Ushering in the employee experience era
Drive productivity & growth after establishing your mission, vision, and values
As the world of work continues to evolve through the power of innovation and technology, how we interact with coworkers and lead teams has struggled to keep up with the changing times.
Employee engagement is a metric to gauge how invested employees are in their work. Utilizing the results and feedback to create meaningful change in the workplace often results in increased engagement. Despite increased perks and benefits, we continue to see a trend of engagement scores declining.
Alongside several disruptions over the last few years to how we work, we’ve seen the impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts paving the way for the new Employee Experience Era that is now in its infancy.
Employee experience is the end-to-end journey that an employee has with your organization. While remote work, office snacks, and improved benefits are part of that experience, an employee's relationship with their direct manager is one of the most impactful pieces to the puzzle. Imagine this:
It’s the fourth quarter and everyone is pushing to get their projects wrapped up before the holiday season is in full force. And…
Sarah’s mom was just diagnosed with cancer. Jacob’s partner just proposed, and Misha’s oldest daughter is getting ready to go off to college.
The concept of leaving your personal life at the door has become an antiquated approach to managing a team. It creates an inaccurate expectation that the moment an employee crosses the threshold, they can give all their attention and focus to task lists, spreadsheets, and back-to-back meetings.
The reality is, that a distracted and unfocused mind is more likely to make mistakes and less likely to achieve goals on time. As the leader, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed in this situation. Managers are often put in a position of having daily executable work while leading and driving productivity within their own team. This leaves little room to show up for your employees going through something in their personal lives, let alone when the world is experiencing several changes or challenges at once.
We continue to see employees leave workplaces due to a lack of flexibility, poor leadership while navigating major life events, and the prioritization of profits over people.
how DO you lead a team going through personal challenges in the new Employee Experience Era?
Prioritize the employee experience and you’ll find project output remains consistent. (Or increases!)
Why This Works
Employees are tools for the business, just like software and programs. And, unlike patches and updated code, employees receive maintenance and care through authentic connection and support.
The importance of management engaging with their teams and connecting on a human level is becoming common thinking. A recent Forbes article highlights the most critical skill for 2023 as emotional intelligence and McKinsey published a piece highlighting how supportive management positively impacts performance.
When employees can show up to work honoring their out-of-work personal circumstances, they…
bring more innovative thought to their work (creativity)
stay with your organization longer (loyalty)
become more adaptable to change (agile)
Why Do This Now
The workforce is changing and has new needs and expectations about the future of work and their day-to-day lives.
As we prepare for the next generation to join the workforce, it’s important to remember how much change we’ve experienced in just the last 20 years. Between the expansion of technology and improved access to information, we’re stepping into a new terrain where employees have increased flexibility in their employment options.
We’ve highlighted the importance of establishing vision, mission, and values (MVV) to lead your team (here, here, here, and here). These are the building blocks of a solid cultural foundation that will attract the next generation to work for your organization.
Establishing your MVV is just the first step. Infusing that into your business expectations for people management is the next step. If empathy is one of your values, the workforce will expect you to operate with empathy internally as much as you do externally. Any mismatch in the public MVV and how your team operate is likely to result in turnover.
“They are a mature, self-directed, resourceful, open-minded group and they are driven by community, by the ‘we’ over the ‘me’. They are perhaps the most nimble, connected, and empathetic humans we have seen yet. To lead them, we need to remember this.” - Mimi Nicklin, CEO of Freedm shared when speaking about Gen Z.
how We Do: Balance people and productivity through systems, tools & process
People management has two sides; managing a team and managing yourself as a leader. Working with humans can be challenging. People have a lot going on outside the Zoom meetings, building the next greatest PowerPoint deck and driving revenue growth. Often, managers have a smaller pool of peers to rely on, making it a delicate balancing act of filling in gaps while continuing to drive productivity and protecting your personal time from being overrun with ‘more work’.
Prepare for the day that an employee will experience a major life interruption by codifying your tools, rules, and people to manage effectively.
Tools 🛠️
Shared Documentation: Whether it’s through shared documents in a Google Drive, Notion, SharePoint, Confluence, or similar knowledge management platform, provide a one-stop shop for all documentation for your team. (Just getting started with documentation? Check out more information here.)
Weekly Communications / Team Notes: Google Docs are an option along with tools like Notion or Evernote. Establish a specific locale for team members to share their priorities, challenges, and upcoming projects.
Performance Management: Software such as 15five or Lattice allows employees to share a weekly rating giving visibility to employee sentiment and a space for employees to share private information about their development or needs in the workplace.
When employees work on projects in silos, the only one that will have any insights into their work is their manager. This is a setup for disaster if that employee (or their manager) has to leave unexpectedly or needs accommodations due to life disruptions. Establishing transparency and documentation between team members means another employee can step in to help or pick up where the other left off ensuring a smoother transition so the manager doesn’t get sucked into the weeds of a project; taking them away from focusing on managing the remaining team members.
