PRAISE FOR EMPLOYEE

EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

“Ben Whitter is not called Mr Employee

Experience without good reason. He pioneered
the concept. Employee experience, along with
Amy Edmondson’s related concept of
psychological safety, may prove to be the most
profound management idea of all. In Employee
Experience Strategy, Whitter offers a blueprint
for making employee experience a reality.”
Des Dearlove, Co-founder, Thinkers50

“The workplace has changed radically in recent

years and few people have thought about it as
carefully as Ben Whitter. We’ve experienced the
pandemic, remote working, 4-day weeks, quiet-
quitting, social media boycotts, greenwashing,
an office perks arms race and a new wave of Gen
Z recruits arriving with a new set of
expectations. Whitter is a savvy guide who
navigates all these issues, through the lens of his
Employee Experience philosophy.”
Dougal Shaw, Author, CEO Secrets,
Digital Business Reporter, BBC News

“Ben Whitter offers a powerful blend of

inspiration and actionability, contributing to our
quest for even more people-centricity.”
Claude Rumpler, Chief People
Experience Officer, L’Oréal

“EX has become the best retention policy

around and a must for any organization. Ben
Whitter developed the perfect blueprint to bring
this idea to reality.”
Dr. Ruth Gotian, Author, The Success
Factor, Chief Learning Officer, faculty
member in anesthesiology education,
Weill Cornell Medicine

“Dive into the exceptional work of author Ben

Whitter in his book Employee Experience
Strategy. With his extensive knowledge and
expertise in the field of employee experience,
Whitter adeptly guides readers through proven
and practical strategies. His insightful and
expert approach provides the tools necessary to
cultivate a workplace culture that fosters
engagement and drives business success. Don’t
miss the opportunity to benefit from Ben
Whitter’s outstanding contribution and elevate
your organization to new heights.”
Marcelo Natalini, Dean, Latam Business
School, Mexico

“Employee Experience is a very basic concept,

intuitive to all of us who have experiences as
employees, as customers, as people. But how do
you take such a simple idea to a strategic level to
the benefit of employees and companies alike?
That is where this book comes in, with all its
fresh insights, inconvenient truths, and aha-
moments. Ben Whitter shows the way forward
for HR and creates enthusiasm for the journey
ahead.”
Timothy Vermeir, Editor-in-Chief, HR
Square
“Employee Experience can be a challenging
concept to advance and implement in any
organization. Ben Whitter has a gift for taking
complexity and translating it into meaningful
actions that any practitioner can follow. In
Employee Experience Strategy, Whitter equips
readers with thought provoking questions,
necessary mindsets for change, and guidance to
co-create an employee experience anchored in
caring for employees and in business outcomes.”
Christina Chateauvert Ph.D., Senior
Manager of Employee Experience,
Insurance Industry

“The profound impact of Whitter’s work on my

career and the affirmation it has provided for
my decision to work in the field of employee
experience, cannot be overstated. Whitter’s
remarkable ability to bridge the gap between
theory and practice is evident in his
comprehensive and insightful books, which offer
easily adoptable strategies and real-life
examples. I firmly believe that Employee
Experience Strategy is indispensable reading
for anyone aspiring to revolutionize their
approach to employee experience and drive
transformative change within their
organization.”
Julie Wix, Head of Staff Experience,
University of Technology Sydney,
Australia

“In the world of driving great employee

experiences, we are competing with the best
experience a consumer has ever had. We need a
focus to make every day simple and special days
really special. Ben Whitter does not only offer
great examples and research but also clear
strategic steps to deliver your compelling
employee experience. I would highly
recommend reading this book if you want to
start or boost your journey on employee
experience.”
Tom Dewaele, Global Head of People
Experience, Alphabet/Google
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Human Experience at Work: Drive

performance with a people-focused approach
to employees (2021)
Employee Experience: Develop a happy,
productive and supported workforce for
exceptional individual and business
performance (2nd edition) (2022)

For further information on these and other

Kogan Page titles, or to order online, visit the
Kogan Page website at: www.koganpage.com.
Employee
Experience
Strategy
Design an effective EX strategy
to improve employee
performance and drive business
results

Ben Whitter
This book is dedicated to
Mum and Dad.

Always there; the first and

most important supporters
of my human experience.
CONTENTS

About the author

Foreword
Acknowledgements

01 The employee experience boom

The defining management idea of
our times
Radical disruption of the HR model
Going deeper into the business
The great talent rotation
The EX technology gold rush
continues
 New workplace designs and new
workplace practices

02 A new strategy for new

challenges
Unravelling people strategy
Small moments, big impact
A world in financial crisis
Pain becomes power
Changed lives, changed workplaces
From culture to lived experience
and performance
Life is the goal: do we really need
purpose?
03 Co-creating the employee
experience strategy
Co-creation first: everything else
flows from there
Articulating what EX means to your
organization
A high-quality start
Transforming with empathy

04 An ecosystem for employee

experience success
An ecosystem to enable evolution
A universal approach to employee
experience
Growing through strategic
challenges
Conversations that matter
Deepening the holistic approach to
employee experience
Employee experience strategy: a
marathon delivered in sprints
Outcomes over opinions?
Where does EX strategy sit and who
owns it?
What does EX mean to you (and
those leading EX-impacting
functions)?
Co-creation has already begun –
building the blueprint for
 experience success

05 Experience masterplan
Experience masterplan – the
ingredients of EX strategy

06 Team performance – a recipe

for employee experience
success
Experiencing team performance
Getting the philosophy right
A team approach – co-leading the
employee experience strategy
Planning for high employee
experience performance
07 Driving holistic employee
experience performance
From awareness to performance
The Truth: towards a purposeful,
mission-driven and values-
centred employee experience

08 Reinventing leadership in the

employee experience era
Alignment
Emerging leadership capabilities
Bad bosses derail the employee
experience: great bosses elevate it
Core leadership capabilities for
employee experience success
09 Aligning leaders to employee
experience strategy
Leading the anywhere workplace
A connected workplace (and world)
Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes
The Make a Difference (MAD)
milestones for managers
Certain leadership in uncertain
times

10 Playing to win with employee

experience
What does winning look like in EX
strategy terms?
 What are the factors that indicate a
winning EX and company?
Imperfect actions, but positive
progress
The strategic atmosphere around
employee experience

11 People experience: bringing

beauty to the world
Insights from the frontline of EX
Going deeper into the people and
human experience

12 Conclusion
Answering strategic questions about
ourselves
Brand leadership through EX
Challenging and co-creating with
the status quo
Employee experience is a question
of time
Every X matters
Strategic milestones, moments and
momentum
Humanizing HR (and all support
services) continues
Present moment performance
The AI-enabled employee
experience is here
Driving strategic EX progress
We’ve only just begun
References
Index
LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 4.1 The triple D model

FIGURE 5.1 Experience masterplan
FIGURE 8.1 The 3C leader capabilities for EX
FIGURE 10.1 Health, wealth and well-being
LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 3.1 Co-creation groups

TABLE 4.1 HEX strategic questions
TABLE 5.1 The life bingo card
TABLE 8.1 The triple A enablers of EX
leadership performance
TABLE 8.2 Using HEX leadership skills for
onboarding
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Whitter was recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the top

management thinkers in the world for 2021 for his ‘compelling’ EX
research. His previous books, Human Experience at Work (2021)
and Employee Experience (second edition, 2022) were also
published by Kogan Page. Ben is best known for pioneering and
popularizing the concept of employee experience worldwide. He
shares his work and research through his company, HEX
Organization, the World Employee Experience Institute (WEEI),
and via international partnerships that enable him to deliver his
popular keynote speeches, strategic advisory services, executive
coaching and the certified HEX Practitioner Programme.
His work has reached millions of business leaders worldwide,
inspired the first EX conferences, and has been featured in
publications and by organizations including The Times, the BBC,
The Telegraph, Forbes, the Financial Times, The Economist, MIT
Sloan, Thomson Reuters, People Management and HR publications
globally. His acclaimed 2015 article, ‘Bye, Bye HR’, introduced
employee experience to a global audience of one million. His content
online and across publications is respected and recognized
throughout the business world.
 In 2021, Ben was formally named by HR Magazine as one of HR’s
Most Influential Thinkers, and he was also voted onto the list of top
30 global keynote speakers on the topic of organizational culture by
Global Gurus.
Ben is a prolific global keynote speaker on human and employee
experience topics and has introduced his ideas to audiences in more
than 40 countries. His background as a multi-award-winning
practitioner has created a strong foundation on which to build his
research and ideas. Ben has lived and worked in eight countries
including the UK, Australia, Italy, France and Japan, and for three
years was the Director of Organizational Development at China’s
leading international university. As a result, Ben brings a deep
global and local perspective to his work, which informs his approach
as a frequent adviser, speaker and strategic coach to the world’s top
global companies. Ben supports organizations in the development of
their holistic, human-centred and people-driven EX strategies.
In normal times, Ben spends most of his time between England,
Wales, Europe and China; the world is his workplace.
You can work directly with him through HEX Organization,
whose clients include companies such as L’Oréal, Sanofi, Unilever,
Chevron, JP Morgan Chase, Suntory, GSK, Deutsche Telekom, and
many more. Get support in developing your EX strategy by joining
the HEX Nation at www.hexorganization.com
FOREWORD

Employee Experience (EX) is the simple idea that organizations can

(and should) create a positive experience for their people. Why?
Because it will make them more engaged with their work so that
they do a better job. And when employees do a better job, customers
get a better experience, which leads to organizational success. The
underlying logic and business case is that people perform better
when they feel valued and know they can make a positive
contribution to something worthwhile. And thus, a virtuous cycle is
created.
Some experts have claimed that customer experience (CX) is
paramount but that is misleading. The causal link between CX and
EX runs the other way. Ask yourself, do happy customers create
happy employees? Or do happy employees create happy customers?
As deceptively simple as it sounds, then, employee experience,
along with Amy Edmondson’s related concept of psychological
safety, may prove to be the most profound management idea of all.
‘Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product.’ So
said Henry Ford, and old Henry had a point. Organizational
happiness means happy employees, and happy employees make
customers happy.
 EX is also the ultimate talent magnet. Companies that fail to
understand that won’t attract the best people. It really is as simple
as that. And yet, we know that survey after survey has shown that
most employees are not engaged with their work.
In fact, research shows that if a company focuses primarily on
profit maximization, it switches employees off. A 2009 Harvard
study based on data gathered from 520 business organizations in 17
countries, many of them emerging markets, found that making the
bottom line the top priority was counterproductive, with employees
developing negative feelings towards the organization.1
Instead, CEOs who put stakeholders’ interests ahead of profits
generated greater workforce engagement – and thus delivered the
superior financial results that they made a secondary goal.
The problem is that despite the overwhelming logic of EX,
organizations around the world are still struggling to put it into
practice. The reasons are threefold: first, despite protestations to the
contrary, too many organizations still regard employees as
disposable human resources – to be picked up when required and
dropped at the first sign of economic trouble. And employees know
it. Phenomena like the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting
happened for a reason: people don’t feel valued at work. Period.
And the reason for that is because in many organizations they
aren’t! Hopefully, those organizations and the leaders who still don’t
get it will go the way of the dinosaurs. In fact, for all its negative
effects, the pandemic may prove to be the meteorite that wipes them
out.
Second, the advent of AI and other machine-learning technologies
has encouraged some leaders to think that human beings and hence
the employee experience will be less important in future. ChatGPT
and its siblings do not ask for an experience at work (not yet
anyway), they simply do what they have been programmed to do.
But this is to miss the biggest change facing organizations today and
in the future: that our humanity will be the defining factor in
creating competitive advantage going forward.
Think about it. Putting employee experience at the heart of the
organization is the most effective way to maximize performance.
Even more so in a world where generative AI and other new
technologies are removing all other points of difference.
Third, even the smart organizations that get the EX-point (a
growing number by the way) do not have the strategies and tools to
make it work. That’s where this book comes in. Ben Whitter is not
called Mr Employee Experience without good reason. He pioneered
the concept. And the focus on the ‘experience’ of work as a
management idea continues to grow. From transforming
organizational cultures to HR’s evolution into people operations, to
the 4-day work week, to hybrid/remote organizations - all these
ideas are based on improving the experience of work to deliver more
sustainable (and profitable) people-centred businesses.
 In Employee Experience Strategy, Whitter offers a blueprint for
making employee experience a reality. He shows leaders how to
build individual and organizational capabilities by approaching
business and every other type of work in a holistic, human-centred,
and experience-driven way.
Employee experience is a simple idea, but a challenging one to live
up to. Organizations need strategies not just good intentions – and
this book provides them in spades.

Des Dearlove

Co-founder of Thinkers50,

London, June 2023.

Note

1 ‘Why Profit Shouldn’t Be Your Top Goal,’ Nathan T. Washburn, Harvard

Business Review, Dec 2009.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My sincere thanks to everyone involved in the creation of this book.

Creating a book is a team game and I appreciate my family, friends,
contributors and supporters who have helped make this possible.
As a coach to the world’s leading EX professionals, I am
profoundly humbled to be part of their inner circle advising, guiding
and helping to shape strong EX strategies at companies worldwide. I
find clients and students quickly become friends for life and I cheer
their successes every day. Thank you for your friendship and trust.
My sincere appreciation goes to colleagues from Kogan Page once
again who have helped bring this book to life. With three books now
published, we really have created an experience universe together.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my readers for your
vocal support worldwide and to all those leaders that are busy
implementing the ideas I share within their organizations. My books
to date have affected and influenced the lives and outcomes of many
millions of workers and employees globally. I am very proud of that
recognized impact and leaders should be very proud of their impact
in EX too. It is a wonderful human-centred field and we are on the
right side of history.
This book flows from Employee Experience (second edition,
2022) and Human Experience at Work (2021) and it has been a
real-time collaboration with colleagues on the frontline of EX
success. It is a privilege to share my thoughts, reflections and some
challenges for your consideration once again through Employee
Experience Strategy.
I thank you personally for joining us on this journey. Welcome,
and enjoy the experience.
01
The employee
experience boom
If you’ve been paying attention to the world’s leading organizations
in recent years, you won’t fail to notice that something has been
creating quite a stir within executive and management boardrooms.
Not simply in one place, or one country, but in all places and all
countries. Scarcely has a new management idea had such an impact
on companies and how they do business, but employee experience
has cut through the noise to take up a significant status and position
within businesses across all sectors. Indeed, the words ‘experience’
and ‘human’ have never been talked about so much in relation to
employees. It’s an incredibly exciting time for leaders and
professionals who are already engaged and ahead of the crowd in
developing the employee experience (EX) strategies for their
organizations.
The defining management idea of our
times
Creating a positive experience for people in work is, as management
ideas go, pretty simple and straightforward to understand. Perhaps
this offers some insight as to why EX has been taken up at such scale
and with such enthusiasm globally. It is easy to digest and
comprehend, but, most importantly, to action at all levels of the
company. It’s as major as a huge investment in a global technology
platform or a totally different operating model for work (hybrid,
remote or in-person workplace), but equally it’s as minor as
bringing fruit, cake and a bit of humour to a usually dull team
meeting.
Everyone can play a role in EX success at multiple different levels
through direct actions. Some designed, some engineered and some
totally organic within the workforce, actions on EX are not in short
supply, but perhaps a unifying strategy behind them is. That’s where
a lot of organizations find themselves now – designing EX strategies
that fit the times and fit some challenging new expectations on what
work is and how it can be positively experienced to enable healthy
business, and human, outcomes. It’s an approach that is often
positioned as the organization’s response to a range of external and
internal stimuli.
An antidote to the management challenges
of the day
A lot of old ideas have been repackaged into copy and phenomena
that gain traction and attention around the world. The great
resignation, quiet quitting, rage applying and all the rest tell us
something that we already know to be true. If employees don’t have
a positive EX, they will leave, disengage or even sabotage
organizations from the inside. Any one of these trends across the
economy can be traced directly back to the quality of the employee
experience. We’ll explore some of these newer (and older)
challenges in the next chapter, but it would be good in the first
instance to discuss where EX is and how far it has already come in
its short life as a management idea that is being seriously applied in
business.
EX has become so popular because, quite frankly, we don’t get lost
in strategy. We get immersed in actions; tangible actions that
immediately improve things for people in their daily work or at
certain milestones in their career journey. It’s as wonderfully
powerful as it is wonderfully simple to understand. This is one
concept that may just avoid the management trap of becoming
something that is too complicated, convoluted or abstract in the way
we apply it into practice. Everything narrows down to the individual,
the team, and the quality of the leadership and community around
them. Increasingly, supported by data and its intelligent use, we can
pinpoint precisely where actions need to be taken and this leads to
rapid results and outcomes that no other approach can get close to.

An emergent global powerhouse of EX and

people leaders
Taking forward this workplace revolution is a community of
progressive people-centred and experience-driven leaders and
strategists. From chief EX/people officers to EX business partners
and EX managers, we finally have a group of people with the
expertise to really take on the holistic people challenge. Without
being saddled with the burdens of a more traditional and functional
past, these leaders have thrown off the corporate shackles and
begun to innovate and deliver outcomes across the EX. Commercial
and brand leadership is a big part of what they do, yet they do it in a
way that puts people right at the heart of the brand. Through this
book, I’ll share some of the insights that are coming through my
work supporting, coaching and guiding EX leaders and their teams,
and I am seeking to draw out some of the lessons that can be applied
in your organization.
It comes at a timely point in the history of work too. The tension
between employees and management has long been recognized, and
despite the best efforts of HR, the trust gap is still far too wide for
comfort. A massive round of strikes around the world offers some
visible food for thought on this matter, but it is also worth noting the
organizational response in general. The chief people officer (CPO)
role is now one of the fastest growing roles in business based on the
past five years (LinkedIn, 2023). Increasingly, this role is starting to
actively reshuffle and upgrade the teams and colleagues around
them into a more purposeful, people-centred and experience-driven
future. This change is a long road though and this new generation of
CPOs will need to prove and demonstrate the unequivocal value of
EX to the business if they are to reverse the HR traditions of the past
and the top-down approach of human capitalism.
In an ideal world, corporate structures would be filled with such
colleagues, and with an eye on the future of work it is becoming
more obvious that they will be in the not-so-distant reality of work.
Just as organizations have elevated their customer experience (CX)
leaders into positions of real power and influence, the same is
happening with EX in real time. As one thing rises, other things
must decline though to make space, and that’s where things get
really interesting.

Radical disruption of the HR model

Technology and more enlightened business practices continue to
upend HR teams and structures as automation of HR tasks and
administration creates space for HR teams to consider where they
can make their biggest impact. Algorithmic HR will mean a lot more
seamless experiences in work, yet that is not all of the answer for
HR. Another part of that will be making some very tough choices
about where to spend time and invest resources for maximum gain
– this will come down to the humanization of the function, but how
well the function can balance technology advances will be key to
success. Employees continue to place a high emphasis on the human
and personal touch. As HR evolves, so too must it think about how it
rises to that human-centred challenge. Elevating the employee
journey and EX is one such area that HR has leaned into in a big
way. It is rare to encounter a HR function that does not have some
foundational work already happening in relation to EX. New centres
of EX are being created to encourage and grow EX capabilities
across the entire employee journey.
The opportunity for HR continues to be centred around evolving
into something that more closely resembles a people team for an
organization, which aligns HR colleagues with the employee journey
and EX. The danger that must be resolutely guarded against is that
EX becomes too associated with HR from the outset and never has
the opportunity to grow and become something that is truly led by
the business. We’ll come onto what that looks like and why it
matters in the chapters to come, as driving a sustainable EX strategy
involves many more functions and the business will need to
determine which functions and colleagues are best placed to lead EX
projects and programmes.
In that sense, EX is about curation, cultivation and activation. It
requires a deep set of skills around collaboration and leading with
and without authority to get things done. EX, for me certainly, is
also a creative endeavour that harnesses and implements the best
ideas from around the organization, so it’s naturally very innovative
and forward-thinking as an approach. It will change things about
the organization’s design, the roles and how they interact with each
other across all support services, and how the organization
approaches change and transformation generally.

Going deeper into the business

The starting position for EX is intriguing. Like most ideas, it begins
life attached to one function or another, and either grows or does
not. I suppose the big point of this whole book is to help it grow into
a mature and multi-functional approach. It’s such an incredible
focus for businesses, we need to be aware of anything that stifles its
adoption. This has been an impressive aspect of the rise of EX
within companies worldwide; not only does it stay the course but it
often changes into something much bolder as companies navigate
their way into the field. Once a few initial projects have
demonstrated the value of an EX approach, there is a definite spark
and resolve to extend all of the practices and ideas across markets
and territories. Then the question turns to scalability and the
technology solutions that can help with that.
From mapping to strategizing, EX is maturing nicely as a strategic
business approach. While there are many, many tools, techniques
and methodologies that will support EX progress, the big one for me
is getting the overall strategy right, and as we’ll discuss in later
chapters, crafting strategy is not done the way it used to be. I tend to
work with the most senior of EX colleagues in my coaching practice,
and I can consider them first and foremost to be, as you would
suspect, strategists. Yet, I take the same view for more operational
roles too. Each experience will require some form of strategy behind
it if it is to deliver clear outcomes. Strategy involves some serious
holistic and system-wide thinking to join things up and present a
unified experience, and this is where practitioners are deepening
their skills, capabilities and attitude. They are, indeed, becoming
much more holistic in the way that they approach and practise their
craft. Whereas in previous years I would certainly say this skill was
lacking. Having experienced many companies working on EX, my
position now is that it is a developing skill. People are paying
attention to the nuances of their functions and how they connect to
other functions that have a key impact on the employee journey.
Colleagues are starting to network across the employee journey in
real time to figure out where those major or marginal gains can be
found to encourage all manner of outcomes, including:

simplification
well-being
engagement
satisfaction
productivity
 reputation
inclusion
advocacy
innovation
performance
belonging.

I’m not anywhere near tempted to put resilience on this list, as that
word often raises its head in the midst of mass lay-offs and poorly
executed leaving experiences. What it really means is how effective
can the organization be in squeezing and burning out its workforce
in the chase for profit – the term ‘more with less’ often comes up
alongside it. Employees see right through that type of nonsense. By
default, resilience is built into healthy and vibrant organizations that
treat their people well and work to deliver positive experiences.
To achieve any of these things, or anything near national or
world-class level, then companies have learnt by experience that
they need all of their functions aligned, effective and moving
forward as one. That is the best way to serve the business and
employees, and it’s great to see such solid progress in this regard.
The days of being stifled in a narrow function with limited scope for
cross-functional career mobility and collaborations are numbered.
EX is creating a new breed of cross-functional business leader
focused on outcomes, through deep work across the business
working with all partners.
Belonging; here to stay
As a measure of a positive EX, there were some head turns in the
early days when I used to talk about belonging as a core metric and
outcome of EX performance. Do people feel like they belong? This is
inclusion that is ramped up to create a real and healthy community.
People can feel included, but it takes a whole different level of work
to produce belonging as an outcome and it can’t be faked.
Companies need to do the hard yards to achieve the kind of
workforce where that sense of belonging is high. Thankfully, the
power of belonging has ensured businesses are paying much more
attention to this within their diversity, inclusion and equality
programmes.
Indeed, belonging is often a core and stated objective and theme
within EX strategies and long may it continue. The rise of EX and
belonging as a management focus can be tied together, and the only
question is how far companies can go with this – it is no longer
adequate to create a sense of belonging that revolves around a
company’s HQ or a regional office. In this changed world of work,
EX leaders are getting creative about how they scale belonging
across countries and regions, but also towns and cities given that a
proportion of the global workforce continues to enjoy home and
remote working. Another aspect within this theme of EX is the
contingent, contractual and alternative workforce. How do you build
belonging into the company given these sometimes wildly different
populations with their very different expectations? This is what I
consider the rarely explored frontier of EX where we operate
sometimes in the grey areas of employment and contractual
relationships. In saying this, a sensible EX strategy will consider all
groups of workers and will scale and develop experiences
accordingly to suit different types of workers.

The great talent rotation

A common theme has emerged in my work on EX over the years and
it is worth noting from the outset of this book. I started my (first)
career on the frontline of sales and customer service. It was those
early roles that fundamentally shaped my early views about what
businesses are there to do. They are in business to be of value and to
serve. That is it. There’s nothing much else beyond this because if
they do those things very well, profit, money and growth tend to
come. If they don’t do those things, then progress will be severely
limited. Now, it is employees and workers that serve and deliver that
value in practice.
My view then when I entered my HR career was that these simple
truths would be reflected in the way HR does its work and the way it
thinks about employees. Well, I was totally wrong. People and their
experiences were as far from the HR radar as you can get. I was
pretty shocked about that at the time as I would have expected swift
and complete actions to help the organization’s value creators
wherever they were. I have to say though, I’m far from alone. EX
attracts business and commercial leaders. Indeed, some of the best
performing EX leaders have had varied career experiences away
from the traditional or associated HR functions. This gives them a
different view and they get to work on different problems. More
importantly, they see and experience the organization differently.
Their work reflects this as does their ambition for the EX strategy
and its constituent parts.
For these reasons, we need to continue to extend the EX talent
pool while ensuring leaders in more traditional employee-facing
roles get to work with and experience commercial roles directly in
some form. Companies must ensure that employees in key support
roles experience the frontlines of their business. This leads to such a
profound mindset shift that it will literally save companies from
spending fortunes on leadership workshops and the like that rarely
make the difference they set out to. It also leads to better products,
better services and better outcomes for employees. It’s a massive
win to rotate talent into and around EX roles and it will contribute
greatly to elevating the status of EX within a business.

The EX technology gold rush continues

EX is in its boom era, for sure. With new start-ups, established
powerhouses, new platforms and new products coming to the
market all the time, EX is now viewed as the anchor of a major
organizational ecosystem of services that support and enable
employees. It is unusual to see vendors not talking about EX if they
are operating anywhere close to the employee services space. The
sales and PR spin surrounding EX has ramped up noticeably during
and beyond the pandemic. Still, positioning and connecting such
vendors with an audience remains complicated given that EX may
be positioned across functions or across specialisms. The more
bespoke products and services, say for hiring and onboarding
practices, can often experience many hurdles in securing clients –
the organization and the accountabilities for EX is a mixed picture
of responsibilities. The contacts that these vendors look for and
cultivate relationships with may not necessarily be the EX decision
maker overall.
From the commissioner perspective, it will take a keen eye to
really recognize the true EX innovators out of those that have simply
re-marketed existing engagement, well-being, productivity or
communication products, but it’s not that difficult if the market is
being continually explored for the latest technology that can
enhance the EX. Simplification of processes has been a real winner
here, as new technology has often been the catalyst for a deep dive
into all kinds of processes that may be frustrating or adding to a
complexity that doesn’t really need to exist within the organization.
EX is data hungry and again, big winners in the EX technology space
are vendors with platforms that can harness and harvest a treasure
trove of actionable data to inform and improve the employee
journey, and EX overall. Augmented listening tools and software,
and platforms that bring everything together from the employee’s
perspective – their digital work life and EX in one place – is also in
the ascendency, with a big push in the market by significant global
players. No one has quite reached the EX utopia that emerging
technology promises, yet it is still a positive development that
employees are experiencing higher quality digital experiences.
Clearly, decisions here will need to be astute and take place in the
context of what the organization has already invested in and the
future state it wants to create, but simplification remains high on the
agenda within EX efforts.

New workplace designs and new

workplace practices
No doubt the heat map of activity on the EX map will be based
around the actual workplace, physical, virtual, or bits of both. This,
of course, dominated executive conversations during and
immediately following the pandemic, with shifts taking place in a
variety of directions, with a lot of debate alongside it. There are now
work models in play that employees have been actively railing
against. It’s an unusual situation really. Employees have been
nothing but consistent on this issue and take every opportunity to
reinforce their position, which is namely that they want more choice,
control and flexibility in their careers. This is a delicate balancing
act for EX leaders and CPOs, but let’s face it, the decision may be
well out of their hands. There’s been a lot of swashbuckling CEO
behaviour on this issue, with CEOs actively leading the return to the
office or the pro-remote work communication campaigns. It will
come down to a personal point of view in many instances.
Interestingly, there does seem to be a lot of ideology rather than
evidence floating about these days when it comes to the optimum
workplace. Certainly, those claiming to be employee-centred while
actively working against the direct wishes of their talented
workforces may come unstuck later down the line based on the
choices of their top teams.
Several of my clients have taken the opportunity to upgrade their
real estate and campuses to ensure they are high impact social
places where natural collaboration and connection can create
positive relationships. There’s also a lot more focus on well-being
within the physical estate and ensuring employees have the spaces
they need to suit their different work styles and modes. Others have
opted to sell the lot off and stay online, and rent venues as and when
needed for high value social events, gatherings and team meetings.
Who is right? I don’t lean one way or the other on this – I lean
into the context of the company, as that’s where leaders should be
focused, not on what everyone else is doing. What’s right for one
company will be a disaster for another so contextual intelligence is
going to need to be in high supply across EX roles to make a success
out of whatever work models companies opt for. The same applies
for the novelty that is the four-day week, which has proven to be
successful in many contexts now. I wonder why. It’s probably
because employees get a day back to do as they please or have more
control over the most important aspect of life – time. Do you know
what’s even better than the four-day week? A three-day week, or
even a one-day week. The part-time workforce has exploded.
Indeed, upwards of 8 million people – a quarter of the total UK
workforce – is now made up of part-time workers, according to the
Office for National Statistics (ONS). This figure is representative of
the connection between companies, society and national policy, and
its impact on the EX. If the cost of a commute is too high, the cost of
childcare is too high or work–life balance suffers, there might well
be far too few incentives to take on more hours or become a full-
time worker again. Employers will feel the impact of this, of course,
and it will determine the kind of workforce that they have in the
future and on what terms. Is it not a state of ridiculousness that a
full-time worker can often end up taking home less money than if
they worked part-time hours? Employees are doing the maths for
themselves and choosing accordingly based on their own costs or
lifestyles.
The same goes for the retiree population who are opting in high
numbers to finish their careers early and do their own thing.
Successive governments have primed these conditions and the
unintended consequences are unfolding over recent years to stifle
growth and productivity across developed economies. This will be a
factor and will need some serious care and attention when looking at
the EX strategy and the demographics (and desires) of the
workforce. At the top of that priority shopping list from employees is
well-being outcomes.

Well-being surges onto the EX radar

If we’re looking at the EX, we’re looking at people, and there are not
many things being talked about with more intensity than the well-
being of an organization’s people. It was an emerging priority within
EX prior to the pandemic, but clearly, things have accelerated since.
There is a greater awareness and sophistication to well-being efforts,
and it is seen as a corporate priority to have a healthy organization.
This has taken shape in various forms across the employee journey
– driven by people and technology – and companies are being more
careful to weave well-being into the organization rather than
position it as something that stands alone and outside of the
mainstream EX. Indeed, well-being has become an outcome of a
positive EX and is talked about in those terms on a more consistent
basis.
Employee well-being focuses on the mental, physical, emotional
and economic health of employees, and is very aligned to the holistic
nature of EX as I’ve presented it. We need to look at the
organization holistically and we also need to consider the human
being in a holistic way too – how decisions are made, how people are
treated during HR processes, what support and tools are in place to
support health outcomes. On the organization side, we talk about
engagement as one major outcome of EX. On the individual side, we
talk about well-being as a major outcome. In reality, both the
employee and employer benefit from both outcomes, and they are
very closely aligned. This is why well-being now features heavily in
slide decks and business cases about the merits and outcomes
associated with EX.

The voice of the employee gets even louder

A growing unrest following a global pandemic was always going to
present itself given the amount and scale of issues that the world’s
employees have had to endure over the last few years. The voice of
the employee was getting louder even before the pandemic, with
many more ways to share dissatisfaction with an employer, and
many more ways (and options) to take action about it. Campus
activism and strikes are happening now with alarming regularity.
It’s amazing to give employees platforms and surveys so that they
can share their views, concerns and also vent their frustration, but
what if no one listens? Or worse still, what if company leaders don’t
care? It’s a recipe for long-term discontent.
Interestingly, I have been engaged to deliver workshops and
speeches a number of times in different parts of the world where,
coincidentally, major industrial action was taking place on the very
day of my visit. While I enjoyed the irony of being booked to talk
about employee experience in the midst of major and chaotic strike
action, I must say that these are not experiences I wish to repeat. It
is my sincere hope that we learn the lessons of employee experience
and find much better ways to restore or even build trust across
workplaces. Whether it is the unions, employees or companies
themselves, it is not in anyone’s interest to engage in these ‘them
and us’ battles that get completely out of hand and end up trashing
the organization entirely. We’ll look at how we can start to do this,
but back and forth consultation and politics is not going to solve
these challenges. We need a better approach altogether to make
progress.
In EX strategy terms then, there are some serious ramifications.
We can’t just use the tired consult and comply model to bring
projects to fruition; it just doesn’t work. It is the method that
continues to be rolled out in companies today by default, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right approach, especially when
working on EX projects which demand a much higher level of
involvement and engagement from employees.
SUMMARY
There’s a lot of excellent progress in the field as capabilities and teams
grow, and companies are positioning themselves strongly to perform
to high standards across the entire employee journey from pre-hire to
retire. A few things are no longer in any doubt:

EX is in the ascendancy within organizations as a topic of focus,

debate and action.
Organizations are approaching the topic with much more
thought, rigour and intelligence.
Execution is starting to catch up with intention as companies
start building EX strategies that will unlock the great potential
of their employees and the organization.
EX is now an essential item of the strategic business discussion
across senior management circles and, as a concept, it is starting
to break through into all levels of management.
Business models are under pressure from all stakeholders to
incorporate, integrate and improve EX performance.
Employees have welcomed and endorsed EX as a strategic and
operational approach. Focusing on experiences, human
centricity and co-creation are recognized behaviours of the
world’s most trusted and admired brands.

