EX, which is further evidence that EX has moved up the corporate agenda at the global giant.
Workplace design companies make their pitches not simply on ar- chitecture or the aesthetic design of office buildings and interiors, but on outcomes. A great workplace will contribute to engagement and productivity by creating spaces that encourage effortless collabora- tion, intense and quiet focus, and a whole world of features to unlock creative minds and drive connection. This is the new connected work- place and it shines a light on everything that needs to be amplified within the business, bringing clarity, meaning and full immersion into the brand. Quite often now, employees are determining with design- ers the type of workplace and spaces that would support them in producing their best work.
Building workplaces that produce the right environment for teams, within organizations that run like networks rather than hierarchies, is a solid part of the EX playbook. If a company is moving to activity- based working, which relies on teams forming quickly around an idea or concept, to iterate and scale, then they will need the spaces and workplace to accommodate and make the most of that approach. This type of approach needs a lot of thought about how cross-functional teams come together, and more importantly, work well together within the workplace. There are now a wide range of vibrant and functional rooms with a variety of different uses and advanced equipment available.
The design of workplace presents a great opportunity for compa- nies to accelerate the integration of the truth. It is an always-on com- munication platform to share and keep sharing what is critical to the business and the people within it. It is a way to tap into our learning from neuroscience and psychology to communicate at multiple levels, multiple layers and through multiple channels all at once as part of an experiential environment that can immerse the senses and inspire new possibilities, or it could just be about the funky furniture and a ping- pong table! But no, we can go deeper into the meaning behind things.
The way we can bring the history of our companies to the fore to empower and enable the current workforce to think that little bit big- ger. The folklore, legends and stories reside in our workplaces, but they all revolve around people and what is being achieved, together.
DRPG, a globally based creative communication (experience design) agency, lives by the mantra, ‘Anything’s Possible’. In the recep- tion, they have over 50 industry awards proving that point in prac- tice, but what is significant is what you see around the offices and in the warehouse. Immediately, there is absolute clarity about perfor- mance, purpose and values. Data, information and evidence jump off the wall and let you experience instantly the openness, the core val- ues, and the level of importance the company places on its people.
The offices and teams are connected to facilitate an experience where people can work together easily, effortlessly and efficiently.
A real measure of a workplace is whether employees are proud to show it off to people – clients, friends or others. In DRPG’s case, it has unleashed the power of EX to win new employees and clients alike. Of the prospective clients that visit its UK Global HQ, 85 per cent choose to become clients after exploring and experiencing the way the company works. If employees are this happy and engaged based on the way they are treated, what can clients expect? The cor- relation between EX and the client experience becomes immediately clear in this example. The broader approach to EX also ensures peo- ple stay; the company has a 92 per cent staff retention rate. This perhaps helps explain why EX is such a critical part of the business model and why leading employers invest significant amounts in the modern workplace, but there are many other reasons including en- gagement, productivity and performance.
In an in-depth discussion, the CEO, Dale Parmenter, told me that the driving force behind DRPG’s success was the holistic focus on the ‘ex- perience’ that employees and clients have with the company. Employees are a fundamental part of the company. This is evident through ac- tions. For example, every new internal project developing the EX is dealt with in the same way they would deal with a client project. A project brief is taken, senior team sponsorship is then allocated, and resources and people from across functions are lined up to make the project a success. The office environment promotes this close-knit, open and collaborative style of working as well as the firm’s philoso- phy relating to people and how they operate as a business. What the company has done, in effect, is built a community and workplace around experience, and given the results of this approach, it strongly demonstrates exactly what is possible when you lead with EX.
Community
After giving the opening keynote speech at Israel’s first employee experience conference, it was this theme of community that ran through the agenda of the keynote speeches that followed mine.
Colleagues from Cisco took to the stage to discuss how they were actively building out and encouraging different communities within the organization to foster an innovative and collaborative culture across borders. This also applied to the way that Cisco acquired and merged with other companies and was viewed to be a much stronger way of ensuring newly acquired businesses could continue to flourish and build on the success of their communities.
This has not always been the case. When companies merge or are involved in takeovers, the first action is for big to consume small.
Small company to assimilate into large company. This is often a rea- son for major failures. Rather than recognizing that the smaller com- pany (or community) has done some really great things and should be encouraged to continue to do great things, larger companies start dictating the terms and running roughshod over the newly acquired company. This makes little sense and leads to a protracted, unpro- ductive and stressful coming together. Belonging, or lack thereof, manifests itself very early on as people join their new companies, and it impacts negatively on productivity. This is perhaps reason enough to explain the steady increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) EX roles providing dedicated focus, care and attention to support col- leagues through transitional experiences; and it is certainly a smart move for any company to consider if they have a genuine empathy towards their employees.
