Eat in deli: brunch Photo by Yong Chuan on Unsplash

About a month ago, I received a LinkedIn message from someone in Germany. Turns out, this individual was coming to the US on business and wanted to get together with a group of others working in employee experience. By the time he arrived, ten people in the NYC area that had agreed to meet for brunch. Three of us actually showed up. I think we were all glad that we did!

Our group was composed of corporate, startup, and consulting professionals working in employee experience. We spent the 2 hours discussing various topics. Below are some of the takeaways from our meeting:

 

Nobody understands what we do

There was a collective agreement that not even our parents understand what we do in our work. Sigh.

 

What is employee experience?

Like employee engagement, there is no single, widely-accepted definition of employee experience. That means it is open to interpretation. For us, it is a composite of the many interactions an employee has within a company across the employee lifecycle.

 

Co-opt of terminology

We all agreed that it is frustrating when companies try to hop on the employee experience bandwagon when they don’t actually understand the concept.  In NYC, we are seeing many roles titled as Employee Experience Manager that are actually just Office Manager roles.

 

Surveys

Surveys can be helpful if they are developed and administered correctly. Most survey work involves sampling a larger population. With employee engagement, there are no samples since the entire population is known. Yet, companies choose to include only the feedback of those who respond to the survey. Non-respondents should be included as well and they should be coded at the lowest level on every question because they are clearly disengaged, i.e., don’t care enough to complete the survey. Even if a company is surveying just a sample of its population, the same principle holds since you know there is a finite group that was asked to participate.  In the end, this skews all employee engagement survey toward a result that shows higher engagement scores than there actually are.

We also discussed building trust before administering any survey. There is enough information to point practitioners toward actions that are universally important to employees. If companies can demonstrate that they are actively trying to make improvements, they’ll build trust that will lead to more open and honest feedback when surveys are used.

 

Workplace design

Companies are beginning to consider how their employees use their office space and others, like Steelcase, are providing the research to help companies develop more engaging workplaces.

 

Mindfulness and Wellbeing

While workplace design is part of this, we talked more holistically about how mindfulness and wellbeing are beginning to gain traction. Companies should encourage their employees to develop more than just their technical skills. Human skills like collaboration, compassion, empathy, adaptability, etc. are becoming more and more important. Emotional intelligence, sleep, exercise, and nutrition are becoming more recognized as areas where companies can contribute to employee development.

 

Company Cultures  

Change is much harder in established cultures. Duh! The ultimate goal is to never get to an established culture and to become a constantly developing one. In larger companies, that means starting small, showing the impact, and then slowly bringing other areas of the company onboard.

Developing cultures also have challenges. Acquisitions, mergers, customers, shareholders, etc. all have impacts so company culture must always be top-of-mind.

 

Biggest influence on employee experience

Direct managers have the biggest impact on employee experience/employee engagement.  Companies should revisit those in management roles and determine if they have the skills to be successful in their roles.  Most likely, they’ll identify many people are in the wrong role and, as a result, are negatively impacting the company, their direct reports, and even themselves.

Companies need to create alternative career paths that allow individual contributors to grow within the company without having to take on managerial responsibilities.

 

How do you go about learning more about employee experience?

The group talked about the books, magazines, and blogs they are reading, the events and conferences in which they participate.

 

What is top of mind right now?

Blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning were mentioned.  How will these be integrated into the workplace? Amazon, Google, Apple, and IBM are ranked as the highest collectors of data. Amazon effectively targets its customers based on the data it collects. How will these companies influence the collection of workplace data for use in improving employee experience?

 

Germany group vs. US group

As I mentioned, our organizer works in Germany currently. He noticed differences in how German and US participants approached the conversations. The Germans brought and discussed detailed frameworks and theories. The US group was much more practical in its discussions.

 

What’s Next?

Our time together went too quickly. It was refreshing to talk with people who “get it” when it comes to the work we do. Our experience started with one person deciding to reach out to other like-minded individuals. Try it for yourself and see what happens. If that is too daunting, reach out to me. I’d welcome the opportunity to connect with anyone who is interested in employee experience.

 

 

Photo by Yong Chuan on Unsplash

 

What do you want others to know about employee experience?  In what ways is your company focusing on employee experience?

 

 

Let’s Engage! 

I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

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