My learning from the EX Summit

I had a great time and learnt a lot at the World Employee Experience Summit in Amsterdam on 8-9 November. I have outlined here my key learning and some 'aha' moments:

Giovanni Manchia from RSM opened the summit by stating that core values are the heart of a company but they only have an impact when they are lived throughout the organisation. Else people play "bullshit bingo"!

Elena Aylott from Oriflame highlighted that culture is felt and lived through "moments", and the stories that we create and share together. I learnt that, in this sense, capturing and celebrating these "moments" are perhaps more important to cultural change than the traditional tools and frameworks.

Adele Cestari from Nestle Waters explained how our biases come in the way of creating great employee experience. I learnt that we start developing stereotypes as early as age 3!

Julia Fidler from Microsoft explained the importance of deep listening when creating employee experiences. She said we can do better if we think of employees as humans whose lives can be enriched. 

Martin Caine from Philips made a persuasive case for placing learners at the heart of learning journeys. He said as learning designers, we must first put ourselves through the learning experiences we want our learners to go through. (How many of us do that?!?)

Ruth Bielderman from my alma-mater ABN AMRO described how we can bring customer journey principles into talent attraction, and encourage talent acquisition teams to act more like marketing teams.

I also found Guido Helmerhorst's presentation on applications of VR in Learning to be very insightful. It can definitely be a tool to make EX more personal and more real. I will surely be checking out Warp Studio.

The session I led on the role of leadership in the cultural environment generated a lot of discussion and interaction. I will soon be posting a summary of my viewpoint and some of the discussion.

All in all, even for a "conference sceptic" like me, two days well spent!