It’s exceptionally difficult to argue with anyone who wants to improve

our experiences and outcomes in life. I suppose that’s the beauty of the
strategic business case for EX – employees are all for it, and executives
are realizing en-masse how the EX shapes and directs overall business
performance and that all-important connection with their employees
and workers. Still, EX strategy takes things to the next level in driving
alignment and outcomes. It creates connections between projects,
programmes and work that touch the EX.
Indeed, anything that affects the EX is in play and is part of the
strategic picture. Whether short, medium or long term, businesses are
getting much better at seeing the EX for what it is and how everything
– every interaction, every moment, every decision, every policy, every
practice and every experience – comes together holistically to define
an organization in and beyond the marketplace. While EX has been
gathering pace for several years, good EX strategy has been lagging
well behind. A few projects or technologies here and there labelled up
as EX is not the EX I recognize. The EX that I’ve tried to advance in
the global economy is one that is whole, connected and unified. To that
end, this book will share a number of insights from my work about
how companies are approaching EX in a more complete and holistic
way at a strategic level.
There are always a lot of trends occurring at any given time within
an organization and the people profession. Employers place their bets
on the latest technology or management idea; yet no matter where I
look, EX has become synonymous with brand progress and it is now
ever-present on the agendas of all employee-facing leaders. Why is
that? Well, it’s booming because we always have a choice – we can
always do something positive in EX at any given moment or through
any given challenge; we can always make something better. EX is the
ultimate management idea and has proven to be consistently
actionable with verifiable results never far away. It is not abstract, it is
tangible, and businesses (and people) enjoy that very much. The EX
profession as a whole, and throughout all those roles that connect and
contribute to it, is prime time within business. We now need to
maximize all of our strategic opportunities to deliver positive business-
growing employee experiences, and all the great business results that
they bring. The employee experience is the defining challenge and
opportunity for organizations of today, and a strong EX strategy is the
foundation stone in building genuine and long-lasting business
success.
02
A new strategy for
new challenges
In exploring the topic of strategy, it becomes evident that, as leaders
and practitioners, we are constantly searching for ways to organize
and categorize our thoughts and thinking into something that
closely resembles coherence. But why and for what purpose? It
seems to me that strategy is often only considered at the most senior
levels of an organization by the highest paid company employees,
and then it is often only communicated and shared within a
relatively small and exclusive group of executives.
During the development phase, strategy, as I’ve found in the
research for this book, can very quickly turn into a mundane and
unimportant exercise that has quite limited impact across the whole
business. Usually, this happens because the business is not entirely
engaged in its creation nor is it highly consciously involved in its
delivery. It is ‘owned’ by a function or group of functions and can be
developed in near total isolation based on what a few people feel is
best, based on their own specialist expertise and their narrow view
of the organization. This isn’t the worst-case scenario by any stretch.
There are many companies that do very little thinking about
aligning actions, resources and behaviours to drive long-term
results. In those situations, everything happens by chance or
through organic, sometimes haphazard, development, and what will
be will be. Now, I am far from against organic organizational
development, but I am also heavily in favour of thoughtful,
intentional and considered design, but can the two sit comfortably
together? We’ll explore this as we move though the book and the
ideas being presented. But this may not be a typical strategy book in
the traditional sense, because what I’ve uncovered and learnt is that
employee experience (EX) strategy is not created in the typical way
that strategy is developed, shaped and delivered. Indeed, an EX
strategy is a different beast altogether, and rightly so if we want to
truly connect strategy to the people that execute and experience it.

Unravelling people strategy

It’s interesting how quickly things change. Many elements and parts
of people strategies that were once cast in stone have been
unravelled at lightning pace over recent years. Every major ‘norm’
across the employee experience has been under intense scrutiny and
challenge by a pandemic that no one asked for, and consequently, no
one had prepared for. There is very little, if any, precedent for what
has occurred in organizations. Finally, the word transformation can
be used in its truest sense. Transformed organizations have emerged
that have ripped apart and reset how work gets done and how work
is experienced by their people. It has, of course, been a time for
experiments, for trials, for pilots. It has also been a time of friction,
tension and unrest within companies given significant societal
challenges, including a cost-of-living crisis with soaring gas and
energy prices alongside increasing food prices, which have led to a
period of high inflation. People are being squeezed from almost
every angle, and to continue as business as usual given these
compounding challenges is wishful thinking at best.
This is because the employee experience is locked hand in hand
with the human experience. What happens over there will impact
over here. They are robustly connected and to treat them in any
other way completely misses the point and will lead to negative
outcomes. That being said, there are also incredible opportunities
for businesses to create experiences that inspire, engage and elevate
people to new levels. But there has to be a strategy behind them.
This is not haphazard and accidental work. It is defined, designed
and delivered.
When strategy is done well, it considers the employee experience
as a holistic idea rather than fragmented parts. Yet this is the most
challenging aspect – to see the whole picture and to connect the dots
across businesses chasing multiple targets, objectives and priorities.
It’s not easy to get things right, and it’s not the easiest thing in the
world to get people aligned and moving in the same direction. This
is where strong strategy and weak strategy stand apart. The former
can be confusing, incoherent and pointless. The latter can be the
foundation stone that helps unite an organization around the things
that matter most when it comes to business and human
performance.

The dysfunctional employee experience

The EX Achilles heel and the subsequent downfall of any EX
approach is a lack of alignment. Of all the issues, challenges
(perceived or real) and missed opportunities that I’ve observed in
companies, alignment remains the number one concern to be
addressed in my view. Whatever comes after is a long way behind
alignment. It’s a strategic misstep in a category all of its own. It is
worth singling out alignment for some closer inspection, especially
as we start to navigate the strategic challenges that EX presents. It’s
so significant a risk (or opportunity) that I would encourage
companies to frame up the entire EX strategy around achieving it as
a significant win, victory and outcome. A good strategy will deliver
that – aligned actions, decisions, and decisions that progress the EX
and the business.
Far too often though, alignment is not chased or cherished with
the level of intensity it deserves and warrants. The surprising thing
from my perspective is that this is entirely understandable and I
have some empathy with leaders and practitioners in this regard. If
EX is viewed as a HR thing, seeking and achieving alignment
beyond that specific function is hard. Even shaping and securing
alignment within HR presents its own challenges given the diversity
of roles, specialisms and agendas. For example, a learning and
development (L&D) professional or HR business partner may not
immediately see the connection between their work, the EX and
brand outcomes. More broadly, an IT manager may not be aware of
the impact that their work has on the EX and how it connects to the
Truth – purpose, mission, and values – of the business (Whitter,
2022), and why that even matters. The other matter to be quite
candid about here is time. It takes a lot of patience, skills and
empathy to join the dots and create connections beyond immediate
colleagues. It’s a lot of effort to drive alignment through the business
and requires management discipline.
We cannot simply continue with the status quo on this either as
alignment doesn’t always magically happen over time (it might do if
you get lucky and things naturally connect up), so it needs to be
engineered, to be orchestrated and to be targeted as part of the EX
strategy. A new approach to building great experiences takes time,
patience and a bag full of effort. Often, the work starts with a
dysfunctional organization. That’s not to say there isn’t a
foundational people strategy in place with the related specialisms.
Quite the contrary; companies can be quite advanced in their HR
approaches while, at the same time, quite immature in EX terms.
I’ve noticed award-winning employers being heralded for some of
their people projects, and rightly so, celebrate small wins along the
way. Yet, looking into these companies in a more meaningful way
leads to the discovery that all is not well under the surface.
The main issue is that employee-facing services are not aligned
and being guided by a consistent set of principles, and perhaps an
over-arching philosophy on how the business creates, moves and
reacts over the course of its life cycle. There is not a time that this is
not more obvious than at times of crisis. The mask slips and we see
what companies are really all about. As an observer, I see the good
and the bad. I still applaud specific aspects of the EX at companies
that have been dragged through the public square because of other
issues in the EX. I realize that no company is perfect, but I’m still
inclined to push boundaries to ensure the EX is performing to a high
level in all aspects. It’s an interesting dimension of this work.
One company springs to mind on this; it was headline-making for
the wrong reasons based on several leadership scandals and
evidence that indicated somewhat of a toxic workplace. At the very
same time, its Glassdoor rating – the platform where employees can
rate, review and rank their employers – was a very healthy 4.4 out of
5. We can condemn specific actions, decisions and approaches, but
to condemn an entire company and all of its people and EX is a
bridge too far for me.
I recall a multinational corporation that was investing heavily into
the EX. It was a full-on commitment and enthusiasm was very high
from the leadership team and the people working to improve the
EX. A very firm public commitment was given by the CEO about
developing the EX. Things were progressing well, but unbeknownst
to the EX team, a decision was in the works that would set that early
work back considerably. The management team decided to abruptly
withdraw the annual bonus scheme and they also failed to
communicate and explain that decision to the workforce. The
decision took the organization, and the EX team, by complete
surprise. It hurt people badly, they felt let down, and all the
promises being made about the EX were then subject to extreme
cynicism. All that good early work undone with one decision. If the
decision is in the interest of the long-term health of the business,
employees can understand and accept that if it is communicated
wisely, but to drive this experience through in this manner – and
believe me, it was an emotional experience for those involved – is
disrespectful and the complete opposite of what we are trying to
achieve with EX.
This is why alignment between leaders and employees is such
good work to do upfront and early within EX work. Decisions taken
in isolation have the potential to rock organizations to their very
foundations. It is also indicative of a fragmented and misaligned
organization, as this sequence of events is quite common across
management lines. Functional leaders touching the EX are a team.
In the early days of the EX strategy, they may not even know that
each other exist, let alone connect their objectives. With EX, I look
at all employee-facing functions and their impact on the EX. It is a
shared agenda for the organization, but even now, after several years
of implementation, this remains a serious pain point within EX
work and is something we ought to explore more fully. I’m not
talking about getting people in a room as and when required for EX
projects. That is weak and won’t suffice over the long term.

Small moments, big impact

The word strategy often conjures up thoughts associated with big
things. Strategy is considered to be something well above
operational and day-to-day work. Employee experience turns this
thinking upside down. Strategy in EX builds up, not down. It starts
from the root and grows. Moment after moment. Interaction after
interaction. These are the elements that are in scope, so in terms of
this book, strategy is not far removed from people. It is right next to
them. We will discuss strategic themes, planning and how to build
up a strong strategy; yet we must not forget that when all is said and
done, EX strategy is about delivering moments of real impact with
employees. Systems, platforms and products will be part of the
equation, but the focus must remain on people throughout all of our
discussion and dialogue. Of course, employees welcome clear
direction about the future and their objectives, and how those things
affect their roles and performance – this is foundational stuff, but
they are more concerned about the moment and delivering
outcomes in their work and life. Why is this? Well, reason number
one is that we are human beings. All we ever have is right now – the
present. Past and future can lead to overthinking of the most
destructive nature. Indeed, as companies grow or transform, anxiety
across the workforce can creep in quickly and a good EX strategy
will be the counterbalance to that.
It was always going to be a challenge to emerge successfully from
a pandemic the size and scale of COVID-19, but the scale of the
additional challenges in the human experience will push people and
businesses to breaking point. Predictions of a ‘long and ugly
recession’ are becoming all the more frequent (Bove, 2022). And
even just the possibility of major banks like Credit Suisse and
Deutsche Bank collapsing as a prelude to a major financial crisis
beyond the magnitude of 2008 (Chung, 2022) is an indicator of the
unease being felt in the business world right now. CEOs are feeling it
too: 91 per cent of US CEOs believe a recession is on the near
horizon and a majority of them are actively getting ready to reduce
headcount (KPMG, 2022). This uncertainty, no doubt, will hit
organizations and the people within them, hard. In fact, it already
has. Indeed, the aftershocks of the global pandemic are still with us
and many workers continue to be operating in survival mode
according to the American Psychological Association. A 2022 poll
indicated that all of the big global issues at the time of writing – the
war in Ukraine, rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis – have
created the perfect storm for growing uncertainty and anxiety
amongst workers (American Psychological Association, 2022). This
leads to high stress levels and several other key side-effects
including personal and performance issues.

A world in financial crisis

Reports in the US suggest employers won’t get anywhere near to
keeping pace with inflation when it comes to salaries, with a
predicted average salary budget increase of just 4.1 per cent versus
an inflation level hitting 8.3 per cent. This is stark. The last hope for
employees to secure money that helps them ride out the cost-of-
living crisis goes well beyond tightening belts – people are hopping
to new jobs to increase salaries, which has fuelled the great
resignation in recent years (Ito, 2022). In a red-hot labour market,
employers will be looking at their salary packages; yet it won’t be the
magic wand that people make it out to be. Building an EX strategy
on money alone will simply not be enough to attract and retain high-
quality talent.
The cost-of-living crisis is a touchstone moment for all kinds of
businesses. If there is no upwards movement on salaries or the
quality of the overall EX, then people with options are already
accessing them. It’s not so much driven by ambition but by survival,
given that every area of an employee’s financial life is in scope for
some serious stress. From mortgage payments, energy costs, right
through to groceries, fuel price hikes and a whole lot more increases
on consumer goods, employees are squeezed and stressed from all
directions. No amount of love for their jobs, colleagues and company
will be enough to retain people if they are struggling to meet their
financial obligations. It’s a serious situation and we’ll need to be
mindful of this when shaping ideas about the EX strategy amidst
these highly uncertain times.
Any fluffy stuff went out the window a long time ago. In my view,
EX is, and has always been, the best for business when it is
unleashed to deal with great pain. No fence sitting. No indecision.
Just pure, decisive action that is wholly designed to meet the
moment. When employees are going through difficult times, this is
where organizations can differentiate themselves from the crowd.
It’s a remarkable opportunity to actually live all of those wonderful
words in a company’s value statement and create authentic and
enduring bonds with and between people. An EX strategy that
ignores these challenges will come unstuck eventually.

Pain becomes power

EX strategy can very well be formed in the fire of pain. Crisis
moments act as the catalyst to scaffold new ideas about how
business gets done. All of the less than helpful projects fade into the
background. As companies we are faced to square off with the things
that matter, the things of most pressing concern and the things that
employees really need help with. This is the time they need the
strongest ally they can get, and employers can fill that role like
nothing or no one else can. It’s an almighty and galvanizing moment
– an interaction that can define the perception of a company for
years to come. Are we with our employees or not? The EX strategy
will need to deliver an unequivocal yes on this front.
This is why EX strategy will need to explore pain in a whole new
way. In bygone eras, the pain being referenced by employers was
almost exclusively focused on company hours. Employers fixated
only on the things that they could directly control within the
traditional time-based boundaries of business hours. It was certainly
a good start to support people and demonstrate care within work
hours; some companies have not yet evolved to that point, but there
have been many missed opportunities to influence outcomes beyond
that. To do this, companies are reconsidering typical boundaries in
relation to the wider human experience. This naturally reforms EX
strategies and expands the influence of the company in the lives of
their employees.
For leaders and practitioners, this means, in a practical sense, that
good strategy may start with considering the employee, but it will
not end there. Indeed, scaling humanity across the organization is a
never-ending endeavour and one that will lead to some profound
questions about the role of the company.
A talent shortage
The balance of power has shifted to the talented worker. It may have
been there all along, but it is now there en-masse given there is a
critical shortage of talent across the economy, and it is driving
employers to consider their EX strategies in a serious way. Indeed,
record employment levels means there are more vacancies than
actual workers. This is hitting businesses hard as they seek to grow
and build their workforces.
In the UK, the number of unemployed people was lower than the
amount of job vacancies in 2022 for the first time in recorded
history. The Office for National Statistics paints an interesting
picture right now; alongside more job vacancies than unemployed
people, the number of job transitions, based on resignation, hit
record highs too. What’s behind this? Well, a
PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 2,000 UK workers found that
pay was the biggest factor (72 per cent) driving resignations and job
changes. On both sides of the employment relationship, there is
evidence of a large number of transactional relationships right now,
and should a downturn arrive, companies and new hires will likely
face a very precarious existence.
Changed lives, changed workplaces
The large-scale global experience in remote working cannot be
simply swept under the carpet as if it didn’t happen. Despite the best
efforts of some companies, hybrid and remote working have moved
forward as a key part and aspect of organizational design.
Employees have demanded it, and in many cases they have secured
it through different configurations of their work weeks. The current
trial of the four-day week in the UK by 70 companies is yet another
indicator of the support and willingness of companies to do
something different in order to engage with their people whilst
pushing productivity higher.
Without doubt, there has been a call to action on flexibility. Real
flexibility in and of the workplace. Employees have consistently
articulated the need for hours that better connect to their life and
other responsibilities, as well as the flexibility to do their work in a
way that suits them. The workplace now is certainly no longer
defined simply as a building, which is a positive given how much
work and productivity takes place away from the actual physical
symbol of the enterprise, which has often been represented by the
office.
With this comes challenges. A chasm has opened up between
managers and employees, with the former expressing the view that
employees can’t be trusted to work efficiently and effectively away
from the company’s physical estate, and the latter feeling that they
can and do work better in this new mode. These sentiments have
been somewhat validated by new research from Microsoft. A survey
of over 20,000 global knowledge workers found that the majority of
managers simply do not trust people who work remotely and are not
at all confident in their ability to be productive (Microsoft, 2022).

Leading a more conscious workforce

A striking example of a challenge that manifests itself across the
employee experience is the almost authoritarian way in which
companies shepherd their employees into a pre-determined path of
choices. A menu of items that employees can access or utilize is
often forced upon them and presented to them as if this was
something that would satisfy their appetite for more freedoms in
work. The scale of the challenge here cannot be understated given
the level of change in expectations across workforces. Yet, there is
also an undercurrent that the focus of companies is perhaps not
always on the right things and outcomes. Profit and growth are
being driven at an urgent pace for overarching outcomes that are not
clear, and in some cases are not necessarily positive for humanity or
the world around us.
There is an illusion of choice taking place within firms in how they
roll out their benefits, perks, and they tailor their employee
experiences to suit the corporate rather than the individual’s
agenda. In other words, employees are given a set of binary choices
that they really have no say in at all. This is not, in any way,
personalization, but I do think some firms try to disguise it as such.
The perceived advances in an employee experience, therefore, may
actually be hurting a business because employees are not involved in
the creation of their own choices. It is a rigged game and employees
take action where and when they can as a result. The rise of
employee activism at some of the world’s top workplaces is a real-
time indicator that sometimes an attractive EX can be delivered at
the expense of something more positive and meaningful for
employees.
Productivity is something that requires active participation; yet if
experiences are not developed, aligned and incentivized,
participation will be the obstacle to organizational success. People
will simply check out rather than participate in a system that doesn’t
connect well to their thinking, and in the end, trends like the so-
called ‘quiet quitting’ will become all the more frequent. Now, as an
old friend at the top of the HR profession would say, this trendy
focus on ‘quiet quitting’ is simply ‘old wine in new bottles’, and it
really is. Engagement levels at a global level have been stagnant or
in decline for decades. People would prefer to opt out of the system
and not be part of it if their major needs are not being met within
the employee experience. It’s a constant negotiation between
employee and employer. The pendulum will swing in favour of one
or the other depending on the conditions of the labour market and
the overall buoyancy of the economy.
 Real personalization is when employees have the power to really
choose how they experience their company and work. Beyond
simply picking from a list of the company’s preferred options,
employees can, in every sense of the word, choose and come up with
ideas on their own work life and run with them. We know that
employees around the world have been activating new choices based
on their own preferences and in much more alignment with their
overall human experience, which would perhaps lend favour to the
idea that employees are more conscious post-pandemic. They are
more aware that life is not infinite and they are not indestructible –
this then opens a pathway to explore the things and experiences that
they really want, and the employer will either enable these new
expectations or hinder them greatly.

From culture to lived experience and

performance
The focus on organizational culture is still very much in its heyday,
but it presents a big challenge. In Employee Experience (Whitter,
2022), I rarely mentioned culture and it has not featured heavily in
my work to date. Culture is often inserted as a signpost to connect
work and projects to something bigger. It is often spoken about for
validation of EX work – the changes and improvements to EX drive
the organizational culture, which in turn enables business
performance. I think the time is right to take a more significant step
back from this very woolly, vague and abstract idea that is often
banded about in organizations to no effect. Employees don’t talk
about employee engagement, nor do they really spend much time
talking about organizational culture – they care much more about
practical and tangible things that become part of their lived
experience. This is what matters most and this is where EX strategy
should be focused. Along these lines, employees remain absolutely
concerned about their performance and the performance of their
company. It stands to reason that they are also sensitive to the
performance of the EX.
Would it make more sense to position leaders and practitioners in
alignment with performance and the lived experience rather than
the much bigger and convoluted notion of organizational culture?
This mirrors my work in the EX field. I can tell you very clearly that
culture is rarely mentioned and when it is you can feel a sense of
disconnection with the term – in practice, we are more targeted
around EX performance and its connection to outcomes (for
businesses and people). Culture is naturally created, enhanced and
experienced by those who make a contribution to it through their
decisions, actions and the things that they bring to fruition, so
focusing on culture as the overarching big thing may not be as wise
as it once was now that the more practical EX has emerged as a key
management concept.
There is nothing more satisfying for an EX leader than
transforming a moment of pain into a moment of performance. The
bridge between these two outcomes is potential and organizational
leaders are getting better at identifying and changing them. It’s the
litmus test of EX strategy – do things change in a positive way? Is
the organization experienced positively by employees as they
navigate their day-to-day experiences? Are they able to perform? It’s
a uniquely human thing to take something that is bad and turn it
into something good, and this also happens to be a business-
growing intervention. It means something to people if you take away
their pain – not just say you will, but actually do it, or at the very
least alleviate it in some way. Employers stepping in to offer
additional support for employees during the cost-of-living crisis was
a good example of this. A company was not in control of household
energy bills and soaring costs, so they were not free to completely
eliminate the pain being experienced, but some companies did meet
the moment by providing financial support in the form of one-off or
recurring bonus payments.
What happened here is telling; employers acknowledged the very
real pain employees were suffering, and they tangibly stepped in to
make a positive difference to that situation. Was that action just
based on doing the right thing by employees? Was it strategically
planned out? Or was it simply humane leadership at the top of
organizations? In any case, it was a strategic decision to take action
for employees and we’ll need to think much more in terms of
strategy flowing and unfolding in the lived experience rather than
some abstract document that does nothing for anyone other than
the executives that wrote it.
In that sense, strategy is forever evolving over time and through
experiences. It is not a one-off cycle nor does it reach an end point.
There may be timed elements in its delivery, but the process and
practice of strategizing the EX continues indefinitely as long as there
are employees and business outcomes to deliver. Certainly, when I
think about strategy, I see, feel and experience movement. It is not
stationary. It is not stagnant. It is a continuous process with
outcomes being realized daily, for good or bad. The latter almost
always being experienced when there is clearly a lack of strategic
thinking and planning. Yet strategy requires people in a variety of
roles to make a strong contribution, take ownership and lead in a
collective, holistic manner, and not all leaders and professionals
may be capable of that kind of thinking on a consistent everyday
basis.

Life is the goal: do we really need

purpose?
Reflecting on the experience of the last couple of years has led
people to question the very foundation on which their existence is
built. It’s been a humbling process for many, and for some it has
been truly shocking to discover what has been hiding in the depths
of their mind. The notion perhaps of most exploration has been the
idea of life. What is our purpose here? Do we really need to lead a
purposeful life? Does any of that really matter? We are driven into
so many default conditions, systems, rituals and behaviours that it’s
hard to keep track of what really matters. Getting the next
promotion matters. Paying the next bill matters. Getting a good
pension matters. Working hard matters. Living in a big house
matters. Having lots of money matters.
Within all of this noise, I find favour with Kierkegaard’s idea that
‘life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced’
(Hipkiss, 1986). It is what it is, but in organizational terms, we can
and must do better to create better lived experiences for our people.
A sound EX strategy will seek to address and face the challenges I’ve
highlighted here head-on, and if there is a purpose to life and indeed
organizations, it is, in my view, to progress people and the planet.
What we need to consider is the overall holistic in-context
masterplan for EX that sets the organization up in the best possible
way for EX outcomes. Having been through many iterations of this
type of work for EX leadership teams, we can identify what needs to
be present within such a blueprint from a strategic point of view,
and we’ll discuss that more in the next chapter.
03
Co-creating the
employee
experience strategy
Listening is only the start of the employee experience journey. If
your strategy is only concerned with listening activities and
exercises, then get ready for a very difficult challenge ahead. Every
company has the capacity to listen, but not many have the
capabilities required to really hear what people are saying, and then
put in place the most impactful actions that address that. This is the
far more important part of getting employee experience (EX)
strategy right in practice. In theory, there are many techniques, tools
and activities that can be used to listen to people, but the only thing
that really matters is what is heard, acknowledged and acted on.
Listening without action is as useful as an umbrella with holes in it.
In the context of this book, the gaping great holes will appear in the
EX strategy and it may well be too late to correct once the corporate
machinery is invested in them.
I often listen to practitioners presenting their wares on employee
experience. Setting out an EX approach quickly becomes detailed
work with various techniques and technologies brought to the fore
until eventually something sticks, something works in practice for
the company’s context. This can be distracting for practitioners and
employees alike. The latest fads or age-old design or management
thinking concepts are wheeled out in the hope of creating better
experiences. Now, a lot of these can prove their worth, yet I feel the
central message about EX can become lost in amongst all that. The
technology, process or model becomes the major driver, not the
people. The antidote to this, regardless of what’s going on or the
specialist tastes of those leading EX, is co-creation, and it is quickly
becoming an organizational and leadership superpower.

Co-creation first: everything else flows

from there
What is co-creation? Put simply, it is creating something together,
rather than apart. For every leader, team and business unit, co-
creation really must be the go-to start within their leadership
playbook. Evidently, an unfaltering commitment to co-creation has
emerged from the outset of the EX movement and it is only
strengthening over time. Indeed, I have stated previously that co-
creation is the foundation stone for any work on EX.
Is there really any more clarity that needs to be added on this
topic? Well, there are clearly some disconnects occurring in practice
when it comes to rolling out genuine, deep-rooted co-creation. The
tendency for practitioners to work in isolation up until the point of
consultation with employees remains a prevalent and undesirable
practice. It also doesn’t make a ton of sense when you think about
the role of employees in using, accessing or experiencing the fruits
of any well-intentioned EX project or programme. This could be a
system, a product, an app or a service – all roads lead to the user (or
to put it in a better way, experiencer) and their involvement needs to
be consistently high throughout any programme of work. This is not
always the case, for whatever reason. Busyness, urgency, fear,
anxiety, lack of resource or internal pressure sometimes removes the
employee from the co-creation loop – it’s sometimes viewed as an
unnecessary step to work with employees directly on projects, but
I’ve seen first-hand that nothing could be further from the truth.
Insights and direct involvement, in my experience both internal and
external to organizations, has always enriched them. In fact,
employee involvement has made EX projects the successes they
eventually become. This is an inevitable consequence of working on
real things that matter to people and also the business, not one or
the other.
 Another highlight of co-creation is that it feels good – it’s an
enjoyable part of the strategy development process to have your key
stakeholders together helping you to solve their specific problems or
challenges that are getting in the way of productivity and
performance. For any support function, it is critical, but too often
co-creation is light touch and insincere. It is a tick-box exercise
rather than meaningful engagement, yet it is hugely advantageous to
do this well and generates all manner of positive and secondary
outcomes. Indeed, I challenge EX practitioners to deepen their co-
creation activities as much as possible when and where they can
within their portfolio of responsibilities. This chapter then serves as
a reminder (and a warning) that co-creation is integral to EX and
leaders would be wise to make this an enduring ingredient in their
EX strategy efforts.

The co-creation partners within

There are a broad range of people and groups to co-create with
across the organization, and having worked with colleagues across
all these groups, I can tell you for sure that they all have pivotal
parts to play in EX. 2022 was strike season around the world. I
recall two experiences I had in London and Paris. At the former, I
was booked to deliver a keynote address at one of Europe’s leading
HR conferences – it was apt that it took place in the middle of a
national rail strike. I adapted my travel and found a way to honour
my commitment, yet I couldn’t miss the irony of speaking about EX
on such a difficult day for workers and those who were affected by
strike action. In Paris, I found the same and arrived to deliver an EX
workshop on the day of a general strike. Such strong disagreements
between workers and their organizations are not pleasant for anyone
to experience. Activism has a rich history in the development of our
economies and workplaces. and without people taking a stand about
fairness and equality, employees would not enjoy the standards they
do today. Yet activism represents a breakdown of the relationship
between companies and their people, and should be avoided. If that
is not possible, then it should be embraced and activists should be
welcomed as co-creation partners too.
For EX leaders, the primary co-creation groups are (in no
particular order) shown in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Co-creation groups
Skip table

Co-creation group Why?

Senior Align to the vision of senior executives and
management/Executive the future direction of the business.
team
Employees Align with the needs and wants of the
permanent workforce.
Customers Align to the core needs and expectations of
customers and consumers.
Workers Align to the needs and wants of the
growing workforce made up of
contractual, contingent and gig workers.
Unions Seek alignment on key developments that
affect employees and the
business/organization.
Functional heads Align agendas to create products and
services that enhance the EX and enable
the EX strategy.
All leaders Align and enable strong leadership and
cultural performance through the EX
strategy.
Employee/worker Those disgruntled with an organization
activists can be the source of much insight. They
are a valid co-creation group, not an
enemy.
What I’ve noticed, and which has been a constant in my work on EX,
is the shift from stakeholder management to co-creation leadership.
Stakeholders are there to be managed, co-creators are there to make
a contribution. Too often in business, there is a detachment from
work that affects employees, which leads to passive involvement at
best. We’ve found a better way is to double-down on roles,
responsibilities and accountabilities. There will be a time to listen to
each of the key groups, but then they will need to make the
transition to co-producer of the EX, and indeed, the organizational
culture. There are levers, of course, to firm up such responsibilities
in EX work like incentives and rewards, but in many companies,
internal projects are the opportunity that allows the real
organizational culture to shine right through.
Rejection is an important feature of this too. When taking
proposals for approval, there can be knockbacks, concerns, or plans
can even be completely derailed by the management team, or one
(or several) influential director(s). An EX investment might come
under some scrutiny, a programme or service could be challenged,
or the design of an experience could come under some fire. How
you, as an EX leader, see these things matters a lot. Getting rejected
by anyone or anything can be deflating and lead to stress, anxiety
and perhaps check-out behaviours, so we need to be ready for this. I
can tell you now that the single biggest shift in my career took place
when I saw these rejectors or cynics for what they truly were… co-
creators.
Articulating what EX means to your
organization
We’ll start to look in more detail at all the components of a well-
rounded EX strategy in the next chapter and mapping those
elements out will be some productive foundational work as they will
all feed into this section directly, which centres on making EX work
for your company, context and culture. No doubt, there will be some
good work on EX happening around the business, yet if every
function and colleague is off on their own adventure, the EX strategy
may fail to live up to its potential. This is potentially the trickier part
of EX – bringing together a diverse range of people and
backgrounds to contribute to an organization-wide agenda. This is
also where we establish that a successful EX playbook from one
organization may not do well in a new context and company. In that
sense, mimicking is out of the question and we’ll need to articulate
EX for our unique conditions to arrive at a definite statement of:

what EX means to your company

who owns EX and who contributes to it
where the accountability sits for key moments along the
employee journey
roles and principles underpinning all EX interventions and
developments.
Without this level of understanding, it will always be a fragmented
and disconnected experience despite the best efforts of all
concerned.

The useful cynic

Sometimes plans can sail through the approval line and be a
complete disaster because no one really cared enough to challenge
them at management team level, and no one really backed them
when they came into practice and were developed into the business.
If plans are being rejected, someone is at least paying attention.
That is good! That is also co-creation because you would hope senior
leaders have arrived at the top team with sufficient wisdom and
experience that will help you, as an EX leader, deliver a strategy that
can actually get implemented successfully. For this, you will need
many of the top team leaders and their people to get behind the EX
work as a serious part, and enabler, of the overall business strategy.
To underline this some more, great EX strategy is not in any way
about you, or any other EX leader. It is about the business and its
people. Therefore, both parties will need to lead it, together. The
reason people get placed into EX roles that evolve EX strategy is to
help guide strategy, shape strategy, cultivate strategy, and in the
end, to help install the strategy successfully into the business, but
this is not a sole responsibility and nor should it be treated as such.
Yet, as we’ll come to learn about in later chapters, EX leaders have
leaned into a far more effective skill and capability set in recent
years that helps them to do their job to an exceptional level, and I
dare say that their businesses would be in a much weaker position
without their particular sets of skills and leadership style.

