From Rice Fields To Buddy Lunches: What My Peace Corps Service Taught Me About the New Employee Experience (Part 3)
Part 3: Friendship
This is part three of a three part series on onboarding and the new employee experience. If you’re following along, we’ve covered the importance of communal eating, having a good guide, language, and mission (see Part 1 and Part 2). Last but not least, we’ll dive in deeper into the importance of establishing friendships at work.
Truth #5: Friendship is as important at work as it is at home.
Unlike the US workplace, which values a strict separation of work and life, Thais embrace mixing personal and professional matters. In fact, they outright demand it! I discovered this truth after trying to keep my Facebook private at the beginning of my stint as a volunteer. Despite my best efforts, I was soon found by all my co-workers and questioned as to why I hadn’t accepted their ‘friend’ requests. I learned that any attempts to keep my private life completely private were not only futile (I was one of a few non-Thais in town), but also politically ill-advised. Thais just didn’t seem to trust people who wanted to withhold their full selves.
This is obviously a tricky topic in our technologically advanced and invasive times. Boundaries are slowly disappearing in the US workplace as technology — and the younger generation’s decreasing interest in privacy — blur the lines between our personal and professional lives. As with my Thai colleagues, Millennials and Gen Z’ers increasingly want to show up at work as their “total selves.” Workplaces that don’t make at least some attempt to connect with their employees on a personal level will risk retaining only those employees who view work as just that — work — as opposed to their mission/calling. Additionally, Gallup found that having a “best friend at work” is one of the twelve key factors of employee retention. In other words, the deeper connection an employee feels at work, the more loyal they will be to the organization.
What to do: Encourage managers to learn what’s important to their employees outside of work and to check in on these subjects during regular 1:1s. Recognize birthdays and anniversaries, even if it’s just a simple note or email. Embed theses reminders into your formal onboarding program to help your managers remember the different dates — and to make your employees feel increasingly connected to and welcome at your company.
One Final Lesson: A Tree Grows in Thailand — A person’s true value sometimes takes a long time to measure.
I went back to Thailand earlier this year. It had been 3 years, but I wanted to see my village again — and of course to see “how I’d done.” Could my students still speak English, did my co-teachers still use games in the classroom, did the youth tour guide club still exist? I was hoping to see tangible confirmation that I’d been there — that I’d made a difference. I’m happy to report I did find some of the evidence I was looking for. The world map I’d painstakingly created with the students had finally been hung up in the gymnasium, villagers excitedly greeted me by my American name, and it was incredibly gratifying to run into old students who remembered some of the basic English I’d taught them.
However, I was much more struck by another encounter that came towards the end of my trip. I was visiting my old house and my former landlord greeted me warmly and took me on a tour of the home I’d lived in for almost two years. In the front yard she pointed out something I’d completely forgotten. It was a tree I’d planted when it was only a foot high that now stood over 5 feet tall! She told me that she called it “Jen’s tree” and that every time she watered it she thought of me. It was less the words she said, than how she said it. She was proud and thankful. Proud that I’d been her tenant, that I’d lived in their town; and thankful that I’d cared enough to “plant roots” and invest in their community and in her house, even though I knew I was ultimately going to leave. I was really humbled. I’d barely remembered planting the tree. So, once again, Thailand teaches me a profound lesson. In our quest to measure ourselves and others based on what we do, we often miss how we make the people around us feel — and don’t acknowledge that this FEEL factor is equally responsible for our “success.”
I know I’ll never forget how the people I met in Thailand made me feel — welcomed, cared for, valued. And it was both humbling and uplifting for me to recognize that I’d played a small role in helping them feel good, too.
Like Peace Corps volunteers, most employees are doing two year tours. In fact, for Millennials the average “tour of duty” is closer to 18 months. This signals a fundamental shift in the way we must approach the employee experience: instead of focusing on retention, we’ll need to focus on employee engagement. After all, engagement is a leading indicator of how someone will perform over the long haul, and how much quality time, energy, and focus your employee is willing to invest while working at your organization. Moreover, employees who are fulfilled, cared for, and engaged employees are like planted seeds whose last value we may not see for a time, but which continue to grow and strengthen over time. A thoughtful employee experience creates lifelong brand advocates whose contributions to you and your company can outlive even their tenure with you.
And that’s how trees grow even after we’re gone.
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Jennifer is the Lead Content Writer and consultant for Yoi Corp, an employee success platform that uses behavioral science and decision-making algorithms to drive workforce performance and engagement. At Yoi, she uses her background in employee engagement, strengths-based coaching, and culture change to help enterprises create exceptional experiences for their new hires.
