Is your company getting the most from its employee experience efforts?
Join us for a 45-minute webinar on building employee experiences that deliver business results.
The term "employee experience" is everywhere today, and its importance goes beyond mere buzzword status and HR circles. Employee experience programs are driving bottom-line results — one recent study found companies that invest in the employee experience are four times as profitable than those that don't.
Join YouEarnedIt's CEO and Director of Employee Experience for this 45-minute webinar guiding you through our most important discoveries from hundreds of research pages and thousands of employee surveys.
Watch for this webinar, and you will see:
The employee experience defined — learn exactly what the employee experience is, and how it can be tailored to your culture.
The employee experience quantified — get research-backed stats revealing how the employee experience boosts your bottom line, helping you build a business case for it.
The employee experience optimized — tips, tactics, and best practices based on survey data and successful companies for building a best-in-class employee experience.
2. 2
Kim Dawson
Director of Employee Experience
YouEarnedIt
Presenters
Autumn Manning
Co-Founder & CEO
YouEarnedIt
3. 3
Overview
& Agenda
Define it — What are we trying to achieve?
Quantify it — How do we get executive buy-in?
Optimize it — How do we get there?
Takeaways + Q&A
5. 5
The employee experience is the result of the connection,
meaning, impact, and appreciation employees find in their jobs.
Creating the ultimate employee experience depends on how
much these pillars are embedded in day-to-day interactions with:
• Corporate values • Coworkers
• Management • Customers
• Work content • Tools and
technology
• Physical environment
6. 6
The good news:
We're already making employee
experience efforts:
● Perks
● L&D
● Culture
● Wellness
● Engagement
● Recognition and rewards
7. 7
The bad news:
Most efforts aren't working:
● Only 33% of employees are
engaged at work (Gallup)
● 82% of employees don't feel
recognized enough (BambooHR)
● Just 24% of employees use
wellness programs (Gallup)
8. 8
Gut Check
Are your employee experience efforts...
Motivating
building employees'
intrinsic motivation
to do their jobs
Organic
connected to the day-
to-day actions seen
across the company
Ongoing
starting from Day 1 on
the job and evolving
with employees
Interactive
allowing both the
employee and
organization to contribute
Culture-Driven:
connecting naturally
to your company
culture goals
Employee-Centric
appealing to
employees' unique
motivations
9. 9
Are your EX
efforts reactive,
or addressing
real needs?
We say:
• "People are working in silos."
• "Morale is low."
• "Turnover is up."
10. 10
We react with:
• More parties and events
• More gift cards
• Recognition tools
Are your EX
efforts reactive,
or addressing
real needs?
12. 12
If senior leadership views the employee experience as an
expense rather than an opportunity, there is a high risk of failure.
Research shows EX directly impacts these six KPIs:
• Revenue • Earnings
• Productivity • Retention
• Customer experience • Absenteeism
13. 13
– Kevin Dasch, COO and Advisor
“In my 10 years being in a role like this, I've come to
appreciate how meaningful it is for employees to know
that on a day to day basis they are doing a good job. It
keeps them motivated — there's intrinsic value to them
knowing how their roles affect the company.”
Talking to the COO
14. 14
– Branndon Stewart, Founder, OutboundEngine
“My first stop would be Finance. I need to know where
the levers are in the business.”
Talking to the CEO
15. 15
Pitching the CEO:
NOT:
"We've lost so many people
lately. Morale is low."
TRY:
"Our turnover rate has
increased. This is how much
it's going to cost to replace
who we've lost. This is how
much we're losing everyday
in terms of productivity."
"Investing in the employee
experience is a business
opportunity in front of us."
16. 16
– James Mann, CFO
“When I see employees trying to justify technology
purchases or any purchase for that matter, I'm really
looking for a pain point that's going to be solved and a
remedy for how that's going to be addressed.”
Talking to the CFO
17. 17
Pitching the CFO:
NOT:
"HR needs a budget increase
for an employee experience
program."
TRY:
"Our productivity and
engagement scores are
falling, and turnover is
increasing."
"An investment in employee
experience could be paid
back in five months, and our
turnover and recruiting costs
could easily cover the
budget."
18. 18
Recap
Creating the ultimate employee experience business case
● What's happening at our company today.
● What we need a solution to help with.
● The features our solution needs to be successful.