A high-quality start
The success of the EX strategy is largely determined by the quality of
those first few months working on it. Sometimes, leaders are given
time and space to really go deep in creating a long-term, enterprise-
level strategy, so the duration of this stage will vary depending on
the size, scale and scope of each company. I’ve worked with vice
presidents (VPs) that have had anywhere from one month to
upwards of 12 months to go through this stage of strategy
development. The duration of this phase will come down to the
context of the company, but the steps leaders go through rarely
change. They get to work on their big EX challenge and they start to
create their own LUCK in the process.
The great part of EX strategy work, in my view, is to craft
something compelling that is directly tied to business strategy. It’s a
time to think about both bold and realistic moves, and to ready the
organization for genuine employee-centric change. It requires a
huge amount of LUCK, but not the type of luck you’re thinking
about. From our perspective and that of the practitioners I work
with, we co-create our own luck by doing a few simple things really,
really well at the outset of developing the EX strategy for a business.
In this chapter, I will start to break these down in a way that can
offer some insight on where you should focus first when working on
EX strategy, and perhaps a few of the different ideas I’ve come
across that sets EX practitioners apart from their peers.
To help frame the actions that leaders take when crafting their EX
strategies, having a bit of LUCK on our side could be helpful. LUCK
in this context means:

Listen
Understand
Connect
Kick-off.

Listen
By far one of the greatest strengths of EX leaders is their ability to
listen at levels scarcely seen in the workplace before. I mean, these
folks truly listen. In this part of the strategy development process,
they are only concerned about listening to people. In their first few
days and months in role, the amount of listening they get through is
staggering, but who are they listening to and why does it matter?
In the organizational context, there are a quite a few groups that
hold sway over business direction, business ethos and overall
business culture. I’ve found it is wise to be balanced and listen
across all of the different co-creation groups that I’ve mentioned
rather than placing one over the other. Certainly, in our work, the
employee is important, but that’s only because the employee has,
historically, not been as important to the overall business as they
should be. So, too, are senior executives and the most senior
employees. These people have emerged as the organizational leaders
and should be afforded the respect they have earned by being role
models for the company’s purpose, mission and values. Given their
impact on the overall direction of the company, they will be a key
concern in the listening process.
Employee experience as a management concept has addressed the
attention imbalance that existed previously; this idea that only
customers matter has been found out. Employees matter more these
days, but that doesn’t mean we are employee-centric to the degree
that we ignore or exclude any other groups. Indeed, any human who
interacts with a business is important and there is much to learn
from them, especially customers. An excellent development within
the experience economy has been the strongly developing
connection between work on the customer and employee experience
– as fields, they have begun to converge and cross-fertilize each
other to produce better business results. It’s still early days, but
many customer experience (CX) practitioners are thinking more
about the EX space, and vice versa, which is welcome and will enrich
outcomes.
Understand
In one global business I worked with, a VP of EX was appointed to
lead an enterprise-wide approach to EX. They were a long-time
leader at the company, operating consistently close or near to the
top team of a multi-billion-pound market-leading company. It was
only when they started this process of digging for, dissecting and
analysing information that they realized there was already an EX
team formed and in place, and the team had been operating for a
good while, clearly well below the corporate radar. Fascinating, yet
indicative of the complexity of large organizations. However, this
was a high-performing leader who astutely and methodically worked
through the organization chart to uncover any team, function or
person that was working on EX. That understanding was critical in
the early stages of EX, as a lot of good work was already happening
that could be harnessed and brought to the fore to serve the wider
business.
If there was a roughshod approach that disregarded this work,
impact and progress, you can imagine what it would do to morale
and the climate around teams, so there will always need to be a
sensitivity and empathy for the work that has gone before us. That’s
not to say everything you find will be fantastic; some of it might be
very poor and be delivering very little value, and tough decisions will
need to be made to focus on other priorities that really matter to
people. Leading with an employee-centric mindset will provide the
business case for most changes in strategic themes, pillars and
tactics, alongside the alignment to the overarching business strategy
and direction, and all of this starts from a place of deep
understanding.
Suffice to say, this is not a rush job that can be skipped. It’s a
serious part of a leader’s first few months exploring EX within the
context of their company, and will cover a myriad of things that are
integral to the business, but what is produced during this stage is
worth it.

Connect
Without doubt, one of the biggest challenges when it comes to EX
strategy is alignment. Aligning people, decisions, investments and
resources that bring about successful EX adoption is not easy by any
stretch. Now, in the main, I’m an advocate of choice and
personalization when it comes to EX. I frequently advise companies
to invest as deeply as they can in this regard using a combination of
technology and high-impact experiences to tune into the emotional
frequency of their employees, especially at critical life moments.
Companies may well be scratching their heads on this, as they invest
in EX yet still they can be faced with regrettable attrition, or worse,
people who stay and seek to bring a company down from the inside
by giving nowhere near their best performance at work. They have
good reason to hold back – there may be an issue that riles
employees and the employer response that comes with it.
 It’s a complicated world and an even more complicated human
experience, largely because we make it so. Simplicity is not usually
held up as a status symbol for living life. So, how do companies
ensure that their EX strategies are aligned to the things that matter?
Well, in my experience, if employees are now starting to set their
own boundaries in relation to their work life and their expectations
alongside that, companies will need to modernize too, and fast.
For this, the organization and planet (OP) framework sets the
tone for the modern company. Our EX strategies lean towards
behaviours and contributions, and these will now need to be further
targeted in companies, given the scale and nature of the challenges
being faced by people and the economies and societies in which they
work.
A non-negotiable within EX is that there is a serious effort by
leaders to connect things up and present a united, well-branded and
well-aligned strategy. Misaligned actions and intent create a chaotic
and incongruent mess of things that is confusing to insiders and
outsiders. No one knows what matters because strategies are
disconnected and colleagues have weak bridges to one another.
There is, in practice, very little joined-up thinking and movement
takes place in all manner of different directions. There may be some
hits amongst that, but the broader potential of EX as a business
transformer never truly materializes because leaders are protecting
what is theirs and building their own mini empires at the expense of
wider company goals. This is where strategy execution falls down. It
doesn’t consider what connects colleagues and their interests, and,
therefore, does not incentivize, reward or recognize behaviours that
are good for the whole.
Connection – genuine connection – is always a positive aspect of
team work and good human relations. Once connected, we can
operate with candour, respect and strong collaboration – things get
done in a better way, and the company benefits greatly by producing
richer, deeper and longer-lasting outcomes. An IT team working
effectively with an HR team on the digital experience is a good
example here. The digital EX creates some natural cross-over points
across these two services, so working hand in hand is a truly
powerful step. This is in contrast to approaches I’ve experienced that
keep these two domains separate. An IT implementation is never
just a project to install new technology. It is a project to help people
do and deliver better work.

Kick-off
In a lot of company scenarios, the kick-off for any project comes far
too early. There tends to be a big kick-off event with invited parties
and a lot of pre-thinking and formulating is shared, which in truth,
does not have much use other than as a social event. Now, I
thoroughly enjoy taking a piece of blank paper into a room filled
with employees to canvas their views, reflections and ideas, but for
me, this is part of the previous three stages. We listen to employees,
we understand them, and we connect with where they are and where
they would like to be. Only then can we start to think about doing a
wider kick-off for the EX strategy around the organization.
It is very helpful for practitioners and leaders who are tasked with
crafting the EX strategy to furnish themselves with the latest
information and data on EX performance first, as they will need to
get into the right headspace to help the organization (and its people)
make sense of itself. I’ve covered how they do that in previous
paragraphs, but it remains important to get this right to avoid some
early pitfalls and gaps in strategy development. If we’re wanting to
develop EX strategy, it makes perfect sense to be employee-centric
from the very start of the process, which means that employees take
centre stage.
With any new work on EX, there is excitement and energy. It feels
like great work to do and there is an urgency to assemble the right
people to get things moving. For some inexplicable reason,
employees are often left out of this early work. Yes, a team is
gathered with the right mix of responsibilities to hammer out some
form of connected and coherent strategy to develop the EX, yet
there is often a lack of representation from employees at this critical
juncture. It is powerful to have data and intelligence to inform
strategy, but I would encourage leaders to take this a step further so
that employees help to directly craft the overall EX strategy and
approach. A key point is that EX strategy would be implemented
more effectively if wasn’t ‘done to’ the employees, but rather ‘created
with’ employees. Just isolating this point highlights two distinct and
starkly contrasting approaches. How can a company claim to be
truly employee-centric if no employees were involved directly in
crafting and shaping the strategy? EX strategy done well feels like a
collective approach that is owned by employees rather than any one
function or role.
In that sense, distributing leadership and securing wider
commitment to EX objectives is simply a continuation of how we
have approached EX so far. We just keep deepening and enriching
the process of co-creation and this spills over into any programme
or agenda that aims to kick-off EX as an organizational approach. It
is to the detriment of the organization that strategy is formulated
exclusively at the hands of a small collection of senior executives. It
is not their strategy. It is everyone’s strategy, and viewing strategy
development in this way eliminates many future and preventable
issues in the realm of strategy execution. People get it, because they
made it. It is a defining point of EX organizations because it aligns
business philosophy with tangible and visible actions. This is not a
quite statement either. It is a loud signal of intent to the
organization. It says employees matter so much to the business that
any strategy that impacts them and their futures demands their
attention, accountability and involvement.
This brings home a fundamental truth about employee
experience. Employees will need to lead it from top to bottom, and
be enthusiastic and energized by the work to move it to a higher
level of quality. Indeed, when I have encountered weak employee
experience approaches or projects, the related involvement level of
employees has been low. This is unacceptable by any standard. It’s
like designing a car without the driver in mind throughout the
process, or building a product and not thinking about the user in
any depth and detail. Employees lead successful businesses through
their contributions. Without them, very little good happens. For that
reason, they must be an integral part of any EX work.

Transforming with empathy

Employee experience remains a never-ending journey of discovery
and reinvention. It is this way because of the pace of change within
society and the economy, and companies need to keep up with rapid
movements in employee expectation management in much the same
way they keep up with latest trends and insights related to the
consumer experience.
Cynicism is a huge hurdle to overcome when transforming
culture. So many decisions, actions and outcomes to get right
throughout the employee experience and it starts with a firm and
resolute commitment from the top. Without that, severe challenges
await. With that, great things happen fast, for everyone.
As Kathleen Hogan (2022), Chief People Officer at Microsoft,
points out, ‘working alongside our CEO Satya Nadella to transform
#Microsoft’s culture has been one of the most rewarding aspects of
my role as CHRO. Witnessing his commitment to making Microsoft
a great place to work and the positive energy his empathetic
leadership brings never ceases to inspire me.’
Having worked with executive teams at dozens of companies
during the pandemic, I can tell you that the path to creating EX
strategy in these circumstances is far from easy. We know that, don’t
we? It’s not been easy for workers and employees through the
pandemic, and it’s certainly been a real challenge for all
management levels. What we’ve seen has been nothing short of a
major clash between styles, generations, expectations and the
resultant top-down decision making. Some have forgotten the
important principles of EX in the way that they advance strategy.
This is problematic and has created mistrust and unrest across,
under and between management lines. Too much standardization
and there is no room to breathe. Too much personalization and
decision making by managers and there are consistency issues. A
good EX strategy will need to bear all of this in mind and satisfy all
stakeholders.
Researching the EX is a holistic endeavour in that we are looking
across the company for data, insights and information that will help
us improve EX performance. Nothing is off limits if it adds value to
our work on EX. It’s the same with co-creation. The organization is a
treasure trove of willing co-creators at all levels of the business.
Even the not-so-willing will be helpful in this journey, but we’ll need
to adjust or adapt our mindset if we are to make the most of this.
 Hopefully, your strategy development work will fail, and fail
again, and keep on failing until there is an EX strategy that the
business can collectively work with. However, the first response to
perceived rejection or failure is not a positive one, for good reason. A
lot of work may have been done to get a coherent strategy
presentation or report to the management team, and perhaps it is
rejected, or rejected with notes/feedback. Is this a good or a bad
thing? I would rather not waste my time driving something through
approval and funding processes that had little buy-in from senior
leaders. This is not an effective or impactful use of time. The talk of
a bottom-up approach is noble, yet reality is something different.
We need our top leaders to lead EX.
There are a wide range of options when it comes to co-creation. I
view any action as a contribution to developing the business, and by
default, co-creation. The only thing that changes is the role, extent
and depth of the contribution to the overall EX work. This can be a
managed or informal contribution so the list below reflects my much
wider approach to co-creation. I’m not simply talking about formal
design and prototype workshops, which usually only involve a small
number of employees or functional specialists. This could be
summarized as where the real action is.

Employee (and customer) surveys (pulses, sentiment analysis,

formal feedback mechanisms)
Forums
Employee resources groups
 Committee and management team meetings
Town halls/All-hands meetings
Workshops/design processes
Special project teams
EX functional leadership team
Gemba walks (as discussed in Whitter, 2021)
Drop-in sessions
Ambassador teams
Leadership 1:1s
Technology interventions, including network analysis
Gamified or incentivized activities
Customer forums/workshops

A co-creation campaign
Done well, co-creation becomes the natural pathway to bringing new
products, services and experiences into being. It becomes an
encompassing approach to utilizing the strengths, skills and talent
that exists within and beyond the context of the organization. It
shortens any change curve and ensures any changes flow into the
organization rather than being forced through it.
It does become a campaign too, based on the range and breadth of
options and activities that can bolster the EX strategy and its
eventual impact. It’s the other side-effects that also add real value –
the ability to demonstrate and role-model the kind of organizational
leadership employees respond positively to – high empathy, high
transparency and high trust-based actions and communication
approaches. Indeed, at this stage of EX strategy we can reset
relationships and refresh the organizational leadership approach.
It’s not a campaign to win hearts and minds, but it could be the
catalyst to doing just that.
SUMMARY
I have rarely found resistance to solid co-creation campaigns. The
challenge with co-creation is that it is underrated within the corporate
world, or viewed to be too much hard work. Much easier to develop in
functional isolation, consult and launch. That kind of approach
belongs in another era and it is the one that will include the more
traditional practices around change management.
Co-creation at its finest will replace the need for anything that even
closely resembles change management, which I’ve found to be far too
organization-centred and that stifles a lot of the great potential
outcomes that can come from creating spaces for people to make their
contribution and utilize their creativity. People are not brought into
EX projects to be managed. They will be operating under principles
that enable them to express themselves and take their ideas through to
implementation. Employees see an organization that reflects their
contribution and an experience that is made by their design.
Co-creation sets projects and companies apart. It is one of the purest
points of differentiation that I can identify across the organizational
landscape. If you want EX work to be good, involve employees. If you
want EX work to be exceptional, ensure employees are co-creating it.
04
An ecosystem for
employee
experience success
An inevitable question that has arisen about employee experience
(EX) is whether or not there is a playbook or blueprint that can be
applied and replicated across different organizations. Is there a
standardized approach that can be picked up by leaders and
practitioners in their context that leads to strong outcomes for EX?
Put simply, I live in a world where this is simply not possible and
nor would we want it to be. Despite the efforts of others to
conveniently package EX as a solution, a platform, a product or a
playbook, it simply isn’t desirable to do that. A one-size-fits-all
approach to EX is as weak an approach as I can imagine to
organizational design, development and leadership. Indeed, the best
examples of EX that I’ve come across are distinctly different, unique
and immersed in their own context. It would be a challenge of the
highest order to even try to mimic or copy the approach, and why
would companies want to simply copy another organization in the
first place? The obvious answer is time and outcomes. Building on
the work and success of others is a temptation few can resist when it
comes to accelerating their growth and success curve, but there are
pitfalls in this approach. A shallow and superficial EX can mask
deep fragmentation, unrest and broken relationships, and it’s not
healthy for anyone to have the occasional positivity boost delivered
by a one-off copied experience, rather than the long-lasting and
sustainable outcomes that a holistic EX approach can produce if it is
a genuine approach that seeks to strengthen trust, respect and
relationships at all levels.

An ecosystem to enable evolution

I’ve found that a much more beneficial way to approach and apply
EX holistically is to think about an EX masterplan and supporting
ecosystem. This helps to set the tone for the work and lifts thinking
to the appropriate organization-wide level. Thinking about the
whole ecosystem around EX will naturally drive powerful discussion
and dialogue, draw the right people to the EX strategy work, and be
immensely helpful in enabling a high-performing EX when the time
comes to deliver the strategy in practice. The challenge for many
practitioners is that they have developed a narrow, specialist
worldview. Whatever function or subject matter people have been
schooled and conditioned in will come to the fore within the work on
EX, and we need to harness that, but at the same time, guard against
it. It may divert the EX into a weaker and more narrow proposition
within the business, which would be in direct contradiction to what
EX, in my view, is meant to be – a collective and shared endeavour.
As a holistic idea, EX benefits greatly from many contributors and
co-creation partners – all of whom have different ideas,
personalities and ways in which they approach their work. Rather
than curtail or stifle those, the area I like to focus much more on is
alignment, and it features heavily in any work I’ve done to stand up
EX teams, projects or enterprise-level EX approaches. While I am
steadfast in my belief that an EX playbook doesn’t exist (and nor
should it), I am equally robust in my view that a masterplan can be
established successfully within the context of an organization. That
is to say, EX as an approach or process can be brought to order in
the form of an overarching blueprint for success on the inside of the
business, and this connects strongly to EX strategy development, of
course. This is in stark contrast to a general or standardized
approach that acts as a one-size-fits-all model for EX. That won’t do
at all.
A universal approach to employee
experience
As I set it out here, each blueprint will be original and based on the
context, characteristics and challenges of each individual company.
Some of the fundamentals that I explore with businesses revolve
around creating a compelling purpose for EX, establishing deeply
installed principles into the EX team and approach, and the co-
creation of an organizational blueprint for EX, which develops the
former alongside other aspects that enable colleagues to join the
dots effectively and enhance their contributions across all employee-
facing functions and touchpoints.
There is an undoubted focus and intensity in EX work. Leaders
tasked with coming up with a solid EX strategy are put into that role
because they know how to navigate the organization chart, they have
the ability to connect and join things up, and they are able to
influence outcomes beyond that of their role and usually the small
team behind them. I’ve used the term experience architect to
describe these colleagues and that tends to sum them up quite well
to this day. Part of the role in shaping EX strategy is to help
companies determine what needs to be built in the first place and to
draw out the unique strengths of the company to ensure high
differentiation in the talent marketplace. What is striking about EX
strategy, and what separates it from others, is the all-out laser-like
focus on the experience of work. Yes, the clue is in the title – we
have fixed our sights on employees, their experiences and the
strategy that enables them – but once something is turned over to
the corporate world, there is an element of dilution and there are
forces that would rather corporatize strategy and organize all the
human feeling out of it. EX strategy, as I’ve found, is different in this
regard. It leans into the core topic at hand and seeks to humanize all
the parts of the business that it can reach.
In strategy terms, leaders working on strategy are not simply
allocating resources and creating plans of action. They go much
deeper and are more active in understanding the real nature of their
companies. I haven’t, in all my years working in the HR field,
observed such devotion and dedication to bridging the gap between
employers and their employees through a well-balanced human-
centred business strategy. It is a commitment that goes unheralded,
yet it is an ever-present factor in crafting a strong EX strategy.

Defining questions to consider

A few key markers that have emerged in EX strategy development
over the years can be summarized by the following questions:

How long does it take for strategy to transform into tangible

and effective actions?
To what extent have employees been involved in strategy
development?
 How far does strategy go beyond the borders of support
functions?
How active and engaged are company leaders in overall EX
strategy execution?
How deeply is EX strategy installed and connected to the
overarching business strategy?
How many data points have informed the EX strategy?

Growing through strategic challenges

A point to note and underline about strategy development is that
there has to be evolution built into it. This feeling like we’re on a
journey and that things will never be complete in the way that we
expect them to has to become part of our approach. Perfection
doesn’t exist. We can get close to it; yet as soon as we do, time has
moved on, and so have the expectations of workers, and even
perhaps senior management. The strategic thought behind this is
always on change and challenge. From these challenges, people have
the opportunity to grow their capabilities and their imagination on
how complex problems can be solved. Thinking in this way also
enables leaders to experience life and the organization as it really is
– imperfect and always in need of improvement.
The life is sometimes strangled out of an organization because it
encourages everything to be correct, to be orderly and to be tidy. The
reality of the life experience is far removed from this, and if you peek
through the corporate veneer you will always find an imperfect
human underbelly. This is as it should be and is an important part of
strategy development. There has to be a serious space to play, to
experiment, to challenge assumptions, and, most importantly, to get
things wrong. EX strategy development literally resets the rules
around failure. We have to fail and fail again to find the right ways
to connect with the workforce. This is often permitted failure – it is
designed into the strategy development process to prototype and
test new ideas in real scenarios through pilots and trials.

Conversations that matter

Once companies have started down the EX path, it becomes
apparent that tackling EX in a more holistic way is raison d’être of
EX leaders. There is much learning to be done prior to reaching this
point though, and various frustrations in executing EX strategy. This
is why I immediately put forward the holistic employee experience
(HEX) model in earlier works because it was paramount to EX
success. It would have been easier and more expedient to suggest
EX was a simple design process, communication approach or
branding exercise, but it isn’t, so I double down here again when
thinking about creating solid EX strategies. The need to consider the
organization holistically only grows as the years go by, and things
become more complicated especially if companies are growing at
pace or transforming their business operations. Thinking and
leading in a holistic and intentional way is a foundation stone of
great EX leadership – the focus on the whole rather than the parts –
and it will continue to be the case as organizations roll out and
mature their EX approaches.
Timely examples of this emerge all the time. Businesses tend to
hype their growth journeys and not think about the consequences
until they need to. They are left brutally exposed during a downturn
in the economy and then the real pain is experienced, most notably
by employees with massive job cuts and scaling back of operations.
In the past year, many industries have been affected by layoffs and
there continue to be question marks about the way companies grow
at such a furious yet unsustainable pace. Many of the major tech
companies have announced major workforce reductions in recent
times, and many have been found wanting in their ability to manage
transitions and exits, or as I think of them, evolved relationships.

Deepening the holistic approach to

employee experience
What tends to happen in practice is that there is a surge in
enthusiasm for EX and projects are stood up to affect and enhance
the experience of work for people. Some hits and some misses
follow, and then a re-grouping takes place around a clear need to
align people more closely on the outcomes of EX work. EX consists
of many diverse ingredients, yet when too many chefs go after their
own ideas and fail to connect the dots and unify actions and
outcomes across the employee journey, then EX performance will be
severely impacted.
This is perhaps the main reason that I up front the discussion and
dialogue about the HEX and seek to get started on these inevitable
issues before they bring progress to a grinding halt later down the
track. A sincere and honest assessment will need to take place early
on about the problems being experienced within the organization.
Some can be fixed; others will take time and a serious trust-building
effort within support services and much deeper into the company’s
approach to EX. This is generally where the marketing spin fades
and you get a proper sense of what the organization is really all
about. Reality for some organizations will be hard to navigate,
especially if there has been a bias to branding and marketing at the
expense of much more substantial organizational development and
design work.
Inevitably, to develop an EX strategy, we’ll need to start with the
most basic of strategic questions about the EX at an organization.
For me, I always return to the HEX for guidance and challenge. This
is the strategic map and tool of choice to facilitate improvements,
strengthen connections and eliminate weak spots. It’s the model and
tool I use most frequently around a business when talking to
business leaders. They can quickly grasp, discuss and diagnose
issues within it, and also key areas of strength. As a co-creation tool,
it prompts insight, introspection and innovation because it brings
people up from the surface of their work to consider the whole and
how each element interacts with each other to unify and develop
positive experiences. Deeper than that though is its ability to prompt
reflection about the extent to which each element of the HEX is
supporting the organization to achieve its mission and its people to
achieve their goals.
For professionals working on EX, this is extremely important at
the outset of their projects. This, as I’ve found in my work, sets up a
point of difference between EX professionals. Some consider the
whole when working on their projects, and some don’t. The best
results I’ve seen are unanimously associated with those EX
professionals that connect their work to the greater whole – they
manage to take their projects, plans and priorities deep into the
organization and reach colleagues that others don’t. This isn’t as
much a skill as it is a daily practice – a daily habit. But what are they
considering at the very start of their projects? What are the key
questions they run through in order to secure the best outcomes for
whatever activity they are working on? And by activity, I use this
term broadly to emphasize the diverse range of tasks that
professionals work on that interact with employees – it is widely
encompassing and is tied to anything and any professional that
affects the EX through their work. A new or improved policy, plan,
platform, product, tool, system or a wholesale experience redesign.
Indeed, any initiative or intervention that touches the EX is in
scope, and these questions rise to the surface quickly to help
colleagues create the impact they set out to.
When starting a project that affects the EX, use this checklist of
questions to refine your approach and build unrivalled consistency
across your teams and companies.
TABLE 4.1 HEX strategic questions
Skip table
HEX element Strategic questions
Human Are you being as human-centred as possible
in the design and roll-out of this project? Is
the human experience (as well as the
employee experience) at the forefront of your
mind?
Is co-creation a fundamental and defined
principle within your approach? Is this
project co-produced with employees?
Are you designing and developing this
project holistically and seeking to enrich it
through collaboration and by connecting to
other functions/colleagues beyond your
immediate team?

Leadership
Are you enabling leaders, as a collective, to
drive this EX project into their daily (or
habitual) management interventions and
leadership practices?
Is the leadership team (at all levels) held to
account for the quality and performance of
this project and their team experience
(TEX)?
Are leaders aligned to, sponsoring and
championing the project?

Community Is belonging, and the creation thereof, a core

and intended outcome of the project?
HEX element Strategic questions
Does this project create a connection
between their people and the communities
around them?
Are there communities embedded into this
project? Are they immersed, informed and
inspired by the potential project outcomes?
Is there a clear and compelling
communication plan behind or connected to
the project to amplify impact and inclusion?

Structure Are all targeted and affected employee-facing

functions aligned, organized and accountable
for outcomes related to the project?
Are there sufficient roles and responsibilities
to effectively lead and scale this project
across the organization?
Is the employee voice effectively structured
in to this project? Is your project structure
agile and informed by real-time employee
feedback, data and intelligence?

Technology Are the right products and services in

operation to deliver a seamless, effortless
and joined-up effort to support your project?
Is there sufficient intelligence, enabled by
technology, to monitor EX performance of
your project in real time?
Is your project driven by humans, rather
than technology, and is the ecosystem in
HEX element Strategic questions
place to produce and sustain desired
outcomes?

Workplace Have you considered the optimum

configuration for employees’ work and life in
relation to your project?
Is the project aligned to flexibility and
supportive of different work styles and
personas?
Are you making the most of the spaces and
places that your organization defines as the
workplace? Are employees truly connected to
your project in a way that enhances their
experience of work?

TRUTH Have you connected your project to the

brand’s purpose, mission and values?
Have you ensured that your project
continues to immerse employees into the
values of your organization? Does this policy
exemplify what your company stands for?
Does this project offer evidence that your
company is living its Truth?
Employee experience strategy: a
marathon delivered in sprints
In the world of employee experience and other fields dealing with
design, strategy is nothing but a series of sprints that create strong
and almost immediate outcomes. Redesigning or transforming a
service, changing something about the employee journey, creating
powerful moments of interaction at well-timed intervals and
milestones in the life of an employee – these are the sprints that
inject speed, sharpness, urgency and quality into the employee
experience. Anyone who works in EX knows there is a strong bias
for action within the field and across companies – people in or
around EX leaning roles are motivated by getting things done and
affecting early, significant and lasting positive change. Sitting
behind these sprints is a strategic marathon – a long-haul thematic
view based on a desired direction for the business and the people
priorities that will help take it there.

Outcomes over opinions?

In EX terms, opinions forged through experience are outcomes.
Generally, this plays out in reality like this: employees don’t care
about what you say you’re going to do (though they will be
disappointed with broken promises), but they do care much more
about what they experience as a result of your leadership actions.
For any EX strategy, it will make sense to start with the end in mind.

What do you want people to feel as a result of your EX

strategy?

Then again, opinions that are not our own do matter in EX as we

have to take the evidence coming directly from key stakeholders
very seriously. Two opinions are perhaps great indicators of how the
EX is doing for real. These are the opinions from employees and
competitors:

In 20 years, what do you want former employees to be saying

about your company?
What would you like your competitors to be saying about your
company and its EX?

A telecommunications company went on a two-year transformation

programme that featured a radical revamp of the customer
experience (CX) and EX, which resulted in record-breaking
engagement and business performance levels, and re-established a
legacy business once again at the top of the market. While feedback
was notable from all quarters, of most note was the feedback I heard
from its major competitor who said that what they did would have
been perceived as impossible just two short years earlier. Impossible
became possible, and the competitor also started to explore EX as a
serious management approach.
 It comes down to several things. Some will not be new to you as a
way of developing strategy. However, there are some nuances in the
way that we develop these areas from an EX perspective. Adopting
agile is not a strategy. Adopting design thinking is not a strategy.
Adopting a technology is not a strategy. These are merely things that
enable the strategy. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, what is the strategy?

For me, the central strategy is the broad and overarching force that
best enables the business to deliver its objectives. The connection
points within this are based on a business leading in a holistic,
human-centred and experience-driven way. Clearly, the strategic
pillars that sit under this will change and be entirely dependent on
the organization. In my experience, there are a wide range of themes
that come through into the EX strategy, including simplification,
empowerment, diversity and inclusion, belonging and well-being.
What a company stands up as the strategic pillars is down to them
and the priorities that their people have indicated.
However, in saying this, does it really matter? Do employees care
about your strategic pillars and the themes within your PowerPoint
presentations? The simple answer is no. They don’t care about these
things; they care about the results and actions that flow from these
things. That’s a big difference and one that many practitioners fail to
comprehend. It’s puzzling really that so much time and effort is
spent on something that our target audience cares so little about.
Indeed, this book would be futile if given to the average employee.
They would have zero interest and that is fantastic.
Why? Because we don’t want them to be distracted with EX
strategy, with words, with rhetoric. We want them to experience and
take part in driving the outcomes of EX strategy directly as co-
producers. That’s what a good strategy will do, but let’s be honest
about that. Half the time strategy is there to hold up or justify spend,
and to monitor and report on progress. It’s more for managers and
senior leaders to crystallize their thinking and the commitments
they make to each other and their people, and that’s ok. I’m not one
to promote or over-hype EX strategy – it plays a valuable role for
practitioners and leaders, but it is not top of mind to employees.

Where does EX strategy sit and who

owns it?
In launching or starting work on EX strategy, we have to consider
this basic question: Who cares about employee experience? I would
like to say EX strategy flows from the business strategy, and in
theory it should. In practice, EX strategy can be condensed as a
constituent part of the people or HR strategy, or at worst it can be a
stand-alone strategy in its own right, which is disconnected from the
core work of the business – a situation to be avoided at all costs. I’m
not a fan of any separation between the business and what it does
regarding employee experience. I see EX as the central enabling
pillar of the business strategy. For some, this makes complete sense
and is nothing new to note. For others, I suspect this would come
across as wishful thinking if they were to consider their context,
culture and top team. In saying that, a solid people strategy makes a
big difference in practice, yet at times the focus on actual lived
experiences is not where it should be – it can be drowned out by the
noise of all the major priorities for HR. If like me, you lead the EX as
a holistic construct, it becomes quickly evident where the weak spots
are.
EX strategy is owned by the business so it should, ideally, belong
as a core part of the business strategy. I can see the allure of the
argument that if your top team ran the business in a holistic,
human-centred and experience-driven way, there would be little
point of a formal EX strategy. It would be strategy by default as long
as it flows through management lines. This idealistic picture can
hold true for small businesses, but with larger workforces it can
often unravel quickly. A strong EX strategy then can play a solid part
of business development, and this will leave us with some
concentrated areas to rediscover and shape as part of our early
thinking. For EX, I have spoken about the need for a MOVEMENT
within the organization (mandate, operating model, vision, energy,
mindset, evidence, network and team) to firmly plant the seed of EX
and maintain positive momentum. As I have supported companies
to build their EX strategies and approaches, there are other practical
things we can also consider to complement this. Indeed, the
backbone of any EX strategy will be the very things that underpin
and help enable great work in practice from the team tasked with co-
creating strategy.
‘We’re a big organization, we can’t co-create everything.’ Yes, you
can, and you must, if you are to be successful with EX. I’ve already
set my stall out for co-creation in the previous chapter. It really
begins to surface as the primary approach the moment EX is spoken
about seriously by senior management and there are early signals of
intent through the appointment or repositioning of a senior strategic
leader to get things moving and off the ground with EX. Invariably,
there’ll be a busy few months getting to know the organization and
all of the experiences it delivers (or doesn’t). I find the early
introduction to EX follows a similar pattern of identifying and
interrogating insights from inside and outside of the business. The
temptation to learn from others further along in their EX journey is
very strong, and company visits are often part of this discovery
phase. Comparing and contrasting approaches is also helpful to
nudge management teams in the direction of strong investment in
the EX so there is a purpose for all this exploration within strategy
development. Yet taking things too far and simply copying the EX
approach of others or trying to replicate it at your company is not
wise and is often a fool’s errand. The best experiences are formed
from deep within the context of the organization, not by mimicking
the work of others.
 Rather than give you all the answers here, I strongly recommend
that you co-create them with your EX team to arrive at a
contextualized blueprint for EX at your company. I see this
blueprint as a living and evolving entity rather than a document
dump for emails. We’ll discuss how to enable it later, but that is the
first principle: it evolves with us. The good news then is that it
doesn’t need to be perfect from the start, and actually I would only
encourage use of headlines when working on this with the strategic
EX team so that genuine co-creation can take place and
wholehearted ownership can flow from there.

