Do you feel engaged at your work?
This is somehow an off-pattern post here on TACOMOB. But it totally fits into the context of Taking Care of Your Own Business – your own business of earning money by working for an organization in this case.
Talking to my friends who serve their corporate duties I get the impression that most of them are quite disengaged at work.
This impression got cemented when one of my friends entertained me with this glorious rant that is absolutely worth sharing with you.
Here he goes:
“You see, Andy, employee experience (EX) is my entire journey within that workplace. It includes recruitment, on-boarding, my role within the organization, how well I understand the goals of the business, how the company rewards me & how it develops me to be the best that I possibly can be.
Is it optional?
Certainly not. I will have an experience anyway. Whether it is a good one that I enjoy for many years or a bad one I want to quit quickly will make or break a business in the long run (well, not because of me alone quitting but the accumulated workforce’s lousy experience).
How to make it a good one in my eyes?
Well, EX has to be seen a bottom-up concept!
The key to delivering a great EX is enabling me to feel & be connected.
It’s my journey of making use of the various apps, systems, platforms, & information I need to do my job.
Physically & digitally, how does the organization support my professional objectives & treat me like a valued colleague?
I want to feel that my work matters & that my employer cares about me.
Nobody wants to be just a cog in the machine.
Heaps of research all point to one formula: a well-crafted EX leads to better employee engagement (EE).
It’s really just that simple.
But maybe not that easy.
If they really want to find ways to sustain higher levels of EE & performance in us, we need to design the work experience to be more engaging. (when he says ‘we’ he means employers & employees together)
Most people don’t stop to think about it, but experiences are really one of the main things that make all of us human.
The challenge we have to overcome today is how to shift our relationship with work from feeling like a physical purchase, where satisfaction starts to decline over time, to an investment in an experience, where our satisfaction increases over time.
A good start would be joining organizations where we truly want to be instead of need to be.”
Then my friend went ahead and shared about an insightful and actionable book “The Employee Experience Advantage” by Jacob Morgan that shows proven and tested ways to get there.
I dug out this quote: Jacob Morgan says, “I view employee experience as something that creates engaged employees but focuses on the cultural, technological, and physical design of the organization to do that. As the intersection of employee expectations, needs, & wants and the organizational design of those expectations, needs, and wants.”
And after a few sips of his beer my friend continued his rant:
“One crucial thing to keep in mind is that EX can’t be created unless the organization knows us its employees.
Yes, sure, every leading organization has thorough feedback mechanisms that connect the voice of the employee to the decisions that the organization makes. Without this bridge, there is no such thing as EX.
And feedback in an organization can happen in only two ways: in person or through technology.
In person is my preferred option, but what if we are geographically disbursed & mainly working on the go?
That’s where technology can act as the glue and the nervous system that power the organization.
Ideally, a technology that actually looks like it is designed for us humans and not for rocket scientists or developers.
We have access to so many amazing technologies and platforms in our personal lives, but for some reason when we show up to work, we are stuck using the same tools we used to use decades earlier.
More Email anyone?
We really want and need something more stylish, flexible, modern, and attractive.
But consumer grade technology is only one of three parts of Jacob Morgan’s proven & tested Employee Experience Equation:
No single environment can get to its maximum potential without having the support of the other two parts (culture and physical space).
This is one of the reasons why so many organizations around the world are struggling with not only improving EE but also justifying the investments required. They are stuck focusing on just a small part of the big picture, and even that small part isn’t being executed on well.
Culture has the largest impact on employee experience
Based on Jacob Morgan’s research conducted for his book it has a 40% share – and it’s the most challenging to execute on (& too multifaceted to be covered here in this short article). Because culture deals more with the human side of things.
Here is Morgan’s great illustration of the components of a CELEBRATED Culture:
Now the good news is that when we start working at an organization, we are already engaged.
How to sustain our engagement that’s the real challenge.
The first step is to measure our engagement.
How often?
That’s something we the people should control & be able to do when & where we want as often as we want.
Organizations need to understand that this is a dynamic & fluid thing that changes constantly.
We are not light switches that are either on or off.
Anything related to us should be measured continuously. Perhaps the organization has a short single‐question pulse survey weekly, monthly culture snapshots, or semi-annual engagement reviews. Mobile Apps can easily be used to collect, collate, analyze and present the current engagement of all team members.
And then comes what is missing from many organizations:
Yes, they ask us
Yes, they acknowledge us
But do they really act on the ideas, feedback, & opinions that we are willing to share?
And it’s not just taking action but also doing so transparently within a reasonable timeline.
EX is not equal to EE
Despite the fact that EE is the end goal, many organizations fail to recognize that EX is the means to that end.
They often only pay attention to results from engagement surveys rather than proactively designing & managing EX.
They are looking at effects (engagement) without causes (the experiences that lead to certain levels of engagement).
In fact, we employees can engage ourselves much better than any HR program can.
And yet it’s in the interest of organizations to improve levels of employee engagement, so they try.
And so they should.
Let’s think of EX as an ongoing & never-ending back‐and‐forth interaction between us the employees & you the organization. Like a dance where both partners need to take the appropriate steps for it to make sense. Except in this tango, the music never stops, & neither does the dancing!
This concept of an infinity loop shows an ongoing relationship or a continuum between us & the organization. There is no break & it’s designed to flow a bit like water smoothly around the loop.
Notice that we make up half of the feedback loop & the organization makes up the other half.
This is quite different from most traditional models, which see the organizations own the majority of EX while employees have only a smaller part.
We employees have to own it too.
It always takes two to tango.”
Puuh, after that rant I had to order two more beers for us.
In case you are interested to learn more about what you can do to improve your own employee experience do check out Jacob Morgan’s book. He shows you the “dance steps” in a step by step manner. Every small step in the right direction helps.
Full disclosure, this is an affiliate link to Amazon. Once you buy the book I earn a small commission.