In the context of EX, what type of leader should we be endorsing and filling our companies with? For me, it is relatively straightforward.
We need high-quality leaders that truly embrace the ‘human’ element of business. Indeed, they understand and act on the human manifesto that we looked at earlier. This type of leader takes the human manifesto to heart. Their role is to create the best possible conditions and climate for success to occur for teams and individuals. In fact, that is their primary role. If it is not viewed as such then we have more work to do on the leadership experience.
Leaders, as we have discussed, are getting real-time data on EX and performance. What follows should be good human-centred and performance-improving actions. Replicated across an organization, the wins and marginal gains are plentiful. Performance – how it is managed and experienced – is something companies are designing in tandem with EX. Ensuring values flow through performance, crafting a team environment and climate that facilitates high performance
and positive outcomes remains a major part of great organizational development work. Great leadership cannot survive in an environ- ment where the stand-alone once-a-year appraisal or staff engage- ment surveys live. It must be fed with fast, accurate and transparent real-time data delivered in a way that helps people lead. In some companies, this may be an app. In others, it will be a dashboard. In others still, it will literally be on the wall or on the screen, but in any case, EX organizations know that data is the power behind progress.
It gives everyone an opportunity to be really clear on what is happen- ing in performance terms and to grow in an informed manner.
Leaders are everywhere, not just on the organizational chart, and increasingly, the most powerful and profitable type of leadership doesn’t have a title. This type of leadership is captured in moments.
The interactions and touchpoints where employees can either take control to really deliver an exceptional experience for customers, or alternatively they can fail to commit to those moments and let them slip away. Making this mistake ensures customers slip away too, and companies may not have the opportunity to get them back. Creating a sense, a feeling and a reality where employees are leading the CX is paramount, but so too is the willingness of EX and HR leaders to spot opportunities to really seize the moment when it comes to starting the EX transformation work.
CASE STUDY Transforming the EX at Sky
After being acquired by Comcast for £30.6 billion (US $40 billion), Sky is entering a new period of transformation. Sky’s overall mission is to be the world’s number one customer-led entertainment and communications company and no one can doubt the fact that it has managed to build a high-quality brand, organization and team. HR’s role within this centred on creating an effective organization and culture to deliver its business aims.
Alison Todd, when she was in her role as Head of Employee Experience at Sky, oversaw the early HR work to embed an EX approach within the company.
‘The Sky@work project was launched as we moved to a large scale new building, and this was a catalyst in broadening out our work on EX to drive key changes in behaviour across all business sites.’
This involved the creation of an EX strategy that had four core themes:
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● Fix the broken.
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● Prioritize.
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● Shape the new world.
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● Work with others.
The types of themes Sky worked on are an example of where a lot of EX projects begin. For HR, ‘fix the broken’ or as I put it earlier in terms of disrupting the status quo, we are designing around and challenging some of the biggest problems within EX. This is naturally a human-centric way of doing things.
Traditionally, HR functions have been too quick to focus on building the new world, rather than respecting the old one. If employees have been complaining about the annual appraisal process, approach to professional growth, facilities or leadership quality, then these should be in the mix early for some compelling redesigns. This demonstrates real empathy – going after issues and challenges that matter most to staff, not the organization. In relationship-building terms, this is a solid strategy to build trust and respect.
Being yourself at work – a team approach
Sky designed and introduced a more flexible approach to work and started building the foundations of ‘being yourself’ at work to drive engagement.
Creating a great place to work is a real team effort. Working across departments, which included premises, workplace, technology, internal communications and HR, the business was energized around the idea of creating a path to
engagement through the day-to-day experience. What is striking about the Sky EX is the attention to detail and context. Hanging out into the atrium just beyond the reception at Sky Central, its London-based campus, is a prominent and eye-catching glass-box studio, which is broadcasting continuously throughout the day as the home of Sky News. Every guest and employee immediately knows what they are part of. The workplace is designed to be human-friendly; it is based around open and collaborative neighbourhoods, which all have their own casual spaces, open kitchens, functional meeting spaces and seating areas. This facilitates agile working practices and gently encourages a strong and vibrant cross-company network and community. Its light and aesthetically natural theme certainly creates a more human feel about work.
