Consistency in the experience is another major organizational goal;
our extensive research in multinational corporations (MNCs) over a two-year period found that having a two-tiered EX with different benefits and conditions for one group of employees, and a different set for another created a wide range of issues within businesses and impacted engagement levels. If we look back to the human manifesto, there will be parts of the EX that we would seek to personalize as much as possible, other parts where we want the community to share the same experiences, and other parts throughout the employee jour- ney that will need to be consistent and seamless for everyone to expe- rience. At the same time, we will need to acknowledge and design around the differences that are specific to role, context, culture or a certain employee persona.
In large companies, the idea of one brand, many communities, is poignant when considering how we define EX. We have the global, regional, national and local communities. Some of the real work here is about connecting them. If the company is going in one direction, the everyday experience of the business is there to signpost it and to help people feel part of it. Technology, no doubt, is a game-changer for global companies. It is often one of the first areas they start defin- ing within the EX journey when looking at connection or consistency problems across a global and complex business.
CASE STUDY Defining EX at Sykes Cottages
Sykes Cottages, in 2017, was the UK’s largest independent operator of UK holiday rental properties, and reported record growth in profit of 33 per cent in its latest financial year to financial year end 2018. The travel company won the coveted gold award at the ‘Oscars of the travel industry’ for the sixth year in a row. It received the majority of over 750,000 holidaymaker votes to become the best large UK holiday cottage booking company. Winning at the British Travel Awards, which is the largest consumer-voted programme in the world, is high achievement by any standards.
Building a business strategy on a purpose to ‘create memories through an awesome holiday experience’, the company’s vision was to take 2 million people on holiday every year by 2020. The company was deliberately
ambitious in this regard as a method to propel the business into the future via a ‘big, hairy audacious goal’.
For the CEO, Graham Donoghue, who is also the former managing director of moneysupermarket.com, the first thoughts when he took the reins of the business were about long-term sustainability and possibility. ‘As a provider of properties for holidays within the growing “staycation” market, the question was how can we influence the experience? What are the possibilities we can deploy to achieve our growth targets? How could we influence the experiences of the owners and customers, what does that look like, and what are the measures of success?’
Challenging the status quo to elevate the experience
Indeed, the first few months in his role of CEO were dedicated to discovering the business, challenging assumptions and starting the early work to redefine the future, working back from an experience-led purpose. Once the vision became clear, and the constituent parts of the strategy were identified, the questions to move things ahead were relatively straightforward:
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● How do we execute on this?
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● What are the tools we need for the job?
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● What is the data telling us?
‘We needed insights and data to take action,’ said Donoghue, as he worked back from the vision to develop, with his team, a strategic roadmap of concrete steps that were necessary to realize the vision for the business. A key question being ‘what needs to be true if we are to succeed?’
As well-positioned business leaders, HR professionals can also learn from the approach of a new CEO in the way they go about their business, setting a vision, and asking the big questions about service delivery and experience, challenging the status quo and the things that hinder progress within the EX.
A frictionless experience
The first port of call was friction. As a team, it was about identifying all the interactions and touchpoints that were causing friction for all stakeholders.
To do this, the full leadership team was gathered up off-site to co-discover and co-create the experience of doing business with Sykes Cottages. They drew out the entire experience from end to end. It was, in effect, a truly defining moment for the business and how it would operate from that day. It was the first time ever that the people responsible for the end-to-end experience for the customers of Sykes had been in a room together. They discovered everything – the economic model, the owner journey, the customer journey – and everything was mapped to identify any pain points and friction.
The structure of the business places an emphasis on being and
remaining agile to facilitate multidisciplinary working and closely connected teams that create regular opportunities to fail, to challenge and to learn.
Huddles are frequent and an expected way to get things done fast and scale quality into the CX.
Inevitably, the business found that the way the business was structured, the technology, data and information available to staff, and the way the employees experienced the business on a day-to-day basis determined outcomes with customers. Unleashing innovation within the EX to develop the CX showed what people were truly capable of and was a major catalyst for collective and individual growth and development. This point, more than any other, demonstrates the fact that if companies truly want to develop an exceptional CX, then they will always need to develop the EX too.
