From pre-hire to retire, every experience in the workplace counts.
That’s a lot of experiences to take care of all at once, across an entire organization. What it takes to deliver a compelling employee experience is not for every company. This is not about a lack of resources. It is not about a lack of talent. It is also not about a lack of cash.
It is about a lack of will. A lack of commitment to run a company in a human-centric way, and this plagues companies at all levels of the economy.
The greatest barriers to success are the ones we have always known about. They are simply recycled through generations until someone breaks the chain, someone chooses to do things differently. Someone decides to build a community, not a corporation. Someone decides to put people and their experiences first.
You don’t have to make a business case in those circumstances. This outcome has arrived by experience, sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but our experiences shape us, mould us, and transform us into the people we are.
Show me a CEO or top team embracing the humans within their organization, and I will show you a catalogue of experiences that have made that so.
This reminds me of the story about the money driven CEO who put the dollar sign first every time until one day there was no money. All he was left with after a market crash - people. The customers went, shareholders went, but the people who worked for the company stayed. They may not have agreed with his management style, but they believed in the purpose of the business, and that was enough, at that moment. The CEO, like many before him, changed, and determined that never again would he put anything else above his people. They stayed. Naturally, there was a period of trust-building, but fortunately, people came to believe in the CEO, not because of his words, but because of his actions.
Unsurprisingly, the business unified, grew stronger, and delivered more value than anyone could have predicted. They became a community of people and every experience mattered. Employees were involved and included in every aspect of the business, and co-creation became the norm for any internal or external project.
They won back all the business they had lost, and generated much more besides, and the most beautiful element within all of this was that they did it together.
There is nothing more powerful than an employee experience in full flow. It is inspiringly brilliant to be part of, but someone must take a stand first. Someone must lead in a people-centric way. Someone must be the catalyst for epic transformation.
Maybe today, or maybe tomorrow, that someone could be you.
