Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report revealed that 23% of employees were engaged at work in 2022—the highest level since 2009. The flip side is that more than half (59%) of employees are quiet quitting, meaning they put in the minimum effort required and feel disconnected from their work.  

This report also revealed a new trend: 18% of employees are now loud quitting. These workers are so frustrated with the expectations or culture at their workplace—a disenchantment often derived from broken trust between employee and employer—that their actions actually harm the organization.  

There are a number of factors creating this employee dissatisfaction, including record-high stress (44%), but for employers that don’t make an effort to improve their workplace environment or managing styles, they may soon be sent back to the starting line where they’ll have to replace talent. More than half (51%) of workers said they are actively seeking a new job. 

According to the poll, however, most disgruntled employees know what needs to change in their workplace, and 85% of those changes were related to culture, pay and benefits, and wellbeing. Employees reported that they wanted management changes like more autonomy, greater respect, clarity around goals and stronger guidance. 

The Gallup poll results stress that there are easy productivity gains for employers who are willing to make even small adjustments to their leadership style. In fact, it reported that 70% of team engagement is attributable to the manager. 

If your company’s profitability or team morale is suffering, Gallup says there is one clear strategy: “Change the way your people are managed.” 

The post Gallup Poll Emphasizes Importance of Changing the Way People Are Managed  first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Why are recognition programs so important? Aren’t commissions and the freedom of running one’s own business enough to motivate your independent sales force? Certainly these factors are reasons that a distributor got into the business in the first place, but these alone will not keep them engaged and motivated over the long term. Appreciation is a fundamental human need and one that needs to be reinforced—often. However, a Gallup poll in 2018 found that only 1 in 3 U.S. workers strongly agreed that they had received recognition or praise for doing good work in the previous seven days. Gallup recommends that recognition should be given at least weekly—and as close to the achievement as possible to reinforce company values. Recognizing people for their good work sends an extremely powerful message to not only the recipient but to their team, other distributors and even customers.

Direct selling companies need recognition programs quite possibly more than any other industry, given their independent sales force are commission-based in remote locations running their own businesses. That is why they need to have a myriad of recognition programs for the many types of behaviors they want to incentivize and the many types of consultants they engage.

Some of the programs that should be included are:

• Career Level/Rank Recognition
• Sales Awards
• Longevity Programs
• Short-Term Promotion Incentives
• Ad-Hoc Recognition

Each of these programs reinforces different company goals, and each requires a different type of thinking to implement successfully.

“Recognizing people for their good work sends an extremely powerful message to not only the recipient but to their team, other distributors and even customers.”

Career Level /Rank Recognition

A career level program shows a consultant how they will move forward with the company if they are successful. You’ll want to create a well designed Career Level or Rank program that communicates the company’s direction, provides opportunities for personal and professional growth and establishes measurable goals and objectives. Your business success depends on how you cultivate your distributor network into productive, passionate, quality-oriented consultants.

Some ideas to consider include:

• Founders Clubs & Charter Member Clubs are an exceptional way to begin recognizing your initial distributor network. These clubs create a critical connection, a feeling of camaraderie and a sense of “we can do it” that is especially important as the organization solidifies its foundation.
• As an organization grows, companies need to keep an eye on their programs and institute expanded achievement/career levels for additional recognition. Even at the earliest stages, think far out and include levels your distributor network can strive for in years to come.
• Much like a company’s logo and product selection, as the years go by, your recognition programs need to be refreshed with more modern style and feel. You wouldn’t let the products your company sells became dated, so don’t do it with your recognition programs.

Sales Awards

Sales award recognition seems fairly straightforward on the face of it. However, companies need to consider at what level they will begin recognizing sales achievements, whether they consider only annual sales or lifetime sales, or sales just over a particular promotional period, and how many levels will be recognized. It is better to have recognition at many sales levels so that a consultant’s next sales milestone is not a huge step, but instead an achievable one.

Longevity Programs

People need to know they are valued over the long term, not just in “what have you done for me lately” ways. Some successful ways to reinforce that you value your distributor network’s commitment over the long haul are years of service recognition, lifetime sales, and mentor/trainer recognition.

“Your business success depends on how you cultivate your distributor network into productive, passionate, quality-oriented consultants.”

Short-Term Promotion Incentives

This is a way to pump up sales when they might normally be low. Promotions can help deal with seasonal lulls or other predictable downturns in the annual sales cycle. They also provide a way for your distribution network to receive quick feedback-recognition for their sales and other business efforts. Instead of having to wait for the annual convention, or until they rise to the next career rank, they are awarded almost immediately for a job well done.

Ad-Hoc Recognition

In addition to more formal recognition programs, ad-hoc recognition is a great way to “catch people doing good things” and recognizing them for it. This kind of recognition is best done by one’s direct upline supervisor as on-the-spot as possible. Sales managers should come up with something unique that resonates with their downline. Perhaps it is the “cactus award” for a sales team based in Arizona, and whoever wins this award is given a tiny cactus plant in a pot with the name of the award and date on it. Whatever the award is, it should be something that recognizes good work right away, that motivates the person to do even more, and solidifies the team. If the award can be presented in front of the whole downline team—all the better.

As you create your recognition programs, make sure to keep in mind your company culture and the demographics of the distributors you are recognizing. What works for a health products company may be quite different from what works for companies that sell beauty or financial products.

Achieving business success requires commitment and persistence on many fronts. Don’t let recognition get left behind.

The post What’s Your Recognition Program Rhythm? first appeared on Direct Selling News.

What makes a company a great place to work? It’s about more than benefits packages, flex days and foosball tables, although those are all attractive perks. Great companies have a clear sense of direction and a vision their employees connect to, care about and support, even when nobody’s watching.

