Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #28: The Great Employee Experience Debate

Transcript

Reality Bytes #28: The Great Employee Experience Debate · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Let's get into it everyone. I'm very excited about this episode of reality
0:13
bites. We've been we've been talking about it in the chat and it's shaping
0:18
up into something like the Great Employee Experience Debate. Although I don't think we're
0:25
going to be so much debating with one another on this panel today so much
0:30
as debating with external perspectives. But a little bit of a scene setting first,
0:37
you know, as we're all more unaware. Of course, the pandemic
0:42
saw an explosion of genuine employee power simply because the Great Resignation created a circumstance
0:49
where there was incredible amounts of competition for skilled workers. Simultaneously, you had
0:58
the the sort of whole employee experience space was was simultaneously growing and gaining increasing
1:04
amounts of influence, as was the Deck space, something we typically cover on
1:08
the show, And all of these things seem to seem to come together into
1:12
something like a perfect storm. Now we're going to be looking at today where
1:19
employee experience goes next, and where it is right now, what its future
1:23
is, what its future looks like, and we're also going to be considering,
1:27
as I've mentioned, some of the critics of employee experience and of the
1:33
phenomenon of employee power that came to the four over the last couple of years.
1:38
But first of all, going to welcome today's reality by its team.
1:42
We've got Sean, Oriana and Megan with us today, and I'd like to
1:47
start everybody by going one by one and asking you your personal idea of what
1:55
good employee experience looks like to you, and let's with you Ariana if we
2:00
can't. I'm so glad that you're starting with this question because it's something that
2:06
I was thinking about a lot as we were sort of bouncing around this topic,
2:09
and one of the things that popped into my mind was, and I'm
2:14
going to do the unforgivable. I'm going to coin a term nice, nice,
2:17
very forgivable encourageble. I think the thing that came into my mind is
2:23
the difference between decks and decks washing. When I say deckswashing, I'm thinking
2:29
about things like greenwashing, right Like, you go into the store, you
2:30
so fifty types of like eco friendly cleaner, and you're like, are these
2:36
actually eco friendly? And I think with decks, you can have sort of
2:38
a similar phenomenon, where you know, companies are doing all this amazing stuff
2:45
to try and attract great talent, retain great talent, create good experiences,
2:51
and sometimes there seems to be a bit of a disconnect, right. I
2:54
think the thing that stands out to me is, you know, there's no
2:58
amount of meditation rooms that will cancel out the damage of commuting three hours a
3:06
day, right that you can't meditate that a way. So I think what
3:10
creates a really good, meaningful experience is sometimes not getting distracted by fancy bells
3:17
and whistles, And to me, that could be something in the technology space,
3:21
which is where we focus. Of course, I'm reminded of the popularity
3:24
of jam boards and how I remember actually when I was a student in school,
3:31
these high tech boards suddenly showing up, but nobody knew how to use
3:35
them. They were very difficult to maintain. And then when I got to
3:38
the corporate world, I suddenly had access to some of these fancy boards again,
3:45
and again they often didn't get used. People didn't know how to use
3:47
them, people didn't know how to collaborate effectively on these, whereas other things
3:53
like a stable zoom connection made such a huge difference in terms of really great,
3:58
meaningful collaboration. Stable zoom connection might not be as sexy as a jamboard,
4:02
but that's good. Decks and what did you say? Did you say
4:08
decks washing or X washing isn't just experience washing sort of experience experience? Yeah,
4:15
I mean I think it goes either way. So I try to bring
4:18
it back to the digital side because I think it might be easier to see
4:21
on the employee experience side with you know, bean bag chairs don't create work
4:29
life balance. But on the technology side, I do think it's that tradeoff
4:32
of where do we invest our time, our effort, our resources, and
4:38
making sure that we are choosing to focus on things that are really meaningful,
4:42
like maybe investing more in support right, like do we have well trained,
4:47
experienced support technicians that can fix issues versus do we have a fancy, I
4:56
don't know support bar that looks really SNA see that it's all chat ai and
5:01
you can't get to a human when you need it. Totally. I gotta
5:05
I gotta say, Arianavid, it's a question of great minds thinking alike.