Building trust through experience
The ‘best experience’ pillar within Sykes Cottages’ business strategy was born out of that. It provided the focus and accountability to directly affect and influence business outcomes through customers, owners and
employees. In practice, the business became obsessed with the experience that people had when they interacted with the brand. This led to some soul searching as commercial drivers could potentially create tension with an experience-led approach. Should employees do the right thing for the best commercial outcomes or should they just do the right thing?
‘We had to become a trusted, salient brand, with our employees
representing the best of us and with customers who not only considered and participated with our brand, but loved it too.’
Sykes Cottages knew that they needed to be trusted from the inside-out, and concluded that it started with employees doing the right thing by the customer, and the business doing right by employees. The company installed full transparency into the business and throughout teams and began
empowering people to make good things happen in the moment. A good example of a brand living its truth is that every member of staff has the authority to spend budget from a central pot of money to fix a customer experience problem immediately. It is this type of decision point where purpose and values align to create a much more powerful impact on the CX.
Businesses delivering positive ‘moments of truth’ with the CX and EX.
A positive experience at every touchpoint
The workplace environment reflects this focus on customer and employee.
With real-time data on performance visualized through several screens in the offices, employees know where they stand and what’s important. There are no walls or barriers between teams either and dialogue about performance is always-on as a way of life. This approach has matured to such a high level that the business has now banned performance appraisals. They are simply not needed within a high-performing team where performance and growth are discussed as a daily practice. Sykes Cottages is intent on creating memories and positive reference points for everyone as a method to build a supported and valued community. The company has themed parties to celebrate individual, team and collective achievement, and reward staff through individual and collective bonuses based on performance.
Every touchpoint, within every experience, needs to be ‘awesome’. The business understood that the best way to stand out in the market and
differentiate itself was through experience. Sykes Cottages was deliberate and intentional in its approach to facilitate key ways of working and enhance the quality of the connections between people and teams. The emphasis here was about innovating to create marginal gains in service delivery and experience.
When added up, these led to significant improvements in service quality.
Sprinkling awesome into the business
‘Sprinkling awesome into every experience within the business’ is the mantra and what does awesome look like for employees? Aside from what I have highlighted already, they also give all 500 staff their birthday off, have
normalized benefits at all levels, and regularly say thank you to staff for their contribution through a variety of action-based practices. The company’s
‘Vibe Team’ is made up of colleagues with the mandate to iterate, improve and enhance the EX. Drawn from all roles and functions across the business, this employee-led coalition underpins what is a collective approach to organizational development. The business infuses and extends its impact as a community with regular internal and external experiences that create a broader impact in society-at-large. An example of this is fundraising and activities designed to connect employees with charitable causes, and when I met with Donoghue, I noticed one of their fundraising targets on the wall and it had already been smashed in record time. What is important is visible and measured, and often gets done.
A real commitment has been made to employees and this can be seen in how the different elements have been defined through discovery and
disruption – the workplace, the technology, the leadership, the community and the structure – all actively cultivated and designed with the human employees and customers at the forefront of business strategy. As part of this, the company addressed its capability gaps and strengthened where necessary.
This saw an immediate investment in data, technology and analytics, which served to inform every action, but it is very clear that the human experience remained front and centre in the decision-making process.
Learning through experience
One of the early learnings was that a focus on experience must be maintained. There was a time in the business when a shift that started to happen in that process became the point of focus, and not the experience.
This was remedied by realigning to the context and simplifying language around what matters most. This not only clarified things for employees, but also led to more meaningful and quality interactions with customers. This meaning, Donoghue says, is found in moments across the employee and customer experience; the most important things then are purpose, values and key ways of working, and these are continuously reinforced throughout the holistic EX. In bringing the vision to life, Sykes Cottages has created an EX where employees have fun, feel valued, and grow and learn together.
‘Everything’s up for grabs. There’s no sacred cows. Our employees have freedom to innovate. We keep our own pace that is right for our context, but we want to bring everyone with us on the same journey, and you can see this every day in the way we work as a team.’