The Shift | August 31st

Hello and welcome to The Shift, Blink’s fortnightly newsletter for frontline champions. Here are the freshest insights for leaders of frontline orgs.

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Getting ahead of the loneliness epidemic

Loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It affects both your physical and mental wellbeing — and it can lead lonely employees to quit their jobs in search of a better work environment.

In one study, 79% of isolated employees — those who didn't feel energized by anyone at work — left within two years. If?attrition rates at your organization are higher than you’d like, it’s certainly worth considering worker loneliness as a factor, particularly if you manage a frontline team.

Frontline employees often spend their days away from HQ and/or working in isolation. This can put them at a?greater risk of loneliness than their desk-based peers. After all, it's hard to get 'energized' by your team when you're working in the field and rarely get the chance to chat or be offered support.

And this isn't just a pastoral care issue. Loneliness has been found to impact the bottom line, too. 2020 Cigna analysis found that loneliness costs $154 billion a year in lost productivity due to absenteeism.

So what can you do to help workers feel less isolated??

• Pulse surveys give you instant insight into how teams are feeling
• From there, you can invest in Employee Resource Groups, recognition, and community-building to celebrate hard work and make employees feel valued
• First line managers play an essential role as well. Rob Evans, a senior HR consultant at WorkNest, explains “It is worrying that a large majority of employers have not provided training to line managers to support employee mental health and training [...] line managers play a principal role in supporting employee wellbeing. By getting to know their team well and encouraging open communication, line managers are better placed to spot any changes in team members’ behavior.”

It's all about creating the trust, energy, and connection that make people feel good — and more likely to stay with your organization.

How to build empathy into digital experiences

We talked about the link between CX (customer experience) and EX (employee experience) in the last edition of The Shift — and how you can’t improve one without investing in the other.

But is the drive towards rapid digital transformation jeopardizing CX and EX? Here’s what Sally Winston, a Director at Qualtrics, had to say on the topic:

"For some organizations, the drive to ‘faster, cheaper, less human’ has triumphed over thoughtful direction and people/customer-centricity. The rapid need to digitally transform the way a business operates has in many areas come from a renewed focus on hard metrics which can at times neglect the people the technology was built to serve — be it customers or employees."

We know that when a customer deals with an empathetic employee, they’re over five times more likely to say they were happy with the experience. Empathetic, human connection is important. So how do we prevent digital transformation from getting in the way?

Winston believes that all digital decision-making has to be human-centric. Whether you want to improve customer interactions or the employee experience, digital tools that champion empathy and connection are key. They help to build the trust and loyalty that enable businesses to thrive.

Keep reading about equitable, empathetic technology in our ebook here.

Intersectionality in the employee experience

It has been documented that frontline women feel less safe at work than men. And new research has highlighted how many organizations are failing a subset of the female workforce: Black, female employees.

Mental wellness platform, Exhale, revealed that more than one-third of Black women say they have left a job because they felt emotionally unsafe. And just 50% of the Black women surveyed said they felt safe enough in their work environment to openly share their feelings.

Why? Well, for one, these employees often feel they aren't being listened to; that even if they do share their experiences, they won't always be believed. That's why businesses can't survey their employees and then do nothing with the findings.

"I think there’s something to be said about the art and the science of listening,” explains Krystal Allen, CEO and founder of DEI consultancy, K. Allen Consulting, “to make sure that there is an informed opportunity to then create structures, practices, policies, and an overall climate of inclusiveness, of belonging, and ultimately a psychological and emotional safety in the workplace.”

Getting more Black women into the C-suite would make a big difference. But Allen says that one-on-one conversations, focus groups, and exit interviews with Black women at all levels of the business are crucial to understand where you're falling short.

By actively listening to Black women and believing in their experiences, businesses can begin their journey towards a safer and more inclusive work environment. Where employees don't feel seen, heard, and valued, "it makes you feel isolated", explains Allen — and as we saw above, isolation only leads one way for a business and its employees.

Blink's employee experience book club

Ready for a new read? Then look no further than our latest EX book recommendation:

The Employee Experience: How to Attract Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Results by Tracy Maylett and Matthew Wride.

This book explores the connection between EX and CX (which we love), and breaks things down into a simple formula (which we love even more):

• 1) Give employees a reason to join
• 2) Give them a reason to stay
• 3) Give them a reason to engage

Grab yourself a copy to read (or listen to), and find out how to unleash the full potential of an engaged and satisfied workforce.

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