were not fully clear to AT&T at the time, the com-pany’s retail sales consultant attrition increased steadily through the mid-2000s. Karen Bennett, vice president of sales strategy and support for AT&T Mobility, was de-termined to reduce the rising expense associated with turnover and position the company to compete in the new, dynamic market. She initiated a number of strategies to increase employee retention and improve the customer experience.

AT&T partnered with talent management consultancy TalentKeepers to build a systemic approach to identify key retention and engagement drivers, as well as clear pro-cesses to leverage the influence front-line leaders have on team members’ decisions to stay or leave.

Understanding the reasons employees were leaving and having clear action plans to address them was appealing given the attrition problem. To test the efficacy of this ap-proach, three sales markets — north Florida, upstate New York and east Los Angeles — were selected as trial sites. The sites were chosen for their diversity in size, attrition rates and union representation. If the solutions worked across these three markets, they should work everywhere.

AT&T Mobility began by surveying retail sales and sup-port team members and their leaders to measure key organizational, job and leader factors that influenced their decision to join, stay and consider leaving the organiza-tion. Survey results were used to drive changes in a variety of areas including compensation models, work schedules, leader-ship skills and sales consultant training. Leaders, from direc-tors to store managers, received detailed reports for their part of the business and training on their role in engaging and re-taining team members. Each leader was held accountable for his or her influence on employ-ees’ decisions to stay with or leave the organization.

Through the first nine months of the initiative, attrition rates dropped in two of the three trial

markets, including the north Florida market, headquar-tered in Orlando. The site began the trial with the highest attrition rate in the company. Its leadership team em-braced the employee engagement program and deployed companion projects spanning several areas in the organi-zation:

Market specific initiatives: Improved new hire training to help new employees reach proficiency more quickly.

Hiring process enhancements: Effective use of behavioral selection interviews, realistic job previews and having candidates observe a customer interaction.

New employee on-boarding processes: Manager touchpoints throughout training, manager follow-up based on trainer feedback, a buddy system and enhanced coaching activities.

Increased focus on tenured employees: Enhanced coaching, communication and active listening, team building, recognition and rewards.

By the end of 2008, attrition in north Florida dropped 38 basis points and was one of the lowest in the company. “The structure and rhythm of this effort began a new cul-ture of genuinely listening and appropriately responding to employees’ concerns,” said Jake Mullins, the director of sales in the north Florida market.

As employee attrition dropped, the market’s sales perfor-mance increased to one of the best in the southeast region.

Dial Up Engagement to

Boost Sales and Service

application by Sherie Britain and Christopher P. Mulligan

Problem: In 2008, attrition among AT&T Mobility’s retail sales consultants cost millions annually and impacted the service experience.

Solution: AT&T reduced costs, increased revenues and improved the customer experience by developing employees to be more inspired and engaged.

Figure 1: Percentage Of Average

Performance Improvement

Source: TalentKeepers, 2012

Seller attrition Commission Feature revenue Net upgrades improvement

0%

20%

40%

60%

80% Market 1 Market 2 Market 3 Market average

Behind Every Happy Customer, There’s an Engaged Employee.

How Engaged are Yours?

Talent Management Solutions | Employee Engagement | On-boarding | Retention Leadership Training | Employee Lifecycle Surveys | Exit Surveys | Research

407.660.6041 | Solutions@talentkeepers.com

www.TalentKeepers.com

TalentKeepers® is Your Experienced Employee Survey Partner Let’s get started!

Visit www.TalentKeepers.com to request the white paper:

“The Risky Business of Employee Surveys: Do’s and Don’ts for Getting it Right”

We are the experts on every stage of the process including design, customization, communication, administration, data analysis, and feedback. When it comes to reports, there is no better tool than our new TalentWatch® Dashboard which provides vivid results layered and segmented from executive leaders to frontline supervisors.

Well run organizations no longer wonder if they should gather data and feedback on employee engagement. Problem is, undertaking a survey initiative can be risky business without a strategic plan based on a clearly defined process, specific goals and actionable outcomes.

TK_1pageAd_Aug_14_2012_v4.indd 1 8/14/2012 9:44:06 PM

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talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 47

Bennett and her colleagues realized that what was ac-complished was much more than a process to retain sales consultants. They had a way to increase leadership skills to help improve both employee engagement and the cus-tomer experience (Figure 1, page 46).

During the next four years, the employee retention ini-tiative was transformed into an organization-wide employee engagement effort with the goal to create an inspired and engaged culture which would deliver an ex-traordinary experience for AT&T’s customers and lead to increased revenue and profits.

As the employee retention initiative evolved into a per-formance improvement strategy, so did AT&T Mobility’s operating focus. After years of emphasis on sales growth metrics such as new customers, new devices, new fea-tures and revenue, the organization recognized the need to focus on customer service levels.

Creating an extraordinary customer experience became the new mantra, and along with it came new metrics for success: willingness to recommend, Net Promoter Scores and net rep satisfaction were now receiving as much attention as traditional sales growth metrics. To be suc-cessful on these new service-oriented metrics, the people driving the metrics had to focus on the change.

In 2009, AT&T Mobility developed a three-year plan to measure and move the organization to an inspired and engaged culture. One underlying premise was that cus-tomer satisfaction is driven by employee engagement, which is defined as an employee’s willingness to provide discretionary effort — to go above and beyond to help the organization be successful. The culture change process consisted of four steps.

Step 1: Measure what drives employee engagement within AT&T Mobility: To determine this, the company worked with consultancy McKinsey & Co. to identify the key drivers of employee engagement (Figure 2).