● The metrics we'll use to measure success.
19. 19
Example
What's happening at our company today:
● Employee recognition is a manual process happening inconsistently
● Our KPIs are falling flat and aren't top of mind for employees
We are looking for a solution to:
● Enable real-time, meaningful recognition — tied to the behaviors that
deliver success — that's visible to everyone
● Bring visibility and increase participation in multiple initiatives across the
business while surfacing insights to leadership
20. 20
Example
In order to achieve results, our solution needs:
● Easy to use, intuitive interface
● Real-time recognition tied to core values
● Opportunity to bring in other key initiatives/ programs into one platform
● Robust reporting for leadership
We will measure effectiveness with these metrics:
● Adoption rate
● Training completing rate
● Increase in upsells and customer satisfaction
● Decrease in voluntary turnover
22. |22
Our research found three elements that are critical to the
employee experience:
• Leadership that models your core values
• Manager-employee communication
• The "10 Culture Building Blocks"
When all of these are in place, 95% of employees report a good
to excellent employee experience. Without any of them, just
15%
PURPOSE OF SLIDE:
We recently published The Employee Experience Simplified to help companies define, quantify, and optimize their employee experience.
Today we want to take you through our findings as well as real-world examples and executive input to help you build the ultimate employee experience.
Kim: I want to start by defining EX at a high level. Companies do a lot they think ties to engagement. If you're looking to change things up it's important to know — what is this? And what are we truly trying to achieve with employee experience programs?
Autumn: We've been researching this for years. Last year we published The Employee Experience Defined — the definition on screen comes from that report.
(briefly introduces the 4 pillars)
Kim: So, looking at this definition, there's good and bad news about the things we're already investing in to engage employees.
KIM: You always hear what you are doing wrong and why it’s not working. But we know most of you attending today are investing in some, if not all of these things. That's the good news! We care!
Autumn:
The problem is these one-off investments aren’t having the impact we want them to have. It’s not moving the needle. The stats we have on screen are just a few indicators.
Autumn: This is an important point. Now that you have a clear definition of what we're after, let’s level up our efforts.
KIM: Gut check! Does what you're doing today feel forced? Or does it satisfy these 6 criteria?
(briefly touch on some of the criteria)
If not, you could be getting a lot more from your employee experience efforts.
[INTRODUCE POLL QUESTION]
Given how EX is defined, do you think your current employee experience efforts are effective?
- Not really; we don’t do much
- Some are; some could improve
- Yes! We’re seeing great results.
Autumn:
Why don't they work?
Sometimes there is a disconnect in how we think we are selling the value.
The focus isn't on why we're doing these programs. So we do things that are reactive.
"It feels like people are working in silos." -> Throw a party
"Morale is really low around here." -> Give out gift cards.
"Turnover is up. Our best people are leaving." -> Buy a recognition tool.
Kim: Being proactive starts with defining employee experience in a way that real, operational needs can be addressed by it.
KIM: So we do things that are reactive.
"It feels like people are working in silos." -> Throw a party
"Morale is really low around here." -> Give out gift cards.
"Turnover is up. Our best people are leaving." -> Buy a recognition tool.
Kim: Being proactive starts with defining employee experience in a way that real, operational needs can be addressed by it.
Autumn: We know this isn't a nice-to-have, it's a must-have.
We did a survey of 800 employees for another recent report, The Employee Experience Quantified. About one third of them said they've left jobs because they didn't have enough appreciation or connection.
Kim: How do we get others bought in?
There's a disconnect between how HR pitches employee experience programs and what resonates with leadership.
Kim: We need to talk about HR in ways that align with business needs
Research shows EX directly impacts 6 KPIs orgs care about:
Autumn: This is advice we get asked about by HR professionals constantly. Your business case HAS to be executive-level to move these programs forward. NO company reaches their ultimate employee experience unless executives are on board.
Kim: We've talked to some executives about how THEY pitch employee experience programs.
Kim: I spoke to Kevin Dasch, who's been in the C-Suite or an advisor to multiple companies for the last 10 years — he was even an exec here at YouEarnedIt!
Kim: Knowing him personally, he seems like a "finance person," but understands the value of EX and platform like YouEarnedIt.
From a COO standpoint, he emphasized the importance of employees understanding the mission to help the business go in that direction. If everyone is rowing together, business heads towards success efficiently.