5:09
Because I have heard the term dex washing before. I love it, but
5:14
I only heard it a few weeks ago, you know, so I think
5:16
it's you know, it's like it's one of those it's one of those things
5:20
where like a few people think of something at the same time, you know,
5:24
they all, you know, everyone invents, you know, events,
5:27
something it's required, and in this case a term. So thank you for
5:30
that wonderfully strong start. Arianava as excellent and let's go next to you,
5:34
Sean and fascinated to hear your idea of good employee experience. Sure, I
5:40
think my idea is probably a little bit more simple. Honestly, just when
5:45
you're in a place and you're just treated like an adult. That sounds very
5:49
easy to know, but I think we've all probably had previous jobs of that
5:53
maybe wasn't the case. So for sure, having good relationships with your colleagues
5:57
in a polite and cordial environment, or people are just trying to solve problems
6:00
and put their egos aside, I think it's first and foremost. But there's
6:03
several other things having respect in the job, and we can go down the
6:09
line, but for me, that would be the top one. That's pretty
6:12
good. When when I think, I think I'll just chime in with Myron.
6:15
I think that when I think back on my career, you know,
6:17
I'm forty one, so a couple of decades in the workforce, right,
6:21
the only ones that stand out to me negatively is when I'm like reporting directly
6:26
to somebody on the verge of sociopathy, and when I look back and I'm
6:30
on my cup that was really horrible and hard. Just about anything else is
6:34
fine with me, which is perhaps a bit of a low bar. I
6:36
should maybe have higher, higher expectations, Megan, what about yourself. I
6:42
hope you don't report to a sociopath, Megan, I should say first,
6:44
you know, I think I might actually not the joke here being that I
6:48
report to Tom. She couldn't say, but yeah. So, I feel
6:56
like my take on employee experience is also like the crux of the entire argument
6:59
that I've come on this episode today really jones into make but we'll start at
7:03
the end. I feel like kind of similar to what Sean had to say,
7:08
and I think it ties into what Oriana had to say too. I
7:10
think good employee experience is when you show up to work and you feel valued
7:14
and respected, and I think that's all it is, and it boils down
7:16
to that, and if our company is focusing on other employee experienced things that
7:20
don't tie back to making that employee feel valued and respected as an equal human,
7:28
then it's unnecessary and it's the employee can probably see right through it.
7:32
At least that's how I feel, very very well said everyone. So I'm
7:38
just going to update the audience and what we had going on a little bit
7:42
in the chat and the lead up to this show. Because last year,
7:46
necessary earlier this year recorded Tim and I actually it was just me for once
7:50
recorded a really good discussion, a really interesting discussion with Jacob Morgan. If
7:56
you don't know Jacob Morgan, he's really one of the leading voice in the
8:00
entire employee experienced space. We were delighted to have him on the show and
8:05
you know, expected him to really kind of sing praises for the period I
8:11
just described of for the pandemic and what it did specifically of course for employee
8:16
empowerment, richness of employee experience, new employee experienced tools and technologies, etc.
8:22
Etc. But Jacob came out with a very very hot take and a
8:26
very surprising one given his specific area of expertise, excuse me, which was
8:31
that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, and that due
8:37
to all of the sort of the bells and whistles of these employee experienced packages,
8:41
due to all of the competition for talent created by the Great resignation,
8:46
I guess I could paraphrase him not unfairly by saying people had become employees,
8:52
have started to take their jobs a little bit. For granted, had started
8:56
to go to sleep at the wheel a little bit. But he was hearing
8:58
this from the c eos he spoke to, and it was it was.