Step 2: Measure the strengths and components of each engagement driver every six months: AT&T Mo-bility adapted TalentWatch, the survey used during the first three years of the initiative, and renamed it the leader and engagement (L&E) survey.

Administering the L&E survey every six months enabled

the company to establish a rhythm of measurement, action

planning, skill building and re-measurement. Constantly

updating metrics clearly communicates to everyone that

leaders are serious about change, and everyone is ac-

countable for doing his or her part. This includes all levels

of leadership, from regional presidents to assistant store

managers. While the score is tracked to determine the di-

rection of progress, it is also about the dialogue between

the employee and his or her immediate supervisor. This

relationship building is core to having an engaged work-

force that wants to give discretionary effort.

By the end of 2012 more than 6,500 leaders will have re-

ceived individual feedback reports with data from their

own teams after every survey. Each leader then creates

goals for key metrics such as the leader engagement in-

dex, employee engagement index and team satisfaction

increase to be met in the next L&E survey. Further, each

leader creates an action plan identifying the key behaviors

he or she will improve to meet the next set of goals.

Figure 2: Elements and Outcomes of Employee Engagement

Source: TalentKeepers, 2012

Helpful leadership communication, trust and influence on environment

Connect to our strategy

Fostering a productive organizational culture

Motivate and empower

Development of solid peer groups and accountability

Create collaboration and teamwork

Clarity of job roles, responsibilities and goals

Conduct career conversations

Employees perform totheir highest potential

Willingness to stayon the job

Service climate thatincreases customer satisfaction

and loyalty

Commitment toorganization and tasks

Four elements of employee engagement

Outcomes of an engaged workforce

Helpfulmanagement

Out in frontleadership

High-performingteam

Careersatisfaction

Figure 3: Most Desired Leadership

Attributes

Source: TalentKeepers, 2012

1 Trust builder

2 Talent developer and coach

3 Communicator

4 Esteem builder

5 Flexibility expert

6 Talent finder

7 Retention monitor

8 Climate builder

9 High performance builder

10 Retention expert

AT&T baselineleadership talents

Mostimportant

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Step 3: Measure what is important to each em-ployee in a leader and in his or her career: While the L&E survey determines how employees feel about the organization, their jobs and their leaders, the data is only available at the team level or higher. AT&T Mo-bility decided to go a step further and measure what was important to individual employees when it came to attributes they value in a leader and elements they value in a career. The company implemented FirstFit, a non-anonymous survey each employee completes roughly once every two years and as part of the on-boarding process for new hires.

FirstFit serves as a scouting report for leaders on how to best lead each of their team members. Each leader receives a discussion guide containing survey results for each employee. Leaders then meet with individual team members to discuss the results and agree on ways they can best lead them and help them achieve their career goals.

Step 4: Develop leaders’ employee engagement awareness and engagement skills: Employee en-gagement research studies from organizations such as Gallup and Kenexa have shown that an employee’s immediate leader is typically one of the most impact-ful factors when it comes to employee engagement and retention. Most leaders underestimate the influ-ence they have on their teams, especially in larger organizations.

Results from AT&T Mobility prove to leaders just how much they matter to their teams. L&E survey results show leaders their team members’ ratings of organization, job and leader factors, and team mem-bers routinely rate their leader as the strongest of the three. Leaders learn how to interpret their survey results, set realistic goals, meet with their teams to share findings and ask how they can be more effective in the areas which have the greatest opportunity for improvement.

FirstFit survey results were aggregated for 18,000 front-line team members, and the most desired lead-ership attributes are shown in Figure 3, page 47.

Using this prioritization, AT&T Mobility implemented blended learning modules covering many of the aforementioned leadership attributes. First, leaders complete an e-learning module which introduces the skill and provides virtual practice sessions. Then they participate in a three- to four-hour, instructor-led workshop where they discuss potential obstacles to utilizing the skills, participate in role-plays and pre-pare to work with their teams on specific on-the-job practice activities. It is all about asking for feedback, receiving feedback and acting on the feedback.

Going into 2013, AT&T continues to expand the initia-tive that now includes more than 50,000 employees. Performance metrics in total sales, accessory sales and feature sales continue to improve as engagement increases. Further, customer experience metrics such as a customer’s willingness to recommend AT&T prod-ucts and services to others are increasing as well.

Sherie Britain is director of sales operations for AT&T Mobility — retail sales and service, and Christopher P. Mulligan is chief executive officer of TalentKeepers. They can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com.

Commit. Engage. Excel.TalentKeepers® provides proven, award-winning employee engagement and retention solutions that span the employee performance continuum. From igniting engagement during on-boarding, creating an energized culture that promotes high performance, to comprehensive employee and leader survey tools, we will help you create a thriving culture build on mutual trust and collaboration.

Here are a few of our award-winning products and services:

• TalentWatch®: TalentWatch is a structured employee engagement system that includes custom surveys, detailed analyses, reporting by user-defined attributes, a dynamic executive dashboard, online action planning and more.

• OnBoard Connection®: A unique and highly successful employee engagement tool designed to engage new employees and build strong commitment to their new leader and your organization.

• Co-Worker Connection™: Support and mutual respect among co-workers is critical to creating and maintaining an engaged workforce

• Engagement and Retention Leadership Skills Series: Online leader development programs that won HR Executive Magazine’s Top Training Product of the Year Award.

Contact us:

Solutions@talentkeepers.com407-660-6041 x124