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While positive employee experiences can enhance customer experiences, negative employee experiences can have the opposite effect. A famous SNL sketch parodies the frustrating experience of trying to cancel cable service, with a customer being repeatedly put on hold, transferred to different departments and subjected to aggressive sales tactics from customer retention specialists.

The sketch highlights the all-too-common problem of customer service employees who are not engaged or motivated to provide good service, resulting in a negative customer experience. To avoid this scenario, businesses need to prioritize employee engagement and create a positive workplace culture to ensure that employees are motivated to deliver exceptional customer service.

CMSWire Contributors Nichole Devolites, principal consultant of LYSI Holding Company and Justin Racine, director and lead commerce strategist at Perficient, emphasize this point and provide real-life examples to illustrate the impact of positive workplace cultures on customer experiences in this CX Decoded podcast. They also discuss the use of chatbots and artificial intelligence, the power of invoking nostalgia in branding and creating a sense of community in the customer experience.

Although employee experience is a relatively new term, the concept behind it isn't: support your employees to do their best work and they will support your business in turn.

In this episode of Get Reworked, World Wide Technology's executive vice president of global human resources, Ann Marr shares lessons learned delivering award-winning employee experiences over her 25-year career with the company. Ann was the recipient of Reworked's 2022 Employee Experience of the Year award.

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"I've been such an advocate of parents who work to make sure that there's a balance there. And that pendulum can swing, maybe, you know, if you're working on a really important project, you maybe have to spend a lot more time at the office. But on the same pendulum, maybe you have a sick kid, or maybe you have a kid who's in a sporting event and you want to see them compete in a sporting event, you have to balance that," said Ann.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• What it takes to create a consistent employee experience across 15 locations around the world.
• How WWT approaches onboarding.
• Where career development fits in WWT's employee experience.
• What to do to ensure employees remain engaged.
• How supporting employees who are caregivers pays off for everyone in the long run.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Ann about how employees can gauge if an employer is a good fit for them, where supplier diversity fits into the company's EX strategy and how she feels on her 25th anniversary at the company. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

Back to office advocates have used corporate culture as an argument for why employees need to return to a central location. But corporate culture isn't defined by a physical place. Ideally, it's a combination of behaviors, practices and processes.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Udemy chief learning officer Melissa Daimler discusses what an intentional approach to building culture looks like and why it benefits organizations — and employees — in the long-run.

"So many people that I have talked to throughout my career have said, 'Why are you getting in the way of culture just happening organically?' And my response to that is, it is happening already, whether by design or default, so we might as well design it, and be more explicit about things that we want to see and things that we don't want to have be part of our culture," said Melissa.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How to define culture.
• The strong relationship between learning and development and culture.
• Why businesses need to reassess culture on an ongoing basis.
• What it takes to turn a toxic culture around.
• How to make culture work in the hybrid workplace.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Melissa about Twitter now vs. Twitter 10 years ago, what employees can do to help shape culture and why vibes alone aren't enough to create a corporate culture. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

At a time when the number of available workplace tools is exploding, how can a company meet employee demands for technology while not overwhelming them with choice?

In this episode of Get Reworked, Tope Sadiku, global head of digital employee experience at The Kraft Heinz Company discusses how she takes a human-centric approach to delivering personalized digital experiences to the multinational food company's employees.

"Really, for me, it's less of a tools focus .... I don't want to have a conversation really, when I'm trying to scope something out, about tools and capabilities so specifically, where someone's saying, 'OK, I like the visual of this. I'm used to this, I've used this in a previous team, a previous company.' It's less about that. It's more about, what are we actually trying to achieve? And then we can say, OK, what's the best way to achieve that goal?" said Tope.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• What a delightful digital employee experience looks like.
• Striking the balance between offering employees technology options and decision fatigue.
• How Kraft Heinz ties ESG into the digital employee experience.
• How regular tool audits fit into tool acquisition discussions.
• How Tope moved from a career in finance to leading digital employee experience.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Tope about how to reduce friction in workplace technology, how pizza toppings relate to digital personalization and whether hot dog flavored popsicles are a good or bad idea. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

How can a company communicate with employees who are distributed across multiple locations, roles and time zones? More importantly, how can companies ensure these communications are two-way and not a top down broadcast?

In this episode of Get Reworked, Maren Waggoner, VP of People, End-to-End Operations, U.S. at Walmart gives us an inside look at how the company communicates with — and hears from — the 1.2 million associates working in U.S. operations.

"Part of listening isn't just what might not be working, we definitely want to have an eye to that and an ear to it. But also, we want to have an ear to what are the great ideas that our associates are seeing every day in their day-to-day work. And we have an application, or a kind of a channel, that we've established called me@ideas at Walmart. And so any associate at any time can go into this channel and submit an idea of maybe something we should consider doing or a better way of doing things," said Maren.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• What the company means by tech-enabled, people-led.
• How employee listening scales from the local to the corporate level.
• How Walmart uses tools like natural language processing to establish employee sentiment.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Maren about creating feedback loops for employee suggestions, how the company balances technology and in-person channels for communications and where she plans to focus her efforts in the year ahead. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

Please note: The conversation was recorded before the mass shooting at a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Va. in November, so the events of that day do not come up in the discussion.