It all starts with culture. Successful companies are built on a firm foundation of principles that guide every decision, are communicated through every touchpoint and define every experience both at the corporate level and in the field. Your culture is perhaps your most important point of difference, beyond your products and business opportunity. It’s why people want to work for you as employees or represent you as independent distributors. And it’s why they stay.

Your employee engagement is a direct reflection of your company’s culture, and we know that employee engagement is critical for retention. In fact, companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share, according to research conducted by Gallup.

“The organization leadership must invest in people managers and equip them and empower them to take ownership for their team’s engagement.” —Leslie Aument, Human Resources Director, Noonday Collection

Christina Thompson, Marketing Content Specialist for Quantum Workplace, defines employee engagement as “the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their places of work. Employee engagement is NOT the same thing as happiness, satisfaction, or well-being.” That’s a key distinction. A satisfied employee will attend your after-work gatherings, show up on time and do her job dependably. However, should a better opportunity come along will she take it? Or will she be so committed to your company that she can’t imagine leaving? That distinction gets to the heart of employee engagement, one of the core components of a great workplace.

Engagement: Not an Elusive Concept

Today we have the data to measure the percentage of employees within our industry who believe they’re able to make a measurable impact at work, who see a path for their future growth and success, and who trust that their employers are not only invested in their success, but also see them as individuals with unique strengths both inside and outside of the office. Knowing our areas of opportunity as a channel gives us a starting point for making meaningful changes that will help us continue to attract and retain talent.

All 12 honorees have one very important quality in common: high rates of employee engagement. Why should you care? After all, the concept of employee engagement may seem nebulous. A company whose leadership is disproportionately focused on meeting numbers may not give it much thought.

The reality, however, is that the presence or absence of employee engagement translates to some hard numbers, including those tied to your bottomline revenues, profitability and retention. Gallup® found that each actively disengaged worker – that is, someone who’s unhappy and unproductive at work, and whose negativity may rub off on coworkers – costs his or her employer $3,400 for every $10,000 of salary, or 34 percent. Engaged employees, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2017 report, make it a point to show up to work and do more work.

They care more about the products and services they deliver to customers, and they care about contributing to the company’s performance. They’re more mindful of their surroundings and are therefore more likely to uphold workplace standards of safety. They’re more likely to help their organizations improve customer relationships and, ultimately, generate increased profit.

Articulating your vision and successfully getting your employees on board is incredibly important not just for your productivity and morale inside the building, but out in the field, as well, since your employees are on the front lines every day articulating that message.

For more than a decade, Quantum Workplace has been conducting in-depth surveys with organizations throughout the world, representing nearly every industry sector, in an effort to measure employee engagement. Higher levels of engagement are linked to better employee retention, higher productivity and more profit. Organizations who know where they stand can make an effort to focus more intensively on the drivers and address the detractors of employee engagement.

For the purposes of our 2019 Best Places to Work (BPTW) in Direct Selling survey, Quantum compared our survey results with all other BPTW survey results, then held them up against the top three overall BPTW results. Finally, Quantum compared the results of this year’s direct selling surveys against last year’s. All of those comparisons reveal some interesting findings worth considering.

2018-2019 BPTW Survey: How Our Channel Stacks Up

Here are some top-line takeaways from the direct selling channel survey analysis, courtesy of Dan Harris, Lead Researcher at Quantum Workplace. Harris compared the findings of the 2017-2018 survey with the findings of the 2018-2019 survey:

1. Became more polarized between 2017 and 2018

Moderately Engaged employees, which represents the middle group on the scale of Highly Engaged to Disengaged employees, decreased and was pulled up to Highly Engaged and down to (Barely Engaged and Disengaged). However, between 2018 and 2019, the trend reversed: The proportion of Barely Engaged and Disengaged employees decreased a little, as did Highly Engaged employees; however, the proportion of Moderately Engaged increased.

2. Favorability decreased for items related to the theme of team dynamics

Whereas the direct selling industry decreased the most in favorability around a theme of trust in leadership from 2017 to 2018, this time around (2018 to 2019), the survey found lower favorability toward goals and accountabilities being clear to everyone on a team, having the information needed to do one’s job well, and employees knowing that they could depend on other team members. So, while the results of the 2017 to 2018 survey suggested a “leadership crisis” of sorts in the industry, the crisis has shifted to more team-based interactions or even a “manager crisis” in the making. “I suggest managers because team goals and accountabilities, providing information to team members, and coaching team members to be dependable are all tasks that fall largely on a manager’s shoulders,” Harris says.

“Employee engagement is NOT the same thing as happiness, satisfaction, or well‑being.” — Christina Thompson, Marketing Content Specialist , Quantum Workplace

3. Lower in favorability around goals and accountabilities being clear to everyone on a team

For example, employees knowing they’ll be recognized if they contribute to the organization’s success, and seeing professional growth and career development opportunities for themselves in the organization. Those three items all point to management: communicating goals and accountabilities, recognizing team members for a job well done, and coaching team members about their futures through one-on-one performance conversations.

Quantum’s 2018 Employee Engagement Trends Report aggregated employee survey responses from more than 600,000 employees at more than 8,000 organizations throughout the United States in 2017, including direct selling companies. The report revealed the following:

• Employee engagement across all industries rose slightly, increasing .50 percent from 2016 to 2017.
• The number of disengaged employees remained steady at 2.7 percent between 2016 and 2017.

Employee sentiment increased slightly in all but one area: retention, which declined .03 percent and was measured by the statement “It would take a lot to get me to leave this organization.”

2019 BPTW High Engagement Contributors

Among this year’s Best Places to Work in Direct Selling, we can identify beyond culture several common contributors to high employee engagement, including:

• Personal and Professional Development.