What does EX mean to you (and those

leading EX-impacting functions)?
A clear first step when bringing together functional heads or
strategic leaders with portfolios that touch the EX is to enjoy some
debate about what EX actually means to your business. This step is
often missed to the detriment of the organization. We want to avoid
an articulation of EX that is forced upon strategic leaders – they
have done no work on it nor have they contributed to it in any
meaningful way. This is a strategic misstep of the highest order. If I
want people to drive and lead outcomes on EX, they have to be
aligned and accountable from the beginning of its implementation.
But more than that. They have to feel that this is their approach,
their work and their opportunity to make an impact that sits well in
the context of their careers and work. It is not a side of the desk
thing or an add-on to their real work. Having leaders go through the
process of articulating what EX means to them and then converging
around a common understanding is very often cathartic and sorely
needed. Often, leaders with portfolios hovering around the EX have
barely got to know each other, let alone work effectively together.
Space, time and a little patience is required to work through this at
the outset of the strategic work, and it sets the tone for what is to
follow.
The perils of missing this important step – giving people space
and time to reflect on EX – are massively underestimated. Without a
shared experience of this nature, the strategic leadership group will
remain a group and never have the chance to form as a team. This
leads to confusion, lack of alignment, low commitment, frustration,
and at best, an incoherent, disconnected EX. We do not want to
make EX any harder than it is. For that reason, I favour dialogue
and discussion as a way to build relationships and respect between
management lines and across functional boundaries. There is a
place for sticky notes and PowerPoints, but this isn’t it. In fact, I
tend to use reflective methods more than anything else when
working on EX. A lot of the answers are already in situ – the
problem is that no meaningful reflection takes place and insights are
lost.
It’s the same with data. Organizations ooze data. They are natural
data machines. It is relatively easy to get lost in data within
companies, but it’s what comes from data that is of most concern to
me: insight and action. So, reflection is a key tool within our locker
to bring the insights out to play in crafting, co-creating and shaping
EX strategy, and for that reason we need to schedule in time simply
to reflect on the EX, the brand and the people.

Co-creation has already begun –

building the blueprint for experience
success
For strategic EX leaders, this is the more detailed part of strategy
and team development, and I leverage my 8XP framework to
articulate the priority parts that will require immediate attention at
the outset of building the EX operationally. These are the specific
foundational stones for EX teams. With the HEX hovering above at
the strategic level, guiding our hand to deliver value and impact in
the right places, 8XP is the strategic blueprint that supports the
implementation of an effective EX strategy, team and approach –
one that is enabled strongly into practice. 8XP consists of:

people
purpose
principles
pain experiences
peak experiences
 processes
platforms
performance.

People: Creating and maintaining a universal approach to EX is a

multidisciplinary, cross-functional effort. It’s truly about people, not
a person. Bringing functional heads and practitioners that interact
with employees is critical in the early stages of the strategic work,
and perhaps the most impactful work one can do to elevate the EX
across an organization. In my facilitated workshops for executives,
there is a diverse bunch of colleagues in the room or online –
including functional heads from functions like estates, IT/digital,
HR/people, marketing, benefits, branding, communications and
customer experience. Clearly, these roles (and their teams) play
huge roles at different (or all) points of the employee journey, and it
is a prerequisite that they are involved in the EX strategy in some
form. I recommend starting with the core roles that have the most
impact on EX and we move from there as we’ll also need to be hyper
interested in those working on other core elements of EX like
leadership, people and executive development, and any roles that
influence the EX in a strong way.
Purpose: A unifying purpose for the EX and the EX team is
necessary to bridge the gap between the EX and the organization.
Both will need to reflect each other in practice. A strong purpose
statement sets the tone for colleagues working on EX within an
organization. We’re really answering the question: What is the point
of this work? What does my work have to do with EX and the
business? So many colleagues across support services can
inexplicably be left to their own devices to foster some kind of
detachment from the organizations they serve. This has to stop and
work on EX will change that entirely.
Principles: The primary outcome that I’m interested in when it
comes to principles is what they enable people to do in the present
moment. Indeed, the present moment is all we have, but our
conditioning, education, experiences, background and training all
influence and are brought to bear in the present moment. Principles
are the guides that allow us to express ourselves and provide the
foundation for actions, behaviours and decisions. In terms of EX, we
want people to create decisions, designs, policies and practices that
make a positive contribution to the EX, to people and to the
business. I’m often asked in facilitated strategy sessions what a good
principle for EX is. My answer is relatively straightforward in that
any principle people can stand behind and actually implement in the
present moment is a good principle. This widens the scope
somewhat for the kind of principles that a team can adhere to and
use to guide their work and impact towards the right places. I’ve
highlighted a core set of fundamental principles for EX in my
previous publications, and these remain highly relevant in terms of
applying EX, but the right set of specific principles will need to be
co-created into the context of the company. They can’t be
parachuted in from an external source in a clumsy copycat fashion.
While reinventing the wheel is not always necessary, there are
certain foundational things that simply do not warrant compromise,
the non-negotiables, and developing some core principles for the EX
team falls into that category, in my view.
That’s not to say there won’t be overlap with what other
companies are doing – great companies tend to land in similar
places when it comes to value statements, underlying and overt
principles, and organizational missions. A strong set of principles is
determined by how consistently they are implemented, modelled
and utilized to lead. Amazon have won admirers in this regard. The
company’s now legendary leadership principles have been well
integrated within and across the employee experience for leaders.
The headline principles below demonstrate the critical areas that
Amazon want to focus on within (and beyond) the leadership
community, and they have been modified recently to accommodate
new objectives relating to EX performance (see #15). Each of these
is a description to guide people and their actions, and there is also a
wide range of ways that these principles are communicated and
enabled to create a more immersive (and real) experience around
them.

1. Customer obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and simplify
4. (Leaders) are right, a lot
5. Learn and be curious
 6. Hire and develop the best
7. Insist on the highest standards
8. Think big
9. Bias for action
10. Frugality
11. Earn trust
12. Dive deep
13. Have backbone; disagree and commit
14. Deliver results
15. Strive to be Earth’s best employer
16. Success and scale bring broad responsibility (Amazon, 2023)

There is a tendency at times to overcomplicate principles; as we can

see from Amazon, it’s relatively simple language and is easy to
understand. The application will evolve over time, but will show up
in decisions and moments that leaders meet in their daily
experiences, and the important aspect of this is that their progress
will be measured against them and will count at the key milestones
across their employee journey (promotions, recognition, etc.).
For the experience masterplan, I would be seeking to leverage
existing principles that form part of the brand/business strategy or
those associated with the people strategy (if and only if they are
connected to the broader business strategy and employee value
proposition, or EVP). This is what Amazon does well; they help
leaders cross the bridge to the most important things that matter to
the business, and customer obsession placed at number one is a
strong indicator of that connection.
Pain experiences: Not all moments are created equal. For the
EX masterplan to function properly, it needs to be disciplined
around solving real problems and issues that affect the performance
of people. The question is both political (I am reluctant to use that
word, but that’s what it is) and practical. The leadership within an
organization will be grouping together to make decisions that
change or challenge people’s lives in and beyond work. So unifying
around some core strategic themes that are viewed as urgent goes a
long way to creating and sustaining a positive relationship with
workers and aligning the EX team or collective towards some really
tangible actions that will definitely make a positive impact. The trust
outcomes here are immense. In all my work, there is nothing more
powerful than taking away someone’s pain. These experiences then
have immense value in establishing and getting some real
momentum behind EX. If you need some examples of painful
experiences in work, search your memory banks, as I’m sure that
there will be things organizations have done to you in your career
that may have caused you some pain and resentment. If not, well,
you’re very lucky indeed, but ask three people and I would be
surprised if you didn’t have multiple anecdotes that pinpoint the
kind of examples we’re talking about here.
Peak experiences: The EX world has matured away from just
fixing things that could work better though. World-class EX work
increasingly revolves around the creation of peak experiences. A
well-established phenomenon in the human experience where
people truly come to life, feel joy and experience a profound
moment in their lives. Many of these moments can be found at work
and organizations have been lining up their EX teams to create
signature, awe-inspiring, brand-differentiating moments at specific
points along the employee journey. We’re not encouraging forced
joy here, far from it. What I am advocating is for organizations to set
themselves apart in their sectors and markets by creating
opportunities or windows that lead to much deeper emotionally
connected experiences for their people. These moments literally
rock people’s worlds and almost guarantee brand ambassadorship
for life.

Defining a peak experience

I defer to the solid work of Privette on this matter, who explored the
unique characteristics of peak experiences after surveying a range of
people about their strongest experiences in life. The result of this
was the following explanation of what we mean by peak experiences.

Fulfilment: Positive emotions are generated and are

intrinsically rewarding.
Significance: Personal awareness and understanding
increase and can serve as a turning point in a person’s life.
 Spiritual: People feel at one with the world and often
experience a sense of losing track of time.

In my world of EX, data is not everything. Design is not everything.

Decisions are not everything. They all impact, of course, but simply
putting EX into one of these camps has never made any sense to me.
Great design will not overpower rotten organizational decisions that
affect EX performance. Similarly, good data will not make a jot of
difference unless good decisions and actions are taken as a result.
So, the triple D of data, design and decisions will need to converge a
lot more intelligently and intentionally in organizations pursuing EX
outcomes. Indeed, to place EX merely as a design process or
function misses the point completely. Data is a natural bridge to
outcomes in that it underpins and secures support for changed
processes, practices and experiences. As practitioners experiment
with their data and as organizations mature their EX approaches,
data takes on a whole new meaning. People science actually
becomes a thing and the quality of data increases as companies seek
higher validity of the data they acquire and the research they do on
EX. This is a good development; the starting point may well be the
traditional survey and pulse approach, yet this can be the starting
gun for a race to evolve data and research gathering practices. In
Employee Experience (Whitter, 2022), I shared the return on
experience (RoE) concept as a way of detailing all the valid sources
of data that a company can harvest and that still applies today. Any
data that helps us focus on improving experiences (operational) and
improving the organization (strategic) is in scope. Inevitably, the
technology that is used to supply, analyse and act on data is
improving consistently year on year alongside improved methods of
prioritization, which is helpful in translating company data into
insight, and insight into actions that make an impact.
 FIGURE 4.1 The triple D model

Figure 4.1 details

Note from Figure 4.1 that we are building up, instead of sending
plans down. This is a strong point of differentiation in the way that
EX leaders approach their work. As we’ve discussed, they dedicate
an incredible amount of time to co-creation, listening and related
analysis; this pays dividends at that moment and also later down the
track and deep into the delivery phases.

Processes, platforms and performance

Processes: The mechanics of any experience require a certain set
of actions (or inactions) to be delivered in order to create an
intended outcome. A lot of the time outcomes are ill-defined and
accidental, or worse, haphazard. There is an absence of a sequence
of disciplined actions that increase the likelihood of success. In EX,
it is perhaps one of the more important aspects of the EX
masterplan; to define a set of actions that contribute a positive focus
to the whole, yet support people in their moment of design and
delivery. What do we want practitioners and leaders to do within
their projects? What process do we want them to follow that gives a
high level of autonomy and freedom, yet drives clear organizational
and people outcomes?
Platforms: In advancing EX work, especially at significant scale,
it quickly becomes abundantly clear that a wider platform is
necessary to scaffold up and steady EX projects. In referring to
platforms, this involves systems, software and products that
operationalize the EX. I sort these into three categories: data, design
and decisions. We can see in Figure 4.1 that the EX masterplan is
broad in nature, with a wide variety of actions, activities and
projects that contribute to the creation of what I could call peak
experiences. As all of those elements of the blueprint come together,
they start to concentrate into a narrow funnel, which ultimately
crystallizes into a defined and clear outcome on the EX. This would
be a peak experience. Along the way, all the data, design and
decisions that take place make an immense and valuable
contribution to that end targeted goal. A platform then brings all of
this together.
Performance: A disciplined approach to EX means that a
different set of skills and capabilities will dictate and be responsible
for driving performance levels of the team, EX projects and the
overall prioritized programme of work. So, the question ahead of us
here is much more centred on what skills, capabilities and attributes
are needed to implement and lead EX effectively on a consistent
basis. If we get that sorted out, the performance will flow at both
individual and team levels. If we don’t bring in or develop the right
capabilities then a lot of pain, frustration and unnecessary
challenges await. So at this point, and as a core part of the blueprint,
we’ll need to consider what the ultimate EX leader/professional is.
If the HEX is the strategic map of the territory, then the 8XP
framework is the blueprint to help bring good things into operation
on a consistent basis. It optimizes all of those present moments to
success and guides people to make their contribution. This is a wider
and broader way to lead EX work, yet thinking holistically does not
mean we’re not thinking operationally. We’re just more thoughtful
about the connection points between people and their projects.
Effective collaboration across functional lines doesn’t come
naturally to most professionals. It takes an enormous amount of
dialogue and discussion to even scratch the surface of high-quality
collaboration. Why is this when most colleagues are paid by the
same organization to make a positive contribution? Instead,
fiefdoms of expertise arise and are often positioned detrimentally to
the business and the strategic plan. Alignment is hard work and this
is why I position co-creation conversations as the remedy to long-
standing misalignment issues, and it’s incredible what can be
achieved in just a few short hours.
Case in point: I was working with an EX team at one of the world’s
biggest companies and there was a great deal of misalignment in the
very early stages of what was a short workshop. I learnt through the
session that they’d never had the opportunity to come together as a
team before; knowing this, I deliberately set the session up in a very
open manner that challenged people to share their candid views
with a high degree of transparency. It was noted through the session
that they were not very aligned in the beginning; yet as we delved
deeper it became obvious that alignment was not the challenge. The
functional heads couldn’t be more aligned if they tried as they were
all focused on delivering great experiences for employees – they
were just tackling this from different angles and different technical
functions. The common fact was the human-centric nature of their
individual approaches. This was news to them. Functional
backgrounds separated them, but an overarching belief in the EX
was the element that united all of them. Very quickly, the team
began to form and only then could they start to realize their full
potential for the benefit of the organization and its people.
From there the strength of the team grew, and suddenly, and
often unexpectedly, the team started to see connection points across
their functions and portfolios. One prime example was the welding
of the EX to the EVP. The latter was a 12-month project rich with
data that produced a strong representation of the promises being
made to candidates in the market; yet up until this point it wasn’t
even a consideration in respect of connecting this hard-earned piece
of work to the EX. That all changed when people connected the dots
and realized that a strong EVP has to equal the lived experience in
the organization.
SUMMARY AND ACTIONS

Seek to unify all the core functions that impact the EX through
the co-creation of a unique EX masterplan that works for your
organization and context.
Review, reflect and continue to renew the HEX through targeted
strategic questions that help set the tone and foundations for the
EX strategy.
Focus on solving painful experiences for employees alongside
signature work on crafting and creating your own set of peak
experiences that are aligned to the brand.
Build the experience masterplan, not experience silos. Join the
dots between all the strategic themes that have emerged within
the business, leverage all existing assets and resources, and lead
holistically across the EX to shape work and outcomes.
Establish a community of practice to evolve the EX, share
learnings and create connections between practitioners and
leaders whose roles are heavily tilted to EX. Start with those
with the most significant alignment with EX and scale out.
Work out the most valuable tools, products and services that can
be utilized to underpin the work on EX strategy and enable team
members to be effective with their daily practices.
Help people meet the moment consistently by demonstrating
and communicating what excellence looks like when working
with your EX masterplan.
05
Experience
masterplan
In previous work, I have consistently made the point that employee
experience (EX) is more evolution than revolution. It starts and
builds from highly effective daily practices and wise strategic
leadership. In an EX sense, strategic roughly translates to holistic.
We are, at all points, considering the whole organization and the
whole person. Our actions and habits are formed to serve us well in
that regard to ensure we fulfil our potential. Within all this strategy
is the real stuff. The experiences being encountered every day and in
every way. This is where true strategy lives or dies – on the frontline
of the employee’s everyday experience of work. There is wide scope
for trial and error within this approach. To simply try something
and see if it delivers. To take a risk, to be bold and courageous with
our actions and to be inspired that even if perceived failure is
encountered that our collective actions and endeavours will
ultimately result in something impactful being delivered. This is
what practitioners continue to get to grips with when it comes to EX
strategy; not being right or certain all the time.
Companies worldwide have been awash with strategic leaders that
are too scared to try something new. They rely on tried and trusted
methods, safe bets and are often overly cautious in their approaches.
It’s no surprise and I don’t blame them one bit. The systems and
cultures around them have demanded short-term results and
success, not a longer-term view based on experimental ideation. It’s
why the internal EX work is often significantly lagging in contrast
with consumer-focused customer experience (CX) work. Yet, slowly,
but surely, the shackles are being thrown out in favour of intelligent
risk-taking, intrapreneurial endeavour, coupled with a bold
approach to progress signature and differentiated employee
experiences. Every new experience is a risk unless there is some
sound strategic work behind it. In this chapter, we’ll look at what the
strategic foundation actually looks like. It is, in my view, the very
foundation to successful strategic EX work. We are always evolving
the way we do things. It needs to be this way given the speed at
which expectations change. Companies have to keep up with the
times and continually inspect the organizational design to ensure it
is meeting and exceeding the needs of both customers and
employees. This is the only way for companies to remain
competitive – they must serve their people well. To navigate all the
challenges and opportunities that EX brings to the fore, we’ll need a
masterplan.

Experience masterplan – the

ingredients of EX strategy
I’d like to reflect on a few observations I’ve made throughout my
work with companies worldwide, which will help us to think about
this important part of an organization’s EX strategy, and it does
warrant some deeper exploration generally, given the progress being
made up and down the economy with the introduction of people-
and experience-based functions. For me, it comes down to several
key things that need to be developed early on and continuously
throughout the implementation of the EX strategy. Evidently, these
will be in place across many organizations that have already
embraced EX as an approach and I rarely meet a mature EX
organization that doesn’t have these building blocks in place in some
form. A lot of hard yards goes into their production. This is the very
early work that scaffolds up an anchor and guiding lights around all
the work on EX. Sure, companies can launch and do well with major
specific EX projects in isolation without a strong strategy behind the
whole EX piece, but I find there is always that feeling that
something is missing – the work is often disjointed, disconnected
and quite exclusive to the people involved in its production. For that
reason, success can be capped and opportunities wasted to bring
something to life that has a huge, wide-ranging, and long-lasting
impact. This is what good strategy can do for EX. It enhances
everything and helps companies tell (and live) a more complete
story that resonates with talent and prospective talent alike.
 FIGURE 5.1 Experience masterplan

Figure 5.1 details

As we’ve discussed, alignment remains a central issue and challenge

to tackle very early in EX work, and it’s impossible to do this without
some form of masterplan that has gone through the co-creation and
feedback rounds, and then starts to resemble something that is
coherent and valuable for use within the EX team and beyond into
what is emerging as an EX practitioner community up, down and
across the organization. The key here is giving clarity, direction and
guidance to any colleague that works on EX. Some call this a
playbook or a blueprint, but I think it is much bigger than that – it is
the grand plan for EX with an associated vision for the work on EX
and the approach that the organization takes.

Experience masterplan: aligning people and the organization

to the EX.
 EX vision: aligning people and the organization to a future
outcome.
Experience mindset: aligning leaders and professionals.
Experience manifesto: aligning to the expectations of
employees and the organization.
Experience map: aligning strategic leaders and operational
functions.
Experience metaverse: aligning digital and virtual services,
products and platforms.
Experience mechanism: aligning people, projects, tools,
playbooks and processes.

An evolution is just what it is. Leaders and workers are continually

changing and updating the very nature of their organizations to be
something that is experienced more consciously, more intentionally
and more powerfully. The components will be called something
different in different organizations, but the same patterns and
components emerge in the process of leading and delivering EX
strategy.

EX vision
Ironing out the ultimate vision for the EX is something that will
need upfront investment in time and thought. It’s relatively easy to
spot teams and functions that run without vision. They roll from one
project to another without any thought to connect anything to a
desired future outcome or state. This tends to be very brand-specific
and taps into related work on the employee value proposition (EVP)
or consumer brand. I can’t tell you how many times some great work
on the overall brand has been cut off from the internal EX work and
not utilized by employee-facing colleagues. It is nothing less than a
travesty when it occurs and it shows the fractures, splinters and
cracks in the organization. The vision then must build from within
the business; no fancy consultant can come in and define the vision
for you; they can help, facilitate and guide, but it has to come from
within and it will really need to maximize what is already
established by brand – the language, the business philosophy, the
values, the viewpoints. Even if the vision is simply a core and brief
statement, it will show how connected or disconnected the
organization is.
A few questions to prompt thinking here would be:

What is the overarching vision for the corporate brand?

What language is already being communicated via the EVP?
How do the two combine to create the vision for EX at your
organization?

Reinventing the wheel here can create a new set of issues, so it is

wise to draw on language that employees are already familiar with
and that shows an unbreakable link to core elements of the business
and related people strategies. Trying to go alone at this point by
creating an entirely different piece of work can quickly establish an
island for the EX and a great big sea around it. This will be no good
when it is time to produce tangible business-leading results, and I
do mean business-leading. Whatever the high-performing and
highly regarded functions are within an organization, it is up to the
EX team to place themselves in that valuable category as they scale
out the EX approach. EX work has to be valuable, impactful and
create a visible stir in the organization. Note it’s the work that
creates the stir, the experiences that are lived and delivered, and it’s
the unity and togetherness that is compelling as the EX strategy
grows legs and moves people. That’s the real impact, but it starts
with vision – a bold, daring and courageous vision for what could
be.

Experience mindset
Our minds manifest our experiences and create our perceptions of
the world. We are constantly trying to make sense of things using
our senses and the connection we have to everything that goes on
around us. This can be overwhelming at times, especially at pressure
or decision points. We don’t need to make things any harder or
more complicated than they already are – we are wonderful at doing
that on our own. That’s why organizations take a lead role in
clarifying and simplifying things for workers and employees, and
providing experiences that match up to what they need at various
moments throughout the employee journey.
 There’s a long list of capabilities and ways of thinking that come
to the fore in approaching EX as serious work. Colleagues often
reshape and rebrand their skills to better showcase and story tell
around their impact on EX. We can consider some of these in
relation to the profile of an EX leader:

Human-centred strategist
Leadership enabler
Structural engineer
Technology shaper
Workplace architect
Community builder.

There is a quiet confidence that I enjoy from EX leaders. They need

no external validation about the impact of their work. No awards are
required to demonstrate their impact or innovation. As a group, they
can often be found on the frontlines diligently making things better
for employees. A well-compensated strategic executive leader
hanging around the frontline? Surely not?! But yes, there is a drive
about them to be immersed in, not hide from, real world problems.
There is a deep satisfaction that goes alongside that. That has to be
true for EX and I cannot imagine it any other way. Imagine a sales
or CX person not spending time with customers. The very notion is
absurd. It’s just as absurd if an EX person ignores or places barriers
between them and employees. I actively encourage EX leaders to go
where the value is created and strategize from there, not to there.
Too often strategy is thought up in corporate HQs and the frontline
is the last call on a consultation journey. I’ve always thought that
made little sense and it is still evident in some EX teams. Employees
are the first, last and only defence against corporate failure; it pays
to respect them and make them a firm thought within the
experience mindset of teams, leaders and professionals. Yet, the
more people get into EX, the more their mindset changes and
appreciates the right things. It’s not about us, it’s about them – all
employees and people within and around a business – and there is a
decisive and unyielding quest to make things better, to keep on
improving things.
‘It’s not necessarily up to us to shout from the rooftops about how
clever we are, how progressive we are or how sophisticated we are.
It’s our place to make stuff that’s as good as it can be,’ said Dan
Houser of Rockstar Games (The Guardian, 2013). This element of
mindset has had a slow burn into corporate teams that have
historically been lined up to govern and police employees rather
than serve them and their challenges.

Experience manifesto
A core part of any EX masterplan is to define the promises that are
being made to people about what they can expect and how it will be
delivered in practice. These are a firm set of positions or aims that
revolve around the EX work. This is important in making the step
from idea to execution. What does the EX team stand for? How will
they approach their work? What is top of mind in moving the EX
forward?
I recall an organization I was asked to do some work with. They
had notice boards in some of the corridors and I picked up a copy of
their latest employee engagement action plan. There were clear
items and actions listed but it was also abundantly clear that there
were no aims, ideals or philosophies behind the work. It looked
fragmented and disjointed because the organization and team
tasked with people work were that way themselves. It was
rudderless work and in total response to a poor showing on its
engagement survey. Staff were, quite rightly in my view, fed up and
wanted to see some tangible action on poor morale and poor
management practices. Clearly, my first question to the team there
was about how many of the published action points had been
delivered (the leaflet was 6 months old at that point). The response
didn’t shock me. Nothing had been done and nothing meaningful
had been delivered.
We need to take some time to set our stall out, connect our teams
and philosophies, form good habits and practices, but this always
starts with defining our intentions transparently within and beyond
the EX team. The alignment thread runs through all of this work
from idea to iteration to impact, so this is time well spent ensuring
colleagues know where they stand with each other, and where they
stand in the context of the organization.
Experience map
EX brings in a multi-layered and multi-functional way to squeeze
out the value of every experience in a business, so why wouldn’t a
company line up all key employee-facing support functions to better
serve the organization as a whole? The map of the organization
dictates how strategy is delivered in practice and goes a long way to
create the prevailing attitude and atmosphere across the EX.
Support functions, and those in service to people, should surely lead
by example in EX, and this might well require radical change at the
centre of the business structure.
It’s not really radical though, it is simply a case of repositioning
and realigning any disconnected services to ensure cross-functional
collaboration drives quick and tangible gains for the company. A
map, for example, can be naturally bigger than the roles and formal
responsibilities that have been assigned. Since EX reaches deep into
a company, so must we to find positive outcomes. In reality, this
means our work and our approach will influence people beyond our
formal authority. There is no choice for businesses but to move
people and teams in a certain direction that is more favourable for
EX to be applied effectively.
The interesting thing about defining and bringing the experience
map to life is that all the varied and rich work going on will come to
the surface of the organization. There will be teams, leaders and
colleagues doing some amazing work on EX, though it will be under
the radar, but working well in plain sight. Building an experience
map provides a level of clarity to help strategic leaders make better
decisions with better data and input from colleagues, and with more
refined long-term and connected intentions. It always amuses me
when a kind of mind map emerges that highlights all of the
functions and people that touch the EX. Then the realization often
dawns that none of these colleagues have ever spoken to each other,
especially across complex multinational corporations, yet they are
all working on and impacting the same thing – the experience of
work. This revelation then merges with another – the EX team is
bigger than we first thought! Yes, the map does tend to start small,
with a very small handful of colleagues at the centre of the company
formally defined as working on EX. Yet this idea quickly changes
when bringing the experience map into play – marketing, estates,
HR, IT, communication, facilities and so on – all will be working on
EX in some form, and I would think of these colleagues as part of
the wider EX team, and that’s just the formal roles. The EX
ecosystem is enriched by groups, committees, partners, vendors,
suppliers and other interested parties. The map grows and so too
does the territory for EX operations, activities and related
communications. This, practically, takes the idea that EX is a
collective organization-wide idea and turns it into something
visually representative and powerful.
Experience metaverse
For this book, and in the context of EX, I look at the metaverse as an
exciting potential prospect within companies where employees
spend their digital work lives, and increasingly, virtual reality (VR)
and augmented reality will help facilitate that and will be evident in
a wide range of employee-related programmes. The digital world is
already upon us. Many workers had their first real taste of digital,
remote and virtual work through the pandemic. In any case, the
world is not going back to the way things were pre-pandemic.
Opportunities to develop careers and impact in hybrid ways has, no
doubt, been the biggest aspect of working life in recent years. Like
anything, some have gone all-in on this new way of doing things,
while some are looking to claw back virtual and home-working
privileges and pretend the new work styles didn’t emerge at all.
Others are caught in-between and are treading a fine line between
what companies would like as the standard work operating model
and the increased expectations from employees about flexible work.
Several elements of flexible work have been hard won, but the ability
to run work and schedules remotely was handed to employees on a
plate during the pandemic. It enables businesses to continue to
exist, and many to thrive and experience surges in productivity. The
metaverse was already on its way, but the pandemic has greatly
accelerated adoption and awareness amongst companies. It is, if
predictions are accurate, the next frontier of work life.
 The metaverse, while certainly a step beyond the current digital
employee experience, will be the next step in creating an immersive
internal world built on virtual reality and the latest technologies that
combine to create digital places and spaces where people can get
things done and interact in different ways. There is the obvious gold
rush from a consumer perspective for companies to lead and
influence the metaverse on the outside of their business, but
internally, the term does bring together many of the emerging
elements of the digital EX and what companies have been hoping to
deliver inside their businesses – a seamless, integrated and
connected digital place where employees can be productive (and
increasingly, even more productive) by utilizing their company’s
virtual world complete with their own avatars, holograms or virtual
self.
‘I think the Metaverse is the all-encompassing space in which all
digital experience sits; the observable digital universe made up of
millions of digital galaxies,’ said Eric Redmond who is the Global
Director, Technology Innovation, Nike (Hackl, 2021). How this
digital life emerges remains to be seen, and also the questions over
whether people really want to bring their entire digital lives into one
place; yet employers are starting to look at the digital life of their
employees and how it applies in their context, and it’s a wise thing to
do. In fact, the catalyst to create much broader and more widely
mandated EX strategies can often be some good early work on the
digital experience at work. Think of the head start that the early
adopters of the internet had and how that profoundly shaped the
future of their business. What I’m clear on though is the idea that
the digital world from an employee perspective needs to adapt to
advancing technologies and be as integrated and seamless as
possible across the EX to help people access information,
communicate and connect with colleagues in high-impact ways, and
to fully utilize the online world to solve problems and respond to
opportunities across EX projects. It is strategically important to
ensure our digital worlds are in order and enhancing the overall EX,
so it makes a lot of sense to get on the front foot with this.
There’s been a lot of introspection about technology in the
workplace. HR and EX technology has exploded and integration
continues to be key to remove any residual feeling of clunkiness and
bureaucracy in the technology being used within EX. A metaverse is
a logical next step in technology adoption for organizations, and if
fully harnessed, will transform the EX completely and also the way
people carry out their tasks and run their work lives. It’s an exciting
time that is being met with a healthy dose of cynical interrogation,
but people can’t really argue with what is already there.
Over 1,500 employees and 1,500 companies in the US were
surveyed by ExpressVPN and the reported statistics are interesting
in that they capture the changing attitudes of employees in relation
to the metaverse (ExpressVPN, 2022). Once the reserve of sci-fi
aficionados, the metaverse is starting to create new career choices
and new expectations in work practices. The findings of the survey
indicated that the metaverse was appealing as a way to work due to:

increased work-from-home flexibility (45 per cent)

an easier way to collaborate with co-workers (36 per cent)
increased job opportunities (33 per cent)
ability to ‘travel’ virtually (33 per cent).

It’s not all rosy though and thankfully so given the over-reaching of
some employers to over-monitor their workforces; employer
surveillance was the top concern cited by respondents alongside
digital privacy and security. So, companies will need to think about
this within experience architecture and the masterplan, and move
sensitively in how they build out their digital worlds. Technology is
effective when used to connect people in a positive way. The danger
is going too far and too fast strategically with an approach that
employees neither want nor would tolerate.

Experience mechanism
Companies want results with EX. No ifs or buts, just outcomes. They
want EX to attract and retain the talent they need to deliver superior
year-on-year growth, productivity and business performance. It’s
not a difficult equation to understand. It can be a challenging
equation to deliver though without the right mechanisms in place to
replicate results and bring in a more consistent approach to EX
across the entire organization. They can achieve this through
selecting the right tools, refining the processes that lead to peak and
powerful experiences, and setting a natural standard for all EX
projects. For me, this is the final piece in the jigsaw. Organizations
can travel down blind alleys unless they have developed the right
mindsets, the right map, the right manifesto, the right metaverse –
and across all of those things there will be clear differences between
teams, functions and colleagues. This does not help the EX work or
any EX projects. The key here is to unify these big things first and
then start to understand what tools, what techniques and what
practices can be used to design or redesign strong, positive
experiences on a more consistent basis across the organization.
Actions and reactions dictate how well an experience can be brought
into play – a coherent process that can be used across different
teams and departments with specialist support built in is worth its
weight in gold when bringing all manner of experiences to life. I
discuss this more specifically when exploring the EX ecosystem, but
here companies start to lay out things like design thinking, human-
centred design, agile methodologies, employee journey mapping,
personal development and many other resources that are lined up to
drive stronger outcomes and a more consistent approach to EX
within a company.
A prime part of the mechanism will be the holistic employee
experience (HEX) as a tool to navigate the employee experience
holistically at the outset of any projects. It complements and is a key
overarching element that sits across a range of processes including
design thinking, and keeps the core areas of EX consistently top of
mind within projects and decision points.