9:03
It was certainly an interesting and provocative discussion. So I made perhaps some mistake
9:07
of sharing it in the chat to see what everybody thought of this point of
9:11
view. And it's fair to say that it elicited some contrary perspectives on this
9:16
idea of the pendulum having gone too far. And I think the way everybody's
9:20
already set out their ideal, their respective ideals of employee experience perhaps point to
9:24
precisely where we're getting to. But let's hear from you first, Megan on
9:30
that front. You listen to Jacob's point of view, and what did it
9:33
bring into focus for you? And where do you see the last few years
9:39
in contradistinction to him. Sure, sure, So okay, First, I
9:43
want to say in case, in case he's listening, like full respect,
9:46
and I don't think the perspective I'm about to share, I mean to share
9:50
it in the spirit of debate. And also I think, you know,
9:56
his point was kind of he speaks to a lot of CEOs and he thinks
9:58
that essentially employees are demanding too much, while at the same time, right,
10:03
they don't want to work anymore, they don't want to come into work,
10:05
they want to work remote, they want to work fewer hours, et
10:07
cetera, et cetera. And I think this is a take that we're seeing
10:11
a lot of, at least I am, and I go online and I
10:15
go on LinkedIn or whatever. You see this. CEOs say they believe everyone's
10:20
going to be back in the office. CEOs think that remote work was a
10:22
fail. CEOs think, you know, employees want to make too much money.
10:26
And I've got to say that I like fundamentally disagree. And I think
10:31
over the last year, I think we've seen kind of the corporate embodiment of
10:37
this point of view, Like I've seen kind of a backlash on where you
10:41
hear about like quiet quitting, and I think that there has been this kind
10:46
of backswing, and that's what employees are frustrated about, because again, I
10:50
think it boils down to that sense of wanting to feel respected and valued.
10:54
When if you look at like the pandemic, right, it was obviously this
10:58
massive societal you set so much larger than your job. All of a sudden,
11:03
there was this thing that came out of nowhere that we had no control
11:05
over that was literally killing people, and you kind of had to look around
11:09
and be like, Okay, what am I doing with my day to day
11:11
life? And I think it there were always those of us who questioned the
11:16
value of work and we're willing to kind of see that life was bigger than
11:20
work. But I think there was a lot of people, especially in America,
11:22
but maybe across the globe. There's a culture of you know, I
11:26
go to work, I work really hard, I earn a paycheck, and
11:28
I you know, that's my life and I'm not going to question that I'm
11:31
going to commute in every day. And I think that the pandemic forced even
11:35
those people to see like, oh hey wait, I actually can get my
11:37
job done from my house and I'm getting my job done really well, and
11:41
I'm still talking to my colleagues, and yeah, I wish I could maybe
11:45
see them once a month before I get together or something. But otherwise,
11:50
like, I'm getting my job done. And so now that you're being sort
11:52
of told no, you have to you have to commute again, you have
11:56
to sit in your car from ninety minutes in both directions, it feels like
12:01
why, you know, like, if we are saying we want to be
12:05
a data driven society, why do I need to sit in my car for
12:09
ninety minutes each way so that I can do my work that I can do
12:11
just fine from my desk at home. And when I do it at home,
12:15
you know, I can be there or my kid gets off the school
12:16
bus. I can take my kid to school in the morning. I can
12:20
go for a bike ride if it's a nice day, like I can live
12:22
my life. So I think that that boils down to that wanting to feel
12:26
respected. But a question for you and Megan based of that, just because
12:31
you mentioned remote work a few times there, how do you perceive the current
12:35
trend a lot of companies of bringing people back to the office, Because I
12:39
personally I look at it as a you know, the remote work explosion was
12:45
very much an explosion, and it was very much unprecedented and pretty much overnight,
12:50
it deconstructed our sense of where we had to work and where we had
12:52
to be to do our jobs, and what the workplace even was. I
12:58
kind of see this period, this post pandemic period, as a reaction to
13:03
that very sudden change. But my expectation is that things are only going to
13:09
go in one direction from this point, which is back towards more dispersed remote
13:16
work, more freedom about where you work. You know. I see that
13:18
as inevitable, and I see this kind of reaction to it is just that
13:24
like a temporary recoil, if you will, Where do you think it's going
13:28
to go? And how do you analyze that? Yeah, I think I
13:33
agree with that. My partner's company, for example, is toying currently they're
13:39
still fully remote. They moved out of their office space in the pandemic.
