The brand’s biggest challenge was retaining employees - without investing in employee experience strategies to develop, motivate and engage their teams, my colleagues all hated their jobs too. This realisation is what initially sparked my interest in culture and people, and I began a journey in the talent, development and HR sector with a mission to better understand the role of employee experience in shaping and supporting businesses. And it’s the experience economy that is impacting the world of work. The growth of the millennial workforce, advances in technology, mobility and globalisation are all demanding more of employers than ever before. This has resulted in the emergence and focus of employee experience, as demonstrated by companies such as Airbnb investing in a dedicated team to ‘drive the health and happiness’ of the company, and BP appointing a Director of Employee Experience. This is further compounded by The Future Workplace study "The Active Job Seeker Dilemma," which found that 83% of HR leaders said "employee experience" is either important or very important to their organization’s success.
In a recent webinar “Harness The Power Of Emergent Behavior To Design Great Employee Experiences”, Forrester, a leading research and advisory firm, recommended that companies use Customer Experience, Journey Mapping and Design Processes to drive their own culture, and impact their creative product. And I agree. The industry spends vast amounts of time understanding clients’ businesses and their target markets to craft amazing consumer facing digital experiences - we overlook creating equally amazing employee experiences for our people. We need to practice what we preach, and begin paying attention to the experiences of our employees.
In the webinar, Forrester cited how Adobe have employed these techniques to create new office spaces designed to specifically foster creativity. The software giant’s 280,000 square foot Utah campus was designed by award-winning Rapt Studio, to create a workplace that would be both an extension and a reflection of Adobe’s innovative brand and an engine for capturing its evolving culture.
Like Adobe, Isobar’s employee experience is a critical part of our employee engagement strategies, as illustrated by Isobar Melbourne’s new office created last year. The environment was purpose built to be flexible for staff to hack and adapt as the needs of the teams and nature of the projects change. This fosters collaboration across its 200+ designers, technologists and strategists, incorporating both extroverted and introverted space for all employees.
So, how can mirroring the Experience Design approach for clients help when creating a great experience for your employees? Experience Design is designing for real people in real scenarios, integrating human-centered thinking and design, as-well-as focusing on customer-centric considerations to uncover new ways of growing and evolving our clients’ businesses. Employee Experience is designed for real people too, with an understanding of how they support, and are supported, by the organisation, enabling them to be better employees and contribute to exceptional service to our clients. As was echoed in the Forrester webinar, if we look at the Employee Experience through the lens of Experience Design, there’s crossovers in what is also considered a “great consumer experience”.
Experience Design Principles:
Source, Isobar
If we take the principles of Experience Design, and translate them into looking at Employee Experience, we should be focused on three things: our people, our environment, and how we can incorporate technology to improve employee experiences.
People
People are impacted by the culture of the business. So consider what your business culture is like, and ensure leadership embodies this culture. Businesses need to create a culture which enables people to perform successfully and feel empowered, in turn exposing their potential, growth, and development.
Environment
From the mailroom to the boardroom, down to the physical architecture of offices, ergonomic considerations of equipment, facilities, lighting and collaborative spaces - the environment is key in empowering employees, encouraging collaboration and reflecting brand values.
Offices also need to acknowledge the diverse needs of employees. Accessibility, changing facilities, religious needs and dietary requirements all need to be considered.
Technology
Company issued devices and software needs to be high-spec. People need to feel proud to use them, and both hardware and software need to complement one another to unlock employees’ creative ideas and innovations.
I believe that by following the Experience Design principles and achieving all of the above, we can ensure that all employee touch points are the best they can be, ultimately unleashing the best quality of work by our people.
Agencies and businesses alike need to be smarter with their employee experience, and use their own successful client Experience Design strategies to help them succeed. If we all, as an industry, put the same level of care and attention into creating great employee experiences and culture that bred creativity and innovation as we do for our clients’ work, this could accelerate results for our client and our people.
Reference:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/using-experience-design-build-brilliant-employee-nick-bass-mcipd?trk=v-feed&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BeLH5%2FjONRAivikGEi0PAAg%3D%3D