Companies who invest in their employees’ personal and professional development signal an interest in their employees beyond merely what they can do for the bottom line. Several of this years’ Best Places to Work–like NuSkin and Team National, for example–offer in-house training for employees. Total Life Changes (TLC) offers its entire staff free online mental wellness classes in topics ranging from financial wellness and nutrition to anger management, substance abuse and stress management. Youngevity takes a unique approach to personal development through its Be The Change Foundation, a grassroots, action-oriented nonprofit charitable organization with a mission to promote employees’ personal growth through service to the community. LifeVantage has hosted six homebuilding trips to Mexico for employees during the holiday season.

• Employee Recognition.

Companywide recognition programs can be highly effective if leaders give careful consideration to what truly motivates employees. Jeunesse, for example, has invested significant resources in employee recognition. Last year, the company launched its Family Circle website, where management and employees can highlight and give kudos to other employees around the globe. The company also rewards an all-expenses-paid trip to a global Jeunesse or other event to randomly selected employees who qualify through its Employee of the Month program.

We’ve all heard the saying that “Employees don’t quit jobs; they quit managers.” If that’s true, then the task of engaging employees should fall to the managers rather than be dictated from the executive suite. Managers must make an effort to understand what motivates their team members and know how each of them wants to be recognized. “Each individual in an organization is motivated and engaged by different things, so it can be challenging to have an organizationwide approach to professional growth, recognition, and even communication,” says Leslie Aument, Director of Human Resources for Noonday Collection. “Equipping the people managers in the organization to take ownership for the individuals on their team can go a long way with increasing engagement in these areas. It’s much more scalable for people managers to work with their individual team members on their professional (and personal!) growth, rewarding and recognizing success in ways that match their personal preferences, and ensuring that everyone on their team is clear about WHY the organization is making changes. This means that the organization leadership must invest in people managers and equip them and empower them to take ownership for their team’s engagement.”

• Trust.

Employee engagement is impossible for leaders who don’t earn the trust of the teams they serve. At MONAT, leadership by walking around has strengthened ties with employees and encouraged
them to share their honest feedback. “Our President, CEO and Senior Vice President visit employees in their offices constantly. They might be busy, but they will find the time to sit and discuss all sort of issues with the employees,” says Human Resources Director Loretta Pardo.

• Onboarding.

We strive to validate a new distributor’s decision to start a business by paving the way for quick wins and early momentum, so she gets up to speed as soon as possible. Savvy direct selling companies are employing the same philosophy at home with an onboarding process designed to orient new employees to all aspects of the business and forge relationships. Plexus developed a formal new employee orientation program after growing its employee base by 25 percent in 2017. The company just launched a cohort program that begins a few months after the completion
of orientation. Cohort members appoint a captain and create a team name. The idea is to create a sense of community among colleagues, says Human Resources Officer Mary Beth Reisinger, and while the concept is still evolving, her hope is to facilitate volunteer opportunities for cohorts and even encourage some fun competition among groups for service participation.

• Work Friendships.

A 2015 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that the top engagement condition for 79 percent of respondents was their relationship with co-workers. Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, named healthy relationships among the most important determinants to happiness. Best Places to Work encourage and provide opportunities for employees to form friendships. Xyngular, for example, created several Slack channels where employees can chat and compare notes on a variety of topics, not all of them work-related. “We spend a lot of time finding out what people are interested in, both personally and professionally, and find ways to get them in contact with other employees who have similar interests,” says Cyndel Stirland, Xyngular HR Generalist.

• Employee Feedback.

“When you’re a fastgrowing, entrepreneurial-minded organization, you sometimes forget to talk about the why,” Reisinger says–and that’s the philosophy behind “Why’s on first,” which encourages Plexus employees to speak up if they don’t understand the “why” behind any change. At Isagenix, employee feedback led to the institution of a year-round casual dress code, extra vacation time, and new parental paid leave policies, and a pet bereavement policy. Employees should also be encouraged to provide feedback to managers. Zurvita’s employee-run website is a place for colleagues to recognize their peers, exchange ideas and present and discuss suggestions. Each month, the company holds an “all-hands” meeting to update staff and listen to employees’ thoughts and ideas; and the following month, the company updates employees on the acceptance and implementation of some of their ideas.

Employee Engagement Profiles

Quantum Workplace classifies employees in four different categories based on their respective levels of engagement:

Highly Engaged: These employees are your company ambassadors. They preach organization love, go the extra mile and plan to stay. The more highly engaged employees you have, the better.

Moderately Engaged: While they’re moderately connected to your workplace, something is holding them back. The good news is that you still have the chance to pull these employees back in by finding out what motivates them.

Barely Engaged: With one foot out the door, these employees are a turnover risk. They’re barely connected to the workplace, with an indifferent attitude and low motivation.

Disengaged: It’s time to cut these employees loose. They’re completely disconnected from the workplace, and the longer they stay, the more their negative attitude rubs off on their colleagues and hinders productivity.

Opportunities for Improvement

LET’S RETURN NOW TO THE KEY AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY for the direct selling industry: managing team dynamics, communicating goals and responsibilities, recognizing team members for
a job well done, and coaching team members about their futures through one-on-one performance conversations. Here are a few suggestions from Quantum Workplace for making improvements in those areas:

1. Ask employees for their ideas.In one-on-one sessions, ask employees what they like best and least about their jobs, what opportunities they’d be interested in, and what skills they want to grow. Try to accommodate those needs when assigning work.
2. Conduct skip-level meetings regularly. Meeting with employees several levels above or below you will open your eyes to a wealth of new information.
3. Ask employees to write their own job descriptions, including the positions they currently hold and the ones they’d like in the future. This helps highlight what each employee enjoys, what she feels
   her strengths are, and illustrates how the manager can be her champion.
4. Provide multiple mechanisms for internal communication. It’s important to provide multiple waysfor employees to speak up. Duringperiods of upheaval, get inputfrom employees all throughout the change.