To him, that's how a tool like YouEarnedIt helps. It aligned the employee experience towards the mission: emphasize core values, engages employees — things he valued as helping the business be more successful.
It's not that his "operations guy" heart grew three sizes after hearing me talk about employee experience. He sees how making employees more engaged and efficient affects the company's numbers.
Efficient teams. Employees who are aligned with our goals. Being engaged and more productive — this is what he wants to hear from a pitch.
(If you're thinking about it from a cost perspective - the COST is negligible compared to what you're getting back. It's more like how can we NOT afford to do this when you see how it benefits operations at the company.)
Autumn: I talked to Branndon Stewart to get another CEO's perspective on this. As a CEO, how do YOU talk about investing in the employee experience? What would your advice to HR be for pitching a program like this?
Let's jump over to the audio from our call. [CUE BRANNDON AUDIO]
Notice how Branndon's pitch included: "If we increase our retention by X%, here's where we'll be in the future."
He's aligning HR needs with the business strategy.
Kim: We also talked to James Mann, our CFO here at YouEarnedIt! James just joined us recently, so he's seen this from multiple angles.
Here's what he said about getting pitched on the employee experience from a finance perspective. [CUE JAMES VIDEO]
CFOs constantly quantify the costs of people. Lost productivity. Recruiting and efficiency costs caused by turnover. How much you're wasting on events and gift cards.
The budget is already there for employee experience programs — you get it by allocating money away from what's ineffective or realizing the ROI of having a better employee experience.
Autumn
So let's put all this together. You just heard how execs are quantifying and thinking about these programs. We heard their advice for HR.
This can be your mantra for building a business case for the employee experience — or any HR initiative.
The problems happening today.
What a solution would do.
Autumn
So let's put all this together. You just heard how execs are quantifying and thinking about these programs. We heard their advice for HR.
This can be your mantra for building a business case for the employee experience — or any HR initiative.
The problems happening today.
What a solution would do.
Autumn
So let's put all this together. You just heard how execs are quantifying and thinking about these programs. We heard their advice for HR.
This can be your mantra for building a business case for the employee experience — or any HR initiative.
The problems happening today.
What a solution would do.
What the solution needs
How we'll measure success
Autumn
Ok, we've defined employee experience. We've quantified what it means for the company and built a business case for it.
Now how do we get there? What are companies doing that's effective?
Autumn:
Everything in our research and surveys points to these three elements as being critical.
We covered them in depth in The Employee Experience Optimized. Let's look at some examples of these elements.
Autumn:
We've used Uber as a BAD example in many webinars, but they're turning things around. Leadership exhibiting their new core values is a big part of that.
BEFORE: Labeled one of the worst companies in Silicon Valley
THIS YEAR: CEO living values like "Do the right thing"
Disclosed and apologized extent of old security breaches
Called out actions of drivers publicly
Sent legal resources to U.S. border
NEW CORE VALUES (November 2017):
We do the right thing.
We persevere.
We celebrate differences.
We are customer obsessed.
We value ideas over hierarchy.
We make big, bold bets.
We act like owners.
We build globally, we live locally.
Kim: Manager-employee communication is another major contributor to the employee experience.
One of our customers recently did this with YouEarnedIt. It had a major impact on manager-employee feedback and visible recognition, and they saw great results.
And finally, these are the 10 Culture Building Blocks revealed in EEO report)
The data from The Employee Experience Optimized shows doing these 10 things well leads to an exceptional employee experience. Write them down, take them with you — these should be guiding or serving as the structure for your employee experience program.
KIM: If you're wondering where to start, these three on the list have the biggest impact, or the most bang for the buck:
Opportunities for growth and learning
(BancVue implemented program to educate employees on industry; were tested on it - even non-accounting people understood banking better)
Feedback and appreciation for day-to-day work
(YouEarnedIt!)
Sense of pride for what the company does and stands for
(Core values! BancVue/Kasasa puts them everywhere; visual representations of core values; employees even get tattoos of them; Kim to comment)
Poll 2: Would you like to see a demo of the YouEarnedIt platform?
- Sure!
- No, thanks
Thanks!
Takeaways:
Our latest report, The Employee Experience Simplified
It pulls the best stats and tactics from our original three reports on EX:
EX Defined
EX Quantified
EX Optimized
If you ever want to see those, visit our website!