The life and career journey

The human experience has come to the fore within EX in recent
years, and will remain a key area of concern within the EX strategy.
Any EX strategy being shaped to focus simply on an employee’s life
in work will fall short. Indeed, the experience that people have in life
more generally is the key to a successful EX strategy. An end-to-end
focus on the journeys that people have in life and work has crept
into and beyond the work of HR functions.
The more colleagues view employment as a journey, the better. It
is very helpful when considering all the projects and plays that are
scoped out to enhance and enrich the experience of work. Viewing
things as a journey is also a reliable way to identify issues between
functions, teams and services. Issues emerge perhaps from one
point in the journey to the other. The role of the EX leader is to help
the organization navigate and transform these issues into small
victories for the business. Small victories stack up into bigger long-
term wins, and there are plenty to be found across the employee
journey once we start looking for them. This could be simplifying
processes, tools or systems that employees interact with, or it could
be wholesale changes in how the organization leads EX. Many have
adopted new themes, new functions and new roles to achieve this, as
mentioned, and I predict that this will continue to snowball as some
serious cross-fertilization of ideas, skills and knowledge permeate all
the support functions that an organization stands up to serve
people. A clunky and cumbersome journey is often made by clunky
and cumbersome support functions that lack vision, connection and
vibrancy.

Moments that matter most

An absolutely critical understanding has emerged amongst EX
professionals. Not all moments are created equal. If we think about
the critical moments that employees experience in their life and
career journey, some matter a whole lot more than others. These are
very familiar to you and very familiar to the rest of us. They matter.
It makes complete sense to lean the EX strategy into them fully to
create a bridge between the organization and its people. Not being
led by policies, but crafting experiences around these pivotal human
moments. Good organizations do this well, great organizations do
this consistently well.
What type of moments are we talking about?
 TABLE 5.1 The life bingo card
Skip table
Job appointment day Birthday Holidays Social just
planet-foc
events
First Paternity Sabbaticals Mental he
day/week/month/year and well-b
challenges
Major work victories House move Belief-based leave Personal c
events points

Team meetings & 1:1s Marriage/wedding Significant Significant

and partnerships national events national
challenges
of living, e
environme
war)
Sickness and absence Birth of loved one Cultural events Unexpecte
events (for employee or adopting a and milestones changes,
and others) family member challenges
opportunit

The life bingo card in Table 5.1 is illustrative and not exhaustive, of
course. Some of the events and milestones we can conveniently and
neatly place on the employee journey with a high degree of certainty
that those things will happen and come to pass for each individual,
but others are subject to life bingo and are quite random in how and
when they occur. Some can be planned, but many elements of life
can be quite unexpected. That doesn’t mean we can’t strategize for
them though. We can prepare our responses to extreme cases, and
drive into the business a human-centred and experience-driven
philosophy that meets the moment. Out of all these moments, and
as part of a good strategy, we’ll need to determine the moments that
matter most to people. The ones that need that special attention to
detail – the ones that can make or break the employment
relationship. It is here we find an organization’s unique strengths
and where organizational culture faces its sternest test. In strategic
terms, I’d want to know in real time or as close to real time as
possible, what moments are of most concern to employees. They
may change, but some will stubbornly remain the same, so powerful
an impact they have on emotions. The one I keep coming back to in
my coaching and speaking is personal crisis points – this is a large
category and there are many things in life that will crop up to create
challenges for people. This could be physical, emotional, financial or
spiritual. They could be affecting the person or it could be related to
their family or loved ones. It is at these moments that the
relationship with employees grows or declines. Is the EX positioned
to strongly support people through their testing moments? Are
leaders enabled to lead through these sorts of tough moments? Have
the right mechanisms and infrastructure been developed and
deployed to shape a supportive response?
 I can almost guarantee that colleagues looking over the life bingo
card will identify some moments that are not quite as they should
be, and deserve a second look and further investment. This is not so
unusual given the wide range of moments that sit in different
functions and under different stewards. Putting in place a
masterplan will start to draw out the moments and milestones that
could be getting away. There is also a pressure on strategic leaders
to deal in strategic things – the big and expensive projects and end-
to-end journeys; yet we’ll need to be careful that we’re spending
time on things that matter most to employees, not just the
organization. This is where EX strategy really makes the difference it
should.
SUMMARY
Starting to think about the experience masterplan is a good step to
take to get the EX strategy off the ground and into motion. I wouldn’t
delay this. Yes, the temptation and pressure will continue to focus on
the good old low-hanging fruit and all quick wins, but it will serve you
well to take a large step back to look at the overall masterplan for your
organization, its people and the experiences they have. In reality, the
experience masterplan and the experience ecosystem will be
developing simultaneously as EX leaders move around and explore
their organizations with this fresh human-centred perspective, and
that’s a good thing. This work will evolve and you will evolve with it.

Reflect on your experience masterplan and all of its constituent

parts. Are you building a connected, coherent and compelling
EX strategy?
Consider how each part of the masterplan is shaping up for your
organization and EX team. Are you missing anything? Is there
more work to do? Get onto it now rather than later.
Delve into your existing employee journey and review moment
performance, especially those milestones in life and work
deemed to be critical moments by employees in your context.
Map all of the functions and roles that interact with, are
responsible for and determine EX outcomes. Keep building the
map as we begin our work on the EX ecosystem.
06
Team performance
– a recipe for
employee
experience success
A strong EX strategy quickly becomes part of the lived and loved
experience within an organization. Of course, it starts with the first
leader, the first followers and the first sponsors and supporters, but
it has a habit of taking on a life of its own once the foundations are
fully in place. In this chapter, we delve a bit more thoroughly into
the team behind the strategy and people driving the experience
movement within an organization. I feel it’s important to highlight
several key areas in what makes an employee experience (EX) team
successful in practice. I have observed many EX teams at close
quarters over the years and have drawn out a number of ingredients
that separate the best from the rest. By best, I mean they have a
consistent, visible and sustained impact on EX performance
holistically. A team has formed, often in the early stages of EX
strategy development, and it has not only stayed together, but
unbreakable bonds have been forged in the fires of co-creation and
redesigning the experience of the company.

Experiencing team performance

Team performance is a primary concern when working on EX
strategy and it needs to be from the outset of any project. It is
remarkable how little I hear about EX performance – how all the
respective parts of the EX are performing as a whole and also with
regard to the intentions a business has around EX performance.
This is a developing area as companies begin to mature their
measurement approaches and start to connect the dots across
functions to tell a more absorbing one-brand story.
But performance should be considered by the EX team (in
whatever form that EX team takes) at the outset of any work on
strategy. I’m not talking about research studies on EX by Harvard
and the like. There is a high-quality and highly valid body of
research that demonstrates the positive impact of EX on business
performance. What I’m talking about now is more specific in
relation to the performance of the EX holistically, and I’ll dive into
this in more depth in the next chapter. What is clear is that a total
picture of EX performance only emerges once the EX team has
started to form and take shape. All of the different facets of the EX
come into focus and then we can begin identifying what data and
measures are already in place that help us tell the story of EX more
coherently and consistently to internal and external audiences. But
the performance of EX needs to move to the centre of the
conversation.

How is the EX performing?

How is the EX team performing?
How are individuals within the EX team performing?
How is the business being impacted by EX performance?

Yes, performance and employee experience would do well to stay

together as we develop strategy and the team associated with its
delivery. Once we start to get really good at discussing EX
performance, we can then mature that into the discussion about its
impact on business performances across the business. It’s still not a
common expression though. EX performance is usually anchored or
expressed in terms of survey data, most likely engagement data, and
that is so limited in scope and depth, and it doesn’t do justice to all
the work that goes on across the EX holistically – across the
community, the technology, the structure, the workplace, the
leadership system and the work to bring more humanity into
everyday business practices.
 It’s for that reason I bring performance to the top of this chapter
before even starting the dialogue about the EX team. We must get
used to talking about EX in performance terms backed with data,
evidence and clear examples, as this will enable the team to drive
real and significant business conversations while at the same time
more closely connecting EX to the fortunes of the company. It’s a
good discussion to have as there’s not a minute wasted talking about
EX performance – this is research that feeds our co-creation
machine and the EX team is going to be at the centre of all that too.
With the EX team though, we’ll need to revisit our ideas on what a
team is. A team is usually, certainly in the corporate world, viewed
to be colleagues who work in the same functional area or specialism
– they are situated in the same structure and usually have the same
manager. In EX strategy terms, the team is an expanded idea that
crosses functions, roles and responsibilities. It is not defined by
structural titles or positions. Indeed, it is often defined by the
amount of impact and influence a role or colleague has over the EX
as a result of their role characteristic and the type of work that they
do. EX blurs corporate boundaries, and for good reason given that
EX has a vast array of touchpoints that rest within a wide range of
business support and leadership functions. The good news is that
EX has already borne many excellent trailblazers who leave
signposts along the way to further support those just starting or
seeking to improve their EX strategies and team development. So,
how do we get a team moving in the right direction from the outset?
What are the practices and elements that have already helped
strong-performing EX teams deliver?

Getting the philosophy right

In practice, the elements that I’ve observed tend not to be high-level
intellectual concepts, but practical and pragmatic themes that
generate positive actions, commitments and movements. They
combine to shape an organization’s approach to EX in a sustainable
and high-energy manner. What is interesting about this is the
starting point. Teams working on EX come together and really have
to start their careers again. Colleagues challenge their belief systems
and the very foundation on which an organization is built. From
management-centred to people-centred is no easy step when it
comes to mindset and team formation.
We have to remember that people serve different masters within
organizations and agendas may not be well aligned throughout daily
and more strategic practices. Silos and functional fiefdoms are the
evidence of this. They are an outcome of misalignment and a poor
holistic team. Centres of excellence can feel like this too – the
company has set up these specialist centres to deepen and accelerate
progress, yet if the islands are not connected strongly then
performance levels are capped and limited to areas of expertise. If a
company chooses to build these islands, at least build some bridges
between them! This is where EX strategy can be pivotal or even a sea
change in how organizations operate because we begin to question
everything and everyone that stands in between the organization
and the people. Indeed, the organization is the people, so human
centricity must run through every aspect of our work. I am fairly
black and white on this point. There is no grey area here. A valuable
company is created by valued employees and workers, so all
functions need to rally around people.
We’ve discussed this earlier in relation to the mindset of
practitioners and leaders working on EX projects, and it is equally
important to consider the team and how it interacts over the long
term. But is membership exclusive, and what do we mean by team in
the context of EX strategy?

A team approach – co-leading the

employee experience strategy
At a strategic level, the team usually begins with those very first
appointments into formal EX roles. We see a range of job titles
around this, including chief EX officer, EX managers, global EX
partner, vice president (VP) EX, and so on. The title is a signal to the
business that something is happening, yet it is, of course, the
substance that matters. What changes, what improves, and what
makes people (and the organization) more whole. There has to be
some care in how and when the team is brought together. It is not
unusual for those charged with EX strategy to take their time
exploring the organization, mind mapping all the functions and
individuals involved in EX, and seeking out some of the early
strategic barriers and opportunities to get things moving. Is it better
to form a team when there is at least some momentum behind the
overall EX work, or do you bring people in cold and co-create from
there? The best answer and one that I advise on professionally is
somewhere in the middle. The proof of concept will still need to be
managed, sponsors will need to be satisfied that progress is
happening, and the CEO will want to see tangible and swift actions
taking place. Results will need to be evidenced.
What does this look like in practice? Well, a couple of company-
wide projects usually fall into development scope – they are often
areas that have been ripe for improvement for some time, like the
onboarding experience as an example. Investment will be required,
systems and processes will be upgraded, and the overall journey will
be redesigned from start to finish. What better way to bring a cross-
functional squad or team together than to work on something very
meaningful and significant for employees? This is the reality – real
projects will start to establish the team in any case, but we can also
start putting in place longer-term intentions around how the right
roles and people can combine to drive consistently high-quality EX
performance.
Beyond the formal EX roles, we know that there are many EX
leaders operating across the organizational landscape – IT/digital,
marketing, campus and estates, communications and branding, and
many more besides. All of these functional roles, and the related
portfolio of projects, will be unleashing a wide range of outcomes
(positive and negative) on the workforce every day. It is important to
bring these colleagues into the fold, as mentioned, via real projects
while simultaneously cultivating relationships that will strengthen
the EX team membership.
Some members of the EX team will make total sense when looking
at the organization chart, yet others may not. This has been an
intriguing development in EX; in driving EX strategy there is often a
view taken that informal influence as well as formal influence should
be accounted for in the overall membership of the EX team. Yes, in
the main, we would want people in the team that have functional
control and responsibility, but there will be some people within the
organization – those with significant influence amongst employees
and managers – that it makes total sense to have onboard in a more
formal way. Why limit their role to champion or change agent or
those other corporate clichés? If people can make a significant
contribution in landing and sustaining a high-performing EX
strategy, I’d prefer it that they were on the team and committed to
the EX mission.
This is another important aspect of EX to mention in that it has
shifted thinking around what a team is and how it comes together in
the first place. Working on the employee experience in a holistic way
leaves us with little choice in this regard. Our scorecard is entirely
dependent on how well we work with our peers and how strong that
feeling of team really is. A human resource director (HRD) working
with an IT director to elevate the digital EX is a helpful reference
point that springs to mind, given that those roles and their teams
will criss-cross each other on so many touchpoints. Now,
traditionally, these functions and many others will focus on their
own domains and very rarely develop any sense of team, and if they
do, it is often short-lived. If the strategic leaders can’t get their act
together then there is little hope for their teams either.

Planning for high employee experience

performance
Strong team performance is no happy accident. It is created
intentionally. I’ll start to draw out some of the priority areas to
concentrate efforts. These ideas have emerged because they have
worked in practice for EX teams. As you’ll see, there’s no fluffy stuff
to be found. It’s just real actionable and tangible things that are very
helpful in standing up a wider EX team and helping them to perform
as a team over a sustained period of time. Our aim here is to build a
new way of working between functions and eliminate any sign of silo
behaviours or thinking. That’s because a holistic approach to EX is
hard work, and it will be harder if things and teams are not joined
up, operating from different playbooks, or nowhere near the same
page. But where does it all start?
Six unbreakable laws of a successful EX
team
After many years of observations based on working directly with the
world’s first EX teams and many of those that have followed them
since, it has become abundantly clear that not all teams are created
equal. There are major differences in roles, in the investment levels
and in the overall positioning (and backing) of the team (and
broader cross-functional EX team) in the structure. For many, as
discussed, it starts with a small number of formal strategic roles to
get things moving and the wise EX leader starts almost immediately
to broaden the approach and expand the team informally, and
formally where possible, with some form of cross-functional group
emerging out of that.
Regardless of the context, any EX team will fail if they break the
laws I’m about to present. Irrespective of the resources a team is
afforded, if these basic ingredients are not part of the mix, then the
scope of the team’s impact will be severely limited. Good work can
emerge, but in the cold light of day, it may not be great work, and I
suspect great work and great performance has to be an intended
outcome when bringing a group of people together. It’s also an
inspiring journey to high performance, finding limits and breaking
them, and doing it with a strong sense of togetherness knowing that
if that team didn’t exist, the EX would be much, much weaker for it.
So, these laws are guardrails in the formation and development of
the team at the centre of the EX work, and I recommend we follow
them wisely and with care.

BE TRANSPARENT

As a strategic EX leader, vulnerability, especially with peers and

employees, is nothing to be feared; if it is, then we really do need to
expedite the work on the culture of the organization. Failing that, be
the change you wish to see is a sensible idea. I often walked into
organizations in a turnaround situation armed only with a blank
piece of paper, intent on co-creating solutions to major
organizational challenges. When I observe EX leaders doing this as a
practice, it is not weakness, but strategic sense. There is no real
point in prioritizing problems that employees are not concerned
about and there is little point in creating false platforms based on
false promises and unrealistic expectations. These things tend to
fracture the employment relationship beyond repair.
This is why I advocate for transparency in EX work. Whether
building the team or co-creating at a deeper level with employees,
being upfront and honest about the context and its challenges serves
as a rallying cry to attract positive and like-minded people to the
cause. An overly corporate and stage-managed approach can
weaken things – I enjoy seeing employees solve their own problems
and co-create their own experiences, and then reflect on the
outcomes. It is the people that will drive the EX forward and it starts
with the team. Being transparent strips out the ego and levels the
playing field considerably.
As a strategic EX leader, the burden to take everything on and fix
every problem is something that requires management unless
burnout is a desirable outcome. I’ve been there and done that, but
what helped me run projects and teams was a commitment to
sharing the challenges, sharing data, sharing knowledge and being
absolutely clear about where we are and where we want to be. Yes,
this can escalate very positively because openness and togetherness
does heighten ambition, so we also have to be upfront about and
gauge where the team’s vision is going. Being average is not exciting
and will do little to form a high-performing team, yet the energy for
a bigger industry-leading mission has to develop from within the
team and with the support of positive leadership. If the team want to
raise their game and become the best at what they do, that’s great
and should be encouraged, but all of the usual concerns must be
aired and an optimistic realism instilled into the team by default.
Leading the team with transparency at the core and being
intentional about how colleagues connect and interact with each
other makes everything else all the more comfortable. Real
relationships, cultivated across functions, is a very good outcome of
the EX strategy. The added bonus is that transparency is like rocket
fuel when it comes to building trust.
BUILD TRUST

At the heart of any EX strategy and team is trust. It’s an outcome of

the shared experiences we co-create across the strategic masterplan
for EX. Shared experiences help build and maintain trust, and we
ought to be very careful about the communications practices we
initiate within the team. Take a moment to consider the situation.
We’re working on an EX strategy that involves many different
functions, not just HR. For years, there have been major disconnects
with the work of these functions. Aside from a well-managed
committee or executive group, many of the functional heads will
simply revert to their own individual objectives to prove their value
and get things done. Why? Because collaboration is not easy and it
can naturally slow things down if solid relationships have not been
built beforehand. There’s a lack of trust that pervades these
relationships and getting the simplest of things done becomes a
jarring experience. I’m sure that you’ve had experiences like this,
but putting in the work on the cross-functional EX team and guiding
people to deliver trust-building actions is a major element of team
success. So, how do we do that?
This is where the strategic EX leader earns their money because
they make all the difference here in creating an atmosphere around
the EX work. We will feel welcome, respected, safe, encouraged,
supported, and we move forward projects and priorities in a
positive, optimistic and pragmatic way, acknowledging that a lot of
learning will take place, and that only makes the team (and the EX
strategy) stronger. There will be also be consistency in the
practicalities of team management: regular meetings, open
communication, shared workspaces, shared objectives and an
unyielding focus on delivering high-quality experiences in work. To
be surrounded by people on the same mission develops trust, but
real and genuine alignment is key to the whole thing.

BE ALIGNED AND ACCOUNTABLE

The greatest challenge of the EX era is this one. How do you bring
functions and people together and unify them around delivering
high EX performance? It’s a question many organizations are failing
to even consider at the outset of the EX work. In all of my
experiences with companies around the world, I can easily identify
problems in EX strategy work, and a lot of them stem from a lack of
alignment and accountability. In bringing a cross-function EX team
together, there’ll need to be some introspection and reflection about
how well the current structure is serving the EX. Ideally, we can
change it, but that is not often possible. Instead, we’ll need to co-
create a team leadership approach that both aligns functional heads
and their teams on EX projects, and holds them to account for
outcomes. The exact shape of this will look and be experienced
differently based on the methodologies and culture of each unique
organization, yet they will all be trying to reach the same outcome:
an aligned, effective and high-performing team.
 Often, it is difficult to figure out what is going on in functions that
are not our own and they move very differently, so aligning people
and bringing them into the EX fold quickly is, for me, a firm priority
in team development. As we discussed earlier, the philosophy of the
team is fundamental – how people think about employees and how
they relate to them and the organization is really quite important.
This is why figuring out a way to measure contribution at individual,
team and organizational levels is going to be something that the
team needs to explore in the early stages.

MAINTAIN A STABLE CORE

The core as I term it here is the engine room of the team. There will
be a few central players who strategically have the mandate to
accelerate, guide and maintain the corporate focus on EX.
Colleagues in these roles are seriously integral to the success of the
EX strategy. They will bring a stability (and enduring momentum)
to the overall programme as the pace gathers, especially as we
reflect on all the projects and the work that touches the holistic
employee experience (HEX). Many projects contribute to the overall
health of the HEX and will make their contribution to it. I have to
say in some teams, a core of colleagues become the magnet for great
things and experiences, and can rapidly advance the EX strategy. It
is also a support network of colleagues who should be aligned and
working for the good of the company anyway, and also reflective and
role models of the values that a company espouses. The proof is in
the pudding – the EX work is the pudding. Just how strong and
effective these relationships will be is discovered in the roll-out of
the EX strategy.
The core of the team is also vital in sharing intelligence,
connecting the dots between functional projects that impact the EX,
and also ensuring sponsors on the executive team remain fully
engaged and briefed in the EX work from all sides and all angles of
the organization. If you’re a senior leader sitting on a management
team, and you keep hearing about EX through the lens of different,
but aligned colleagues and functions, the message will not go
unheard, and this is also helpful in crafting the strategic
communication narrative. The employer brand is the marketing, the
employee experience is the reality – the core can help the brand and
the EX reflect each other, and tell a more unified story to attract,
retain and encourage a high-performing workforce.

CELEBRATE MOMENTS AND MILESTONES

Again, this law is not some abstract idea that cannot be applied.
What I’ve learned from observing and working with the very best EX
teams is that they are constantly moving from one milestone to
another. One building from the next, bringing order and consistency
to the EX in more ways than one. It’s refreshing to see the emphasis
being placed on EX innovation and improvement, with recognition
and respect being placed on each development. High quality should
be celebrated, and it is also a platform to build for future success. It
generates good feelings and serves as a reference point for the
organization to look up to and explore more within different teams.
So many times, it is the simple things that break through and change
things for the better. Our example is far more important than we
realize, but it has ramifications beyond the boundaries of our
responsibilities.
Too often, there is not enough attention placed on recognizing
and respecting cross-functional endeavours that serve the greater
good of the organization. Indeed, in the experience economy, those
colleagues who lead and embrace this new powerful style of co-
creation across functions will be in the zenith and of high value in
the talent marketplace. Drawing people together to work on EX is
one thing; keeping them together and performing well despite an
organization design that often prevents great collaboration from
occurring in the first place is solid EX leadership and should be
commended and learnt from wherever it happens. There is
something bonding about co-creating the overall EX strategy and
EX priorities, and then going through and delivering against them in
partnership with colleagues and employees alike. We have to
remember at all times that the team scaffolding an approach to EX
is having an experience too – it will need to be a good one!

ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE

This is a law in any work that I’m involved with, and great EX teams
around the world seemingly apply this law automatically. For me, it
goes deeper. This is a life philosophy and a rather useful and
excellent measure of success: are we enjoying the experience?
Enjoyment is not often mentioned as a measure of team success,
but I think perhaps it should be for various reasons. Things have
become harder and more challenging in the EX world. A pandemic
and post-pandemic world of work to design and roll out in record
time, wars, energy crises, and on top of all that, a general cost-of-
living crisis and greater economic uncertainty. There’s a lot going on
in the world that can quickly sour the mood. Leading and managing
projects and strategies inevitably means we’ll have to deal with
expected and unexpected challenges if we are to fulfil our potential
and exceed our objectives. Whether internal or external, these
challenges will demand some form of response. Yet, if you give two
leaders the same challenges and one was determined to enjoy the
experience come what may, I can confidently say which team I
would elect to be in. The point here is that EX teams are often
incubated in the midst of great challenges, but what is significant is
the enjoyment they derive from their work despite all the challenges
and barriers against them. They truly enjoy the experience of solving
problems, fixing things and maximizing opportunities to expand
and extend the impact and outcomes associated with EX.
In this sense, the team will be at its best when it enjoys working
together. It’s not painful. It’s not awkward. It’s enjoyable despite any
challenges that present. I do think this should be considered as a
wider foundation stone in team development. When people reflect
on their lived experience, it is this point that quickly comes to the
fore. They cite times of challenge and enjoyment, and they often
occurred at the same time. Questions to keep in mind as the EX
team forms is:

Is the team enjoying its work and enjoying the experience of

working together?
If not, what needs to change? How can we co-create a more
enjoyable team experience?
What’s getting in the way of positive relationships between
team members?

Asking these questions may well surface a few issues getting in the
way of powerful co-creation. It could be that the systems, practices,
tools, platforms and processes need some revamping, or there may
be other things coming into play that will need some solutions, but
in any case, we go back to co-creation to generate the kind of team
experience that is enjoyable to be part of, and this, in turn, develops
a pathway to even higher team performance.

A powerful accelerator for EX success

Getting the team right, the dynamics right, the practices right and
the working rhythms right goes a long way to cementing a unified
and holistic approach to EX for any organization. If only more time
was invested in this from the outset, a lot of EX opportunities could
be realized much sooner. Usually, the inevitable penny drops when a
company has embarked on one or two projects designed to improve
the EX. They go through this process and realize how weakly
connected their functions and teams are. It becomes a massive pain
point just to get equipment ready for an employee’s first day, or to
coordinate seemingly simple events or transitions along the
employee journey, or technology doesn’t connect across functions
and employees get confused or lost in the system. All of those
outcomes are reflective of an organization that is not set up
adequately to deal with the EX holistically and its approach that
organizations surely don’t want to maintain and keep replicating.
Yet, so many have to go through the pain themselves in order to
make the required changes. They have to find out directly that
collaboration across functional boundaries is hard, that easy tasks
are not so easy, and that communication is too complex between
colleagues and teams.
While it is valuable for organizations and their bureaucracies to
experience such pain, I’d rather they avoided it in the first place, or
at the very least minimized it, because it slows progress and the
employee experience will suffer as a result. Good intentions are
simply not enough and the system may well resist any change to it if
a lone wolf EX leader comes knocking with their fancy new ideas
about treating people as human beings and making every moment
and experience count within the organization. One lone colleague
with good intentions and even better ideas will easily be defeated by
a well-established system that is resistant to any form of change. But
what if it was the system that was changing itself? That’s what we’re
doing here with EX. We’re changing the system of management and
leadership from the inside. Building a cross-functional EX team
ensures that all parts of the whole support system infrastructure and
all the related services are represented and aligned with the changes
to come – indeed, they are driving the changes themselves directly.
Make no mistake, EX changes the way you see things, it changes
what you work on, and it changes the way you work with each other.
This is only a good thing for the organization, which is merely a
vehicle for an idea, a purpose and a mission that is delivered in full
by people. If we are to truly and sustainably affect EX performance,
we’ll need to get our house in order first by exemplifying many of
the things that we’ve discussed in this chapter.
SUMMARY

For consistent and exceptional EX team performance, we’ll need

to reconfigure our views about what a team actually is and how
it develops beyond functional boundaries.
Review the unbreakable laws of EX team success. How is your
EX team performance stacking up?
Consider the scale and depth of your EX strategy. Are your bases
covered? Do you have the right combination of skills,
capabilities and attributes that will sustain an organization-wide
and holistic EX?
Consider how the EX team can become more aligned and more
accountable for EX performance, and how high-value impact
can be a visible and constant theme within the EX approach.
07
Driving holistic
employee
experience
performance
At the initial stages of a company’s journey into the employee
experience, a lot of emphasis is placed on raising awareness,
education and the search for quick wins around the organization.
Things that stand out as needing some immediate care and attention
when looking at them through the lens of experience. Employee
experience (EX) does change the way we approach our work in all
different kinds of ways, but the primary one is the shift to a much
more committed form of human-centred leadership across a
business – this is exemplified by the very practical and powerful
focus on EX. In this chapter, we’ll explore the holistic employee
experience (HEX) in performance terms, drawing out some
significant themes that require more consideration while seeking to
overcome new and unexpected challenges that have presented
themselves around the economy. Many of these global events and
challenges are outside of our immediate control, yet the HEX
remains firmly within our control and under our direct influence as
companies. We can make a significant contribution to our
organization by driving key performance outcomes through every
element of the HEX. We started with awareness, and now it’s much
more about everyday performance.
In Employee Experience (Whitter, 2022), I sought to establish a
major strategic reference point, lens and tool to guide practitioners
in advancing the EX at their businesses. The HEX has been taken up
by many global organizations now and is a central part of their EX
strategies. The world is filled with so many organizations though
and many are still trailing well behind the EX frontrunners.

From awareness to performance

It’s one thing to be aware of something, it’s a different matter
entirely to take actions and generate strong performance returns
based on a new approach to business, which EX clearly is. The focus
on EX as an implementable and scalable business idea has been
massively advanced by necessity during and after the pandemic.
Organizations have been challenged like never before to build an EX
that complements and integrates well with the human experience.
These new work configurations are being tested to the max in recent
times with mass layoffs, busy strike seasons and a growing
resentment generally towards working conditions and pay
settlements. Companies now have the stick or twist moment to deal
with too; flexibility has been a key carrot being dangled by
companies to entice candidates into their organizations – this is a
demand and supply issue as workers have expressed flexibility as a
consistent top priority, and employers during the pandemic have
been more than happy to accommodate and encourage that.
Fast forward to the present day and it’s a different story, with no
clear consensus on which configuration of work will rise above the
rest and become the ‘norm’ or business standard. Performance then
has become somewhat a subjective discourse across executive
teams. Despite evidence emerging during the pandemic that
workers are more productive, healthier and happier, corporate HQs
are beginning to move in a different direction by demanding a
return to the office. The narrative around this tends to pitch
management against workers, but I still feel the context and co-
creation are key to decisions of this kind, and there is a need for a
clear alignment between people and the company. The large and
global round of mass layoffs will be an interesting period and litmus
test when it comes to talent decisions. There might be fewer options
available in the system with the flexibility that candidates would
want to see, and businesses may also struggle to attract their first-
choice candidates if flexibility is no longer a key part of the EX. The
thing to remember here is that in any scenario, any labour market or
economic challenge or period of uncertainty, talented people always
have choices.
For this and many other reasons, companies and colleagues will
need to raise their game when it comes to harnessing the full
performance potential of the HEX. Every element has been
impacted by global events, and we’ll need to double down and start
to look at each element much more carefully in terms of tangible
performance outcomes. I have highlighted the return on experience
(RoE) previously and that encompasses a large body of potential
outcomes across the HEX that help to tell a one-brand story – a
story that ends with a company being admired, respected and
trusted, not just in the talent marketplace, but in society at large.
The times change, the HEX changes with them though. The real
area of concern for me when reflecting on overall HEX performance
is strength, unity and health. This surfaces some really core strategic
questions about the elements of the HEX that we need to consider
over and over again come what may.
Looking out and across all the HEX performance elements, we
can consider the following questions.
STRENGTH
Is there a strong connection to the organizational Truth
(purpose, mission and values)?
Are the connections and relationships between each of the
elements strong?

HEALTH

Is the organization healthy?

Are people within the organization healthy?

UNITY

Are people aligned to the needs of the business?

Is the organization aligned to the needs of the people?

I have run people through straightforward HEX assessments many

times. Strategically, we can quickly understand and grasp how a
company is performing across all the respective parts of the EX.
Companies know if leadership quality and performance is at a good
level. Companies know if technology is serving them well.
Companies know if a community is vibrant or not. It is then not
difficult to arrive at a pretty accurate picture of HEX performance
which will be backed up by qualitative and quantitative data in
abundance from across the whole organizational ecosystem. After
many years in the field, surveys and data points serve to validate
what we already know to be true. Why? Because we live and
experience it daily. We know what is what within the organization.
Of course, data points are insightful and impactful, helping us to
target priorities and improvements where they count and get
valuable insights for business cases.
So, what is happening across the HEX elements today and what
do we need to prioritize in terms of EX strategy? Let’s move forward
and explore this.

Human performance
The human element of the HEX has always been about working with
employees as co-creators and co-producers on their own experiences
in work. How significant is this right now as a great rift opens up
between employers and workers about conditions, pay and work
configuration models? There has been a major transition in
business. Indeed, there is a greater awareness amongst all levels of
management that organizational performance is delivered through
human performance. In short, stronger, healthier people create
stronger, healthier businesses. This is not insignificant.
It has taken businesses a good while to realize that what happens
to their workers in life will affect their performance in work. This
has reset expectations on both sides. Employees have been given
more flexibility, freedom and control over their lives, and it has
redesigned the organization at the same time. Recognizing,
supporting and encouraging humanity may seem like a natural thing
to do, but it is not. Clearly – given the role of corporations in trying
to claw back this new-found freedom in work and turn back the
clock to when all employees were in the office the majority of the
time. This is a delicate opera that is playing out in real time and as
yet no clear model for work has emerged victorious. Indeed, this
tension is leading to record-breaking stand-offs between workers
and companies. Workers feel forced into a position where striking or
protesting becomes the only option to assert their voice in this
debate while securing pay that keeps up with inflation and enables
them to live during a cost-of-living crisis.
 TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Expand and scale listening/feedback practices. Enable with

impactful technology where necessary to scale the co-creation of
EX projects.
Advance central data analysis capabilities to help tell a complete
brand story in relation to EX. Fragmented and disconnected
projects need to be brought into the fold and the strategic
communication narrative to highlight the quality of the EX for
current and prospective employees.
Continually engage with peers and the organization about
human performance and factor this into the EX strategy.
Human/people performance is the key outcome of the EX and
we need to talk less about isolated outcomes (like engagement,
which is only one of many outcomes of EX). Performance and
experience develop together.

