With so much focus on customers, we often lose sight of our employees and the critical roles they play in our organizations. It’s always instructive to remember that organizations are the employees, and that customer service and quality are dependent on these skilled, motivated people.

Employees should be seen as assets, not expenses. Assets are something you invest in. One indisputable fact is that frontline workers, those who interact daily with customers, know the customers the best. They’re the most familiar with the processes in place and have solid and perceptive ideas about how to improve them. Unfortunately, managers have been trained to think they are supposed to know all the answers. They don’t.

Continuous process improvement initiatives can bring about positive changes but often do not involve rank-and-file employees. These initiatives are sometimes blamed for downsizing. Often, they are viewed as “flavor of the month” management programs, creating skeptics and cynics of the very people who are needed to embrace new and better ways to do work and provide services to customers.

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