There has been a considerable amount of research on employee experience in recent years, focusing on various aspects of the employee experience, including engagement, well-being, motivation, and productivity. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report for example. This annual report is based on a survey of workers in more than 150 countries and provides insights into the state of employee engagement worldwide. The most recent report found that just 21% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs (14% for Europe).

In our own poll for the Customer Experience Foundation (across our CX Community) 83% of respondents said Culture was the most important component in delivering strong EX, way ahead of Recruitment, Onboarding, and Pay and Rewards.

How are you prioritising Employee Engagement in the current climate?
When you look at pay and benefits, they don’t always have a long-lasting impact on employee engagement, so companies need to look at what would make the difference. Some things that can be done are simple such as relating to intrinsic motives, rather than ‘free coffee’. This is all too often seen as a ‘benefit’ in job descriptions. Referring back to the Gallup report, onboarding is a keyway to enhance employee engagement from the very beginning and is relevant for all roles within a business. Managers are fulfilling different role and the ones who are ‘winning’ are those who change how they manage from the very beginning – starting with a good onboarding process and following this through employees’ careers.

Culture is key – this is a common theme which came up during the summit. Although there are more opportunities for talent where companies offer remote working, as employers have more of a geographical reach, it does mean that the culture of an organisation and its employees must be more detailed and more diverse, as everyone will have different needs and views on what the company culture should be. Culture is such a broad topic. How do you measure it? And what drives this as a business? It can take years to change organisational culture.

How do you align EX to your CX strategy?
Get your employees involved. Many people go to work to do a good job. You need to listen to those doing the role. Employees should be passionate about the brand – living and breathing it including the brand and employee values, and the culture. Practical things such as brand merchandise can really help them feel part of the brand. Sharing good feedback with employees is also such an important factor. So often in life it is only the bad feedback which people are made aware of. We should be celebrating the positive too. The use of slack and emojis for daily check-ins can really help show what the mood is as this can affect productivity. People are allowed to have a bad day… we are all human, but what is important is how companies and leaders turn this around.

Can you see a direct link between Employee NPS and Customer NPS scores? You need to find out what is important to your staff. Get a defined set of metrics and be transparent. On the back of bad CX is bad retention. EX is critical to CX. When you launch new products and services – involve the staff as well so that they are 100% engaged with it.

Those paying their employees more, and investing in EX, will see an improvement when it comes to their CX. How does CX drop if EX is poor? Demotivated employees aren’t aligned to the company’s CX goals and their customer’s needs. You can often see when staff are disengaged with a brand when they start talking about it in the ‘3rd person’ (i.e., “they will come back to you”, “they will do this”). You can see a lack of accountability when they start referring to their company in this way.

How do you build a customer-centric culture in your business?
You can do this directly, but it is also about organic interactions, although these can be more of a challenge in a hybrid working environment. Together these can help build a good team environment. It is easy to feel isolated. How do you create an organic version of this? Companies should also have metrics in place to ensure staff always know what is expected of them. Culture is not a binary model, and it isn’t defined. What kind of a business do CEOs want to be running and what culture do they want to create. One thing we must always remember is Customer Service and the Customer Experience is everyone’s job in an organisation, and it should be embedded throughout the business.

There needs to be a shift in mindset on how things are measured. Some organisations focus too much on the cost of sale. People are everything! Technology can enable and empower them, but you need to focus on your employees, or the industry and your business will suffer. It can be difficult to balance what to do for the employee, the customer, and the bottom line, but it can be done. Change how you lead and manage and align