For those of you old enough to remember that song, it’s one of those songs that sticks in your head for days.  If you are currently humming it to yourself, I’m very sorry, it will stick around until at least Thursday.

It also was the music for my favorite ride at Kings Island when I was a kid living in Cincinnati.  It wasn’t a great ride, however it was the only ride at the whole amusement park that was air-conditioned, a must when temperatures were near 100 degrees in the shade…  you do what you have to!

Anyways…

I’m still on a little high after my opening and closing keynote at the 5th International Compensation and Benefits Conference here in Mexico City.  Although I have to admit I was a little nervous right before my first speech, I received confirmation from the audience who laughed when they should have, were concerned when it made sense, and gave me the appropriate “head-nods” when I said something smart or snarky.

Although the employment situation down here in Mexico is different than it is in the States (I sound like a ex-pat), you can still find companies who understand the 4 R’s of Workforce Engagement.  One of those folks was Adib Estefan Guitierrez, Director Compensacion Total.  For those of you like me, let’s call it “language deficient”, I called him Stefan, and he is Director of Compensation for Scotiabank, one of the fastest growing banks here in Mexico.

He and I had a very nice conversation prior to my closing keynote (playing the hold’em game with about 125 human resource professionals).  We talked at length about the importance of training supervisors and managers as “engagement agents”, due to their ability to “make or break” the attitudes and actions of their staff.  He was interested to learn how supervisors and front-line managers have the lowest level of engagement in my latest national benchmark, and wondered why U.S. businesses didn’t do more to improve it.

“Marc, do companies understand how important supervisors are to customer satisfaction?” he asked.  “And if not, what kind of training do they get after they are promoted”.   I told Stefan that in many U.S. industries, especially retail, many supervisors and managers are promoted from within, they were “great on the floor” and were therefore first in line for advancement opportunities.  However the training they received was “how to manage processes”, and very little training went into how to “manage people”.  Stefan indicated the same was true in many companies and industries in Mexico, however Scotiabank was going the opposite way.  Since they were expanding their presence in the country (both in numbers of employees and branches), resources were being spent of attracting, training, motivating, and retaining staff, especially at the supervisor and management levels.

Due to layoffs in many of his competitors (including Citibank), highly qualified employees are available to his organization in larger numbers than in the past.  This his given him a unique competitive advantage at a time when many of his competitors are in flux.  Stefan liked one of my comments made during both the opening and closing keynotes here in Mexico City:

You have to train your employees so they can leave, or else they’ll leave.

It is a small world, after all.