13:43
They're toying with the idea of having once a month get together, so renting
13:48
out a space just to go and visit, you know, at a co
13:50
working space once a month. And I think that's an interesting approach because maybe
13:52
people don't need to see each other every week. Maybe people don't need to
13:56
see each other, you know, twice a day. But I do think
13:58
there's value and seeing each other face to face. But I think there are
14:01
also value in understanding why employees want this remote work. But I do think
14:09
that the remote work thing, obviously, I don't know if it's it's not
14:13
on equal standing with the salary thing of feeling valued. And it looks like
14:18
Orion it might have a follow up to my comment about people being motivated.
14:24
Let's let's let's hear it. Or so I actually had two thoughts. But
14:28
you know, you were asking about the motivation thing. And there's this great
14:33
meme that made the rounds on Twitter about how this fear of people don't want
14:39
to work anymore is something that's been cited over and over and over again over
14:45
many different years. And I had actually just read a book about the Great
14:50
Depression, and that was one of the concerns, right, like, oh,
14:54
if we if we give people food, they're not going to want to
14:56
work. So this is something that has been sort of intention in conversations about
15:03
policy for pretty much forever. So I think I'm not super concerned about that
15:11
being like this this new phenomenon, but rather this idea of you know,
15:16
how do we motivate people in ways that drive business forward without allowing for say,
15:22
exploitation, And I think the the answer is a lot more complicated than
15:26
an individual company's text policy or ex policy or work from home policy. Right.
15:31
I think it's this sort of bigger question about ideology and the the flip
15:39
side of that is one of the things that I'm glad Megan mentioned is,
15:43
you know, having time for your family at home, because one of the
15:46
things that doesn't get talked about a lot, except in spaces that are really
15:50
dedicated specifically to gender equity, is the fact that the burden of balancing work
15:58
and life falls just proportionately on different people. Right. If if you have
16:03
kids at home, which several of our contributors on this podcast do, then
16:10
it makes a big difference, you know, if you're home in time to
16:11
make them a healthy dinner, if you are there to put them on school
16:15
bus and make them a lunchbox in the morning. Right, Like, all
16:19
of us have different competing things going on in our lives, but to people
16:25
who do have more home responsibilities that does It's not that you know you don't
16:30
want to work. It's that potentially I can do more work if I'm not
16:34
trying to squeeze in other life things around it and struggling to do things like
16:41
cook a healthy dinner around my job. Definitely, and you have an interesting
16:45
perspective, very own. I know you you're German by upbringing, is that
16:51
right? And obviously very very different kind of social welfare policies in Germany as
16:59
against the US, very different kind of ideological traditions and outlooks with regards to
17:04
care and society and the effect of sort of support net, if you will.
17:11
What perspective does that give you on this issue? Do you think when
17:15
you contrast the two work cultures and the different forms of employee experience that grow
17:19
within them. It's so funny that US lepas actually had one of my colleagues
17:26
in Lasenne, because almost everybody I work with is in Switzerland right now,
17:30
and one of them asked me, you know about the difference in our benefits
17:33
because here next thing, we have this wonderfully generous PTO policy. And he
17:41
asked me, know, like when when American companies have a limited PTO is
17:47
it just a scam? And I told him, really honestly, it depends
17:49
on the company, and a lot of the times, yes, it totally
17:52
is. I feel very fortunate that it isn't here. I have a wonderfully
17:56
supportive boss who happens to be Swiss and takes vacation and encourages me to take
18:02
vacation, and I do think that that makes a difference. I think company
18:07
culture is an important element of policy. Excellent, excellent, Sean. So
18:15
far, we've kind of we've we've looked at the kind of backdrop in which
18:19
the employee experienced spaces has arisen. I wonder if we could kind of look
18:26
at the employee experience space itself a bit more directly when you look at vendors
18:33
and what they're trying to do it and introduce through technologies and solutions to the
18:37
workplace to improve a company's ability to measure employee sentiment in the broader sense,
18:45
What are your observations, what stands out to you about the space and how
18:48
would you relate that back to the space our company operates in, which is
18:52
of course specifically digital employee experience. Yeah, I think employees eperience vendors are
19:02
trying to tackle a big problem and I feel for them for what they're doing.