Quantum Workplace Methodology

This is the fourth consecutive year that Direct Selling News has partnered with Quantum Workplace to measure, analyze and, ultimately, honor the channel’s best places to work. We opened nominations August 2018, began surveying Oct. 26 and closed the survey Dec 20. Twelve outstanding companies made the cut for our 2019 honorees.

Since 2010, Quantum has surveyed more than 8,000 organizations annually representing numerous industry sectors through the Best Places to Work Program. This year marks the third year that Quantum has surveyed the direct selling industry. The Best Places to Work Program survey utilizes the same 30 questions across six categories for all participants, regardless of industry. No
single question is weighted more heavily than the others, although certain topics may be covered more frequently than others.

Six of the 30 questions on the survey are designed to quantify discretionary effort, intent to stay and advocacy for company. The other 24 questions measure workplace culture, identifying, for example, the kind of conditions under which employees are more likely to advocate for their employers. The questions may be standard, but the results are highly individual. They shed light on what each company can do to retain their valued employees. And, as we examine the direct selling channel, those results suggest some patterns within our  broader industry that merit discussion.

The post Best Places To Work first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Many of those conditions are related to acquisitions—to symbols of achievement. A funny thing happens, though, when you just happen to achieve that condition. You buy that new car, it’s great for about a week, and then you ask the inevitable question: “What’s next?”

You may have read the news earlier this year about a class at Yale University, “Psychology and the Good Life,” in which almost one-quarter of Yale’s 1,200 undergraduates enrolled within three days after registration opened. Taught by Professor Laurie Santos, the course challenges students’ preconceived notions about what brings happiness. Spoiler alert: It’s not the perfect grade point average or the prestigious job after graduation, but rather things like genuine connection with others, reflection and gratitude. (The course is now available free on Coursera.)

The reality is that the “I’ll be happy when” approach doesn’t really work, because there’s always someone with a bigger house, a better title, more money, the seemingly perfect life. Where are we going wrong?

PERMA
Positive Emotions / Engagement / Relationships / Meaning / Accomplishment

Jeff Olson, founder and CEO of Nerium International, a skincare and wellness brand, has dedicated much of his time to answering that very question. Olson—like many direct selling executives—has spent countless hours researching how to help field members achieve their maximum potential. Personal development is the vehicle by which direct selling has traditionally helped new business owners cultivate leadership skills. One of the biggest selling points of a business in this channel is the opportunity to strengthen emotional intelligence, resilience, negotiation, overcoming rejection and other traits that contribute to longevity and success. Personal development offerings are often structured in a format resembling academics: readings, courses and curricula, videos and the like, and field members review the material on a schedule of their own choosing.

The reality is that the “I’ll be happy when” approach doesn’t really work, because there’s always someone with a bigger house, a better title, more money, the seemingly perfect life.

There’s no denying the value of personal development. Many have witnessed the kind of incredible transformation that a direct selling business paired with a commitment to personal development can bring; ask any leader onstage, and she’ll be glad to tell you about how her direct selling journey has changed her. According to Olson and many other leaders in the channel, though, if direct selling executives truly want to help as many representatives as possible reach their goals and create successful businesses, not just based on financial rewards but personal ones as well, they need to examine the role of happiness in the equation.

Before he discovered the happiness factor in success, Olson says, personal development seemed to increase engagement for some representatives, after which point progress seemed to stall. “It was very frustrating,” he recalls. But he had a theory for why people were hitting this roadblock. “Personal development, from my perspective, was hard. It felt like going back to school.”

Positive Psychology

Then Olson met Dr. Martin Seligman, director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Known as the founder of positive psychology, Seligman defines the term as the “scientific study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” It’s a perspective that moves from the inside out, rather than the outside in. In other words, when you assume that a better job title will bring you happiness, you’re expecting an external source to provide personal fulfillment. Positive psychology takes the opposite view, asserting that your personal thoughts will have a direct impact on external results. This field of study examines how people frame their past, present and future prospects. Well-being, satisfaction, hope, optimism, altruism, forgiveness, tolerance and perseverance are all qualities or conditions associated with a positive outlook. Seligman’s evidence-based approach for the active ingredients of well-being is known by the acronym PERMA: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. The principles of positive psychology can be applied at work by adopting a grateful mindset (reflecting on what you have), forging meaningful connections with others (finding friends among colleagues), contributing individual strengths and capitalizing on the strengths of team members, finding meaning and purpose in work, setting goals on a regular basis, giving oneself a pat on the back for a job well done, and recognizing others for their efforts.

Olson started reading the research by Seligman and others in the academic world, where the discipline of positive psychology was almost exclusively limited. What he learned, he says, completely changed his viewpoint on how to help independent representatives be more successful. “Clinical data was proving the power of happiness,” Olson says. “They were finding that happiness was a precursor to success. It’s easy to do. It’s not a quantum leap. Most people think, ‘If my direct selling business is successful, I’ll be happy,’ but it’s the other way around.”

Appreciation, Optimism, Hope

Personal development and positive psychology have a lot in common. Skills associated with personal development, like resilience, confidence, gratitude, compassion and other traits associated with emotional intelligence, can ultimately increase one’s sense of well-being and happiness. For companies who are examining ways to better engage their field members, however, approaching the conversation from another angle may be worthwhile. Positive psychology—adopting an appreciation for the past, optimism for the present and hope for the future—could offer another viable route to success.

“The same people who are drawn to personal development are very easily drawn to happiness,” Olson says. “For a leader who’s already going down the path to personal development with reading, listening, going to seminars, we’re just giving them another tool. We’re all aware that the more personally developed people are, the more successful they are. But happiness is an untapped segment, and a big group of people will be attracted to it.”

