What we learned about Employee Experience from a Futurist, an AI innovator and talent leaders
Last week, I joined a knock-out event on Employee Experience hosted by our friends at Benefex.
From the vivid visionaries to the people practitioners, it was an event packed with ideas and a room buzzing with people looking to make positive change in their organisations.
I came away inspired and, as I leafed through the many pages of notes I’d made, I wanted to capture some of my highlights and takeaways from the event:
What do we mean by employee experience, anyway?
The event kicked off with Matt Macri-Waller, CEO of Benefex, sharing his perspective on the ‘employee experience’ as a series of loops that determine the interactions an employee has with their organisation. It reminded me of this definition:
“Every company is on a journey. It has a history, a vision of where it wants to get to in the future and set of present challenges, opportunities, strategies and ways of working that define its present reality.
Everyone who works for a company is also on their own personal journey. They have their own past experiences, hopes for future and current preoccupations. At thousands and thousands of touch-points these journeys interact.
For us, employee experience is about making these interactions work for both the employee and the organisation.”
Interactions at work are competing with a million other interactions. Forget the war for talent, Matt makes the case that we’re in the war for attention. With the average person scrolling 300 feet of social media content daily, we (as product/service/experience providers) are in competition with Facebook, BBC news, Candy Crush and more.
Individuals’ experience as consumers is increasingly shaping expectations of their experience at work. Yet, given that most established companies are built on 19th century management practices, breaking the mould will be challenging. Matt warns that, when when shaping employee experience:
One size won’t fit all. Companies must be clear on what makes them unique.
It’s not about copying the latest trend from Google or Silicon Valley, but about shaping an employee experience that is true to the context, mission and values of the organisation. People can sense inauthentic a mile off.
What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?
According to James Wallman (futurist and author of Stuffocation) we are now in The Experience Economy.
You don’t see people posting photos of their new car and shiny watch on Instagram. You’re much more likely to see photos from Secret Cinema, the latest Escape Room or the recent Tough Mudder-esque obstacle course.
‘Things’ aren’t cool anymore. Experiences are.
In a world where people are more likely to share their ‘company getaway in the Alps’ than an impressive bonus, what does this mean for how we design employee experiences?
The Happy Startup School is one example of how this is manifesting in the workplace, where they run retreats for entrepreneurs seeking experiences over traditional conferences or training.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how companies can better help their people learn, grow and develop, this got my cogs turning. How might we deliver genuinely valuable development experiences for people at work? How might we enable experiences for people at all levels in an organisation?
It’s more interesting to ask, what’s not going to change in the next 10 years? — Jeff Bezos
It’s likely that what’s not going to change is that at work people will crave achievement, recognition and interesting work. Even with radical transformations to the world of work, those fulfil basic human needs to feel important, valued and challenged.
There are interesting examples of how companies are elevating the importance of their employee experience. Adobe, apparently, have brought together their CX (customer experience) and EX (employee experience) teams and have been recognised by HBR for their people practices.
Here’s what happens when you choose to be different, not just better.
Ade Cheatham and April Bembridge from shared the story of how PFK Cooper Parry differentiates themselves from other accountancy firms through their employee experience.
From their neon pink branding to their pinball machines in the office, they look about as far from a traditional accountancy firm as you can imagine. As one of the fastest growing accountancy firms in the country, they demonstrate the value associated with being different, not just better.
Most interesting were their examples of the structures in place that facilitate the culture, values and behaviours. There’s an email curfew after 7pm to actively discourage late night emails, there are family days to help people to connect their home lives with work and there’s the school-like ‘houses’ that create a sense of micro-community within the firm.
PFK Cooper Parry have big ambitions — they’re shooting for the Sunday Times Top 100 employer top spot and further growth plans —yet it sounds like they are already winning in terms of employee experience.
Yes, AI is exciting. But progress is about humans, not machines.
Pete Trainor’s talk was rammed with inspiring stories and scribble-worthy anecdotes. He made the case that, while it is an exciting time in the evolution of automation and AI, it’s time for technology to get out of the way:
Progress is made by the improvement of people, not machines.
At his company, Us AI, they have prototyped AI chatbot technology designed to help people who might be suffering with mental health challenges. Their research indicates that people were more open when they knew it was a machine responding to them via a both, than a human on the other end.
BUT machines can’t fix everything. As Pete rightly points out:
Machines can’t ask if you’re ok and offer to chat over a coffee.
Human interaction. Humans helping humans. AI won’t replace that.
This is certainly a finding that we can echo at GroHappy, where we’ve seen that people are likely to be open and honest in a safe, online space. The key is asking better questions that empower people to come to their own answers.
When it comes to employee experience, Pete points out that:
Every human is on a journey that you know nothing about.
Companies must recognise that whatever employee experience they design and implement — each individual will be interacting with it in a totally unique way, depending on their personal journey.
Create communities, not companies.
Andy Swann — author of The Human Workplace- brought a bundle of energy to the afternoon of the event.
Andy argues that we should build communities, not just companies. In a world where the lines between employees, customers, alumni, investors (and more) are increasingly blurred, it makes more sense to build communities rather than be constrained by the rigid borders of a ‘company’.
This echoes The Alliance where LinkedIn Founder & Chairman, Reid Hoffman, talks about the importance of managing the experience of those who leave the firm for they can be your biggest advocates, or indeed, detractors. It also rings true of Seth Godin’s Tribes.
Andy shared the idea that:
CEO = Chief Experience Officer
… and that organisations should get out of the goddamn way and allow their users (employees) to do what they know is best.
Talking about millennials isn’t helpful.
Ange Pattico from fast growing company, MVF, tackled the hot topic of millennials.
In rebuttal to Simon Sinek’s internet-breaking talk on millennials, Ange made the case that millennial stereotypes are often based on statistically shaky ground and that generalisations about how to manage millennials can be unhelpful.
Millennials may be more tech savvy and more individually expressive, but they want the same things from work.
Ange shared video clips of millennials from MVF — one of whom is in the C-suite- to showcase their perspective on the millennial stereotypes and their personal motivations at work.
When asked what they most value at work, the words that I noticed cropped up the most?:
Learn | Grow | Progress | Achieve
These were just some of the highlights of the event — there were many other brilliant panellists, inspiring speakers and conversations over coffee.
3 themes that weaved through the event…
Had I been keeping count, I would bet would be that the most frequently mentioned words/themes were:
- Human
- Authenticity
- Community
Might these provide the foundations for great employee experience? If so, perhaps we should be challenging ourselves to ask these questions of our employee experience:
- How might we create exceptional experiences for the wonderful humans (not resources) in our organisations?
- How might we make our employee experience authentic to our organisational context, mission and values?
- How might we build community and belonging into our employee experience?
Thank you to Benefex for a truly standout event. Will be keeping eyes peeled for the next one.
