Forging Employee Experience

Forging Employee Experience

By Blaze PerformanceBusiness
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Forging Employee Experience episodes

  • People Analytics Can Distract From the Employee Experience with Lewis Garrad

    Over the last couple of decades, Employee Engagement has started to become more and more important to companies. Early data showed how much time and energy companies lost to a disengaged workforce. In recent years, organizations have started making huge efforts to fix the Employee Engagement problem. Yet despite millions of dollars of investment, the average number of engaged employees has only risen 3% in the last almost 20 years. So, what’s the problem?

    At a fundamental level, employees don’t feel a connection with their companies. The relationship cultivated from their first day on the job perpetuates a feeling of obligation. Employees tend to feel like once they have provided the work their companies have paid them for, then they have fulfilled their obligation and are typically content provided the minimum to get by. Employees don’t feel connected with their organizations on an emotional level. If organizations want to see real change, they’ll have to start focusing on curating a working relationship such that employees feel truly connected with the company.

    To make that change happens, organizations must stop focusing so exclusively on the numbers. Yes, employee engagement stats are an important metric. Yes, increasing retention is a huge bump the bottom line. But at the end of the day, it’s about the people. It’s not about the numbers. When organizations can honestly say that they care most about connecting with their employees, then they’ll find the engagement stats rise organically. 

    Furthermore, many of the past efforts of boosting engagement have missed the mark. Quick fixes like beer Fridays, snacks in the break room, or casual dress don’t move the needle. This failure stems from the lack of efforts that the company exerts when they do these things. While they think they are showing how amazing they are to work for, most employees see it as an attempt to make them more loyal. It doesn’t work. 

    In a recent podcast with Lewis Garrad, he discussed another major factor to employee engagement. He related that about 50% of the tendency for employees to be engaged at work can be traced back to their personality, and that those type of people that tended to be more engaged shared a similar set of cognitive characteristics. He warned that while it may be tempting to hire based on those characteristics, a workforce full of individuals who are all more inclined to be engaged would prevent cognitive diversity and promote group think tendencies. Listen to the full podcast at Forging the Employee Experience and follow Lewis Garrad on Twitter at @LewisGarrad or connect via email at [email protected].

    Employee Engagement can be boosted, but there is not shortcut to success. Organizations will need to look place the ineffective low hanging fruit, stop focusing on the numbers, and commitment to creating a workforce full of positive connections. 

    34 min
  • The Most Important Word of Employee Engagement with Henry Albrecht
    Henry Albrecht is the founder of Limeade, an employee engagement platform that builds great places to work by improving well-being and strengthening workplace culture.
    He has led the company from an idea in his basement to a high-growth, industry-leading employee engagement technology company that serves some of the smartest companies in the world. Henry earned his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management with an emphasis in technology and marketing and his B.A. in economics and literature from Claremont McKenna College.
    Limeade helps the world’s best companies develop happier, healthier and more productive employees. Learn more at http://www.limeade.com/ and keep in touch with Henry on LinkedIn and Twitter.