Our workplaces hit a milestone in recent years: it was the first time on record that five generations shared the workplace. While there's been no shortage of articles on the needs and desires of individual generations, not much has been paid to the benefits the mix of generations produces — both for individuals and organizations.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Ramsey Alwin, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging, shares how age diversity in the workplace benefits everyone and what we lose when ageism goes unchecked.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• The benefits of having multiple generations in the workplace.
• What we can learn from New Zealand and Iceland about building age-inclusive workforces.
• How HR leaders can best promote age diversity in hiring and retention.
• The outsized impact layoffs has on older workers.
• How we should rethink careers as longevity increases.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Ramsey about the differences in advocating for change at the government level rather than the organizational level, what retirement means if we live till 150 and AARP marketing practices. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

Diversity efforts typically fall under HR's remit, and for good reason. But talking about people and culture will only take a company so far. To move the needle on DEI efforts, organizations need to follow the money.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Eloiza Domingo, Allstate's VP, Chief Inclusive Diversity & Equity Officer, Human Resources explains how the American insurance mainstay incorporates diversity into every facet of the organization. And it all starts with how it spends its money.

Listen: Get Reworked Full Episode List

"So I would encourage companies as they think about their diversity efforts, not to just look at the people and culture — that certainly is one thing. But where are you actually putting your money? Where are you investing your money?" said Eloiza. "How are you supporting, again, systemic bias and racism in the United States and kind of helping to reverse that in some way, by the way that you're investing and spending your money."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How DEI has changed over the last 20 years.
• How companies can hold themselves accountable to DEI goals.
• What a "diversity identity" means.
• How companies can navigate a complicated political landscape.
• How Allstate uses data to ensure its accountability.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Eloiza about the part employee resource groups play in the company and why Allstate rebranded them. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

What causes burnout? So often, conversations around burnout center on the effect — the burnout itself — rather than the cause. It is only when the conversation focuses on the chronic job stressors at the root of burnout, can organizations begin to tackle the problem.

Because at its root, burnout is an indication of a misalignment between people and their jobs. By identifying where these misalignments occur, organizations can make adjustments which improve employees' relationships with their jobs.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Christina Maslach, pioneer of research on workplace burnout, creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory standard assessment tool and author of "The Burnout Challenge," shares the key factors that influence whether we have positive or negative relationships with our jobs. Christina has studied the relationships people have with their work and what organizations can do to improve those relationships for over four decades.

Listen: Get Reworked Full Episode List

"If we're going to do anything about why burnout occurs, as opposed to focusing on who is getting it, we need to focus on what's causing it, we need to prevent the impact of those stressors, reduce them, or have them be better managed, so that they don't occur as often all of these kinds of things," said Christina.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why burnout and stress aren't synonymous.
• Why vacations and self-care are only short-term solutions.
• How burnout is more than an individual issue.
• The importance of networks and community in alleviating burnout.
• The six areas where organizations can focus to improve alignment between people and their jobs.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Christina about hustle culture, the upsides and the downsides of a daily commute and chardonnay burnout. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

The ongoing debate between return to office or work from home misses the point. The question isn't where we work, but how.

Over the last two and a half years white collar workers have taken part in a grand experiment which upended many of the long-held norms of the workday. Business leaders now have the choice of what to do next: embrace this new way of work or try to return to how things were in 2019.

In this kickoff episode to Season 3, Sheela Submramanian, co-founder of Future Forum and VP at Slack, and co-author of "How The Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives" shares why leaders need to move past the debate around physical location of work to embrace a much more flexible approach to how work gets done. Listen: Get Reworked Full Episode List

"It's really critical for leaders to think about flexibility when it comes to choice in both where and when people work, rather than setting mandates in terms of the number of days they need to come back into the office," Subramanian said. "There's an opportunity for us to shift the conversation from power to trust, because power reflects the command and control model that we had for so long."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• The dangers of confusing presenteeism for performance.
• The outdated ideas around professionalism we've shed in the last few years (and the ones we still should lose).
• Why working from home increased a sense of belonging in employees of color.
• Why the future of work comes down to two things: flexibility and trust.
• What leaders' top concern today should be.

Plus, we talk with Sheela about why we should all be in touch with our inner two-year-olds, why we need alternate career paths outside of management and where to find the best bagel in Oakland. Listen in for more. Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

How do you stay positive in the middle of a tragedy? It's a question that became all too real for our next guest, who found himself at the scene of the mass shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Ill. that left seven people dead and scores wounded. In this episode of Get Reworked, Howard Prager, executive coach and author of "Make Someone's Day" shares how times of trouble are exactly when we need to focus on the needs of others and tells us what exactly we can do at work to make each others' lives better. Listen: Get Reworked Full Episode List

"Negativity just breeds more negativity both within us and with others," Howard said. "I believe that when we can make others feel better, I know that we too feel better because of our mirror neurons creating what I call the boomerang effect."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How to stay upbeat amidst tragedy and bad news.
• Why we need more kindness in the workplace.
• How to practice gratitude and recognition at work.
• How leaders can make time to make others' days.
• The role of recognition in hybrid and remote work.

Plus, co-hosts Siobhan Fagan and Mike Prokopeak talk with Howard about bringing your whole self to work, if nice people do indeed finish last and why the tuba is the most underrated musical instrument. Listen in for more. Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].