‘We used the outcomes of the day for a call for action, establish shared accountabilities to improve the moments that matter and as a start to help us create our version of a people deal.’ Inspired by the example set by Cisco with its approach to breaking HR, Achieve Australia, and many other organizations like it across a diverse range of sectors, are proving in practice that any organization can embrace EX principles to design far more valuable experiences for staff.
The organization has now established employee taskforces aligned to each of the 10 moments that matter as defined by staff, and five working groups that are focused on tackling its big workforce
challenges and opportunities. There is a dedicated executive and assigned leads to each group to keep up the momentum, which reinforces the need to create an early movement within an EX ap- proach. The other big lesson here is that individual moments that matter and the strategic workforce or organizational challenge are constantly being defined, designed and delivered simultaneously. ‘The information as a qualitative input into our workforce strategy helped to prioritize all the improvement efforts we knew we had to deliver focusing on those things first that we were told would make the most difference (interestingly the results were very different to what we expected in terms of what was important to the group),’ said Salloum.
CASE STUDY Designing across the HEX at Maxis
Maxis, Malaysia’s leading telecommunications firm, found itself in a very challenging position a few years ago. A traditional and well-established market leader with over 3,000 employees, the company has undergone a quite
remarkable transformation. I have a lot of interest in companies that take back control of their destiny to deliver amazing turnaround success stories. Maxis is in that category.
In 2013, the brand was in serious decline. It lost market share and dropped from number one to number three in its prepaid business. Customers were opting to take their business to challengers within the market. Telecommunications companies worldwide had to rethink their business because of declining revenues and profit due to players like WhatsApp. On the inside, things weren’t much better. In fact, it couldn’t be much worse. Engagement was at an all-time low. The perfect storm of issues made this a particularly compelling journey for the company over a period of several years. Customers were not happy.
Employees were not happy. Things looked bleak.
Truth: re-designing business strategy and values
With the appointment of CEO Morten Lundal, the brand had determined that a major new direction was required. What they knew was that people and culture was key to succeeding with the digital transformation. As part of the early work, the company quickly set out to redefine the values of the business. It is not
unusual for values to be developed at the top of the organization and is a wise move in some contexts given that leaders are the ones who role model the values for others to follow. What employees see, feel and experience in relation to the values often originates from senior management and the trickle-down effect. There was a sincere effort around creating the right expectations within the company and forming a new relationship with customers and employees.
Lundal explained the vision for Maxis in a simple and effective way. The Maxis of the future would be all about digitalization, channel revolution and moving from product to services. It was this that dictated a radical shift in EX and CX, and was key to changing the perception of brand internally and externally.
The culmination of this was the MaxisWay. A purpose and set of clearly defined values for the business at all levels to embrace.
Workplace: a modern employer
Part of the transformation was heavy investment to modernize the work environment. The company wanted its employees to be so proud of their
workplace. Maxis delivered on that and exemplifying this was the CEO who would also sit in an open-plan office alongside everyone else. This is not the ‘norm’ in Asia by any stretch and highlights how Maxis successfully diverged from standard practice across a range of EX work. The offices are colourful, vibrant and welcoming, with lots of functional and well-designed spaces that encourage openness and bring the MaxisWay to life – the office communicates exactly what’s important and the values are well integrated within the workplace design.
‘This was intentional as Maxis’ people worked very closely with the external workplace designers to achieve the outcomes they desired. Nothing was left to chance and co-creating the workplace design was pretty much our way. The office environment is good, but the EX and the culture we create sustains and maintains the MaxisWay’ said Monir Azzouzi, the then Head of Employee Experience at Maxis.
Installing an EX and people-centric mindset
If Maxis was to be a leading digital company for its customers, it had to make this a reality for employees too. At the outset of the EX work, HR at Maxis was far too conventional in approach and a shift in mindset was a priority. The function was compliance and policy driven. These elements needed care and consideration, but to effect and influence outcomes for the business, HR had to step up.
‘We had to become Peak Performance Incorporated and this required specialist skills and capabilities so we hired sales guys, actuarial scientists,
psychologists, and entrepreneurs. We took the view that HR is not rocket science, and colleagues coming without a HR background can pick it up along the way, and they did. The most important aspect was their mindset and attitude towards leading the business in a digital and employee-centric way,’ said Azzouzi.