PwC, a company I worked with in Australia where it was named LinkedIn’s top workplace for talent in 2017, demonstrates another example of community building. The consulting firm’s UK business has shifted strategy away from the traditional 9–5 work pattern as it seeks to widen its community and attract the best talent. Its own study found that 46 per cent of 2,000 survey respondents prioritized flexible working hours and a good work–life balance the most when choosing a job (BBC, 2018b). The firm recognized this need for greater flexibility within the EX and is designing experiences that can
best deliver on the expectations of the people it is seeking to entice into the business. This move allows them to be more competitive in a red-hot talent market and is also a big nod to the progressive work- places further down the food chain, which are inspiring the larger firms across the economy to consider the lifestyle of their employees and the need for different ways of working to accommodate an indi- vidual’s lifestyle, choices and values.
As humans, we are often at our best as part of a thriving commu- nity. If companies want to instil a real sense of belonging then build- ing a community is the path to creating it. Whatever the size of company, I believe it is within our gift to develop a genuine and life- long connection with employees. A sense of community is an out- come of how well we have crafted and connected the important things within the company. It is the purpose, the mission, the values and the resulting behaviours that become the ‘norm’ every day. It is the way people are treated, the strength of the relationships, and the level of care within the business.
Architecting and consciously shaping a community takes time, considerable effort, and a laser-like focus to get the truth flowing through the EX. ‘Trust is king,’ says Rachael Powell, Chief Customer and People Officer at Xero, and one major way to build trust is by ensuring the purpose of a business ‘remains at the core of what you do and you stand for things that matter in the eyes of your people and customers’ (Powell, 2018). As a company, Xero leads by example with its ‘inside-out’ approach, which revolves around different com- munities within and outside the business.
Bringing together different communities under one shared purpose has proven to be powerful in creating positive ripples across the com- pany. Ultimately, through a purpose-driven approach, one of the major outcomes is brand ambassadorship – the extent to which em- ployees publicly advocate for the company and what it stands for. As Powell documents, Xero has ‘700 app partners, 180 connected finan- cial institutions, and thousands of accountants and bookkeepers, as well as 1.4 million small business subscribers’ and they are all con- nected in a meaningful way, and that’s good for business when you have $2.4 trillion worth of business transactions running through your platform (Gohman, 2019). Indeed, Xero’s truth is firmly based
on helping small businesses thrive, and to deliver that truth is to con- sider every way in which the business interacts with them and its employees.
Observing how the elements of the HEX intersect and connect to the truth is compelling to see and even more inspiring to hear directly from employees. Sarah Boaz-Shelley, when engineering manager at Xero, summed up how work flows within her company and how all the various elements come together to deliver an organization’s truth in practice. ‘We know those closest to the work will have the best ideas. So, we try to create an environment in which people can con- tribute on many levels. Our teams have autonomy over the products they build, from defining what we build to how we build it. So, we can choose our processes, our quality, our metrics, and our opera- tions. We weigh the trade-offs and own our choices’ (Boaz-Shelley, 2018). Behind this comment there is so much going on about the way the company has built holistically, and intentionally developed each of the enabling elements such as workplace, structure and tech to support the human, leadership and community elements.
Community doesn’t stop at the company door either. EX now transcends traditional organizational boundaries, and reaches deep into the external community and society. A good example of this is the way companies are connecting their work with communities around them. It could be a volunteer programme for employees to work with and grow within to support charities, the way products or services are sourced, the sponsorship or integration within local events, which bring together employees and the neighbourhoods around them. There are endless examples, but companies are now changing what we believe about how they can interact with others as part of their EX efforts. The global and local operating context, in effect and reality, is the broader community. As EX brings down the walls between internal functions, companies are uniquely placed to bring down the walls between people and communities.
Spotify, one of the world’s leading music streaming services made headlines recently through an iteration within one simple, but under- rated aspect of HR – the bank/public holiday policy (Whitter, 2018).
While in many companies this public holiday allowance takes shape in the form of a rather dull document, Spotify applied EX thinking to
it and crafted something impressive. Placing humans firmly at the centre, they launched a global EX campaign, which demonstrated the inside-out nature of EX. They started by transforming it internally from a policy to an experience. Employees are now able to take any public holiday worldwide that is aligned with their beliefs. The policy is no longer specific to any one country, but to the beliefs of the em- ployees as part of a highly personalized experience with the mantra,
‘No matter what you believe in, we believe in you’ (Berg, 2017). This simple, but powerful, iteration with the EX at Spotify has inspired society-at-large while creating some incredible reputation, branding and marketing outcomes as well as the positive impact on existing employees. One community connecting with many others, and it all started with EX.