Happiness Is a Competitive Advantage

So is positive psychology really that simple? Do we just need to help field members learn to be happier? And how do we do that? Happiness isn’t a switch you turn on for immediate gratification; it’s a long-term commitment, a shift in thinking that we have the power to create through a series of incremental changes. The subsequent benefits can be profound; a leader’s mindset rubs off on her team and even on her customers. In a channel that’s all about personal connections and exceptional service, happiness is a relevant and timely area of focus.

“As a direct seller, the key to developing and maintaining a positive mindset and lasting customer relationships is to understand where and how to best invest your energy,” says Jim Ayres, managing director of Amway North America. “People tend to dedicate time, money, talent and other resources to areas that are most important to them. If you are passionate about what you are doing, who you are serving and identify the necessary steps to bring it to life, you can unlock the power of positivity to fuel the success of your business.”

“It’s easy to do. It’s not a quantum leap. Most people think, ‘If my direct selling business is successful, I’ll be happy,’ but it’s the other way around.”

—Jeff Olson, Founder and CEO, Nerium International

An entrepreneur’s success can depend almost entirely on her mindset. And today, more people are directly responsible for their own income and financial success, both inside and outside the direct selling channel. The more accountable you are for your income, the more important happiness is, according to Deborah Heisz, president of Nerium International and CEO of Live Happy, LLC. In contrast to a corporate job, where you’re paid whether your mood is good or bad, “if you’re not happy, you’re not going to make that sales call or have the confidence to get in front of that room and speak,” says Heisz, who also is the co-founder and editorial director of Live Happy, a positive lifestyle magazine. Happiness, she adds, is a competitive advantage, especially as the direct sales channel competes with other opportunities in the gig or freelance economy.

A significant contributor to happiness is the recognition and appreciation of one’s own strengths. “Everyone has natural strengths that focus individualized thoughts, behavior, and feelings,” says Missy Larsen, senior director of government relations and corporate partnerships at dōTERRA, an essential oils company. “As we focus on these strengths through positivity, we recognize our natural abilities and unlock our incredible potential. When we choose to focus on our unique strengths, we are more productive, more engaged in our work, and three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life than individuals who do not.”

Combating Negative, Fearful Genetic Wiring

It’s not always easy to remain optimistic in Western society. People are bombarded with information, much of it negative. “We still have the genetic wiring to look for the negative and be fearful,” Heisz says. “If you start looking for the good, you’ll find it.” If people are not reading the news, they’re on social media, which is dominated by a culture of comparison. “This obsession with what I don’t have that Western culture has created through social media and advertising is the wrong thing to focus on. There is no ‘enough.’ ”

Learning to be selective about the information you absorb can be a challenge even for the most seasoned direct selling executive. “How many negative things can we face, even as a CEO?” asks Dr. Traci Lynn Burton, CEO of Traci Lynn Jewelry. “There are some things I don’t do first thing in the morning, like email or Facebook. You’ve got to command the morning to get your attitude right. When I come into work, I’m already on a high—a 10—and I work from there. Joy comes from knowing who you are and what you need. Comparison can be very dangerous. That’s why you’ve got to limit this stuff. My mind is an asset, and I’ve got to protect it.”

“We still have the genetic wiring to look for the negative and be fearful. If you start looking for the good, you’ll find it.”

—Deborah Heisz, President of Nerium International, CEO of Live Happy

The most common enemies of a positive mindset include internal and external factors like fear, hopelessness, low self-esteem, and your associations. Lynn encourages her field members to consider “who’s really close to you. Who are you allowing into your life? Who’s in your space? Who are you listening to? All of this you can filter once you’re really clear on who you are and what you can bring to the table. And you attract what you put out.”

A positive outlook is associated with more than just the attainment of one’s goals. It’s also linked to a host of health benefits, including increased lifespan, lower rates of depression, lower levels of distress, better resistance to the common cold, better physical well-being and better coping skills during times of stress, according to the Mayo Clinic.

It’s Not About the Dollars and Cents

The direct selling channel is focused on the business of serving others through quality products and personalized service. In most cases, high-performing independent representatives have invested the time and care to build and nurture not only their teams, but also their customer base. The financial rewards are a natural result. This approach may not be fast, but it leads to greater stability in the long term. From time to time, though, some individuals may try to motivate others with earnings claims and trappings of financial success. New business owners who have the “I’ll be happy when” syndrome might be swayed by such false assurances. However, money really doesn’t bring happiness—and there’s solid science to prove it.

“Joy comes from knowing who you are and what you need.”

—Dr. Traci Lynn Burton, CEO, Traci Lynn Jewelry

Studies have shown that happy people make 30 percent more at the same job. However, research conducted by Seligman, Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, and the Gallup Organization finds that contrary to what many people believe, money isn’t a lasting contributor to happiness or well-being. “The intuition that one will be happier with more rather than less income might be correct, but this effect occurs only at the individual level and is negated to the extent that everyone’s incomes and desires increase.” Further, Seligman and Diener found that the desire for material goods keeps pace with rising income, therefore negating the benefits of a pay raise, for example. In other words, the goalpost keeps moving.

Changes to Make Now

If happiness is up to the individual, then one can start making some little changes that, over time, can add up to big transformations. Write down three things you’re grateful for each day. Take an inventory of the information you’re taking in each day, and strive for balance by including more positive books in your reading list. Aim for eight hours of sleep each night. Pay someone a compliment. Exercise daily. Spend time outside. Find your favorite positive affirmations, and repeat them often. Focus on remaining in the present. Invest time in your family, your hobbies, and in serving your community. For the long term, focus on financial security versus material acquisition. And, if you’ve been dreaming of moving to a place where you enjoy a higher quality of life, make a plan, and get to work.

Heisz also recommends these four keys to resilience:

• List your wins. What have you already accomplished in life?
• Choose your thoughts. Don’t dwell on the worst-case scenario. Focus on what you can control in the moment.
• Give yourself some grace. You’re going to make mistakes. Allow yourself to fail in order to succeed.
• Don’t go it alone. Build resilience by finding someone to talk to, someone who lifts you up. In this business, it’s often your upline or your sideline. Find that person by becoming that person for someone else.