19:06
I mean, there's a lot of psychology that goes into this strategy.
19:11
So I was reading a couple of studies that have been published over the past
19:15
couple of years, and one thing is it's really difficult, for example,
19:19
to measure somebody's skills for a job. Sometimes we tend to overestimate our own
19:26
skill set, known as the Dunning Krueger effect. It's like our own cognitive
19:30
bias, where we think we're probably qualified for a particular position when we may
19:36
not, when that may not be the case. Other instances, you might
19:40
have high performers who tend to underestimate themselves. But technology and employee experience venitors
19:45
vendors can help out in that regard. There was a study published a couple
19:49
of years ago by the World Economic Forum and there are several big name corporations
19:53
that joined in, and they basically used AI to determine that I was able
20:00
to find out three times more skills than employees did themselves, essentially identifying skill
20:06
sets that you're completely blind to, which I think is a positive finding.
20:11
But obviously every company applies the vendors and the technology differently, whether you're gonna
20:17
weigh heavily artificial intelligent or the rubrics or metrics you use, or whether you're
20:21
gonna, you know, let a human come in and step in and make
20:25
that deciding role, whether that be based on your job satisfaction or your skill
20:30
set for the thing you're doing. I do find though, that there's just
20:34
kind of almost a paradoxical aspect to it all with employee experience, not necessarily
20:40
vendors, but I imagine for an HR person or even companies today where if
20:45
you're just relying only on the employee experience vendors these survey tools and collection data
20:52
collection systems by if you're not factoring in like your digital experience, it's just
21:00
almost seems paradoxical and uh, you know, misleading to me essentially what you're
21:04
doing. Here's a very simple example. If I send you an employee survey
21:08
at the end of the year, not only do you have to remember what
21:11
you've done for the previous year, but imagine the thirty minutes prior you were
21:15
having issues connecting to the network. That recency bias is going to impact how
21:19
you respond to that survey. That survey, so there has to and that's
21:23
just a very simple example. There has to be some way to integrate not
21:29
only your network connections, but the laptop you hold, how many errors you've
21:33
encountered, you know, all of those things I think should be pulled into
21:37
the same profile when an HR generalist or manager is looking at particular employees.
21:44
I don't know exactly how that would play out, but it just I think
21:48
it's a good topic for discussion and something that most companies are trying to grapple
21:52
with. Now, you know, that's really interesting going Oriana. I think
21:56
I was going to go to you right away, so it'd be interesting to
22:00
hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. I think the problem at hand,
22:04
and it's one of my favorites, is this question of how to ask good
22:08
questions right. This is something that we think a lot about here. Next
22:12
think because sometimes it's not just the tool that you use to connect to the
22:18
person, it's also what are you asking? How are you asking? Right?
22:22
Are you comparing it to metrics? Like Sean suggests, And that's one
22:26
of the reasons why Engage is so great. Right. The reason why we
22:30
build our tool the way we did is so that you can have more moment
22:33
in time interactions so that you can target people at different times, different people
22:38
at different times, which gives you a much more holistic picture. Right.