    Topics covered in this episode:
    • Engagement: A deep sense of purpose and connection that leads to extra energy and commitment at work.
    • Engagement initiatives without thinking of the well-being of employees is short-sighted
    • We’ve fallen in love with people analytics, but we fail to act.
    • Square deal-I put in as much as I get out. 
    • Bi-directional trust. What are you doing to show your employees that you care. 
    • 3 questions to show you care:
    • How do leaders show up?
    • What resources do you give them?
    • Are managers invested in their people?
    • “Care” is the single-most important word we can talk about around employee engagement
    • When people can feel that their manager cares about them, they are 38% more engaged at work.
    • Learning to take a whole person approach.
    • Burnout is a luxury in a workforce who cares.
    31 min
  • 3 Crucial Elements for the Ultimate Employee Experience, with Jacob Morgan
    Jacob Morgan is a 3x Best-Selling Author, Futurist, and Leading Keynote Speaker on the Future of Work, Leadership, and most importantly, Employee Experience. He works with global organizations around the world ranging from Samsung, Prudential, Microsoft, Salesforce, Disney, MasterCard, and many others. He speaks in front of tens of thousands of people each year and his content is seen over a million times a year. Jacob founded The Future of Work University, an online education and training platform. You can find it at futureofworkuniversity.com. 
    He has contributed to publications such as Cosmopolitan, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, Glamour, USA Today, and The Harvard Business Review. His new book on the future of leadership is coming out Sept, 2019. You can connect with him on Twitter or email him [email protected].
    You can also subscribe to Jacob’s newsletter to get weekly content on the future of work to work with Jacob or have him speak at your event visit TheFutureOrganization.com
    Website: http://www.thefutureorganization.com/
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacobm
    Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8
    The Employee Experience Advantage, Future of Work, and more on https://www.amazon.com/Jacob-Morgan/e/B00703V3WO/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1505835726&sr=8-2-ent
    The Future Organization Newsletter: https://thefutureorganization.com/newsletter/
    36 min
  • Moving People Analytics Into Action with Jeff Jolton, PwC
    To engage their employees, organizations must give them a voice. In our most recent podcast with Jeffrey Jolton, we talked about the importance of reaching out to employees through surveys and what it means to actually listen to the responses. Jeffrey is the managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) people analytics practice. He has over 15 years of executive consulting experience and has contributed to over 90 publications and presentations related to engagement and employee experience. He is a regular presenter at numerous professional conferences and is published extensively in both business periodicals and scientific journals. He co-edited a book on global HR practices and holds a PhD in industrial organizational psychology from Ohio University.
    Employers often try to engage with their employees through engagement surveys. Yet, they don’t often see honest feedback and optimistic participation. This indifference to engagement surveys comes from a lack of action in response to the survey. When the survey process is done properly, it provides the company with better data on how to improve. However, if the organization doesn’t take timely steps to make those improvements, employees will begin to doubt the efficacy of the effort they expended filling out the survey. This apathy will result in a much less effective surveying process and workforce that doesn’t trust its leadership. Managers and leaders then should act on the feedback they receive in a positive way to improve the company overall.
    Jeff discussed that in engaging employees, companies should have intentionality. He emphasized that if a company is just doing it because everyone else is and doesn’t really have a sense of why they want an engaged environment, then they’re not going to see a lot of success. Jeff continued by saying that many companies don’t actually know what engaging employees would mean and how would it change their business, yet they still take employee surveys because that’s what they think they should be doing. He opined that a survey is an effective strategy when done intentionally. Surveys should communicate to employees that their feedback is crucial for the company’s well-being. Surveys should also be able to get across to the employees that the feedback will be used for them and not against them. Surveys should contain questions that are relevant to those taking it. Finally, survey data should be analyzed and best off the results, noticeable actions should be published to the company and implemented. When companies take action based on survey results, employees are more likely to participate in giving future feedback. However, Jeff concluded by saying that surveys may not be the right tool for all companies. Companies should think of the right strategy for them and act accordingly
    Companies should be authentic in wanting to engage employees. Listen to the full podcast to learn more on how employee feedback can propel companies forward. Reach out to your colleagues and be a force for change.
    We would like to thank Jeff for his time and expertise. We encourage everyone to check out his LinkedIn profile, Jeffrey A. Jolton. You can also reach him through [email protected].
    35 min
  • Employee Engagement 2.0 with Casey Wahl