Direct selling leaders are in a powerful position to give people tools they need to find meaning and purpose in their own lives while they enhance the lives of others. That, in turn, can grow exponentially, making the world a happier place and creating a lasting impact.

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That’s because direct selling was founded upon principles of exceptional service, personalization and taking care of one’s own. Those values are usually presented in the context of the relationships that independent distributors hold with their customers. But that’s only half the story. Direct selling companies also strive to apply those principles to their relationships they hold with their employees. The savviest companies realize that, given the incredible growth of this channel over the past several years, it pays to take good care of employees for two primary reasons. First, the obvious one: Turnover is disruptive, from the toll it takes on morale to the time and money it requires to replace employees who take their expertise with them out the door. Second, employees are on the front lines of communication with independent distributors. If employees are happy, distributors are happy. It’s just that simple. And, on a personal level, shouldn’t people enjoy what they spend most of their day doing and feel appreciated for that work?

“The company will only go as far as our employees take us, and they need to feel that they are being supported at all times. An engaged employee is one who believes in the company mission, and they’ll do everything in their power to showcase that to everyone they come across. That engaged employee becomes a company advocate, and dozens of others will follow that positive example.”

—Scott Lewis, Chief Visionary Officer, Jeunesse

Direct Selling News has once again partnered with Quantum Workplace to measure, analyze and, ultimately, honor the channel’s best places to work. We opened nominations Aug. 1, 2017, began surveying Oct. 30 and closed the survey Dec. 20. Thirteen outstanding companies made the cut for our 2018 finalists.

While each has their own distinctive story, these direct selling companies are united around a common theme of employee engagement.

For more than a decade, Quantum Workplace has been conducting in-depth surveys with organizations throughout the world, representing nearly every industry sector, in an effort to measure employee engagement. Higher levels of engagement are linked to better employee retention, higher productivity and more profit. Organizations that know where they stand can make an effort to focus more intensively on the drivers and address the detractors of employee engagement.

For the purposes of our 2018 Best Places to Work in Direct Selling survey, Quantum compared our survey results with all other Best Places to Work survey results, then held them up against the top three overall Best Places to Work results. Finally, Quantum compared the results of this year’s direct selling surveys against last year’s. All of those comparisons reveal some interesting findings worth considering.

“It’s imperative that you’re constantly making sure that employees understand why they’re working there and why their jobs matter. Then they feel more attached and engaged in the business. Our job is that we work for 23,000 people every day. We’re all in this together.”

—Chris Cicchinelli, CEO and President, Pure Romance

Here are some top-line takeaways from the direct selling analysis:

• Engagement increased slightly for our channel, up from 56.7 percent last year to 57.8 this year. The average national engagement rate was 67.5 percent, and for the top three regions, 74.5 percent. The direct selling channel, then, has an opportunity to increase employee engagement.
  Compared to our previous year’s data, and national data from Best Places to Work companies across the board, benefits and culture are strengths associated with direct selling companies. More direct selling employees report that their employer-provided benefits meet their needs and their families’ needs (82 percent); their employer’s culture supports their health and well-being (83 percent); and that their immediate managers care about them as people (82 percent).
• Compared with last year’s data, our channel scores increased slightly in three areas: team dynamics (agreement with the statement “My immediate coworkers consistently go the extra mile to achieve great results,” which increased 3 percent); individual needs (“I am paid fairly,” which increased 2 percent); and personal engagement (“I find my job interesting and challenging,” which increased 1 percent).
• Compared to the Top 3 Regions benchmark and National benchmark, the direct selling channel is behind on employee recognition, understanding why organizations make changes when they do, and employees believing their opinions count at work.
• Compared to last year, the proportion of Highly Engaged employees increased, yet the proportion of Barely Engaged and Disengaged also slightly increased. This suggests that the direct selling channel may becoming more polarized—that is, the “middle ground” (Moderately Engaged, in this case) was pulled both up (to Highly Engaged) and down (to Dis- and Barely Engaged).
• Compared to last year, Trust in Leadership seems to have decreased the most. There’s lower favorability toward believing the organization will be successful in the future, trusting senior leadership to lead the organization to future success, and that senior leaders demonstrate integrity. This suggests that trust in leadership is an area of potential concern for our channel, and one that should be addressed before it becomes a larger issue.

Quantum’s 2017 Employee Engagement Trends Report aggregated employee survey responses from more than 500,000 employees at more than 8,700 organizations throughout the United States in 2015, including direct selling companies. The report revealed that employee engagement across all industries increased .7 percent from 2015 to 2016, recouping losses experienced during 2015. Further, the report identified three key challenges that lie ahead for industries across the board: The engagement gap between hourly and salaried employees grows; low engagement threatens retention; and failed change management puts engagement at risk.

“When we show we care for our employees’ growth and well-being, we develop and retain a caring team that works together toward growth.”

—Angela Loehr Chrysler, President and CEO, Team National

Employee Engagement Is an Evolutionary Process

Employee engagement isn’t a one-and-done initiative—especially for the direct selling channel, in which so many companies are relatively new and undergoing rapid change. As organizations add staff, their employee engagement philosophies evolve. Sometimes they need to make tweaks.

In the early days of growing a company, “all you’re trying to do is keep your head above water,” says Chris Cicchinelli, CEO and president of Pure Romance. “As the business grows and you add employees, some may not have the same drive as you do. Some may not be as attached.” He continues, “We went through periods when we asked, ‘Why aren’t these people getting it?’ We realized we needed to do better job of explaining who they’re helping, who they’re taking care of, and what our company mission is. They’re not just writing code; they’re helping a mom support her family. It’s imperative that you’re constantly making sure that employees understand why they’re working there and why their jobs matter. Then they feel more attached and engaged in the business. Our job is that we work for 23,000 people every day. We’re all in this together.”

