What if your employees were your customers?
David Liddle
TRANSFORMING WORK. CEO of The TCM Group | Culture architect. HR Most Influential Thinker 2024. Author. Speaker. Thinkers50. Founder of peopleandculture.com. President of People & Culture Association. Lifelong mediator.
Have you ever stopped to consider that as employees, we're actually consumers within our own workplaces?
We consume the leadership of our managers, the culture of our organisations, and yes, even the HR processes that shape our daily experiences.
Imagine if we treated our employees with the same care and consideration we give our customers. What if we viewed HR processes as?products, carefully designed to meet the needs of their users - us, the employees? It's a simple shift in thinking, but the implications are profound.
In the marketplace, we wouldn't dream of launching a product without customer input. We'd listen carefully to needs, co-create solutions, and continuously refine based on feedback. So why do we often implement HR processes without the same level of employee insight? It's time to bridge that gap. This brings me the Employee Experience (EX) equation. It looks like this:
Now, don't let the maths scare you off! It's very simple. WEI stands for Wellbeing, Engagement, and Inclusion - the core initiatives that directly impact our day-to-day experience.
The 3Ps are our Policies, Processes, and Procedures - the operational framework of our organisations (which, if not supportive, undermine our well-meaning initiatives). And the 4Hs? They're the outcomes we're all striving for: Happy, Healthy, Harmonious, and High-performing workplaces. These together form the Employee Experience overall.
If we apply the principles of product development to our HR processes, we open up a world of possibilities. We could treat new initiatives as 'minimum viable products', gathering feedback early and often. We could iterate and improve based on real-world usage, maintaining an ongoing dialogue with employees - just as we would with valued customers.
The potential impact of this approach is huge; increased engagement and productivity, better talent attraction and retention, improved organisational agility, and employees who are happy to go that extra mile. But more than that, we're talking about creating workplaces where people genuinely want to be.
So, I put it to you: Are we ready to revolutionise our approach to employee experience? Can we start seeing our workplaces through the eyes of a consumer, always on the lookout for ways to improve, refine, and delight? The future of work is here, and it's all about treating your employees as your most valued customers. I, for one, am excited to see where this new perspective might take us.
Introducing People & Culture Consulting
You can learn much more about the EX equation, how to make the crucial transition from HR to People and Culture and get started on your journey of transformation by getting in touch with us through People & Culture Consulting, our brand dedicated to revolutionising workplace culture.
Check out the People & Culture Hub for resources and tools to get started (including the EX equation) from my book, Transformational Culture.
Congrats to our Customer of the Week!
And for this week's Customer of the Week: the amazing team at Bellwether !?At TCM, we take great pride in recognizing organizations that go above and beyond in their commitment to employee development and positive workplace culture.
Bellwether is highly dedicated to their internal training for leaders and we're thrilled to be rolling out a new Leadership training programme?with them. Thank you for being such wonderful partners in this process! Congrats!
Webinar recap: Hybrid Leadership
Last year, the CIPD reported that 83% of UK organisations have implemented some form of hybrid working since the pandemic. This staggering statistic underscores a seismic shift in how we work—and how we lead our people.
We discussed the challenges of leading hybrid teams and how to make the most of them in our recent webinar with Engage Leadership. Here's a link to the recording to those of you who missed it! Look out for our next webinars:
Culture Pioneers Award finalists announced
As partners of this year's 2024 Culture Pioneers Award, we're happy to share that the finalists have now been announced!
This awards programme, powered by HRZone, is all about celebrating positive workplace culture change. This year, they were on the lookout for trailblazing organisations and leaders who could demonstrate a tangible and sustainable impact on company culture in the areas of?Wellbeing, Inclusion, Learning?and?Brand and a new Leadership category.?
Let's meet in person!
I've got a busy schedule of speaking engagements this autumn where I'll be covering topics from transformational culture to mediation and conflict resolution. I'd love to meet and connect with some of you there!
If you'd like to book me as a speaker for your organisation or event, please reach out!
The TCM Reading Corner
I'm excited to share a book that perfectly complements our discussion on the Employee Experience equation: "Built for People". Zwaan's approach of applying Product Management Principles to HR practices really aligns with the idea of treating employees as customers.
She also emphasises aligning People Operations with business goals, mirroring the balance we seek in our EX equation between employee needs (WEI) and organisational necessities (3Ps) and?focuses on embedding problem-solving, resilience, and adaptability into organisational structures. If you're intrigued by transforming employee experience, "Built for People" might just be the blueprint we need to turn our EX equation into reality.
You can get the book here.
That's it for now. If you have any questions or queries relating to any of the content above, please feel free to contact me.
Have a great weekend!
David
HR People Partner driving employee growth and development
5 个月Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking post! I couldn’t agree more with your point about applying the same agile and attentive approaches to our employees and HR policies as we do to business plans. In the NHS, where our people are our greatest asset, it's something I often emphasise to colleagues. Stakeholders, including staff, are our internal customers and should be treated with the same care and consideration as we give to external ones. The Employee Experience (EX) equation you mention resonates deeply with me, as creating a positive, responsive, and supportive environment is essential for fostering a healthy workplace culture. If we can adopt more agile methods and truly listen to our employees' needs, we’ll not only improve engagement but also enhance service delivery for our patients. Looking forward to reading more on this topic in your Transforming Work series!
Transforming workplaces through Mediation ??Conflict Coaching | Promoting positive, inclusive cultures ??Mental Health First Aider and Neurodivergent advocate ?? Complex Workplace Investigations ??HR support
5 个月Love this David, very thought provoking, especially in the world of work where employees really are hyper focusing on their overall employee experience and not just seeing work as somewhere they go to earn a living. It has been coming, but the pandemic has accelerated it, and changed the way employees now think about their workplace. For me, the businesses that will thrive in this new age are the ones which put their people at the heart of everything they do, embrace inclusivity and move away from methods that no longer serve teams