An array of convenient services has been built into the workplace including a subsidized restaurant, café and its own private cinema for employees, customer screenings and presentations, a drop-in for IT support that immediately fixes any
tech issues, its own post office, car washes, dry cleaning and access to a gym.
Sky is a prime example of a business placing great emphasis on the holistic human experience – its EX is geared up to support journeys through work and life, and create the right conditions for humans to genuinely thrive. The business is also doing some pioneering work focused on wellness and wellbeing for its 7,000+ employees. The company has introduced a programme working with Frazzled Café, a charity partner, that creates a safe and confidential space to meet and discuss mental health issues and challenges (Bird, 2018). Employees can share stories and help each other with the assistance of a trained facilitator.
Clear and simple communication
‘Our EX priorities were communicated in clear language; we wanted to create an environment where people can deliver great work. Internal communications and marketing were all connected as this important work rolled out and Sky
introduced a mantra for all messaging to employees regardless of which team the message came from. This tag “Work. Life. Better.” proved very effective in unifying teams and communications with the same shared focus on EX.
Employees would visibly see the connection between all the detailed work that was going on to make work better at Sky,’ said Todd.
To inform this and ensure action followed, the company harnessed the potential of an instantaneous data set that was generated from regular people and pulse surveys. This encouraged action at pace to improve engagement and performance, and placed the data in the hands of teams so that local improvements could be made to move quickly. With the people surveys in place and data readily available on the quality of the EX at Sky, the business has been keen to consciously distribute ownership of EX to the wider business. It is too big to sit in any one function and leaders were given the data they needed to make progress.
Context is key
Commenting on the bigger elements of EX, Todd said, ‘I have found that by creating a business case for individual elements that fit the organizational narrative, context and direction for Sky, it has enabled huge progress to be made in the broadest sense.’ This is an important point. Designing the EX may require many and multiple business cases, dependent on the context, to get things moving. This is business reality in a lot of companies to justify time, spend and effort, but the job of the EX professional remains very clear. It is to help shape, connect, align, and help make things coherent for employees and how they experience the business. This not only helps deliver meaningful outcomes, but also helps to amplify wins across the EX and across the business.
Measuring and progressing EX
Todd agrees with this. ‘Initiatives don’t work on their own. The business has to do it for itself – create desire and give people the tools and the measures to help them track progress. HR is in a unique position to rally people and join the dots for other departments to ride the waves and move the dial steadily in the right direction.’ In the design stage, yes, HR can be the experience architect, but the other roles for HR professionals are also vital as they become shapers, connectors and subject matter experts in all things that matter in the human experience.
Part of the experience: diversity and inclusion
An example of a development theme specific to the context is the work on
‘Women in Leadership’. This body of work was led by a director who brought together all relevant teams across Sky to make a step change to the experience for women leaders to transform representation at a senior level. This successful approach has resulted in a real change in understanding of what diverse teams can deliver and broke down previously held assumptions and attitudes. The employee experience and leadership development teams were the drivers of the HR aspects of this including 50/50 gender-balanced shortlists at the start of the pipeline for new roles – generally for both internal and external hiring where possible. The development elements included a bespoke ‘women in leadership’
development programme. According to Todd, the then Women in Leadership Director, Bella Vuillermoz, also instigated a whole programme of inspiring women speakers from all walks of life, which were open for all to attend.
What this reinforces is that in designing across the entire journey, HR is now one of many functions that needs to take a lead on this work. Relationships, alignment and accountability must be strong to make a success of it. Certainly, the days where HR could just get on with it and deliver core work centrally are over – the EX demands joined-up working and thinking across all touchpoints with a high level of senior support and leadership. This is perhaps part of the reasoning behind the amount of time spent on getting the brand truth right and how it is being framed with employees and prospective employees alike.
A unique experience to attract and recruit talent
Sky spent 12 months building a new approach to attracting the best talent, which was founded on thorough research across the whole Sky Group. It allows the company to describe the unique experience of working at Sky and highlights those things that potential candidates have told the company are important and
is reflective of its new purpose and values. Again, starting with empathy for the candidates, for the humans, proves to be very worthwhile when it comes to outcomes, as Todd describes. ‘We have developed a market leading strategy and plan across all social channels (over the last three years) in service of attraction.
This has been across all the major (and some niche) platforms with great success. We have won awards for our work and now land around 96% of hires directly rather than through agency or external search.’