Leadership
We’ll go over the reinvention of leadership for the EX era in a later
chapter, but it is worth noting some of the pressure on this element
and what we need to think about if we are to generally strengthen
this area. This is a critical issue that has emerged, alongside much
needed capability development and enablement of frontline and
middle-management centres around senior leadership decisions in
particular. There is, as noted, a strategic and ideological ongoing
debate about the best way an organization should be configured in
terms of producing desirable outcomes, mainly productivity. For EX
strategy, decisions of this kind may well sit above the pay grades of
EX practitioners and leaders. Remote, hybrid or in-person
workforces are the options before senior management in how they
connect people to their businesses, and I must say there has been a
creeping reversion to autocratic management archetypes on this.
Employees are given a taste of freedom when it suits businesses, and
it is immediately clawed back once calmer times return. I’m afraid
employees are having none of it, and rightly so.
I don’t necessarily take issue here with the work model that
employers ultimately opt for, but I will call out the way that
businesses get there. It is the ivory tower way that businesses
approach their decisions – it often undoes a lot of the great work on
EX and trust declines as a result. These decisions, and their
subsequent implementation, are naturally at the behest of the CEO
who has a particular modus operandi that they want for the
organization. This is then dictated and mandated for all, irrespective
of what workers actually think about the proposed – and I use the
word proposed lightly here – change and how it affects them. It goes
against everything EX is meant to be – co-creation, human
centricity, and in no small part, empathy for people and their
choices about how their work gets done. This will be the undoing of
many companies.
 It is also puzzling to see companies who have done the hard yards
delivering positive experiences for employees then shift to an
autocratic and inhumane approach to creating mass layoffs. Again,
all that trust, all that respect, and all that related brand advocacy
lost into the ether. Have they learnt nothing about people and the
overwhelming power of their experiences? I get that in tough
economic times hard choices and decisions must be made, but it’s
the how that people feel and remember, and there is still some work
to do at these major moments that are directed entirely by an
organization’s senior leadership. There is a question sometimes that
springs up at the time employees leave companies and it is related to
whether or not they leave in good standing. This impacts references,
both positive and negatively. The very same is becoming true for
employers too. Employees have a wide range of opportunities to
ensure the world knows if their former companies remain in good
standing with them. It’s an issue and opportunity that needs to be
made repeatedly to senior leaders. It is such a shame to waste all
that exceptional work on EX with poorly formed or implemented
decisions made by the top team.
The onus on the EX movement has now positively shifted beyond
the HR function into all support or employee-facing services and has
continued to rise in prominence amongst senior, middle and junior
management. This is very good and welcome progress, yet there is a
big opportunity to ensure that once the top team is engaged and
leading EX that they remain firmly committed to its principles in
whatever circumstances present themselves for the business.

TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

This is a work in progress, but EX practitioners are well advised

to educate, inform and keep inspiring the most senior business
leaders about the impact of their decisions on and beyond EX.
Continue to build human-centred and EX capabilities across
management lines. Recognize and build communities of practice
to highlight and disseminate people-first management practices.
Review leadership development, promotion and recognition
infrastructure. Is it aligned to and enabling positive experiences
in work?

Structural performance
If you were a structural engineer, you would look at the structural
design of most organizations and conclude they are not fit for
purpose, or put another way, not fit for purposeful organizations.
I’ve noted there is still some considerable work to do in getting
teams combining well to bring up top performance for EX. Yes,
teams can do some journey mapping and personal development,
and yes, they can perform really well together on certain aspects of
redesign, but we really need a bit more ambition in this element.
Many companies that I’ve worked with have gone all in for EX and
brought all employee-facing functions under one roof. All services
that connect with and interact with employees are lined up to deliver
for them. No ifs, no buts, just solid work to design and deliver
experiences that break the mould and serve people in better ways.
Venice would be an extremely difficult place to live without all the
bridges and walkways that connect the city state. The Venetians
knew connecting lands and people was of upmost importance.
Building centres of excellence or expertise is a great idea if they
connect with the wider whole and are not detached from the people
as they often are. Again, up for consideration here is what more can
be done about the structure of a company and its support services to
fully embrace the employee experience getting away from the
unintended consequences of unintentionally created silos.
 TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Determine if the employee-facing structure (HR, IT, marketing,

branding, estates/campus, travel, facilities, communications,
etc.) is fit for purpose in relation to EX and is serving employees
in a powerful, trust-building and co-creative way.
If not, talk to your CEO and C-suite about developing something
better, which places people, relationships and your brand front
and centre.

Technology performance
This has been a considerable element over the course of the
pandemic. HR and EX technology have exploded in growth and
many new start-ups have burst onto the scene all claiming to be the
employee experience platform or solution. Many are not, but they do
offer specific products or tools that are helpful in solving certain
challenges within the organization. Some platforms are excellent at
process re-engineering, which does a massive service to the
organization in eliminating unnecessary and tedious bureaucracy.
Employees are always the major stakeholder that benefits from any
internal service redesign or engineering, but often the last
population to benefit from easy, seamless and effortless transactions
or interactions within work. Companies almost always try to give
this to customers upfront because if they didn’t, there would be no
business at all. I do think it is worth saying again that the way EX
leaders tend to approach this is to be led by humans, but enabled by
technology. That’s the magic formula in getting technology right
across the EX, and having a clear focus on the HEX and how
everything integrates and connects is worth the time investment
when crafting the overall EX strategy. Technology will have an
impact everywhere around the EX, of course, and it is well beyond
the scope of HR given the innovations taking place in workplace
design and technology.
The clear-out of the old and the commissioning of the new has
been happening for a while as companies find, or even try to help
create, new tech solutions that better meet their needs. The
performance aspect of this is often hidden within organizations
though and that’s what I would advise companies pay more
attention to when developing their EX strategies. If a new system or
platform has come into the organization, I’d want a central view on
its performance and the performance of any other technology that is
currently in the organization. I’d also want to know precisely what
employees do with it and how it enhances their experience and the
outcomes for the business. There is a tolerance for poor
performance of technology in many corporations, usually because a
huge investment has been made, and then there are various follow-
on clauses in the contract that don’t allow the form of evolution the
company wants. They may have learnt through a technology
implementation what works and what doesn’t, but it would be far
too expensive to make any customizations, and that’s when they get
stuck with something dated, clunky and near obsoletion even after
just a short space of time. I can imagine many corporates scratching
their heads after ChatGPT came into being after spending millions
on clunky employee portals, intranets and other things that will
quickly be useless once the potential of sophisticated AI chatbots
have hit the EX in a big and better way.
This is the other point relating to technology performance.
Technology advances rapidly. There will always be something better,
newer and more powerful coming down the line to enable great
outcomes in work, whether by communication, connection or a
coherent and consistent experience with the actual technology. This
is a given, so I find it is far more important to master the human
element of the business first and balance technology decisions and
implementations with the more important aspect of business life –
human beings. In practice then, and to the dismay of the IT and
digital crowd, technology falls into the background of the human
and employee experience. It’s there working in the background so
seamlessly that we rarely give it a second thought – it just works and
people can focus their attention on the important work they need to
do, not get stuck talking about which platform or sign-in to use, or
how slow an approval process is, or how many different apps there
are within the company, or how much friction occurs between
transitions and experiences. In reality, this scenario is still all too
common for those who operate outside of the leading packs within
their industries. The leaders tend to be more acutely aware that wise
technology investment has massive upside and growth potential,
and this is becoming more factored into EX technology investment.

TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Audit all the EX-related technology that exists within the

organization. Assess strengths, weak spots and determine how
integrated all the various platforms, products and services are.
Step into the employee journey and use all of the technology that
employees experience on a daily basis. Where are the
disconnects? Where does the journey transition well? Where
does the journey fall flat?
Consider the information and evidence above as you build out
the EX team and EX ecosystem, and related alignments and
accountabilities.

Workplace performance
I would struggle to identify one element that has stood out more
over the last few years than workplace. It has often been the
lightning rod topic that then brings all the other elements into the
business conversation. If companies move to hybrid work models,
how will this change leadership practices? How will it affect the
community of people within the company if they are often away
from the physical workplace? How will technology fare in enabling
productivity outcomes for remote or hybrid employees? How will
the structure of the company, informal and formal, hold up in a new
business model? How will the well-being of employees be affected
by vastly different working styles? Of course, all of these are great
questions, but recently they have all been focused on the workplace
and ways of working. It has been a very specific global conversation
and debate – there are no signs that this debate is going away
anytime soon.
Disney is one of the latest companies to pull in the reins and
demand that its workers return to the office for the majority of the
week. A recent memo from the returning CEO, Bob Iger, reversed
course on a more flexible work model for the media conglomerate
and has now mandated that workers are to be in the office at least
four days a week, and not the two days a week that Disney workers
have grown accustomed to (Sherman and Whitten, 2023). His
announcement mirrors decisions made at other companies like
Apple and Netflix. This is a sharp and dramatic about-turn from the
global giant, and will no doubt influence other companies, but is this
commitment to in-person work the right call?
Well, this is where it gets interesting, as other technology
businesses have taken an opposing view and enshrined remote and
flexible working practices into their business models permanently.
Companies like Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify have taken definitive
positions and they are not alone, with many smaller and medium-
sized businesses following suit. If this was a global election on the
future of work, I’d be primed for landslide victory for hybrid work in
some form given all the data points that now exist that demonstrate
the clear preferences of employees to have more control, choices and
options over where and how they work. It will be hard to put this
particular genie back into the bottle, so what, as EX strategists, do
we need to think about when forming EX strategy? That’s the tricky
part as our personal ideals, and even the wishes of employees, may
not be a factor in this strategic decision at all. You could present all
the evidence and data you like within a business case, but if the CEO
wants an in-person workforce, that’s what they’ll get. Similarly, if
they want to sell off all the real estate and go fully remote to save
costs and drive up profit, then that’s what’s going to happen. If the
hybrid happy medium solution emerges, then that’s what will come
into play.
What we can do in this scenario is give the best advice and
intelligence we can based on the data and reference points we have
to influence a decision that is helpful in aligning the expectations of
the organization and its people. Though middle ground and
compromise can often weaken the overall outcome in relation to
major decisions or projects, we may have to acknowledge the limit of
our formal influence, so what next then? That’s the good thing – we
can help make it work in practice and ensure the experience is
enabled and delivered to a high standard. We can also prioritize
initiatives within the EX that will make the experience better for
people working closely with colleagues in workplace and technology
design, depending on which model your company settles on. It’s not
our place to get caught in the middle of debate, it’s to bring good
things to life that enable people to be at their best regardless of
where they are. The workplace is still not a building. It’s the spaces
and places that enable our best work (Whitter, 2022).

TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Whatever work model (hybrid, remote, in-person) has been

mandated (or better, co-created), seek to enable it fully by
reviewing overall HEX performance in relation to the work
model and prioritizing strategic actions that make a valuable
contribution to it. Optimized technology and leadership
capabilities may well be required, for example.
Continue to monitor employee sentiment, feedback and data,
and work with employees to make the model work in practice.
Get out onto the frontlines and encourage changes to the model,
where necessary.
Drive alignment through the EX strategy and paint a clear
picture about how the work model/configuration connects with
the brand and its people.
Community performance
With all the issues and challenges being experienced within and
beyond the organization, community is not a nice-to-have feature of
company life. It is an absolutely vital ingredient of success. The
fruits of all that great EX work in the last few years will revolve very
much around the strength of the community that has been built with
intention. The powerful connections and the subsequent
collaboration that have been enabled and scaled will testify to that.
If your company’s EX has contributed to a real sense of belonging
being shared amongst the majority of employees, then this element
is performing as it should be. If not, then there is much work to do
and I have to say that work will not get any easier over time. With
uncertainty on the rise across the global economy, we need to be
more certain about the things that matter within our companies and
the things that bond and unite us. It is my idealistic side that shines
through here as I say this during the biggest strikes in the UK for
many years. Many organizational communities are breaking down
and trust in management is in decline.
As EX leaders and strategists, it is not our sole responsibility to
build a community, but it is the organization’s job to move from a
corporate to a community. That’s what good and admired
companies do. They become something more than just a group of
roles driving financial returns. How hollow is that? We know
instinctively that human connection is a sacred part of the human
experience, and we’ll need to find and co-create ways to express this
within the EX strategy, placing a much fuller emphasis on
relationships between people, a supportive culture and leadership
that cares. These are the big things that build communities
alongside keeping our promises, honouring the past and respecting
contributions to the greater whole. How well is your company doing
on this front? What more could be done and what can you enable
within the EX strategy to accelerate this sense and feeling of
togetherness? Within EX organizations, this is often expressed and
cultivated at different points in the employee journey – those
moments beyond the control of the manager where there is direct
connection with the company or the corporate centre. What kind of
experiences is the HQ disseminating, and are they creating the
desired connection and outcomes? From onboarding people to
transitioning them into an alumni community, and everything in
between, these are special touchpoints with the company.
It is, and this has certainly been proven in my work, at these
moments that we learn what the organization really is and what it
cares about. Values flood through these moments and milestones,
and they have to be carefully managed, else the wrong message is
communicated and received by employees, and it can invariably
affect performance and loyalty. We are not responsible for
happiness – all that talk is a bit too grand for my liking. I view the
individual as being in sole control of that as a co-producer of their
own experiences in life and work. Of course, organizations can make
a contribution to it in many ways though, and the onus here is
creating the conditions where people can step into enjoyment – they
enjoy their roles, their work, their outcomes, the people they work
with, the mission of the business and the social aspects of the
organization. We can help with a lot of that as organizations, and
why would you want to create an organization where people don’t
enjoy the experience? It makes no sense, but this is not measured or
reflected on very often in leadership circles.
In my mind, more mature EX organizations have improved the
quality of the questions they ask. In the past, it used to be more
about how good an employer was and if a company was a good place
to work. Those question themes are valid and relevant, but it’s time
to become more ambitious. How about this: Is this an enjoyable
community to be part of? Are our people enjoying their experiences
in work and life? There are boundaries in place for organizations at
the intersection of life and work – one fades into the other yet they
are both the same, and a community is being created whether it is
acknowledged or not. The real question is just how strong that
community is and what they are willing to do to support each other
through the good times, and through the challenging times. This
takes us beyond restrictive thinking of companies and corporations
into something that offers a glimpse into the beauty of human life –
connection and relationships. It’s time to double down on building
positive communities, and our EX strategies can help enable and
accelerate that important work.
 TIMELY STRATEGIC ACTIONS

Reflect on your community and the strength of the connections

and relationships within the organization. Map out the strongest
internal communities. Draw lessons from their progress and
seek to scale great community-building practices.
Identify strategic themes, pillars and initiatives that are
deliberately and consciously designed to build a sense of
community and belonging. If there is not a sufficient number, go
back to the co-creation drawing board and think ‘community’.
Double down on the direct connection points between the
company and employees. Target moments and milestones in the
employee journey to develop further and elevate. Is the Truth
(purpose, mission and values) breaking through into these
moments and making a strong impression/impact amongst
employees?

The Truth: towards a purposeful,

mission-driven and values-centred
employee experience
A purpose full employee experience delivers a significant advantage,
but the path may not always be straightforward. The corporate
world is now very familiar with purpose and its impact on business
performance. Installing purpose into an organization has been a key
theme in business for the last decade of management thinking.
Purpose has struck a nerve in corporations as an anchor on which to
build their consumer and employee brand messaging. It is helpful as
a way of communicating origin stories, connecting to legacies and
maintaining a razor-sharp focus on why a group of people has, and
continues, to throw their lot together in the form of a company.

CASE STUDY
Unilever

I took a step back down memory lane on a nostalgic visit to Port Sunlight in
the UK, which is an iconic place in the history of employment. Alongside
Cadbury’s Bournville, it ranks as one of the most important developments
and artefacts in the history of work. It is symbolic of a company deciding to
do things differently, treat workers differently and to cement the
importance of the human experience into the very fabric of a business. Port
Sunlight was a community that provided housing, recreation and
community to the workers of the Lever brothers. Its foundation stone was
laid by William Hesketh Lever in 1888 to house factory workers – a vibrant
community emerged with strong connections still going strong to this day.
Lever, who became the 1st Baron Leverhulme in 1917, set out to build a
close-knit community like days of old and was successful in creating one of
the first profit-sharing business enterprises with employees – investment
was poured into the development directly to benefit workers and develop a
new blueprint for a socially conscious enterprise.

Fast forward to 2023 and Unilever continues to bring forth the lessons
learnt from that period of its history into its business model. In recent years,
the brand has a renewed focus on the very thing that defined it all those
years ago – the employee experience. Not that it left that space, but Unilever
has been at the vanguard of integrating purpose into its organizational
culture as a priority, engaging all employees in some impressive dialogue
about what purpose is, how people can find theirs and how the brand can
help them live it. Unilever is a corporate giant operating in 190 countries
through over 400 brand names, and with over 149,000 employees
worldwide. What it does, where it focuses and how it approaches its work on
company development means something and reverberates around offices
the world over. They set the tone and example for many others to follow,
and it is a company revered and held up constantly for its progressive take
on employment, sustainability and building strong business ecosystems.

Marrying purpose with the employee experience

Championing purpose so visibly and so practically, Unilever has perhaps

not been talked about in EX circles so directly in the recent past given its
intense focus on purpose. Purpose and Unilever were the match. However,
in recent years, that focus has expanded to EX directly and the company has
caught up fast and in a quite radical way. Taking a fragmented approach to
EX to task, setting out a unified vision for EX, and growing an impactful
global team that is committed to EX has accelerated the company’s
progress. I have had the opportunity to work with Unilever’s global EX team
and what I have found is a considered, thoughtful and wide-ranging
approach to EX – it was a comprehensive and all-encompassing mission to
bring all EX functions together under one umbrella to deliver simple,
consistent, special and inclusive outcomes across the employee experience.

As the journey progresses, the company continues to develop EX

capabilities and has leveraged the HEX as a methodology to scale its EX
impact and daily performance across the work of global teams. Tom
Dewaele, who was Unilever’s global head of EX when I delivered an initial
advisory session for his global EX team, summed up the kind of ambition
that is required to execute on EX strategy. ‘We took a leap to completely
change the way that we’ve been working. We took a leap to become
experience makers… It has been a journey… and I believe it’s the right
journey.’ (Sarin, 2021) Driving the end-to-end employee journey, balancing
digital and human touch, designing workplaces based on social capital and
leveraging data to make better people decisions are all viewed to be
essential in getting this right.
SUMMARY
There is no doubt a lot to think about when considering EX at your
organization, but what a wonderful thing that is. To have a tour around
the HEX to establish where you’re flying high and where you’re falling
short. I think we would all be better equipped and ready to deal with
challenges if we did this more frequently. The HEX has proven to be a
great strategic tool for managers and practitioners alike. It helps them
to raise their heads above the busyness, the short term and the details
of their activities to really consider the performance of the employee
experience at a holistic system-wide level, and there have been many
things that have been impacting all the elements of the HEX as we’ve
discussed. It’s now up to us to move with the times, but more
importantly, move with the people and move with purpose.
08
Reinventing
leadership in the
employee
experience era
The employee experience (EX) moves well beyond support functions
and any form of core experience team or practitioner community. It
extends to leaders directly, and in fact, leaders play one of the most
valuable roles in creating a positive employee experience for their
teams and the individuals within them. In this chapter then, we’ll
explore how to connect and align EX strategy to leaders in a
meaningful way, and the required capabilities that will form part of
that work.
 What I won’t do here is go off on a tangent about some abstract
leadership concept. There are other books for that, given it is one of
the most profitable areas to write about and offer services in. Why is
that? Well, because leadership doesn’t come easily to most people.
As industry has scaled globally, so too the demand for managers and
leaders. Not everyone should be in a leadership role and perhaps
this is why we hear so much about the bad managers in the
corporate world; there are far too many of them as companies seek
to fill their management lines. EX has brought with it flatter and
more open structures, agile methods and more inclusive starting
positions via a more concerted effort to distribute higher quality
leadership, yet leadership remains the ire (or saving grace) for most
organizations. Companies are absolutely reliant and dependent on
leaders, and this will be the case for some time until leadership
hierarchies evolve and employees are given core ownership for their
work, impact and outcomes as a natural part of organizational life.
But until then, leadership alignment to the EX is critical, as is
augmentation to help leaders shed some of the more bureaucratic
and time-consuming administrative tasks associated with their role.
A survey by Accenture summed this up nicely; it reported that
managers spend a whopping 54 per cent of their time on
administrative coordination and control, a paltry 7 per cent is spent
on developing people and engaging with stakeholders, and just a
meagre 10 per cent of time is dedicated to strategy and innovation
(HBR, 2016).
 Given the current economic uncertainty, the critical challenges
that leaders are facing in relation to EX are compounded by
everything else that is going on and being felt by people all over the
world. These are magnified by media and no one can escape their
effects across the workforce, yet the scale of the challenge is almost
unmatched. ExecOnline, a company I partnered with recently, is
tasked with developing leaders to rise to these challenges, and it is
not surprising that there are significant gaps in current leadership
capabilities. This is a distinctly different challenge, as the company
pointed out to me in an interview. Unlike previous periods of
economic uncertainty, like the 2008 financial crash, the current
uncertainty comes at a time of significant talent shortage due to the
ongoing great resignation and the continuing effects on businesses
of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Employees have greater leverage to
make demands of their employers than they did in the past, and
more than ever, leaders need to be able to address those demands,
assuage those concerns, and above all, attract, retain and motivate
key talent,’ said Sara Pixley, Head of Strategic Insights. This all
means that organizations need leaders who are highly skilled, not
just in relentless strategic prioritization, but in talent engagement as
well, she adds. ‘However, we find only 7 per cent of leaders are
highly skilled in both areas, and unless that situation improves, it
means the more pressure is put on leaders, the more attraction and
retention will suffer, and the employee experience along with it.’
 That statement is worth a second look. Just a paltry 7 per cent of
leaders are highly skilled in leading strategy and the employee
experience effectively. Couple that with the evidence that suggests
workers more generally are unprepared for the future of work and
there is a ticking talent time bomb in our midst. Indeed, according
to a study of 3,000 people conducted by Amazon and Workplace
Intelligence, 70 per cent of people have reported that they don’t feel
prepared for the future of work, which is a staggering statistic that
demonstrates the scale of the work ahead (Workplace Intelligence,
2022). If we don’t understand the scale of the challenge and why
organizations are delivering inadequate employee experiences and
workplaces that fail to retain the best talent, then that one statistic
should be ringing alarm bells around the corporate world. Yet the
capability gap is just one urgent area to address. The other is equally
problematic and can drain all the power that EX holds within a
flash. I’m talking here about alignment (or lack thereof).

Alignment
In partnering with companies worldwide on employee experience, it
becomes evident rather quickly that alignment is a world-class
problem. It’s one of the best and most enduring issues within
businesses still to this day despite all the advances in people
management practices and technology to improve systemic
performance. I venture that this continues because people are
involved and alignment does not come naturally to most. A world-
class problem of this nature requires a world-class response to cure
misalignment issues, but where are organizations going wrong
specifically?
In working with ExecOnline, I found that the leadership
development firm had identified four major misalignments between
leaders and organizations, and they certainly coincide with my
findings working on EX strategies.

1. Leader challenges: Organizations say their leaders are

struggling the most with maintaining team well-being and
culture, but leaders themselves tell us they struggle the most
with motivating employees without monetary incentives and
with managing workload for themselves and their teams.
2. The productivity viewpoint: Organizations believe
innovation will improve team performance and productivity,
but leaders tell us they need support in re-evaluating goals in
order to improve their productivity.
3. The commitment viewpoint: Organizations believe leaders
are increasingly disengaged and ‘quiet quitting’, whereas
leaders say they are only protecting themselves from further
burnout – we find over 70 per cent of leaders said they were at
least somewhat burned out in each quarter of 2022.
4. The paradox of priority: Leaders want and need more
learning and development, but when provided with those
 opportunities, they struggle to take advantage of them due to
prioritization.

The cost of these misalignments is steep. A recent analysis of Bureau

of Labor Statistics data by the Washington Post finds that
productivity has plunged by the sharpest rate on record going back
to 1947, as Pixley highlighted (Telford, 2022). Indeed, misalignment
is killing any prospects of productivity, and the employee experience
is at the very centre of this perfect storm for business success or
business failure. It’s never been more significant. In stable economic
conditions, companies could get away with producing a pipeline of
technically good professional, but very poor leaders – not now, and
perhaps not ever again, given the radical changes to worker
expectations in this regard. This changes how we view leaders and
its connection to EX, and also how we develop and promote leaders
within and beyond the organization. I’ve highlighted issues with
leadership and the EX before. While alignment is critical, it is also
hugely important to invest in growing leadership capabilities that
directly affect EX performance. Often, leadership development
interventions miss the mark because they lack practicality and don’t
fully enable leaders to meet the moments as they present themselves
within their teams. Policies and procedures are part and parcel of a
responsible, well-governed, and professional organization, but
everyday practices matter more – the lived experience matters
more. That’s why this capability and alignment gap will not be sold
by doing the same things that have always been done.
Emerging leadership capabilities
It’s insightful at this stage to consider exactly what are the most
important emerging capabilities that leaders (and organizations) are
investing in, developing or starting to apply at scale.
As the tension between economic uncertainty and talent pressures
continues, leaders are increasingly focusing on the skills they need
to resolve that tension without additional support from their
organization.

In Q3 2022, 27% of the leaders we surveyed said resilience was one of

the most important skills to navigate the current business
environment, up from 23% in the previous quarter. Making decisions
amidst uncertainty (34%) and change management (27%) still remain
critical, both increasing in importance from the previous quarter.

This makes little sense when we consider that good strategy, people
development and innovation are catalysts for sustained business
success, so why do companies continue to have their leaders tied up on
things that waste time, energy and resources?

Technology, no doubt, is alleviating some of this and companies are

seeking solid solutions within their digital EX strategies, bringing in
products, platforms and services that enable leaders to more fully
play their part in EX. Technology is a big part of the equation, yet
it’s not the thing that most impacts employees. In everything we’ve
discovered about EX, it is clear that the leadership approach has by
far the greatest impact on people. With that, it is not one thing, but
all things that the leader does (or doesn’t do) that is of concern to
employees. There’s no need to complicate leadership any more than
we should. Indeed, if we stripped it back to its basic utility and form,
and also consider the expectations of people, then a conclusion can
be reached quite readily: we respect leaders that lead with
compassion, care and enable us to feel certain that they make their
decisions and choices with the best of intentions, and with people, as
well as the organization, in mind at all times. In practice, and from
the perspective of employees, it looks something like this:

Strong future direction of the team (and individuals) aligned

with the business strategy.
Strong atmosphere, togetherness and energy around the team.
Strong trust in the leader’s ability to co-create plans and take
positive decisions.
Strong confidence in a leader’s competence, integrity, ethics
and morals.
Strong belief and faith in a leader’s willingness to do the right
thing by people.
Strong understanding and clarity on what matters most
(purpose, mission and values).
 Strong commitment to growth, development, feedback and
ongoing coaching.

If we spell it out like this, then we can consider a range of actions

that will increase the likelihood that this type of leadership
community will prevail in the organization, and the impact of poor
leadership approaches would be minimal, or less likely to occur. It is
not complex at all to guarantee and promise employees a high-
quality leader, and it’s getting to the stage that a promise of this
nature must be made.

Bad bosses derail the employee

experience: great bosses elevate it
It’s a very simple equation, yet it is proven true time and time again.
Poor-quality leaders continue to blight an organization’s EX efforts,
but I am by no means anti-manager. Having experienced high-
quality leadership throughout my career, I know personally the
positive impact it can have on careers and lives. Conversely, I have
also experienced the worst of leadership too, which does have a
dramatic effect on team and individual performance and well-being.
Managers are often the target for blame and ridicule with some of
that very often justified, but I have no doubt that the organization
(and its overall leadership team) is the accountable authority on
this, and must hold the primary blame (or credit) for leadership
failure (or success).
What exceptional leadership looks like, and the type of leadership
being emulated and held up across the economy, is fascinating. On
the one hand, we understand fully the impact that human-centred
leadership has on us as people. But we are also inundated with
profiles of visionary leaders and those who are technically brilliant
at what they do, and they deliver compelling results, but sometimes
at the expense of the people they work with. There are such strong
feelings about people like Elon Musk, as a timely example, given his
recent and seemingly chaotic takeover of Twitter. His leadership
approach has been heavily scrutinized in real time – every decision,
every email and every action as he attempts to steady an
unprofitable ship, which he paid $44 billion for. From my own point
of view, I cannot, given my focus on EX, conceivably defend his
leadership style – I can admire what he produces and the powerful
pioneering results he has consistently managed to deliver, but his
treatment of people leaves much to be desired, as Netflix CEO Reed
Hastings highlighted when he said that Musk is ‘the bravest, most
creative person on the planet… his style is different, I’m trying to be
like a really steady, respectable leader, you know, he doesn’t care,
he’s just out there.’ (YouTube, 2022) Yet the real secret of Musk’s
overall success is the strategic goals and missions he creates. ‘I am
100 per cent convinced that he is trying to help the world in all of his
endeavours,’ said Hastings (YouTube, 2022).
 I’m not saying he’s all wrong, but I’m not saying he’s all right
either. This is the incomplete picture of leadership many of us
experience – human beings have their strengths and their failings.
They cannot be exceptional at everything, nor do they possess the
same amount of emotional or intellectual intelligence across the
board. These things are distributed differently. The question comes
down to the type of leaders we want to represent our brands to the
world. Strategically, this poses some opportunities for us in EX
strategy, yet it also offers up some learning that we can translate
into practices. What if those big macro things were people,
relationships and experiences and we had our strategic EX/HR
executives executing consistently against them with the same
intensity as Musk? I’ve encountered many an organization where
the negative aspects of the visionary CEO have been mitigated and
limited by an outstanding human-centred leader at the top. Yet, as
we look across the organization, it is clear that if you filled your
company with Musk copycats, the result would be interesting to say
the least. We would either get to Mars tomorrow, or crash the
company in the most spectacular way possible. It’s a challenging
thought, but so too is the organization’s penchant for enabling and
promoting brilliant idiots – those with exceptional technical skills
yet lacking completely in human skills. Too many of these in
leadership roles make companies unstable and unsustainable given
the carnage they cause internally, and we know what the vast
majority of people crave in work: stability, certainty and support.
 A sound and proven solution, especially if we are committed to
EX, is based on a core need to commit to enabling a much larger
leadership community, and that’s why companies are investing
heavily to grow new strategic and operational leadership
capabilities, which are more aligning to the human skills that
employees wish to experience with management. This is another
part of the strategic equation given the size and scale of the impact
that any designated leader can have on the experience of work for
employees. Every interaction, every moment and every decision
counts, and warrants exploration and experimentation. The default
mode for anyone working on EX is to act and lead, but act in what
way? In my research, I’ve found that getting three things right will
turbo charge leadership within the organization – the triple A is
about alignment, accountability and atmosphere.
 TABLE 8.1 The triple A enablers of EX leadership
performance
Skip table

Enablers of employee
experience
leadership
performance What does it mean?
Alignment Connecting leaders to EX in a strong,
robust and highly visible way throughout
an organization’s infrastructure.
Atmosphere Consciously curating and guiding a positive
atmosphere around the team, which
significantly improves experiences,
relationships, resilience and results.
Accountability Leaders are held responsible and to
account for the quality of the EX.
Objectives delivered to a high standard.
Measuring, monitoring and recognizing
strong EX performance by leaders.