    Casey Wahl is the CEO of Attuned, a company that he started while living in Tokyo, Japan, and he has been there ever since. He is extremely passionate about the employee experience and making sure that employers understand very clearly the intrinsic motivations of their employees.
    Attuned helps to solve one of the hardest and most complex problems that companies face with engagement: an individual's driving motivators.
    In this episode we dive deep into what Casey calls "Employee Engagement 2.0" and that is intrinsic motivation. you can connect with Casey on Twitter @caseywahl.
    32 min
  • 2 Formulas For Employee Engagement Success with Eric Rowlee
    Eric is the Director of Change, Training and Communication at Walmart. Let's all just keep in mind that Walmart employees are over 2.1 million people world wide. That's about 1.4 million in the United States alone. He's got his work cut out for him.
    Eric holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Brigham Young University, a masters degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology in the University of Nebraska. He has an MBA in Brigham Young University. He has a big beautiful family, we're talking 7 kids living in Arkansas. He's got a farm, crops that he is growing.
    Engagement is what you see when people are fully involved in the work that they are doing. They are enthusiastic about its that feeling of investment. I can't put a single word on Engagement other then engagement but if you were to take the lid of it and look inside its this feeling of being involved, invested and enthusiasm. To start to hear people say things like, "I want to do this or we're going to make this successful or I love want I'm doing." That's engagement, it inspires people, drives commitment, you might use the word passion. That's engagement on my head.
    52 min
  • 7 Cultural Pillars of Employee Engagement with Eric Chester
    Engaging employees is synonymous with retaining employees, and engaging employees is on the forefront of moving companies forward. In our most recent podcast with Eric Chester, we talked about how to both manage and retain employees. Eric is the author of On Fire at Work: Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People Without Burning Them Out, his best-selling book that talks about getting employees to “work harder, perform better, and stay longer.” Eric has delivered more than 2,000 keynotes to great companies all over the world, including Harley Davidson, McDonald's, Sprint, Great Clips, Wells Fargo, and Subway. He has spoken on three different continents and is a 2004 inductee into the National Speakers Association’s acclaimed CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame.
    The concept of employee retention has largely evolved over time.
    Decades ago, employers, or even employees, didn’t have a thought about engagement or about being “happy” at work. The relationship between employers and employees was a transactional relationship where you just do your job and get paid. We have now come to realize that money isn’t the only motivating factor in why an employee chooses to stay. Employees are now focusing more on the experience. In order to keep employees engaged, companies should reach out to their employees. By doing so, they learn the employees’ points of view and are able to create a better workplace.
    Eric spoke about his experiences as a high school teacher and youth speaker. These taught him about talking to individuals in the trenches. By conversing with these individuals and learning what their thoughts are, he was able to inspire them. Over time, he became interested in generational studies and wrote the book Employing Generation Why?. The book was a huge success, and he companies started asking for his help on managing employee engagement. When he works with companies, he follows the same strategies of talking to employees in the trenches. He would take excerpts and present these to the management. The management will then learn what they can do to improve the workplace. Eric emphasized that with most of these organizations there are really no employee retention strategy. From his On Fire at Work book, he explained that there are seven cultural pillars that employees evaluate their jobs. Money is only one of them and is far from the only assurance of keeping an employee in a company. He further added that retention is a by-product of hiring the right people and treating them the way they want to be treated. Employee engagement problems are solved when companies put an effort into making a better workplace.
    Companies only get out what they put into their workforce. Listen to the full podcast to learn more on how talking to employees and knowing their points of view makes a better workplace. Reach out and initiate change in your workplace.
    We would like to thank Eric for his time and enthusiasm. We encourage everyone to get a copy of his book On Fire at Work: Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People Without Burning Them Out and to check out his website at www.ericchester.com.
    36 min
  • Unlocking Self-Determination Theory with Dr. Scott Rigby
    As it turns out, employees are humans. Like all humans, they have needs, and these needs need to be fulfilled. In our most recent podcast with Dr. Scott Rigby we talk about the fulfillment needs of employees and how they become assets to the company. Dr. Scott Rigby is a behavioral scientist, author, entrepreneur, and founder of Motivation Works – a company that applies behavioral science to organizations. He is a leading authority on predictive measurements on motivation and engagement as well as interventions to improve organizational culture. and He has been featured on ABC News, BBC, National Public Radio, National Geographic, and Scientific American.