Rules (Process) 📝
Time Blocking & Calendar Management
Pick one day a week that is a “no meeting day.” This can be used in a variety of ways:
It provides a guaranteed opening on your calendar to reschedule time-sensitive meetings
Time to catch up on project work you may have deprioritized earlier in the week
Dedicated time to focus and find flow
Block off time on your calendar for morning & post-lunch catch-ups and time at the end of the day to wrap up anything and prep for the following day.
Identify and communicate what is considered “critical” and would justify a time block disruption or after-hours contact.
Get Comfortable Saying No & Resetting Expectations
A new project is always en route to someone on your team. Setting appropriate boundaries through clear communication and expectation setting can help prevent burnout for everyone. (Read more on the power of “Yes, and…” here.)
When projects are reassigned due to the unexpected, serve as the face of your team when communicating cross-functionally and with senior leaders about delays or changes to the quarterly goals.
Build a Support System
Find peers you can rely on as a sounding board for feedback throughout the organization.
Continue prioritizing your relationships outside of work.
Consider working with a professional career coach.
Working with a professional coach provides an unbiased resource to navigate change. A coach can help roleplay different scenarios, provide external resources and feedback, and help you identify answers to questions you didn’t even know to ask.
Identify Mission-Critical vs. Nice-to-Have Projects
The day will come when an employee has an unexpected absence (or worse, departs the company). Whether it’s a collaborative discussion or something determined at a leadership level, use data and strategic insights to prioritize projects based on needs.
Provide clarity on why an employee may be changing projects midstream. The MVV is something many employees buy into because of their personal beliefs so they put a lot of themselves into their work. A change in priorities without clear communication may result in a decrease in morale or a delay in getting up to speed with the work to be done.
People 🫶
Build A Team of Generalists
Having team players who can flex in and out of various work streams can be a game-changer. Generalists can typically pivot quickly with their broad experience and background making them great backups for one another when extra support is needed during challenging times.
Hire Team Builders as Managers - Part I
Managers who know how to build and support a team are the secret sauce to driving growth. This also means these hires are less likely to ‘produce’ work themselves. Outstanding managers are spending their time actively involved with their team every day, knowing when to step in and when to let someone fly.
Hire Team Builders as Managers - Part II
Adjust the expectations of manager output. These managers are doing ‘invisible’ work keeping a team in sync, motivated, and supported to get projects over the finish line on time. Building and fostering a healthy work environment is work. The ‘output’ will reflect through employee retention, the percentage of KPIs achieved, and increased employee engagement. Even more exciting, employees who are engaged are more likely to share innovative ideas that benefit the bottom line.
Invest in Leadership Development
Spend the time identifying what it means to be a leader at your organization and how that ties to your MVV.
Consistently provide opportunities for leaders to grow and evolve as new insights and research on employee management come to light. (Reminder: It’s just the beginning of the Employee Experience Era.)
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
Audit manager workload and identify what percentage is output-based vs. employee-focused (~1 hour per manager)
As startups become small businesses, many individuals in management positions are often previous individual contributors. Doing an audit of their workload can help identify if they are spending their time focused on people or projects.
Prioritize the employee experience (~4 hours for the exit survey analysis and ~4 hours in talent attraction research)
Hiring, onboarding, and training replacement employees can cost three to four times the original employee's salary. Review past exit surveys to understand the root reasons your employees leave. Pair those insights with additional research into what makes your organization attractive to new talent and begin implementing the changes.
Example: If employees were leaving in droves because they didn’t feel they had the support & resources to do their jobs successfully, launch a new initiative that focuses on building resources & providing support.
Begin implementing new culture initiatives that prepare managers to prioritize their employees
You don’t need a pizza party budget for your employees. You need a budget to provide the employees with an easily accessible, supportive manager that provides psychological safety. Providing a Mental Health First Aid course for all management is a great option.
Introduce opportunities for managers to spearhead committees that bring value to your employees. Some examples include;
Healthy Activity - Introduce a daily step challenge
Wealth Management - Introduce financial basics
Community Engagement - Host local nonprofits at a few of your All Hands. Invite them to highlight their community impact & share their business methods. Afterward, provide paid volunteer opportunities with that nonprofit.
Acknowledge the challenging times
“We’re just expected to go to work when all this is happening around us?”, has become an all too common phrase. News has never spread so quickly or been more easily accessible. Create a slack channel, send an email, or provide an open house style All Hands to acknowledge those major events, set expectations for the workplace while navigating potential impacts from what happened, and provide resources to your team.
Before you go
Pivoting quickly when employees are going through a hard time can be tough, but it doesn’t have to be. Applying the tools, rules, and people concepts to the initial example, a manager…
Would be able to adjust their schedule to provide time to Sarah and learn what she needs for support while she navigates her mom’s diagnosis
Would be able to ramp up other employees on new projects and work streams using the existing resources and documentation
Would be able to maintain healthy work boundaries by using the baked-in time on their calendar to catch up when the unexpected arises.
Being human is messy and complex. If you allow employees to be their full messy, complicated selves and make space for them to unravel and find clarity, you’ll see the return on the bottom line through retention and innovation as the Employee Experience Era evolves.
Writer: Adrianne
Interested in working with Adrianne through of All Trades to transform your customer service operations? Email founder@weofalltrades.com for more on how to bring her in as an embedded operator in your startup.
 | A guest post by
|