Technology: digitalizing the EX journey
Azzouzi, with a background in business and sales, together with his colleagues and CHRO saw the raw potential of HR to become a genuine business leader. ‘We had to try, fail, learn, and move forward fast. Within this, HR had to be among the first departments to digitalize. Perception is everything throughout the employee journey. As a leading telecommunications company, we had no excuse not to be a truly digital company. Through mobile and cloud technology, we created a seamless and integrated experience of previously bureaucratic processes.’
In practice, this meant a bold move to becoming paperless and digitalizing many HR processes. ‘How employees feel about the brand is determined from the first contact with the brand. We can’t claim to be digitalized and then run a paper-based company.’ This boldness has seen HR digitalize everything including interviews within the candidate experience and a broad range of learning experiences. It has also made things more transparent and easier for employees to access the information or the learning they need, when and how they choose to access it, on mobile or computer. Through a wide range of digital initiatives, it was HR that led the conversations around implementation, team forming, and the ways of working used to iterate and advance EX projects that started with the user experience first, not last.
Structure and leadership: flatter, accountable and data-informed
To facilitate agile ways of working, the company flattened the structure as is common when seeking to accelerate EX progress and designed accountability for collective EX leadership. Indeed, the company went from a very hierarchical structure with 51 grades and 10 career ladders to four career levels. Every quarter an actionable survey that is aligned with the leadership expectations is carried out and receives a 94 per cent submission rate on average. This data is used within the design of learning experiences and throughout the performance review process, which includes regular pit stops or check ins to discuss performance and growth. The company worked hard on the leadership element of EX and ensured the structure was delivering the best possible outcomes for employees and customers. This included a commitment to provide great leaders for great people.
‘The monthly 1:1s known as pit stops and the quarterly leadership surveys made a fundamental difference to engagement outcomes. We could measure our progress and take any necessary actions quickly to support and develop
the experience working with our leaders. This was important for our employees.
They know we measure leadership quality. We take it seriously,’ said Azzouzi.
Community: working well together
Azzouzi and the team at Maxis wanted to help design a community that worked well together and had fun. Actively co-creating experiences that facilitated this was a major step forward and employees are the ones who are now leading this with various clubs, communities of interest, and activities involving local and national charities. ‘Every day something’s going on. People care so much more about the company and the people around them now. Silos have gone and the company is working together much better as one team.’
Community cannot just happen. It takes big and small design decisions to affect people. A big example at Maxis was its decision not just to be market- current on pay, but in many cases, market leading. Pay remains a factor in how attractive an employer is perceived to be. Maxis went further in a country and cultural context that was traditionally more conservative. The organization determined that benefits would be standardized across the entire company. No more perks or fancy entitlements based on seniority. From the tea lady to the CHRO, all benefits are the same. This is community-forming action, and sends a big message to current and future staff.
Human: experience the benefits of change
There was little value in talking about stuff. For Maxis, a deliberate strategy was to give employees many opportunities to experience new technology and new ways of working before they were fully adopted. The thinking, which proved helpful, was that people needed to see, hear and feel the benefits directly.
Employees as humans had to be immersed in the change, not just hearing about it through senior managers. This was a smart move and helped successful efforts to transform.
The results of this EX approach were numerous. Maxis won the prestigious Asian Human Capital Award 2017. This was recognition of its successful transformation while improving the engagement score to the best in its history, which was in the high-performing category worldwide. The company elevated engagement from 67 per cent to 88 per cent in just four years and returned to number one in its pre- and postpaid business as well as in brand preference.
Transformation 1.0 complete you could say, but now Maxis is stepping up efforts to elevate the EX even further through deepening its use of design thinking and introducing AI, machine learning and chatbots within HR.
Developing the EX is neither a phase nor a destination. It is some- thing we do every day and in every way. It is not one approach, but many, at multiple levels, all coming together to bring home high per- formance. Businesses are no longer wedded to one technique, trend or fad of the day. EX gives us the flexibility to utilize all manner of techniques and tactics to evolve the day-to-day experience. It can be a nudge or sometimes a major push, but designing the EX certainly requires intelligence and insight throughout the design stage, and one element we need to draw out for some special attention within our design of EX is leadership.