Core leadership capabilities for

employee experience success
Leaders are not detached from EX strategy. They are an integral part
of it, so we’ll need to think about how we can join the dots between
the EX, the organization and the type of leadership that is exhibited
(and experienced) across a company. In practice, this means that
those with responsibility for the leadership development and
executive development are part and parcel of the experience
ecosystem, as are the leaders that shape promotion, hiring, and
recognition practices and policies. Leaders must be aligned to the
EX if EX is going to prove its worth. If we think about the construct
of the HEX again, we can see all the elements that leaders actively
shape (and will need to communicate) throughout their roles and
this will be complemented (and driven) by a series of key
capabilities that have been ripe for development in the new models
and configurations of work. At this stage, I’d like to highlight three
major capabilities and then we can explore how we can mould these
capabilities and get them serving the organization in a strong and
consistent way. The thread of these core leadership capabilities
manifests a path of connection and communication – this type of
leadership enriches the EX at every moment that matters across the
employee journey. Imagine any scenario that emerges for employees
– any challenge or problem – and a leader responds by default in a
co-creative, connected and communicative mode. Not only does it
help employees through the situation, but it also simultaneously
builds trust and respect. Trust is clearly the core challenge with
leadership at any level – building and maintaining trust-based
relationships is essential for business growth, and the wider health
and good of the company.
Leader capabilities (in relation to employee
experience performance)
 FIGURE 8.1 The 3C leader capabilities for EX

CO-CREATION

We’ve already explored co-creation as a central enabled practice in

the development of the EX strategy, blueprint and overall
experience masterplan. And the additional good news is that this
powerful and emerging capability has started to leak across into
general management, and it’s something we would want to put an
emphasis on within all types of leadership development, leadership
enablement and leadership alignment activities. Ideally, we can
arrive at a place where this very practical capability becomes the
first thought of a leader when making decisions, plans, or building
up a portfolio and programme of work. There is some project
management fatigue I’ve noticed up and down the economy as
projects roll out as fait accomplis rather than a genuine team effort,
with the active participant you would expect that goes alongside. If
you’ve read my earlier works or taken part in some of my earlier
career experiences, you’ll know how seriously I apply this principle
in practice. I do so, not because I’m a genius or because I’m an
exceptional leader; I do it because, quite frankly, it works better
than anything else I’ve tried or attempted within my leadership
style. It goes beyond mere cooperation and collaboration, which can
often be superficial and hollow.
Co-creation genuinely drives better and more enjoyable results. I
say the word enjoyable because, as so often is the case within
companies, collaboration on projects is not enjoyable in the
slightest. It’s difficult and painful for practitioners and leaders at
times, and that really shouldn’t be the case in a properly formed
team or project. The challenge as I’ve discussed is that people
working in their specialisms do not see themselves as part of a wider
team, and why should they? Certainly, their organizations are often
guilty of not setting them up in that way. Methods like agile are
challenging this and bringing about some proper team experiences,
yet I would like to see strong evidence of co-creation in any project
regardless of the way the team or group is set up or the methodology
they’re using.
What does this look like in practice? That’s the great thing –
whatever we co-create it to be, as this capability muscle grows every
time something needs to happen and involves people. I once took
part in a group challenge that was assessed nationally and I was the
designated leader of a group to focus on a very specific challenge.
Very much in the style of The Apprentice where contestants have to
work together but also take care to shine individually. It’s a delicate
balance to get that right, but the only way I know how to lead is
through co-creation – I am not the commander in chief of a group of
people, nor did I ever want to be. I have my responsibilities, of
course, but so too do people within the team. I have my own ideas,
but so too do members of the team. It’s about the best ideas that
deliver the most impact, and the only way to get at these is through
co-creation. So, that’s the way I led this group – from objectives to
outcomes – and I’ll always remember the feedback; the assessor
sharply observed that he didn’t know who the leader actually was.
The co-creation style ensured we dominated the final presentations
and assessment. We delivered the best ideas, the best team
presentation and ultimately won the task with high praise from a
leading CEO. We were poles apart from the other group, but their
leader was very easy to identify. There’s a time and a place for high
visibility leadership, yet the real victories emerge when we focus on
delivering a team experience that unlocks the creative energy and
absolute best contribution from each contributor.
As I have written in my books to date, co-creation is a leadership
superpower. Indeed, there is not much out there that will top this
when it comes to management capabilities. It is ever present in
successful EX leadership practices. Co-creation is about sharing
power and bringing the full potential of people to the table.
Harnessing ideas, sharing leadership and co-producing outcomes is
a way of leading in a more human-centric way. Instead of dictating
objectives, we co-create them instead. Instead of making plans in
isolation, we create the plan together. Instead of telling people what
to do, we ask them to co-create the right business-growing actions
together. In this mode, leadership becomes more about facilitation
and genuine collaboration than anything else. While at the same
time, leaders increase and enhance all the major people metrics that
matter, from engagement right through to innovation.

CONNECTION

Excellent leaders have the ability to connect people to the

experiences they need at a time when they need them. Their default
mode is: connect. They are constantly seeking and applying ideas
that more closely connect people inside and outside of their teams,
departments and functions. Leaders are the natural connection
point between a company and its employees. They have the unique
position to be able to connect people to what matters most to the
business. Yet, at the same time, they are well positioned to connect
their people with experiences, resources and opportunities that help
people grow and produce their work. Leaders can operate up and
down and right across the organization to leverage everything the
organization has to offer to support their people. They’re not exactly
a concierge of EX, but they’re pretty close to it when they provide
access to the tools, resources and moments that employees need to
get their work done to the highest possible standard.
 This is also about connecting to the overall strategy of the
business, its purpose, mission and values, and the overall business
objectives. If people feel like they belong, it’s often because leaders
have connected people to experiences that count and make a
difference to their everyday work life.

COMMUNICATION

EX is a collective and cross-functional endeavour. It depends on

people and leaders working well together. This means that
communication will need to be solid up and down the structure.
Communication with employees is vital if they are to maintain a
healthy connection to their companies, but what type of
communication are we talking about?
Well, the style that separates the best from the rest is human-
centred communication. This capability integrates things like
empathy, compassion and care into a leadership style that generates
positive emotions and better outcomes. It is demonstrated
throughout the leadership infrastructure – 1:1s, team meetings and
any situation that involves employees. The human really does come
first and all else flows from there. Being human centric is a
capability, a practice and even a philosophy. It has an instant and
transformative effect on people. While communication tends to
work its way up to the top of the management development list,
there are some nuances in what we will be developing in this regard
and what exactly leaders are communicating in the context of EX.
HEX leadership – connected, co-created and
communicative
To demonstrate how we can use the HEX within the design of the
team experience, we’ll run through a tangible example. A make or
break process within business is the onboarding experience. Those
first 90 days after appointment go a long way to determine whether
employees will be successful in their roles. It is business critical that
we get this experience right as managers. We’ll be thinking about
and designing around all the major moments in this journey,
including day one, first week, first month, first team meeting, first
customer contact, first 1:1 and all the other milestones in those early
stages of a new job. Let’s explore some areas to consider around this
experience.
TABLE 8.2 Using HEX leadership skills for
onboarding
Skip table
Human We will need to ensure this is a human-centred
process and is more like a welcome experience
than a bureaucratic, management-centred process.
We seek to personalize the experience where we
can and use information gleaned from the
recruitment process to inform its design, and to
meet and exceed expectations. We give people
space and support to get settled while being on
hand and accessible throughout the experience.
Leadership We’re present in this process at key moments to
effectively connect new colleagues to the
organization, relevant networks and their team
mates. We communicate key messages that role
model the organization’s values and give clear
direction on the company’s mission and purpose.
Co-creating early objectives is also a key part of the
leadership playbook.
Structure We plan the key stages of the experience and
design interventions that deliver a smooth and
cohesive experience. We connect up to
organizational resources and experiences, and
design additional elements locally to successfully
enable and onboard new colleagues. We guarantee
a strong and supportive structure around the new
employee – it becomes a platform for future
success.
Technology We can utilize technology (where impactful) to
connect, co-create and communicate with new
team members. Generally, we consider how and
 what technology is available within our teams to
unleash productivity in their EX and ensure it is as
seamless as possible. Companies have invested
heavily in platforms and products that serve
employees; managers can integrate these into their
teams and encourage their usage.
Workplace The workplace is the spaces and places that enable
our best work. It is no longer just an office.
Managers can design (in the context of their
organization’s approach) a more modern and
flexible working style to suit team members and
their personal circumstances. It’s outcomes that
matter and we can look at how the workplace
serves team members in the best possible way.
Community A sense of belonging doesn’t happen by accident. It
happens by design. Managers can facilitate events,
social gatherings and spaces that allow people to
connect at a human level. Celebrations,
milestones, recognition events and many more
besides create an immersive and engaging team
experience. A group of people that work together
and a team are two different things. We need to be
more intentional about creating the latter.

Using the HEX model alongside the key management capabilities of

connection, communication and co-creation that we’ve discussed
will ensure the team experience is one that drives business growth
and performance over the long term.
SUMMARY

Explore leadership performance in relation to producing

outcomes. What needs to change? Where are the gaps in
capability? How can this be actively addressed within the EX
strategy?
Assess the strength of the ‘triple A’ leadership enablers at your
organization to determine what more needs to be actioned to
create the right alignment, atmosphere and accountability
within and across leadership roles.
Reflect on the 3C leader capabilities for EX and consider how to
consciously develop them across all leadership levels.
Continue to encourage leaders and managers to use the HEX as
a tool, lens and resource to design and deliver positive team
experiences.
09
Aligning leaders to
employee
experience strategy
The first thing to position on this is that there is no separation of
leaders from the employee experience (EX). They are instrumental
to the success of EX. EX practitioners will inevitably arrive at the
conclusion that the vast majority of the most important touchpoints
with employees are out of their control. Instead, they are directly
under the stewardship of a company’s leaders. While the EX strategy
is a powerful enabler of EX and organizational performance, leaders
will need to form a core part of it if the organization wishes to
facilitate positive relationships from top to bottom of the
organization. The EX strategy can be extremely helpful in this
regard by scaffolding up the policies, practices and platforms that
enable managers to play their vital roles in EX to a high standard.
Why is it that leaders have such a powerful impact on EX? In one
study I was involved with across multinational corporations, we
analysed decisive data that indicated what we knew to be true –
leadership is an EX concern. Where leaders were equipped, capable
and reliable in the eyes of their employees, the team performed
much better than teams where that was not the case. Leaders with
human-centric capabilities delivered high levels of trust,
engagement and productivity. Much of this revolved around their
own competence and capability levels – they were role models for
morals and values that are important to employees. This is why
leadership is viewed, rightly in my view, as a hygiene factor for a
healthy organization.
The lived experience is the compelling evidence that demonstrates
the quality of EX, and leaders are the primetime architects of that
experience. With all the leadership infrastructure at their fingertips,
leaders have the ability to enhance and enrich the EX, and this
makes the leadership community the real frontline of EX, not HR or
any other support function. Indeed, a redesigned team experience
can make all the difference in performance terms. I’ve seen this so
many times in practice. A change of leader signals a new era for
people and performance. There have been instances where nothing
about the organization infrastructure around a team has changed or
improved, but a change in leader brought about major uplifts in
morale, performance and engagement. This was centred on the
practices, principles and behaviours they bring into play – the
accountability and alignment they direct, and the commitment to
help people fulfil their potential. This permeates their people-
centred approach and draws on compassion, empathy and social
support as the fuel for high team performance.
This is not vague or abstract leadership. It’s leadership that meets
the moment. It’s a capability set that energizes, inspires and delivers
in the present moment. Indeed, many of the top leaders have
presence because they are fully present at the real moments that
matter to people. They are the organization’s first response to any
situation or scenario. Rather than detail why this is the case, I’d like
you to consider the best and worst leader you have ever encountered
in your career. What was the difference between the two? Your
answer will quickly demonstrate the practical human-centric
leadership that is required and suited to elevate EX performance,
and this is exactly the type of leadership an organization needs to
promote, encourage and replicate more consistently, more
intentionally across the business through whatever means
necessary.

Leading the anywhere workplace

The organization is not what it used to be and the workplace has
been radically altered post-pandemic. One major area of change has
been the broad roll-out of ‘work from anywhere’ business practices.
This will prove to be an important part of the EX strategy depending
on what context a company is operating in. Clearly, it is a key
requirement, desire and perhaps even a red line for talented workers
– the ability to make grown-up choices about where work takes
place. It used to be the office or the facility, now it’s increasingly
wherever work can be done and enabled so that people have more
control over their lives; and ultimately, it is a calculated decision to
unlock higher productivity and performance. Workers and
organizations have a vested interest in making these policies work
out in the long run, and it’s an area we’ll need to hone in on within
the make-up of the EX strategy.

CASE STUDY

If there is one company that wants to see more nomadic and flexible work
trends emerge globally, it’s Airbnb, the juggernaut home rental company.
Not only does it have a huge business interest in this mode of work, but it is
also well-positioned to help it enable it globally. I spoke with Airbnb’s
people chief about this, and the momentum behind the company’s ‘live and
work from anywhere’ approach is gathering pace and is encouraging others
to follow suit. The CEO, Brian Chesky, once again fronted and led this move
after a strategic conversation about where the world was heading over the
next 10 years, and the company built a design to fit that future – connecting
people to business strategy and changing societal conditions.
 Airbnb’s design principles for living and working anywhere are pretty
clear.

1. You can work from home or the office.

2. You can move anywhere in the country you work in and your
compensation won’t change.
3. You have the flexibility to travel and work around the world.
4. We’ll meet up regularly for gatherings.
5. We’ll continue to work in a highly coordinated way. (Airbnb, 2022)
What is positive about this is the clarity it provides to employees and
workers. And it demonstrates the company is more than willing to move
with the times, and of course, is astute and savvy in connecting the EX, once
again, to the broader ambitions of the company to change the way the
people experience the world. Following the announcement of its ‘live and
work anywhere’ policy for employees, Airbnb reported that more than
800,000 people visited its careers page.

A connected workplace (and world)

It is tempting to restrict holistic thinking to the internal world of an
organization, given there is so much there to coordinate and
connect, yet the example from Airbnb shows us what EX is all about
– going beyond the line of sight to actively engineer and take control
of the future. Invariably, this means that those that tend to be high
performing on EX are also the pioneer companies in the economy –
seeking out and building trends into their business models with
rapid and immediate effect. They don’t wait for validation – they
test which way the strategic wind is blowing and then they go all-in
and set their sail for successful outcomes.
What are we doing here? We’re mobilizing the equivalent
populations of small cities, towns and villages to live in a completely
different way and experience their and the wider world in a whole
new way too. This will inevitably take the strategic dialogue beyond
the borders of a company, given there are so many dependencies
when considering how to enable workers in this way. Front runners
like Airbnb will be keen to see national and international
government policies that are friendly to organizations pursuing an
anywhere workplace model as part of its business strategy,
especially when it comes to global mobility.

CASE STUDY
Dell

Dell, a company I worked with recently, has embraced the anywhere

workplace to full effect. This has been an evolving approach over the last
decade for the company and some excellent foundations were already in
place. They were more than ready to flip the switch into an anywhere
workplace – where people can design their own style of working.
Nonetheless, its progress has stacked up some serious wins for people,
planet and performance.
 The Connected Workplace program, designed to harness the benefits
of remote, hybrid and flexible work, is afforded to Dell staff and has
‘saved an estimated 42 million kWh of energy. 35,000 metric tons of
CO2e per year avoided from fewer commuters on the roads!
Collectively, working remotely helps Dell U.S. team members avoid
136 million miles of travel per year.’ (Dell Technologies, 2023) Highly
significant results and a transformed work experience have taken
place over time.
The availability of the Connected Workplace program is impressive,
reaching 84 countries worldwide, and is well recognized as a leading
example of remote work by Forbes amongst others.
The company enjoys broad support for its configuration of work, with
94 per cent of employees taking the view that its flexible approach to
work contributes positively to overall company performance.
The majority of the Dell workforce has accessed flexible work
arrangements. (Dell Technologies, 2023)

What isn’t so easy to quantify is all the joyful, and even peak experiences,
that a policy and practice like this generates across a multinational
workforce. From being there at special family moments, to having space and
time for self-care, Dell has positively affected many, many people on
multiple levels. Indeed, shouldn’t a decent policy or experience design do
just that? The other element to reinforce at this point is the fact that co-
creation featured heavily in its design – Dell threw down the gauntlet to
employees to take more control and ownership over their days by designing
their ideal work configuration. It has propelled into and through a
pandemic, which only served to more deeply implement and accelerate this
way of working as a company. Perhaps this goes some way to explain why
(out of a sample of 30,000 workers/employees) 88 per cent would
recommend Dell, and to further demonstrate the connection between the
CEO’s leadership and EX, 96 per cent of respondents approve of the CEO,
Michael Dell (see the Dell company page).

Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes

A big driving force and enabler of the last example is an
organization’s relentless focus on outcomes. It simply has to be that
way if the model of work is configured in such a way that means
people are less present in the physical workplace. There has to be a
real commitment to trust and an ongoing (and open) conversation
about performance, with any related tweaks or changes taking place
to ensure that people and the business are (and remain) fully
aligned. That’s just sensible business, but business that is built and
led through clear values that people see in their everyday experience
of work. Given this, EX strategy will be impacted as we start to move
away from an incessant focus on inputs and how people use their
time. Work and time have a very odd relationship, and have formed
this exclusive partnership over the years to coerce and control
people in the context of Monday to Friday. I’ve never really
understood this aspect of work. Do you pay people for the time they
spend inside your company or the value they bring to it? It’s a
simple answer in my view, but leads to sometimes complicated
practices of reporting, managing and governing time. Micro
management is now frowned upon to a strong degree in
management circles – leaders still do it, but it is tolerated less by
businesses now and it remains deeply unpopular as an approach.
Yet I can see a time where macro management could replace it
through mass monitoring of employees and their keystrokes and the
time they use on jobs. This is what we’ll need to guard against in the
EX strategy and the focus on outcomes is a good start.

The 007 principle and practice

In managing the complexity that emerges with all manner of people
working in all manner of ways, businesses will need to get
exceptionally good at keeping things simple, keeping things focused
and keeping performance on track. Too many forms, too much stuff
to remember or too many systems to navigate kills performance.
People get lost in the system and leaders can sometimes be lacking
in capabilities that hold everything together in a positive and
supportive way. For that reason, when considering EX performance
holistically, we’ll need to challenge leaders to deliver clear and
tangible returns.
Increasingly, data from pulses and surveys is at leaders’ fingertips
in some form of dashboard, but the problem is converting that data
to real impact and improvement. They may get a number of areas to
improve all at once and it will knock leader confidence and
commitment to making a good change. Data on EX and their
leadership quality can overwhelm people even if it is presented in a
smooth and pretty way.
In working with global businesses, the limelight must be on a
constant always-on cycle of action and experimentation. Data and
insights are fantastic to have, but we also need to do as much work
to deliver impact. Now, this can be done through incentives and
reward, of course, and those are strong areas to explore within the
EX strategy to encourage the right people-centred leadership
behaviours. We need to respect, recognize and reward the things
that elevate the EX. Central to this is the core need to align the
entire leadership community and what they actually do in practice
to lead the EX.
As a summary of the way businesses are starting to deal with this
is the 007 principle and practice, which articulates what is
happening in the large, complex global businesses I tend to work
with. We can’t expect leaders to do everything, but they can do
something to affect EX performance. In this case, the summary is
based on:

Three objectives & three outcomes + one giant leap (stretch

objective and outcome) = improved EX performance

At an organizational level and alongside the refreshed set of

leadership capabilities, the challenge must be taken up by all levels
of the company to co-create and contribute to a better employee
experience. The main thrust of application no doubt is fixated within
the company narrative around what leaders can do to improve the
EX, but as we learnt from Dell and others, it’s equally about how
employees can be enabled and supported to improve and take
responsibility for their own EX, one which sustains business goals
and performance in the long run. Timing is important here too. We
know the perils of controlled time when it comes to working hours,
yet having no structure around a goal is a quick way to ensure it is
not achieved and no outcome is delivered. So companies are still
thinking very much in terms of time when it is discussed in the
context of objectives, and this very much relates to quarterly, one-
year or longer-term timelines. That’s the reality, though EX is
challenging practitioners and leaders to think much more in
strategic timelines (+3 years) for their overall programmes of work.

In-moment impact
Leadership is demonstrated through moments that mean something
to people. It is an everyday practice that supports people to fulfil
their potential. What has risen to the top of the leadership agenda
over recent years is the core capability that is wrapped around a core
need to generate and incubate more human-centric practices within
the global management community. No manager has escaped the
challenges and opportunities that the pandemic brought. Suddenly,
managers were expected to be more human, more compassionate,
more empathic alongside doing all of this in remote working style.
There have been great successes and great failures as managers
grapple with these emerging capabilities, but when all is said and
done, it comes back down to moments – moments where human-
centred leadership makes all the difference.
In-moment leadership is powerful beyond measure when it comes
to meeting the expectations of employees, building strong
relationships and keeping businesses right on track. Yet, to truly
develop a robust approach to employee experience, there will be
work to do across the organization, and especially around the day-
to-day lived experience of the team.
This is where leaders become experience architects. We can
define, design and deliver a team experience that gets the best out of
people while creating a sense of belonging and togetherness that is a
critical building block of exceptional teams. Throwing a bunch of
people together, dictating objectives and running things purely in an
organization-centric top-down way is rarely sustainable or healthy,
and is often not very enjoyable to be part of. This is where we can
make a mark and leave a legacy. To do this, we’ll need to add some
holistic thinking to our human-centred and experience-driven
approach to leadership. The great opportunity here is to align our
strategic and daily leadership actions to amplify our impact. Rising
up from the moments and touchpoints with employees, we can see
all the key elements that join up to meet and enable them.
Helping us navigate this is the holistic employee experience
(HEX), which I presented in Employee Experience (Whitter, 2022).
I use and continually reference the HEX with the world’s leading
companies to deliver strong business-growing employee
experiences. It is made up of six elements that surround the most
important aspects of business strategy – the purpose, mission and
values of the business. I call this the Truth and it is managers who
bring this Truth to life through the experiences of their teams.
Indeed, leaders that successfully connect, communicate and co-
create the Truth into the business deliver more profitable,
productive and happier teams.

The Make a Difference (MAD)

milestones for managers
Assessing the strength of the EX across an organization makes us
think a lot about manager performance across the employee journey
and all the milestones that matter. Each milestone has the potential
to make a difference. Indeed, the MAD milestones present many
opportunities to demonstrate responsible and present leadership
that cuts through all the noise and resonates deeply with people. To
understand these milestones, the moments contained within them,
we will need to explore the relationship between the system
(organization), the managers (leaders) and the people (workers,
employees, partners). Management is not leadership and vice versa.
There are many examples of managers who can competently
manage things, yet leadership takes us several steps beyond that to
create solid relationships and outcomes that exceed the normal
performance levels.

Navigating key relationships and major

connection points
The organization, through senior executives, sets the tone for the
overall company when it comes to the purpose, mission and values
of the business. The organization is also the great enabler of EX
through support functions such as HR, marketing, IT,
communication, estates and facilities. So, we can understand all the
major touchpoints within these functions that the organization has
to take care of. This covers a wide range of activities such as
accessing strategic and operational information/knowledge, using
communication and productivity tools, learning and development,
employee benefits, internal clubs and communities, computers,
travel etc., alongside navigating all the basics of employment like
salary, holidays, health care and sickness policies. There’s a lot to
think about and design well from the organization’s perspective.
Leaders too have their fair share to think about and consider in how
they set up and manage their teams. Indeed, much of the internal
infrastructure is good to have in place to create a positive
employment relationship, yet nothing is more significant than the
relationship that employees have with their leader. This is
underlined throughout all the activities associated with leadership,
including 1:1s, team meetings, performance management meeting
and reviews, and general day-to-day leadership moments. Some
things and elements of organizational life will be accessed by
employees from time to time or when needed, but leadership
remains an ever-present within EX. It’s important we get it right
above all else in my view.
EX is a team game, so employees have a strong role to play in the
future development, growth and success of their organization. In
this sense, EX is not a done-to approach. It’s experienced far more
effectively as a ‘working together’ leadership approach. Employees
are co-producers of their own experience and their role within this is
not a passive one. Sitting back and complaining about the EX is not
an option when employees are positioned in this way. Indeed, they
are the critical stakeholder in EX.

Mobilizing positive employee experience

leadership
So, we have the organization, leaders and employees all interacting
across the EX every day, with lots of potential touchpoints and
interactions being activated along the way. But are they positive
interactions? Are we deepening our connection with people or are
we letting these moments get in the way of human and business
performance? To help us focus, a great first move in employee
experience leadership is to identify and establish the key milestones
that employees will encounter during their time with a company.
These milestones, or moments that matter, are big opportunities to
build a sense of belonging, create a strong impression and ultimately
maintain a positive relationship that fuels performance and
productivity.

EXAMPLES OF KEY MILESTONES

Recruitment and selection events and interviews

Onboarding experience, including appointment letters and
communications, the day one experience and the first 90 days of
employment
Growth experiences, including promotions, lateral moves,
mentoring assignments, learning and development experiences
and recognition events
Performance management events (1:1s, quarterly meetings,
team meetings, annual reviews, town halls, etc.)
Victories – first wins, achievements and successes
Transitions to new roles, new teams, new challenges or new
organizations (including retirement, restructures or
redundancies)

As we can see, there is a lot to think about, but this really only
scratches the surface. As part of their EX strategies, organizations
are now looking at how to support their employees as they reach
personal milestones outside of the workplace and are developing
policies to deal effectively with those types of moments. Companies
are choosing to assist a wide range of life events, and there is a high
level of personalization in how businesses and managers help. This
includes things like:

flexible/hybrid work patterns to support people with their

other responsibilities (employees are often parents or carers)
or preferred work styles
birthdays, marriages, house moves and other major events and
celebrations
leave provision including maternity, paternity, marriage,
sabbaticals and career breaks
illness, absence and personal crisis points.

The great resignation or trends like ‘quiet quitting’, which means

people essentially down tools, check out, disengage and stop
working in the interests of the organization, are very often a direct
consequence of not taking the employee and human experiences
seriously enough across all of these milestones that impact people.
Employees will never forget how you treated them on their worst
days, and they will also always remember how you supported them
to deliver their best days. How we, as leaders, respond and
demonstrate care, concern and empathy at these critical milestones
goes a long way to determine the outcomes that people and teams
produce.
We need to get them right, consistently, but what are the key
capabilities that will help us to navigate the EX and all of these
milestones? Given the number of potential interactions that
managers have with their team members across the employee
experience, they are always going to have an outsized impact on how
people feel about the team, the organization and their work life in
general. There are opportunities in abundance to create a
connection, to co-create and to communicate with people in a way
that enhances their EX.

Meeting the moment

Where can managers influence and really demonstrate their
leadership capabilities to the fore? In many instances, the moments
are right there in front of us, and it may require a significant shift in
leadership style to affect them to a great extent. EX changes the
nature of our interactions. As a way of leading, it is perhaps best
summarized as a ‘we, not me’ style of guiding and facilitating teams.
This is at the forefront of our approach and communication. We are
consistently putting others first, not last. Leaders take the people
experience very seriously indeed and they are proactive (and
reactive) to the needs of their teams. In a sense, it’s more thoughtful,
considered and intentional leadership. We aim to facilitate the kind
of experience that support people to achieve their best outcomes in
life and work.
Here are a few practical questions that I find very helpful with this
approach in leading through moments and milestones within the
EX:

Does my leadership in this moment increase trust?

Does my leadership in this moment demonstrate that I care?
Does my leadership in this moment show my commitment to
people?
Does my leadership bring people and the organization closer
together?

These questions (and challenges) will be presented in all manners

across the EX. They will require positive responses if leaders are to
influence the EX and related business outcomes.
We can see how this plays out in real time. The human experience
is always presenting new and unexpected challenges for people to
deal with, and the impact of this leadership style is proven in
moments of personal or professional crisis. In the research for my
first book, Employee Experience (Whitter, 2022), I found that these
crisis moments deliver a massive impact on people. We know they
do because we are all human.
Imagine an employee approaching their manager with an
unexpected and urgent personal issue. This issue is distracting them
significantly and sapping their energy. It is a constant worry in their
mind and it will obviously be affecting their work. Whatever this
issue is, it’s important to the employee and could be any one of those
human milestones we’ve already discussed. The actual issue matters
little. What matters most is our response to it, as it will radically
alter the employment relationship. In this moment, we have a
chance to elevate it to whole new positive levels, or erode it to the
point where the relationship fractures for good. The so-called ‘quiet
quitting’ trend could well begin to scale from moments like this, but
so too is the possibility to create lifelong fans of your leadership and
your organization.
The way to lead that delivers the negative outcome is to parrot
company policy, focus on the work and performance issue, and to
lead with zero empathy, zero compassion and zero flexibility. In
short, we don’t meet the moment. The employee feels unsupported,
disrespected and, quite rightly in my view, will begin to question
their continued commitment to your company and team.
Leading in a human-centred and experience-driven way changes
all that. In-moment leadership unleashes the full influence of
management on the EX. Our job in this moment is to support our
employee, communicate with compassion and understanding, and
to help connect them to the outcomes they need. Taking it to the
next level, we will be playing the role of facilitator in that we will be
co-creating solutions and ideas to overcome this challenge, using all
of the resources at our disposal through the company infrastructure
and also through our significant management discretion. Discretion
is often understated within company policy; it is there yet often
overlooked. It gives us the freedom to do the right thing in the
moment and we can use this wisely throughout the EX. One
colleague I interviewed said she would literally ‘run through walls’
for her manager based on the level of support and flexibility they
received when dealing with a difficult personal issue. She came back
to work having had the space and time to deal with the issue, with a
renewed appreciation of her company and manager. Ten years later,
and she is still talking about that moment and she remains a huge
brand advocate. Meeting the moment makes a big, long-term
difference.
I think of it like this: successful leaders do not win at the starting
point, but at the turning point. Indeed, when I have found a
successful company getting the EX right, it is largely because the
managers within the company are leading strongly from moment to
moment directly on the frontline of the employment relationship.
What is striking though is the way they do it; they have shifted their
leadership style to one that is in service to their people. Rather than
commanding and controlling, they are consistently co-creating,
communicating and connecting with people in human-centred ways
that uphold trust, demonstrate care and maintain healthy
relationships.
Certain leadership in uncertain times
Being certain about the kind of leader and organization you are
becomes a strategic opportunity during times of uncertainty in the
economy. Certainty in this sense means that we can firmly rely on
the leaders around us, but rely on them to do what exactly? This is
where the company can really inspire and shine. It’s a powerful way
to connect values with visible actions, and it can be an EX catalyst
that inspires trust across a business. No doubt, wisdom springs from
awareness and experiences; this is the next frontier in creating a
more stable, enlightened and conscious management team. There
will need to be deliberate and intentional cultivation of awareness
across the EX – how things connect and how leaders can respond
positively within those critical moments that matter to their teams.
This brings about an undeniable certainty across a workforce.
People want to be proud of themselves, proud of their teams and
proud of their organization. Only wise and certain leadership can
deliver that, and increasingly we know that certain leadership
revolves around the EX.

How certain are you that leaders do the right things at

moments that matter to employees?
How certain are you that leaders will use their discretion to
create impactful experiences with their employees throughout
their journey in work?
How certain are you that leaders will co-create, collaborate
and connect with their peers, employees and other key co-
producers to deliver better work?
How certain are you that leaders will put people first (in
harmony with the organization’s goals) throughout all of the
leadership infrastructure you have?
SUMMARY AND ACTIONS
A stifling and persistent problem that I observe is that many
businesses and EX teams are not certain in the ability of their
leadership communities to create and maintain positive relationships
across their workforces. This being the case, how can we become more
certain that company leaders are delivering a strong EX in practice?
Well, certainty is built from the ground up and the top down. The best
way I have seen to do this is to focus on alignment between leaders and
the business. This will naturally create more shared accountability for
EX performance. This is what it will involve:

Reimagined hiring and promotion policies and practices to drive

high-quality human-centred leadership. What a company
promotes creates the future of the business. Many a good
business has crashed because they started to promote things
that didn’t advance the brand and people. A business that takes
the EX seriously will always be promoting leaders who get that
and apply that seriousness in practice.
Updated capability development and immersive learning
experiences that are fully focused on producing higher quality
behaviours, decisions and actions within leadership
performance.
Bold (and sometimes radical) accountability practices that are
designed to guarantee certainty in leadership performance. The
organization will know how leaders will respond in any given
moment because that’s what the company will measure,
encourage and demand.
Incentivizing leadership performance around the EX, which will
reward those leaders who are producing high-performing teams
where people feel like they belong, and sets the foundation for
strong individual and collective outcomes.
Foundational work to strengthen the connection between
functional heads and the work of their teams. I have visited HR
teams that were so disconnected that no one knew what any
other colleague was working on, which was remarkable given
they sat in the same room. HR and support services should lead
by example here and connect at all costs with their peers to drive
EX performance, and role model what they expect to see
everywhere else in the business.
Curing misalignment between leaders and the organization.
Leaders are employees too – there is no excuse not to be
embedded within the EX approach, and any deliberate
misalignment will need to be dealt with rapidly. Employees see
what senior leadership do and don’t do with regard to the
leadership community. It’s a hot topic at all times. The top team
will need to be on top of their own leadership performance in
the first instance to ensure the right values and behaviours are
installed, and acted on, across the EX. Long gone are the days
where senior leaders can take a neutral and passive position on
EX and defer to HR or other functions.
10
Playing to win with
employee
experience
How can and how do we win with employee experience? The idea of
winning is a universal one that is instilled into us from birth. There
is always a winner and there is always a loser. Business is
consistently framed as something we do to win. Win for investors,
win over competition, win at all costs. Yet it is clear over recent
years that something has changed within people and within
businesses on this matter on winning. Winning at all costs is not as
powerful an idea as it once was. Customers, and investors, have
been historically framed as the key stakeholders and audiences in
business, but no more. Employees have caught up and it is
transforming organizations inside out. And it needs to be, given the
seemingly endless exodus of talent across the global workforce and
also given the perpetual lay-off cycle that runs alongside uncertain
economic times. The world has opened back up post-COVID-19,
businesses are resetting themselves and many are now questioning
the wisdom that went into massive hiring cycles. Talented people
have also been busy exercising their options and making new
choices about where, when and how they ply their trades. The
employee experience (EX), therefore, has never been more
prominent than it is right now for those on both sides of the
employment equation.

