Designing a great employee experience November 2017
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE: LET’S DO THIS DIFFERENTLY
An employee’s journey with an organisation is more than the milestones – they can feel it very deeply, particularly at key points. The employee experience matters, not just to the employee but also to engagement, productivity and customer satisfaction. We know that there are important times in employee journeys. Nous’ experience working with clients to improve employee experience has shown there are four important experiences that done well can help your employees soar, and done badly have consequences for both the organisation and the employee. These are: Welcome | Step-up | Re-set | Workplace design This booklet describes what we learned from you and others about these four experiences.
We hope you find it helpful as you work to improve employee experience in your own organisation. At Nous we’re exploring team customer experience design techniques, with people and culture technical expertise to seize the opportunity to transform the employee experience. If you would like to talk more about transforming your employee experience then please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. Kirsty and Penelope
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CONTENTS
2 Employee experience: Let’s do this differently 3 Welcome 3 Step-up 4 Re-set 4 Workplace 5 Let’s get started 6 Get in touch
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The welcome should start before the employee’s first date, and whilst it can include some of the administration involved with getting started, it shouldn’t stop there.
We need to find strategies to get from emotions like ‘anxious, incompetent, unsure’ to ‘valued’ quickly.
Good welcomes include meeting the team or a buddy, informal coffees and much much more.
Immersing a new employee in the company culture quickly is really important.
It can be an emotional time.
The new team, particularly the manager, is critical. There needs to be space for a proper welcome from the manager and new team so that the new starter can quickly establish ‘go to’ people and their own support network. Some managers find it hard to prioritise this time, and even if they do, they are not always equipped to do it well. Other roles such as a buddy can be really helpful.
Employers need to be clear about what skills are required or need to be developed prior to stepping into a new role. Opportunities for skills development should be made available either before or just after the employee starts the new position.
Internal and external support network can assist in developing capabilities. The internal support connects employees with a peer network with similar experiences, while the external support enables full disclosure and new perspectives.
Many employers seem to pay lip service to making it “safe to fail”, when that safety needs to be real. Sources of feedback often change in a ‘step up’ situation. Feedback can dry up or, even worse, turn into only positive spin that doesn’t reflect the team’s real thoughts. 3
Trust between all parties (employee & organisation, employee & manager) needs to be built before an honest conversation about a reset can occur.
A command and control approach is restrictive when policies & processes limit the ability to tailor solutions. It can result in employees not feeling encouraged to explore the options and they then move on.
Time away from work can leave people feeling very isolated. Confidence can drop and it can be hard for people to find their new place in an organisation or team. Adopting a “welcome” mentality can be helpful as people transition back to work.
Leadership capability to model productive re-set conversation is often missing. Managers are often unable to broach the conversation and leaders don’t model different ways of working.
Variety is key. Provide spaces at work for people to choose based on the activity they are doing. Open plan for collaboration, connecting with colleagues, developing ideas. Quieter areas for focussed-activities and thinking. Encouraging staff to move around the office regularly also helps build stronger relationships between teams an collaboration throughout the business.
Flexibility – permit employees to choose the space they want to work in. This empowers employees to choose the options that best fit their needs.
Flexible work spaces backed up with the infrastructure to make it happen. Same devices, monitors, docking stations, mobiles etc. This can reduce the transaction costs of changing from one space to another. Also provide support that helps things get quickly resolved when they go wrong.
Workspaces require management and employees to all trust one another to do the right thing, to use the facilities in the way they were intended, and to get the job done in the most productive way possible. Employees who like their work environment are also more likely to be happy and more productive at work.
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LET’S GET STARTED
1. Project set up
2. Discover
Project management
People and culture expertise
Useful questions to ask, wherever you are on the journey‌
5. Deliver
4. Design
Human centred design
DISCOVERY
DEFINE
DESIGN
DELIVER
What evidence or data do you have that helps you know where your organisation is in relation to employee experience?
Where should you focus?
What hypotheses do you have about what the solutions might be?
What discipline do we have for delivery?
What are you doing well, where are the pain points and what are those pain points costing you?
Which experiences could create real value for your organisation and your customers?
How else might you solve that problem?
How do we keep improving, rather than behave as a one off project?
Who will notice or care?
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Contact us
Kirsty Elderton
Penelope Cottrill
PRINCIPAL
PRINCIPAL
03 8638 4126
03 8602 6220
Kirsty.Elderton@nousgroup.com.au
Penelope.Cottrill@nousgroup.com.au
Jonathan Yeates
Melanie Coupe
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DESIGNER
DIRECTOR
03 8638 4168
03 8638 4166
Jonathan.Yeates@nousgroup.com.au
Melanie.Coupe@nousgroup.com.au
Nathan Jones
Ruby Pryor
DIRECTOR
SENIOR CONSULTANT
03 8638 4191
03 8638 4140
Nathan.Jones@nousgroup.com.au
Ruby.Pryor@nousgroup.com.au
Tim Esmonde SENIOR CONSULTANT 03 8638 4149 Tim.Esmonde@nousgroup.com.au