Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

la symétrie des attentions

English translation:

if you look after your employees, they'll look after your customers

Added to glossary by philgoddard
Feb 2, 2015 14:28
9 yrs ago
21 viewers *
French term

la symétrie des attentions

French to English Bus/Financial Management human resources management
In a very short document about the founder of a company.
This is the sentence: "La société [a] l’ambition d’asseoir son développement sur des pratiques de management innovantes, reposant sur ***la symétrie des attentions***."
I understand this to be a style of management based on the belief that well cared-for staff will take equally good care of clients, but I can't the equivalent EN phrase, which I suppose I'm assuming does exist.
It's rather urgent...
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Change log

Feb 4, 2015 20:56: philgoddard Created KOG entry

Discussion

Jackie Doble Feb 26, 2015:
Employee Customer Profit Chain Theory I am adding this much later for those who are searching on this topic: See the Wikipedia entry on this: it appears to the right translation
philgoddard Feb 2, 2015:
I would have thought "Employees first, customers second" could be misinterpreted as meaning employees are more important than customers.
Victoria Britten (asker) Feb 2, 2015:
@Philippa & Phil Philippa - Thanks very much: am pursuing frantically...
Phil - I initially thought my version was too clunky, but with your encouragement am maybe changing my mind, since there really doesn't seem to be a standard English translation. Thanks!
philgoddard Feb 2, 2015:
Or If you look after your staff, they will look after your customers.
philgoddard Feb 2, 2015:
Victoria Your interpretation is correct, so you've answered your own question. In fact your suggestion is good because it repeats the idea of "care for", and is therefore "symmetrical".
Philippa Smith Feb 2, 2015:
Victoria, if you haven't already seen it, this link describes the approach:
http://www.journaldunet.com/management/expert/58066/la-symet...
and mentions the English-language book that adopted it, Employees First, Customers Second; maybe a quick bit of research on the book will give you the English equivalent...(sorry, on major deadline myself so can't go any further!)

Proposed translations

+3
3 hrs
Selected

if you look after your employees, they'll look after your customers

I don't think you should attempt a literal translation - it doesn't work. We're not looking for some clever piece of marketing jargon, just something that all readers will instantly understand.

'Le concept de "symétrie des attentions" postule que la qualité de la relation entre une entreprise et ses clients est égale à la qualité de la relation de cette entreprise avec ses propres collaborateurs.'
Peer comment(s):

agree Yolanda Broad
1 min
agree ormiston
6 mins
neutral DLyons : The term warrants a TN, and this would work well in that.
1 hr
What's a TN?
agree Nikki Scott-Despaigne : = "engaged employees, satisfied customers"? See reference section. Zut! Scratched my ref post. I'll redo it.
1 day 7 hrs
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "In the end - thanks to your encouragement in the discussion box - I went with something very similar to what I'd written as my interpretation. Many thanks for your thoughts."
19 mins

symmetry of attention

Lots of hits.

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Note added at 21 mins (2015-02-02 14:49:34 GMT)
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Well maybe not lots, but enough to suggest it :-)
Note from asker:
Thanks!
Peer comment(s):

neutral Philippa Smith : I only get 18 ghits, not enough I'd say...
13 mins
Thanks Phillipa. And quite a few of those relate to something else entirely. But I don't know that there's an established term
neutral philgoddard : I don't think people will understand this.
1 hr
Thanks Phil. It's marketing speak, they probably aren't meant to.
Something went wrong...
1 hr

symmetric attention

I found a few occurences of this (more literal) translation in a context similar to the one you describe.

... This chapter seeks to advance the study of the imaginaries that structure cultural tourism by arguing for symmetric attention to perspectives of tourists ...

... A unique feature of this study is the symmetric attention to the manu- facturing and non-manufacturing sectors. ....
Example sentence:

The requirement of symmetric attention implies that any path- connected agents are strongly connected, which is a way of guaranteeing that beliefs reach an

However, even in the case of symmetric technologies across tasks, there exists an optimal asymmetric attention allocation across tasks when there are increasing returns to scale to monitoring.

Note from asker:
Thanks, Ana!
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4 hrs

a reciprocity deal with its employees

My take on this tricky concept
Note from asker:
Nice idea.
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Reference comments

1 day 11 hrs
Reference:

symmetry of attention ; engaged employees, satisfied customers

Hmmm. It may be an appropriate option; <I>the appropriate option? There are 132,000 Ghits for it, but without looking too far, they are indeed rather thin on the ground. A number of the sources are of French inspiration also, which kind of knocks any EN authenticity leads on the head.

1 - http://www.favorangels.com/change-the-new-permanent-state/

"Co-development model came from Canada, is another of these tracks. He enrolled again in the new participatory management practices. Under a "symmetry of attention," it is estimated that if the manager wants to serve the client, it must start with good care of its employees . In other words, if the manager is not listening to his troops, he can not expect that they behave differently. This is, again, a form of exploitation of the individual as a thinking and active person, capable of taking initiatives connected to its environment. Before, the manager was developing a strategy and was applied.
Since, time is compressed and the manager must continue to define the outline of its strategy but delegating some of its powers to its teams to better adherence to the aims of the group. "


2 - http://groupamaconvention.com/agenda-of-the-convention/

The guy speaking at the conference is French. ALong with "symmetry of attention" the expression "engaged employees, satisfied customers" is also given. I quite like that!




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Note added at 1 day11 hrs (2015-02-04 01:54:09 GMT)
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http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1705/17050890.htm

Michel Camdessus, outgoing Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

The behaviour of the borrowers, in turn, was determined by a complex of factors, though Akyuz does not think that an absence of regulation was the central issue. Before the outbreak of the crisis, many of the features of the regulatory framework in the A sian region were seen as factors underlying the economic miracle, he points out.

UNCTAD's view of the Asian crisis, in short, is very different from that of the Bretton Woods twins, and the key difference lies in symmetry of attention. While the IMF and the World Bank tend to pass over the behaviour of the international banks and fin ancial institutions, UNCTAD views them as key agents. UNCTAD, for instance, has drawn attention to the changing pattern of behaviour of international banks, each mutation corresponding to a particular phase in the growth of global financial instability.
Note from asker:
Thanks, Nikki.
Something went wrong...
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