22:42
Clearly, I used to be on a crusade here. I used to be
22:47
going around to everybody influence that next thing going we can we market you know,
22:52
Engage specifically to the a employee experience space, And there was all kinds
22:56
of complicated reasons why they'd already thought of that. You know, the answer
23:00
is probably not, but I definitely agree that it's a unique tool and you
23:06
can see how it would slot into that kind of into this wider context so
23:08
well. And in fact, I've spoken to customers who, in fact,
23:11
ironically enough, during the pandemic started using Engage to survey employee well being at
23:19
large, make sure everybody was sort of safe, feeling looked after, feeling
23:23
supported during the first phase of the lockdowns. Wouldn't be surprised to see more
23:30
use cases like that going forward, But I'd like us to I'd like someone
23:33
to conclude, if they would, with a thought as to where these kind
23:37
of these these free currents that we've looked at today, specifically technology, the
23:45
evolution of or almost the deconstruction of our idea for workplace, and and I
23:55
forgot. I'd like to look at the two currents we've looked at today,
24:00
the technol which is okay, I can do that again, which is technology,
24:04
which is employee experience, and which is the evolution of or even the
24:08
deconstruction of the workplace. And to say something about where these free currents are
24:14
ultimately likely to be taking us as employees, as workers oversee the next five
24:21
years. Anyone brave enough to pick up that baton and make some kind of
24:26
general give us an overviewer prediction. I see free muted microphones. Omegan,
24:33
Come, Omegan. You can do it all right. I'll attempt. I'll
24:36
attempt to see where we're going. If I had to say, perhaps not
24:40
where I think we're going, but where I hope we're going. I think
24:42
I think the technology piece is clear. Right. If you're a business,
24:48
there's an obvious reason to make sure that your technologies, your employees technology is
24:53
functioning, not only functioning, but is like seamless, because it allows them
24:59
to get there work done. It makes them feel valued and respected, and
25:03
it's just it's a clear It gets rid of barriers to productivity for your business.
25:07
So a continued focus on making sure that the technology you give your employees
25:14
works for them and that you are on top of that, that would to
25:18
me be a no brainer. And then in terms of the evolution of the
25:22
workplace, you know, I'd love to see a future where businesses kind of
25:27
break free of the everybody has to commute into the office every day, and
25:32
that we strike a balance because coming together and meeting face to face has obvious
25:37
value and that's never going to go anywhere. At the same time, a
25:41
lot of work can get done from home, and it allows people to live
25:45
more fuller lives. So I think if businesses can really stop focusing on the
25:53
things the bells and whistles as it were, which ultimately I think if you
25:57
were to do an assessment of a lot of those bells and whistles are bloated
26:00
spend probably I think businesses are probably wasting money on some of that stuff and
26:06
focusing on are we respecting and valuing our employees so that we're retaining them both
26:11
through technology and through the way we're treating them in the workplace. I think
26:15
we'll find a middle ground and ideally could maybe stop having these conversations about nobody
26:22
wants to work anymore. Thank you making excellent last forts and thank you for
26:26
gallantly stepping in where my open question might have otherwise really died. At the
26:30
end of the show, and thanks to everybody for a really, really engrossing
26:36
and enjoyable discussion. I'm just going to recommend if people are really interested in
26:40
some of the trends that we've discussed today, to check out the show that
26:45
Tim and I did on the democratization of work, which is a World Economic
26:49
Forum term and term with huge relevance to a lot of what we've been saying
26:55
here today, particularly Megan, and I'll put the link to that episode in
26:59
the show notes. Just remains for me to thank everybody for bringing so much
27:03
for an insight today. It was great to see you well. Thanks so
27:07
much. To make sure that you never miss an episode. Subscribe to the
27:11
show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify your favorite podcast player, and if you're listening
27:17
on Apple Podcasts, make sure to leave a rating of the show. Just
27:19
have the number of stars you think the podcast deserves. If you like to
27:23
learn more about how next Think can help you improve your digital employee experience,
27:27
head over to nextthink dot com. Thank you so much for listening until next time.