As a company adds staff, it also becomes more logistically difficult for leadership to get in front of employees as much as they’d like, our executives say. At Scentsy, regular calls with executives and founders help ensure that the company’s growing employee base has the opportunity to hear directly from leadership. Employee engagement is a continuous process. “We haven’t arrived—we’ll always continue to improve,” says Richard Steel, Scentsy’s chief human resources officer.

“It’s more challenging to keep employees engaged because the online resources available now make it easier for employees to leave for another company if their needs aren’t met at their current jobs,” says Team National President and CEO Angela Loehr Chrysler. “We focus on the personal growth of each employee that feeds into the engagement levels of our company’s people. When we show we care for our employees’ growth and well-being, we develop and retain a caring team that works together toward growth.”

The ability to retain employees is where thoughtful and intentional employee engagement efforts can really pay off. While it may be easier than ever to lose an employee to a better offer, it’s also never been more expensive.

According to research conducted by Quantum Workplace, the average cost to hire an employee is at an all-time high of $4,129, and research shows that 33 percent of new hires will start looking for another job within their first six months at your organization. One in four will leave before they reach their one-year anniversary.

It should come as no surprise that employees who aren’t engaged are more likely to leave. If you were to take a look around your organization, how could you tell who’s engaged and who isn’t? It may be tempting to categorize your high-performers as your engaged employees and assume that employees who are “just dialing it in” are disengaged. But it’s more complicated than that.

In Gallup News article: “Talent Walks: Why Your Best Employees Are Leaving” (Jan. 25, 2018), reporter Ben Wigert reveals that “in our most recent work with organizations across various industries, we discovered something really interesting and somewhat unsettling: Highly talented employees who are not engaged were among those who had the highest turnover in each organization—on par with low talent, disengaged employees. In other words, when your best employees are not engaged, they are as likely to leave your organization as employees who tend to have performance issues and are unhappy.” And today, they have more choices than ever.

Given that employees are motivated by different factors, flexibility and personalization are important characteristics of any employee engagement initiative.

“You won’t accomplish anything with a one-size-fits-all approach, which means you need to dedicate more time to personalizing your engagement,” says Lewis of Jeunesse. “While that might not sound realistic, it’s critical as more of our workforce is dominated by millennials, who crave positive feedback. And within our companies, there are subcultures, meaning that those in marketing are different than those in IT, and those in sales are different than customer service. You have to know what engages those departments, and tailor your actions accordingly.”

“When we show we care for our employees’ growth and well-being, we develop and retain a caring team that works together toward growth.”

—Angela Loehr Chrysler, President and CEO, Team National

Steve Elder, COO of Xyngular, agrees. “How we connect with employees—how we communicate—happens in different ways,” he says. “We always want to provide clarity about our purpose and vision. We may think we’re communicating, but it may not resonate. Some people may want visuals. That’s our challenge. As we get larger, how to bring that vision as close to our employees as possible.”

High Employee Engagement

Among this year’s Best Places to Work in Direct Selling, we can identify some common contributors to high employee engagement, including:

ONBOARDING. As companies grow and add employees, it becomes more challenging to ensure the maintenance of their core values. That’s why onboarding is key. In less than seven years, the It Works! corporate staff grew from 58 employees to 207. Within the past year, the company established a formal onboarding program, including a mentorship component. Mentors are nominated by their managers and approved by the executive team. “The role of mentors is to teach employees about the It Works! way—our culture, values, expectations,” says Senior Marketing Director Kate Martin Carlson. “Over the years, we’ve had to be much more conscious about incorporating those elements as we’ve grown so quickly.”

STRONG CULTURE. As the Quantum Workplace survey indicates, culture is an area of distinct competitive advantage for the direct selling channel. Culture is defined as the pervasive character and personality of your organization—the sum of its values, behaviors, beliefs and attitudes. The more positive the culture, the stronger the engagement of employees. Steel of Scentsy sums it up perfectly: “When people drive into the parking lot, I want them to be excited.”

“People may think engagement is tied to how many parties or lunches we have, but that’s just window dressing for what our day-to-day culture is,” says Darren Jensen, CEO of LifeVantage. “It’s taking the time to give real thought to what the meaningful things are for your employee base.” As these executives suggest, employees need a “why” for their work, and while some say that’s especially true for younger demographics, having a sense of purpose is a strong motivator for employees of every age and background. That starts at the top. “The leadership of the company has to be crystal clear on vision, message and mission,” says Brant Wallace, senior vice president of resources and strategy at Zurvita. “When they’re interacting with someone—in customer service all the way to the executive vice president level—they have to be able to listen and take time to sow into that relationship. Then, they have to respond not from the standpoint of selling the mission, the vision, the goals, but really from a standpoint of how that goal, mission and vision apply to that employee. When I see that work, it works tremendously. When it doesn’t work, it leads to a misaligned and disengaged workforce that just wants to clock in, clock out and go home. They have to buy in to what leadership is saying, follow and bring others with them.”

SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES. The direct selling channel prides itself on a deep commitment to giving back. Each September, Scentsy holds an annual “Rock a Thon” near its Meridian, Idaho, headquarters to benefit a worthy cause. Last year, employees and members of the surrounding community filled 70 rocking chairs stationed on nearby Eagle Road. Local radio stations promoted the event, which culminated in a fireworks show. After 12 hours of rocking, the event raised $250,000 for a school for pregnant and parenting teens. Sometimes those efforts happen right at home. Approximately eight years ago, Nu Skin employees contributed to a voluntary fund established to help their fellow employees in need. To date, the fund has helped lighten the financial load for between 25 and 30 Nu Skin families facing medical issues. The company also sends a group of employees to Malawi, Africa, each year to work with local families on sustainability initiatives. Zurvita staff recently visited Puerto Rico, where they served meals to more than 3,000 people in one week. Across the board, direct selling companies embrace the opportunity to serve both locally and abroad.

