A few years ago, I shared the exceptional results of our first ever Employee Engagement Survey. We recently completed the Survey again and the outcome was even more positive: With 100% participation in the survey, 95% of GWC employees are satisfied with their jobs! And, we received over 20 pages of comments letting us know what we can do to make GWC an even better place to work.
These results are extremely gratifying as they illustrate that GWC employees “get” what it means to work in a high accountability, pay-for-performance company that emphasizes specific values and culture. They also demonstrate that the leadership team at GWC is listening to its employees and making the company ever more attuned to their desires for an amazing workplace.
Best of all, these Employee Engagement scores coincide with another stupendous run of growth in both sales and earnings. In fact, GWC just came off its 24th consecutive month of record sales and is on track to establish another high water earnings mark in 2016.
I continue to believe that these results are a direct outcome of our efforts to attract and retain the very best team in the industry. And they provide even more fuel for GWC to continue to strive for high Employee Engagement as we move ahead.
What Am I Reading?
Early in my career I was introduced to the seminal work by Nagle & Holden entitled “The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing.” It’s a little dry at times but its influence (particularly on me) cannot be overstated. At the time, I was working for a large company filled with smart people who nonetheless thought an appropriate pricing approach was to figure out how much it cost to offer our product, add a standard margin and let it roll. This simplistic “cost-plus” method was ridiculously incorrect and Nagle & Holden gave me the ammunition I needed to push for a wiser strategy that started with our customers, not our costs.
Years later, Hermann Simon has released a worthy companion to the classic I read in my youth. Simon, one of the world’s acknowledged experts in pricing strategy, updates Nagle & Holden by offering up a variety of real-life pricing strategies and outcomes that illustrate his central point: Pricing is about value, the value a customer receives and perceives from your product. By focusing on that value equation, companies can ensure that their products are neither over- or under-priced and can thus maximize their success. Even more importantly, it forces a real discussion within companies about their product offering, how it is different from that of competitors and what customers truly value.
