The Shift | August 17th

Welcome to The Shift, Blink’s fortnightly newsletter for frontline teams. Let's get straight to it..!

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Why you need CX?and?EX for company growth

Customer experience and employee experience — you can’t ace one without the other. That’s according to Tiffani Bova who, in her new book,?The Experience Mindset , says that companies?need to balance customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) to achieve commercial growth.?

That means only promising customer experiences that employees are empowered to deliver. It means treating employees as well as you treat your customers. It also means?understanding how interlinked your CX and EX strategies need to be.

This makes sense, so why aren’t all organizations getting the balance right? Bova says:?“I think many companies believed they were delivering compelling and meaningful and great employee experiences until they realized they weren’t.”

So who can we look to for a best-in-class example?

• Thanks to its EX track record,?Go North West ?beat competitors to a major franchising contract
• Revo Fitness started to invest in employee communication during a period of growth. Its?frontline employee super-app ?helped the business succeed in its nationwide expansion
• The team at?Poundland ?gets it, too. They've seen a boost in employee productivity and a drop in attrition thanks to their annual EX events

Because these companies understand the CX/EX link, they can engage their employees, delight their customers,?and?grow their business.

A 'loud quitting' warning for all frontline teams

We’ve all heard of quiet quitting, but?loud quitters —?actively disengaged employees — may pose a greater workplace problem,?according to Gallup .

“[Loud quitters] tend to have most of their workplace needs unmet and spread their dissatisfaction — they have been the most vocal in TikTok posts that have generated millions of views and comments.”

A recent article ?in Becker’s Hospital Review says that?labor action in healthcare — including strikes and unionization — is a clear example of loud quitting.

Becker's also adds that the situation in healthcare reflects the mood?throughout?communities and workplaces;?loud quitting is a problem that we’re likely to see across all frontline industries.

So what should you do if loud quitters are making their voices heard within your organization? It’s important to remember that these employees might not actually?want?to quit. They may be?motivated by a desire for change, in which case there’s a lot you can do to?turn loud quitters into engaged employees.

Listening to and addressing employee issues, creating an EX strategy, and working towards better expectation alignment (a topic we touched on in?our previous issue of The Shift ) will help you reverse the trend.?

Toxic workplaces — and the impact on EX

A recent American Psychological Association (APA) poll ?revealed that?nearly 1 in 5 employees believe their workplace is toxic.

A toxic environment?affects employee mental health and wellbeing,?and?the negative impacts last way beyond the working day. A toxic work environment affects people’s personal relationships, sleep, and overall health.

The damage doesn’t stop with the employee, either — it impacts a company too. A toxic culture can slow down productivity, lead to absenteeism, and damage your brand reputation. It can even become?a matter of life and death .

The APA research is a useful reminder of how important?psychological safety ?is within the workplace.?A culture that champions connection, communication, and feedback?is much more likely to reveal toxic traits before they take hold — and support employees to share their feelings and concerns.

With a little help from my (frontline) friends

An exhibition of recently-rediscovered photos taken by Paul McCartney is on display at?London’s National Portrait Gallery .

The exhibition features images of The Beatles and their entourage in the early 1960s, as the band was catapulted to ‘Beatlemania’ fame. And a few photographs, in particular, caught our eye.

McCartney chose to place frontline workers in the center of some of his portraits. The collection shows police controlling crowds outside NYC’s Plaza Hotel, rail workers waving as the band's train went by, and bemused baggage handlers at Miami Airport covering their ears to muffle the sound of screaming fans.?

It just goes to show how essential frontline teams are — and how they’re just as much a part of significant world events as the famous faces we tend to remember.

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