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Direct selling is revered for its stories of personal and professional transformation in the field. Savvy companies are implanting similar offerings at home, giving employees exposure to training that develops and strengthens their direct selling knowledge and “softer” skill sets. Traits like resilience, perseverance, listening, empathy and other aspects of emotional intelligence may not be quantifiable. Nevertheless, they’re critical for success. Plexus is currently fine-tuning a series of curricula, which will be rolled out to almost every level within the company, says Mary Ann Luciano, vice president of learning and development. “Our CEO [Tarl Robinson] has said numerous times that he wants us to develop employees so they feel that while they’re at Plexus, they’ve been developed as well as we can possibly develop them. If and when they leave the company, we want them to take that Plexus development with them and know that we cared to provide development for them both as human beings and as potential leaders.”

At Nu Skin, where employees take advantage of such offerings as financial planning education, “We send a message to employees to spread their wings and fly,” says David Daines, senior vice president of global human resources at Nu Skin. “We’re trying to engage their whole lives, not just the time they spend here. If an employee leaves, we want them to be better than when they came.”

FUN. From theme park visits to sporting events, this year’s Best Places to Work in Direct Selling offer a lineup of events throughout the year for employees to downshift from their work and enjoy themselves. Every other Friday, Pure Romance employees enjoy “Drink Cart Friday.” Work stops at 3 p.m., and one department takes the lead, stocking the drink cart and passing through the building, encouraging employees to get out from behind their computers and connect with one another.

At It Works!, “We want people who are excited to come to work each day,” says CEO Mark Pentecost. “We want to have to ‘kick people out’ each night because they don’t want to go home—because they’re having fun.” The company’s waterfront corporate headquarters, Pentecost says, adds to that atmosphere of fun. “We chose our location to be a driver of the culture and environment we want to cultivate.”

Connection with salesforce. Relationships between employees and distributors are vitally important for several reasons: Distributors need to feel supported in their businesses, and employees need to understand the purpose behind their work. To that end, leading direct selling companies make a concerted effort to bring together employees and distributors in the same room. As members of the same team, they support each other, and everyone wins. Pure Romance, for example, holds periodic “town halls,” in which distributors come to the corporate office and share current challenges and opportunities with staff. Nu Skin offers a leadership program in which employees spend a day with a distributor in order to better understand their business. LifeVantage holds several large events throughout the year, and “we end up taking 60 to 70 percent of our employees with us to interact directly with the field,” Jensen says. In direct selling, companies place so much emphasis on products, promotions and distributors’ professional growth that it can be easy to lose sight of the development of employees. It’s a fine balance. “I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. It’s not an ‘or’; it’s an ‘and,’ ” Jensen adds. “If you can take care of a distributor force of thousands, you can take care of a few hundred employees.”

HARD NUMBERS. Many direct selling companies, including several of this year’s Best Places to Work, are conducting employee engagement surveys to determine where they can improve. Results may be broken down by department so that specific groups can examine their results and analyze year-over-year changes. For the best results, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recommends that organizations reach beyond surveys and facilitate conversations with staff, asking questions such as “What does it take to be successful here?” and “If there is one roadblock between the organization’s ideal culture and the way it really is, what is it?”

It’s clear that employee engagement is about much more than great salaries or benefits packages; it’s about quality of life. “This goes beyond financial reward and gain,” says Daines of Nu Skin. “In the general workforce, roughly one-third of employees do just enough not to get fired. At Nu Skin, engagement matters because we’re trying to change the world. How can we change the world if we have employees who aren’t giving everything they have?”

Methodology

Since 2010, Quantum has surveyed more than 8,000 organizations annually representing numerous industry sectors through the Best Places to Work Program. This year marks the third year that Quantum has surveyed the direct selling industry. The Best Places to Work Program survey utilizes the same 30 questions across six categories for all participants, regardless of industry. No single question is weighted more heavily than the others, although certain topics may be covered more frequently than others.

Six of the 30 questions on the survey are designed to quantify discretionary effort, intent to stay and advocacy for company. The other 24 questions measure workplace culture, identifying, for example, the kind of conditions under which employees are more likely to advocate for their employers.

The questions may be standard, but the results are highly individual. They shed light on what each company can do to retain their valued employees. And, as we examine the direct selling channel, those results suggest some patterns within our broader industry that merit discussion.

Room for Improvement

Returning to the direct selling channel’s areas of opportunity—including trust in leadership, employee recognition, understanding the rationale for organizational change, and employees believing their opinions count—here are some suggestions from Quantum Workplace for how to increase engagement:

Change management

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Provide multiple mechanisms for internal communication. Encourage and solicit input from employees throughout the change. Consider issuing “pulse” surveys for a quick and accurate read on engagement amidst organizational change.

Employee recognition
Provide flexible work hours and encourage flexible work locations. Consider unlimited vacation. Ask your employees “When are you at your best?” and “What’s draining your energy, and how can you do less of that?” This conversation can lead you toward opportunities to challenge motivated employees and work more efficiently. Send handwritten letters of gratitude for a job well done. Ask your employees how they like to be recognized. Match employee philanthropy giving.

Trust in leadership
When failure happens, don’t gloss over those moments. Instead, use them as opportunities. A leader who owns up to a bad decision shows vulnerability, which in turn can foster trust among employees. Consider releasing the company at noon the day before a holiday. Create a feedback-safe environment. Conduct quarterly teambuilding offsite. Ask employees for advice.

Click here to view the Honorees of the Best Places To Work In Direct Selling 2018

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