    Companies today tend to interpret happiness among their employees in the workplace as fulfillment. Organizations believe that by adding certain perks and by keeping the employees “happy,” they can get more out of their employees. Unfortunately, happiness and fulfillment aren’t the same. For the employees to be engaged, the company has to make sure they fulfill the employees’ needs. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) specifically addresses how to fulfill those needs.
    Dr. Rigby explained that employers should focus on employees’ fundamental needs as human beings before trying to fill their needs as workers. To this end, he, along with the creators of the SDT, founded Motivation Works. This platform utilizes SDT so that companies can measure the fulfillment of different basic needs of employees. According to the SDT, employees have three basic needs for fulfillment: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy pertains to giving the employees a meaningful choice over how they are completing their tasks. Competence is the desire to be successful by performing things with efficiency and achieving growth in their skillset. Relatedness is a sense of belonging in the workplace where there’s mutual respect and support for each other. Satisfying these components always leads to increased employee engagement. Dr. Rigby emphasizes that measuring employee engagement isn’t that hard. It can be done as simply as by asking employees if they agree with the statement “I love my job.” Employees who love their job are almost always fulfilled and engaged. The real trick is making sure changes are made based off those measurements to help increase fulfillment and thus engagement.
    Every employee, every manager, every leader, needs to understand the employees’ experiences and points of view. Listen to the full podcast to see how fulfilling the different needs of employees engages employees in the workplace. Motivate your reports. Motivate your managers. Be an agent of change.
    We would like to thank Dr. Rigby for his time and expertise. We encourage everyone to visit www.motivationworks.com to learn more about the platform. You can follow Dr. Rigby on twitter at @csrigby.
    35 min
  • Building Employee Experience with Trystin Bailey
    Trystin is the Director of Employee Experience at Huge INC and shared some amazing insights with us on how to build an employee experience that will make your employees feel like you care about them.
    Included in this episode are themes around Employee empowerment, building a level of community and collaboration that strengthens every other business aspect, and taking risks in the corporate arena to be authentic and real. He makes the point that you are nothing without a cohesive team and encourages all managers to focus on the whole of a person and not just the work they produce.
    We hope you enjoy this episode of Forging Employee Experience.
    21 min
  • Making Employee Engagement Personal with Mary Miller
    An engaged workforce keeps the company moving forward, and keeping employees engaged in their job is a challenge companies have faced for decades. Our most recent podcast with Mary Miller, CEO of Jancoa Janitorial Services, discussed the concept of the issue of focusing on happiness that leads to success and how this has cascaded in her flourishing company. Mary is also the author of the best-selling book Changing Direction, which talks mainly about optimism and how this has helped her in life and some of the employee engagement strategies she has implemented at Jancoa.
    Golden handcuffs are the trend of today. Organizations keep employees from looking for employment elsewhere through predominately compensation-based approaches. This retention approach, however, does not equate to an engaged workforce, and when employees are disinterested, it affects their performance and the company overall as a result.
    Mary talked about the culture of caring. When the company cares for its employees and their families the focus shifts from tasks to results. When the company provides their employees with the tools to be successful, including helping them connect to programs and agencies to make their future better even if that means that the employee may go down a different road in the future – employees thrive. Companies want to retain team members who want to be there. When employees are engaged in their work and are able to become efficient workers, the customers are happy. Engaged employees that care about their work, take care of the customers. The end result is a win-win-win situation for all parties – company, employees, and customers. However, applying this to other companies would be a challenge as it would have to start from the top – the CEO or the Board – and that this is not something that you just “plug and play.”
    Take care of your employees, and the employees will take care of your customers. This is true employee engagement. Listen to the full podcast to see how companies can benefit from nurturing their employees holistically. By developing this culture of caring in the workplace, we bring the “humanity” to the work place. Employees will be aware that they are contributing to a mission and that they are not just another person doing a certain job. These will all boil down to the company’s success. Be an agent of change in your team.
    We would like to thank Mary for her time and enthusiasm. We encourage everyone to get a copy of her book Changing Direction and to check out their company’s website at jancoa.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at @mary_dreams.
    28 min

About Forging Employee Experience

From the publisher's feed

Employee engagement is dead. Employee Experience in a traditional office is dead. If you, like all leaders post COVID-19, need to make split decisions that drive the best digital employee experience (DEX), this podcast delivers on all the latest and greatest strategies that top companies are implementing today.