>Tracy Maylett
The Employee Experience
The Employee Experience
How to Attract Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Results
Tracy Maylett, EdD, and Matthew Wride, JD
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2017 by DecisionWise, LLC. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Foreword
When you ask employees how they approach their jobs, just over half of them say that they put in the least amount of work possible without getting fired. If this statistic is true, odds are the guy who recently assembled your grandfather’s pacemaker didn’t really care. One can only hope that surly pacemaker guy is actually part of the other half who are engaged in their work.
Until you understand who is putting in a full and smart effort each day – from producing pacemakers to driving Disney’s Jungle Boat (you try telling the same dumb jokes twenty times a day) – you don’t know where to focus your leadership attention. Who is fully engaged, but not in serving their customers – instead, they’re engaged in serving themselves? Consider the artists who design shampoo and conditioner labels. They work hard to produce a product that will win all kinds of art awards. Of course, that means they use small, grey fonts (they’re considered artsy and all the rage). Now, nobody over fifty who has the temerity to remove their glasses before entering the shower, can see the labels. Oh well, it’s just shampoo and conditioner. But what if the stakes were higher?
As you look behind the engagement headlines, you’re compelled to ask why so many people care so little about their work – or their customers. But you already know the answer, don’t you? It’s those darn Gen-Xers, Millennials, and other narcissists who are taking celebratory photos of themselves every time they chug a large soft drink or stand in front of a waterfall. When will people like that ever think about serving customers?
Perhaps we should look at this through a different lens. Maybe it’s not because of their age, and they weren’t simply born under the wrong star. It’s not because they’re selfish and lazy. There are dozens of factors that turn a job into, well, a job – and not a dream. If researchers could find those forces, and learn how to change them, leaders could move from complaining about low engagement to measuring and changing the experience. And, with a rise in employee engagement, so rises the customer experience.
That’s just what Tracy Maylett and Matthew Wride did. They plowed through tens of thousands of cases and millions of data points, figured out what actually tips the scale of engagement, and are now sharing what you can do to attract and retain top performing employees by building the right employee experience for your organization.
Good for them. For me, I’m taking away two things from this. First, based upon the marvelous research and catchy writing they displayed, Maylett and Wride were fully engaged in writing this book. It’s truly a work of passion. Second, I’m hoping that, when the day arrives, they can tell me the name of a fully engaged person who should build my pacemaker.
Introduction
Engagement is a fundamental human need. It is a power that resides in most people, waiting to be unlocked. People want to be engaged in what they do. If employers build the foundation, employees will do the rest.
The idea of handing a stranger the keys to the front door of your home sounds a little fishy. Even with a quick email introduction, renting out your apartment on the Internet for a few days to some guy you’ve never met challenges common sense. But it’s an even greater stretch to set up an entire company based on the idea that you could entice millions of people to rent out their private abodes to strangers. But that’s exactly what “sharing economy” superstar Airbnb did, becoming the largest lodging provider on the planet and earning it the title of Inc. magazine’s “Company of the Year.”
Admirable as this new, disruptive business model is, it’s not why we have a big man-crush on the company. We admire Airbnb because it’s the first high-profile unicorn – and one of the first companies, period – to create the position of chief employee experience officer.
The exact title is global head of employee experience, but you get the gist. Since that time, we’ve noticed a number of business cards claiming similar titles. Creating such a position legitimizes the growing importance of the Employee Experience, or EX, to organizational success. Not just in a corporate setting, mind you, but in healthcare, academia, the nonprofit sector, and even professional sports.
If you hail from the command-and-control, “All that our employees should expect from us is a paycheck!” school of business,