What does winning look like in EX

strategy terms?
Winning with EX and winning in business can mean different
things. There will be leaders out there that will be perfectly happy
with their organization so long as the profit metric is in the right
place, and the outcomes of the workforce will be of little concern.
This is unsustainable yet is not uncommon. Then there are
businesses going above and beyond with EX – they do more than
the basic and exceed all expectations in building great, people-
centred brands.
Disney used to be a standard in the employer space. It was a
company setting standards in how you build connected customer
and employee experience communities, and how a one-brand story
can really contribute to business performance. It is probably still
getting a lot right in this regard, but Nelson Peltz, the famed activist
investor, recently argued that Disney is no longer winning. It’s an
interesting position to take given that Disney’s annual revenue grew
by 22.7 per cent in 2022 to $82.7 billion (The Walt Disney
Company, 2022). Citing key issues including a decline in the share
price, which was down 40 per cent in 2022, Disney+ not being
profitable and an increasingly unhappy (and actively protesting)
workforce that has been railing against low wages in the face of
spiralling inflation, there is some genuine unease about the future of
the world’s leading entertainment company. A Glassdoor rating of
3.9 out of 5 from employees is encouraging based on a sample size of
12,000, but pay continues to be cited as a major and persistent
concern at the brand. Price gouging and constant hikes in theme
park ticket prices is also painted as ‘nickel and diming’ a path to
profit, which is viewed to be unsustainable and masking operational
performance issues (BBC, 2023). Iger, the returning CEO, has
already committed to a vast corporate restructure, cost cutting and
lay-off drive, with 7,000 employees in the firing line and $5.5 billion
in savings estimated. This is hot on the heels of other major
employers cutting their workforces and reorganizing their
structures, such as Alphabet, Amazon and Meta (Cain and agencies,
2023). All of this is designed to appease active investors and get
profits moving in an upwards direction.
 Why are we exploring the Disney example here? Because, quite
frankly, it is worth pointing out the layers of complexity that the EX
strategy sits in and under. Certain parts of your business may be
flourishing, others emerging and others failing. Winning then is not
easy to define or to grasp hold of in a narrow, linear sense. We can’t
also fix this incessant hire and fire cycle that the economy, and,
more importantly, people suffer from. Even the most progressive
and people-centred brands continue to fall into the same lay-off trap
when profit takes a turn for the worse. It is an impossible nightmare
for EX leaders, especially, given their commitment to building a
trusted and positive community, and to see it happen time and time
again can take its toll. The onus for EX leaders is to encourage
responsible businesses to avoid these boom and bust approaches
and all the carnage they bring, but this cycle is not going away
anytime soon and it is the natural order of things currently – rise
and decline.
So how do we think about this in relation to the EX strategy and
our daily work? Well, as usual, it’s about focusing on the quality of
the experience. Even in the lay-off situation, a strong and positive
brand and company can continue to move forward alongside
positive and strong people who move onto different roles with other
companies. A big part of EX strategy is getting these types of
unpopular experiences right, and they offer a great litmus test or rite
of passage for organizations claiming to be great companies and
great employers.
What are the factors that indicate a
winning EX and company?
In these times, there are most notably three factors that are of
upmost importance in the EX. These are the non-negotiable
outcomes of a positive EX in my view, and we can see how relevant
they are in an uncertain world and economy.

Wealth: Are employees financially stable? Are they able to

meet and exceed their living needs? Are they paid fairly in
relation to their industry, skills and experience?
Health: Are employees physically and mentally strong? Are
they in a positive place in relation to their general health? Is
employee health a high priority and supported accordingly?
Well-being: Are employees well on the inside? Are they in a
positive state of being? Are they enjoying their work and life?

Yes, such basic questions, but how many employers contribute to

negative outcomes in this regard?
The anti-hero employer scenario is not uncommon.

Employees on low wages struggling to pay basic bills.

Employees being pushed to deliver strong performance under
the most intense and stressful conditions.
If an employee’s health declines, their wealth declines, and their
well-being declines with it.
It is a domino effect and the EX will need to address all three areas
in full.
It’s not just about the hours people put into their work as many
would have you believe. It’s much more about securing that feeling
that they are performing well (read: winning in moments, winning
for people) in all areas of their life. Many a sacrifice has been made
to win in specific aspects of life and it is driven by three easy-to-
understand factors and motivations.
 FIGURE 10.1 Health, wealth and well-being

These three factors are, and will always be, significant drivers of key
career decisions, and perhaps also the reason why employees choose
to work at, stay or leave an employer. A deficit in any of these areas
can affect the other areas instantly. We know that challenging times
bring challenging decisions. The recent cost-of-living crisis is a
prime example; people may well be sacrificing their health and well-
being in order to secure a higher wage. There may be little choice in
these decisions if people are going to pay their bills and maintain the
level of life they have previously become accustomed to. Conversely,
how many times do we see talented employees take lower than
market salaries because they are prioritizing their health and well-
being? They find and stay loyal to the employers that cultivate those
things explicitly and visibly within the EX, and sometimes that is
more than enough to win in the talent marketplace, certainly in
more stable economic times. Yet, inflationary pressure on wages
means that getting an EX geared up to serve people across these
three factors is more important than ever.
John Keats, the great poet, wrote that ‘nothing ever becomes real
till it is experienced’, and this is the case for EX. All the brand
promises in the world can be made to employees, but if they are not
experiences for real then they are simply not real (or true), and the
vast majority of the critical impacts an employer can have on an
employee revolve around their health, wealth and well-being. Keats
also said that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’. This quote often alerts
me to the idea that EX is about communicating the truth to
employees. What do companies really stand for? What do
companies really care about? All of that will be experienced for real
in the EX, so employers would be wise to prioritize continuous
discovery within their work on EX strategy, as anything going
counter to what they espouse will be felt strongly by their people.

CASE STUDY
Sanofi: A shared understanding of employee experience to guide
global culture transformation

With an annual revenue of approaching £40 billion and close to 100,000

employees worldwide, Sanofi is one of the biggest companies in the world
and a giant in the pharmaceutical sector. I’ve worked very closely with
Sanofi in recent years to support the company’s work to implement EX
holistically, and it’s been quite the journey to create the right kind of EX
strategy that fully enables such a complex, global business to deliver
excellent experiences. It’s a journey made easier by a new brand that
purposefully installs EX in a way that reaches deep into the organization
and connects genuinely with existing approaches and infrastructure.
Ensuring EX is built up, not just bolted on

Sanofi launched its ‘Play to Win’ business strategy in 2019, with ‘reinventing
the way we work’ as one of four pillars. Co-creation and co-production were
at the heart of this transformation from the start, with a clear expectation
that employees would play a very important part in bringing the new Sanofi
culture to life. It is this, perhaps, that differentiates Sanofi.
The way the company shaped its approach to EX was to weave
experiences very deliberately and intentionally into both the business and
people strategies. The foundation of Sanofi’s new people strategy, rolled out
in 2021, was to deliver a purposeful experience for all employees. It
concentrated attention on clarifying intent, and on developing concrete
plans to embed purpose as part of the lived experience across Sanofi.
That compelling purpose is to ‘chase the miracles of science to improve
people’s lives’. It is the everyday experience of this purpose that matters
most. The EX is often impacted by significant factors both within and
outside the organization that play a role in setting the direction of business
and how that relates to people. For Sanofi, it was a series of convergent
issues in the world that changed the way the business viewed and positioned
EX.
‘We can see how effectively and impactfully the EX can be leveraged to
create meaning, connections, and tangible outcomes,’ said Raj Verma, Chief
Diversity, Culture and Experience Officer at Sanofi. ‘The pandemic, the
impact of lockdown, and intense focus on social injustice really got us to
think differently and hypothesize that the game-changing trifecta for
employees, new and existing, would be diversity, culture and experience. So,
we created EX as a strategic enabler that connects all three drivers.’
Early strategic steps into EX

Like a lot of organizations, Sanofi took three big steps to lay the foundations
for their EX strategy:

Commitment: Securing support from broader leadership teams

including HR (People & Culture) and developing a simple road map
was the critical first step.
Investment: Strategic investment in building an internal knowledge
bank, creating a network of external EX professionals and leaders,
and securing funding for programmes and projects cleared a path to
success.
Communication: Engaging a larger group of senior leaders who
cover key geographies and functions was key to transitioning from
ideation to operation. In a series of live webcasts, they learnt about
EX as part of the Play to Win strategy and what the role of the new
EX function would be across the business. I was brought in to work
with this group and present my findings on the impact of EX. This
engagement extended to the People & Culture function, who are key
enablers of EX and need to know what’s happening and why, and the
role they need to play.

As Verma points out, ‘It really starts with having a clear understanding of
EX as an investment, not a cost in time or money, and building out a road
map based on where the EX meets business needs. That starts with
identifying the most obvious gaps or broken processes that affect people day
to day. Prioritizing work on those gaps isn’t always easy–there will always
be things that need fixing – but if you don’t hit the most obvious first, you
don’t build credibility. And you need credibility to support any business
approach. What delivers that is results.’

Experience: the key strategic people theme

The Sanofi EX team engaged diverse stakeholders representing different

parts of the business to help them think through the people strategy,
ensuring it laddered up logically to the Play to Win strategy. They defined
‘experience’ as a key pillar of the people strategy, with specific focus areas
built into the employee journey: hybrid working, physical workplace, well-
being, recognition, onboarding, attraction and employer brand. This view
on experience was supported by data from the company’s new, annual
internal feedback survey, called ‘Your Voice’. The survey is designed to help
the company prioritize global and local experience themes, and measure
progress.
Demonstrating the multidisciplinary nature of EX, Sanofi’s team formed
close partnerships with two functions that are pivotal to change: digital user
experience and research, and the facilities management and real estate.
They were confident that intentional co-creation would help them deliver
the right employee experience for the business.
One example was the move of Sanofi’s iconic HQ in Paris, France and its
establishment of a new, unified presence in Cambridge, MA, USA. In both
major projects, EX and the visitor journey were anchors in the decision-
making process. I was delighted to be one of the first external guests to
experience La Maison Sanofi – the company’s brand-new HQ on the
Champs-Élysées, in early 2023. It was very interesting to compare it with
the previous HQ, which was a bit colder, more detached and corporate, and
not designed to bring people together.
 In Paris, the collaboration created a New Way of Working change
programme, with local coaches to support the transition for both managers
and teams to a new workplace and new, more inclusive ways of working.
Verma had a unique view on the projects as part of the steering committee,
which used learning from both to establish a new workplace strategy.
‘La Maison is designed to be a “home away from home”, with all the
modern comforts you would expect at one of the world’s leading
organizations. But importantly, it is the vibe or atmosphere that stands out
for me: there is an openness and informality that really sets the right
foundation for collaboration, social interactions and relationship-building.’
That’s what a modern office space needs to do, deliver positive business
outcomes through positive relationships. A great office design connects
people, in person and remotely, and that connection makes a tangible,
measurable impact on performance, retention and recruitment.

Insights to impact

The EX team was keen to leverage external learning and bring more of the
outside in, so engaged with leading experts in the market to help shape the
company’s workplace strategy, then build out, test and co-create with
internal stakeholders along the way. This became the new-generation
workplace strategy, dubbed WorkX.
Sanofi’s EX team sometimes led projects directly, sometimes as co-
creation partners, and often as part of a working group. Through it all, the
holistic employee experience (HEX) methodology (Whitter, 2022) served as
a touchstone in the design thinking process. For each project, an agile
mindset helped the company arrive at minimum viable products that served
as early springboards for embracing the full, end-to-end employee journey.
A multidisciplinary EX team

To achieve impact, Sanofi’s EX function brought together a real mix of

business and HR skills and experiences:

Operational HR: A deep, lived understanding of the end-to end

employee journey.
Strategic business partners: Global, regional and local levels,
including centres of expertise, shared services and outsourcing
partners, to help create a better understanding of the big picture and
what key users would typically be trying to achieve.
Employer brand: Employee value proposition framework (how you
feel versus what you get).
Marketing and brand: Understanding insights and translating
them into deliverables.

‘My role as the EX leader was to connect the dots to avoid unintended
consequences, which means being well networked and able to see the bigger
strategic and operational picture. I also need to use every opportunity to
explain and coach what is meant by EX and the methodology we use, in our
case the HEX model. Otherwise, EX could be seen as just a generic
common-sense activity, which has the risk of devaluing and sidelining our
efforts,’ said Verma.
Verma emphasized that the EX team was not about project management
but a new, business-critical area of expertise, like Talent, Learning and
Development, and Rewards. Clearly communicating that role to top
leadership elevated the exercise of considering the EX holistically. That’s
how the Sanofi experience map took shape, co-created by all key EX
functional stakeholders.
Planning, prioritizing and co-leadership

Sanofi’s co-creating approach has been compelling from the early stages of
its EX journey.
‘Co-create, co-design, co-execute, co-deliver… and co-learn,’ said Verma.
This spirit extends beyond simple collaboration and co-operative projects.
It’s about taking action and getting results in a human-centred way. An
obvious sign of true co-creation is the quality and robustness of the
discussion between colleagues, and the actions that follow.
Co-creation in its truest form begins at the outset of any project or
programme. That’s why Sanofi’s EX team focused on planning and
prioritization as the cornerstone of its EX leadership.
‘Wisdom comes from insight and understanding, and understanding the
employee journey from start to finish was the lynchpin in our strategy. We
gathered intelligence from all corners of the business and beyond so our
decisions could be based on high-quality data. That’s how we can be
confident that what comes out will be targeted projects that directly impact
key objectives of the business and people,’ Verma explained.
This is a sign of strong, problem-solving EX work: when business and
employee outcomes are aligned well. Involving key stakeholders early
helped the team achieve a clear vision and align on goals, and
communication was vital to maintaining early momentum. Neither could be
left to chance. Including Sanofi’s communication partners so they could be
part of the initial thinking ensured a global perspective – one that
considered everything else that was happening across the organization.
All too often, communications professionals are sought out only when
things need to be announced or there is a campaign to run, but that type of
approach misses the mark in the EX world. Sanofi was keen to create and
maintain continuous communications, not just with key audiences, but also
internal partners. To do that, an agile mindset was deployed as needed to
create shared digital spaces to co-work on actions. This especially needs to
be a standard practice if there is a global team in place (which for Sanofi is
usually the case). Communication flows well when the basics are in place,
including the project scope, alignment on desired impact and a team of
people who can deliver. Winning in moments, winning for people
A solid benchmark for EX performance can be found in the moments that
matter. Each moment, when optimized and performing well, can bring
positive outcomes for individuals. When the company helps, supports and
enables people at every moment of significance during each experience of
their employee journey, they can achieve a strong impact on their brand and
business performance. Sanofi is determined to create winning interactions
at all these moments that matter. They are going beyond engagement
surveys and pulse checks, zooming in on ‘moment performance’, which
requires better analytics and a more focused approach to getting quick,
simple, in-moment feedback at touchpoints with employees.
From the micro to the macro, EX is about major impact in the right
places. In 2023 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sanofi launched a
global initiative called A Million Conversations, which is designed to build
trust in health care across marginalized communities. This eight-year
project will deploy Sanofi expertise and networks to listen and facilitate real
change to help create better health care experiences for underrepresented
groups – a €50 million investment in projects and programmes that
accelerate this also includes scholarships to encourage diverse communities
into health-related careers and give them a great experience in the health
care industry. Companies win when the communities around them win too.
 The early work on EX has been so successful that I was recently invited to
work with the broader EX team, which includes leaders from all major
employee-facing functions, to document and help create Sanofi’s first EX
playbook. This tool is being rolled out to all global colleagues and leaders
whose work significantly impacts the employee experience. This was a key
milestone in the EX journey and the brand.
By disseminating HEX thinking across all EX-related projects in a way
that connects to everyday work, the playbook will provide a global standard
to guide each employee-facing project. It will strengthen alignment between
all colleagues working on EX, and grow Sanofi’s EX capabilities within the
business through an aligned community of practice. Sanofi’s approach to
EX, from moments to major milestones, is a strong example of EX being
applied and considered holistically to ensure that winning with EX is
sustainable and becomes a very successful habit across all parts of the
business.

Imperfect actions, but positive

progress
A main difference that EX brings to the forefront within a large and
complex organization is a tolerance for imperfect actions. The
philosophy behind strategic leaders is less about getting things right
first time, but much more about doing the right things. This involves
a high-level iterative approach, but even before that, it demands a
basic commitment to trying new things and seeing what happens.
This naturally creates a more fluid strategy, yet it is also a more
certain one. People can be certain that the organization is not
inflexible about things that do not work in practice and they will be
focused on creating solutions that work better. Seeing organizations
that are keenly and firmly committed to EX performance rather
than attempting to force experiences on workers that not only don’t
meet their expectations, but may also not be truly aligned to what
will really help deliver those core business needs, is a very refreshing
approach indeed.
The learning experience is something that ties in very closely to
the EX strategy too. Listening, feedback and action cycles will
continually influence the direction of strategic initiatives once they
hit the real world. The old way perhaps was to carry on regardless
and drive through strategic projects until they were fully operational
despite negative feedback from employees or even spiralling costs,
especially in relation to technology projects, but if progress is not
being made then EX leaders will have serious questions to ask about
their overall approach and how they design and commission things.
This is where some significant learning takes place – at a strategic
level. We’ll be in constant learning mode about EX performance at
all times, but we’ll also need to consider our individual performance
more closely as EX leaders. I’ve observed a mixed picture in this
regard.
 EX leaders can be tempted to make safe decisions that are not
necessarily the right ones for the business. They may not be
prepared to take a risk when investing in innovative EX products or
services, or programmes where the value is not immediately clear.
While I understand this, I have also observed many instances where
EX leaders and strategists took intelligent risks to elevate the EX at
their organization, and they ended up with real success stories on
their hands, or signature experiences that transcended their
businesses. These can be small or big ideas and investments, but
what we need to do is create space for us to consider radically
different ideas that go against the norm and that are aligned to the
brand Truth of the organization. It is in these places that brands can
differentiate their EX from others and move away from the vanilla,
plain and bland EX, which is going to be an important and ongoing
strategic concern.

The strategic atmosphere around

employee experience
What does winning look like? Well, that’s a matter for each brand to
consider for themselves, but it will look distinctive and unique. It
will be memorable in its own way and the personality of the EX at
any given company will be different. In saying that, we don’t live in a
vacuum, and there will be things working really well at other
companies that we may be inspired by and will make a lot of sense
to learn from and apply. Yet, how we do this matters a lot, especially
in communication terms. Each and every improvement or design
must be fit for the context of the community, and it really ought to
build on the company story and employer brand. The EX is the
major part of the employer brand. It is the substance of what is
promised to employees and prospective employees. It guides
perceptions, but also has major impacts on overall brand
performance. Building a holistic EX story allows companies the
freedom to showcase and highlight the real employer brand as it is,
not how companies market it to be. These two are often not the
same, and this leads to unmet expectations and simmering
resentment. What was promised was not delivered. This is not
winning, and this is not even playing to win. In a similar vein, this
chapter is not called ‘Playing to be average’ for very good reasons.
No one really wants to be associated with average or just good
enough.
People want to associate with companies that are doing exciting
things, making positive impact in the world, and actually go above
and beyond for their workers and employees. That is far from
average. Indeed, those activating the EX are in their own leagues
and are consistently held to be well above the average in their
respective sectors.
In more practical terms, this is why EX teams and projects
become bastions of energy and excitement. Finally, the EX is given
the attention it deserves and it is always active and engaging work to
get involved with. This ambience and atmosphere around EX will
not happen by accident, and this is where the EX leader and team
will come into their own by directly shaping it into being. This, in
part, is what winning with EX means.

Employee experience is in the memory

business
Every leader, professional and employee has access to their own
memory, which has documented their organizational and career
lives. People are the residual outcomes of their experiences in life,
and memories will always be there in the background creating
perceptions and reality. The organization also has its own collective
memory card and it is built on what the organization does, what it
designs, and how people feel and think about those things. EX then
is most definitely in the memory business. It’s a fact often
overlooked in EX strategy, but it is a fact nonetheless.
In my career, I have often referred to institutional memory in my
work. Organizations are made up of people, and people have long
memories. These memories come into play and create a rich tapestry
of an organization’s progress and plight, and employees access this
memory often when considering their thoughts and feelings about a
company and their organizational behaviours. They consider how
the company is designed, the decisions senior leaders take, and all
the data that unlocks a real picture of performance across all parts of
the business. So as strategic leaders we will need to be mindful of
these memory drivers at all times and how they interact and
integrate with each other, if our strategies are going to be shaping
the right narrative and prioritizing the right actions.

SUMMARY
We will know when we are winning when the collective and individual
memories of an organization combine to create positive feelings and
outcomes in daily life over the long term. I often ask people about
when they had very positive experiences with an employer – some will
often have to search deeply into their memories to access a great,
tangible example and to find an employer from their career history
worth talking about.
Others are very different. They do not even flinch or think for a
second. The brand and employer immediately springs to mind and is
already on the tip of the tongue. There is no de-focusing in the eyes
and no evidence of any search whatsoever going on in their minds.
They know the employer they want to highlight immediately and they
do not hold back in their praise, respect and admiration for what their
example employer did and how they did it. In almost all cases, the
universal feeling is of connection, belonging and support. They felt
their employers cared about them, trusted them and treated them like
human beings. In my view, that’s what winning in EX looks and feels
like.
11
People experience:
bringing beauty to
the world
A positive employee experience is, quite frankly, a beautiful thing.
It’s something of beauty – to be admired, to be studied and to be
showcased throughout the world. Everything works well and flows
from one moment to the next across the holistic employee journey,
and the people and business outcomes are rich and uncontested.
There is often a coinciding and non-negotiable belief at senior
executive level that business outcomes are entirely dependent on
people so, at the very least, people should have a positive experience
in work. Now, this is far from universal and I do tend to work with
the top-end employee experience (EX) companies around the world
that have earned the respect of their people and others besides by
investing in EX early and heavily. For our EX strategies to create a
thing of beauty then, we’ll need to explore the ugly side of employee
experience in this chapter first.
Some of the things I hear about EX within developing EX
organizations are now well-established themes within people
professions. I stress the word ‘developing’ from the previous
sentence. Many leading EX organizations have already been through
and started to answer these challenges directly. Largely, because as
they have evolved their EX approach, they have encountered
expected and unexpected problems and issues that have halted, but
not derailed, progress with EX. I share some of these challenges
here for reference and we can have a look at them in more detail.
They will, no doubt, be evident in some quarters as we build and
launch EX strategies.

Insights from the frontline of EX

There has been some incredible progress with EX, and the gap
between intention and execution is getting smaller all the time. A
recent poll I conducted amongst hundreds of large employers found
as much, and now a majority have formal EX strategies in place. The
challenges then are designed to prompt even more accelerated
progress with EX and to deepen the related EX practices into the
business. While this is not an exhaustive list, these are some of the
key talking points that come up when teams begin to navigate their
way into an EX approach at their organizations. These are, perhaps,
the things that are unhelpful in positioning something that looks,
feels and sounds like a beautiful experience in work.

1. Consultation is a crutch, genuine co-creation is lagging.

Sincere co-creation, as we’ve discussed at length earlier, remains

something that will be in scope for a much-improved focus when
developing and contemplating EX strategy. It is not exceptional EX
work if we are merely sitting in ivory HQ towers dreaming up plans
to take to employees as a fait accompli. Co-creation is not about
giving employees options that the organization favours – that’s
called rigging the experience game and it won’t deliver anywhere
near the best outcomes a more co-creative approach would.
Consultation is a management approach of last resort. It is easier to
just take pre-prepared plans and ideas to the workforce, but then
struggle to get buy-in over the medium to long term. That turns into
hard work based on a failing ‘them and us’ approach to business.
Better to enable employees to create solutions to their own issues
and problems with exceptional support in place from the EX team
and managers to do just that. Businesses grow through the ideas,
inventions and innovation that comes from the people themselves.
Embrace that, don’t hide from it within EX strategy.

2. HR is still focused too much on HR.

Another ugly truth about applying EX into practice is that HR is still

predominantly focused on traditional HR things. That can be stifling
for EX as newly minted EX managers are expected to work within
the HR organization and on HR-owned polices, processes or
elements of the employee journey. This is, of course, good work to
do and there will be any number of employee journey projects to
work on, improve and develop. For sustained and powerful impact
though, EX leaders really need to be positioned beyond HR and
their roles should reflect a business-wide interest in EX and in daily
work experiences. If we can help people do their jobs better in the
moment with customers, clients and consumers, then that is where
the really powerful and valuable EX can be done. Not unusually, EX
teams tend to focus their early efforts on the HR realm, yet the more
advanced or wise EX leaders will always be seeking gains across the
holistic EX, whether through authority, influence or inspiration. EX
feels right when it is a genuine business and brand leadership role,
and is not indefinitely anchored to any one function. Doing it in that
way avoids EX becoming viewed as simply one function’s
responsibility. The truth is that EX is a business responsibility.
I’ll again reinforce the need for deep change within HR, but I’ve
spent a good proportion of previous books on that and my position
hasn’t changed at all. HR needs to evolve with the times – the rise
and new prominence of people and experience functions is an
indicator that this shared point is breaking through, as is the influx
and rapid growth of all EX roles up and down and across company
structures. I said it would take a while for HR to transform and that
is turning out to be the case, but some major brands have already
moved to people functions, and that trend is gathering some serious
momentum. If the substance changes with them and companies
continue to develop EX capabilities across their teams, then those
from HR backgrounds can look forward to a very bright people-
centred future.

3. Managers are not strongly aligned to EX.

We’ve already spoken in depth about aligning managers to EX and it

is one of those things that makes all EX work less beautiful. There
may be a great EX team in place and all support services are playing
their roles in EX, yet if managers remain detached from EX work
then momentum will stall and dry up eventually. It is critical that
EX is disseminated and enabled across the organizational structure
and that managers are accountable for the quality of their
contributions to their team experiences. Capability building has
already begun in earnest across organizations and the economy, but
it still feels a little too abstract and removed from the everyday
experience of work. EX leaders will need to drive leadership
outcomes via any means necessary, including leadership
development initiatives and all the related management
infrastructure including hiring, firing, promotion and recognition
practices. A beautiful EX demands high-quality human-centred and
experience-driven leadership. It’s time to give employees what they
want and need in this regard, and more consistently too.
 4. Alignment between functions and practitioners needs to be
stronger from the outset of EX projects.

It sometimes takes a while for organizations to bring functional

heads together to work on EX. This is puzzling for several reasons.
Perhaps EX leaders and the organization are still finding their feet
and don’t want to appear vulnerable when discussing a new
management approach or sharing knowledge that they are not fully
confident about themselves, but it would be wise to get the ultimate
co-creation team together at the earliest opportunity. When this
happens, what you look at and explore from an EX improvement
perspective, changes, and it can change quite rapidly, as can the
ambition the organization has for EX. It can uplift everything. Yes,
do the research, get yourself briefed on EX and perhaps some early
thinking about where to improve and what to work on, but don’t
hold fast to those things until a cross-functional EX ecosystem has
been stood up on. On behalf of the organization. Why wait? There
will be some projects that get the EX work moving, but there is no
good reason to not start working on EX holistically from day one of
the EX strategy. Co-creation is a big part of the strategy and it needs
to be role-modelled throughout.

5. Technology is never the answer to solve the holistic EX

challenge.

It can be quite an ugly thing to see practitioners jump the gun and
reach for a technology solution in the very early stages of the EX
strategy. I do think EX leaders are guilty of moving a little too fast
on the technology front at times. Yes, they have things to deliver at
scale and technology will certainly have some of the answers on that,
yet it is not wise to rush into commissioning major technology
investments in EX prior to doing some of the really valuable
groundwork. Indeed, technology can sometimes exacerbate some of
the issues that are being faced with the EX and also some of the
misalignment between functions. It is not a beautiful EX if all we do
is flood the EX with technology that employees don’t want or need,
and worse, don’t even use.
Technology, when considered as part of the holistic EX, is
incredibly powerful and can be very helpful in scaling EX outcomes.
Still, too much technology that used to be something else is being
branded EX and repackaged for enthusiastic EX audiences, and not
enough due diligence is going on about the true impact that some
technologies really have on actual EX performance. This can be
easily solved though. Technology is part of the answer, but only one
part of the EX. Technology alone is not what EX is really all about.

6. An emergent Truth and trust gap is under greater scrutiny by

employees.

What companies said they were and what they valued prior to the
pandemic has been under ever greater scrutiny as employees
experience knee-jerk reactions, authoritarian diktats about how
their workplace experiences are going to be, and a total lack of trust
from management layers that have been, at times, completely out of
their comfort zone giving up control and power as employees work
out of sight in their own homes. Employees, rightly in my view, have
become deeply sceptical about the intentions of their companies
because actions have not been meeting grandiose words and value
statements in practice. A positive employee experience builds and
maintains trust. It is, in my view, one of the most powerful outcomes
of EX when applied well. Trust goes up and stays up, which creates
great relationships and related business outcomes that emerge out
of those relationships. It’s a simple formula for EX success – build
trust through the touchpoints and by connecting people to the
purpose, mission and the authentic (real) values of the business. A
lack of trust in an organization makes for an ugly business.
Leveraging the EX to form deep levels of trust within an
organization creates great beauty on the inside as well as the
outside. Employee experience and trust don’t often get tied together,
but they should be and this means that we are more conscious of our
actions, decisions and behaviours at all times to ensure we’re having
a trust-building impact across the EX.

7. Treating people as human beings is still not the business

default. Will it ever be?

Linked to the last point, another ugly truth about business is that we
are still only at the very beginning of our human-centred journey. It
may feel like two steps forward and three steps back sometimes, as
companies react to various pressures and personalities in their
decision-making philosophy. Without a deeply ingrained respect for
people within the business model, these challenges will not go away
fast and it will be very confusing for people. In surveys at companies
that are not clear on where they stand with people, I observed a total
lack of clarity about a company’s intentions and how highly they
think of employees. Let’s be clear, employees should be in no doubt
whatsoever that a company has their back through the good and the
bad times. The EX is an excellent way to communicate that point
through everyday human-centred practices.

8. Short-termism and inconsistency can scupper EX efforts.

Adaptable organizations will always outlast those that are stuck in

their ways. Indeed, a trait I’ve noticed at companies that have
managed to operate across eras and over longer periods of times is
that they will adapt. It’s in-built into the very fabric of the
organization. They adapt, but they are not reactionary. What
remains solid is an abundance of care when dealing with business
headwinds and the impact they have on people. Even when
repositioning and lay-offs are required, there is a display of
empathy, care and respect for people.
Many companies have been found out in this regard through and
after the pandemic. They may have been excellent at leveraging their
EX to attract top talent, but decisions since have left them faltering
with worker revolts, protests and huge disconnects between what
the company says it is, and what it actually is. A people-centred
approach to business and a long-term view on the value of people
must be woven into every facet of the company, and it really needs
to be as consistent as possible. The feeling that an employer cares
and respects its workforce transcends physical geographies. It can
be adapted, contextualized and translated in many ways for different
and diverse audiences, but that feeling can remain strong wherever
it occurs. That’s an aim of a positive EX – to go beyond the short
term and think much, much more about creating human-centred
business that lasts over the long term.
Thankfully there are many companies out there that are
challenging old paradigms and setting new expectations about the
world of work.

CASE STUDY
L’Oréal

L’Oréal is a company that rarely needs any introductions. Valued at $11.2

billion and with over 86,000 employees, it is the most valuable cosmetics
brand in the world, and has also earned its reputation as one of the world’s
top employers. Having worked directly with the company and its EX team
for over a year, I have observed first-hand how this 100+ year-old company
has forged ahead with EX, and crafted and co-created a people experience
strategy that has generated real momentum across the business.
Visionary experiences

L’Oréal has wasted little time in setting its vision for EX. The people vision
at the brand is to be the most inclusive, innovative and inspiring people-
driven company to create the beauty that moves the world. As visions go,
this is as bold as it is ambitious, and it is reflected in how quickly the brand
has progressed its work on EX to date. There is an urgency and excitement
about the work on the EX and as the movement grows and more people
become aware of the work, the vision acts as a compelling and unifying
force that helps connect people, teams and objectives.
L’Oréal’s founder, Eugène Schueller, was the company’s revered first
people leader. He once said that ‘a company is not walls and machines, it’s
people, people, people’. It is this statement that cuts through the most about
how world-class and world-leading brands are created. This people
philosophy transcends everything, and I have seen first-hand at L’Oréal how
this focus on people is incessant and never-ending. It is a part of the brand’s
DNA and it is integral to its success. In this sense, formalizing this into the
company’s first people experience strategy and team was a natural step to
take.

Relentless focus on people, rethinking what’s possible with

employee experience

During those early stages of the EX work, I observed at close quarters the
passion and enthusiasm for improving the lives of people that is now
synonymous with the EX field. In L’Oréal’s case, the people experience has
become a vehicle to enable beauty and beautiful experiences to flow through
the organization, and the EX is being led globally and across regional
markets to do just that. Beauty, of course, is often in the eye of the beholder,
and the company has also looked to personalize experiences as much as
possible to connect with people individually throughout their employee
journey and their daily work. Why can’t we have beautiful experiences in
work every day? Why can’t we create the most people-centric company on
the planet? This burning desire to rethink what’s possible for EX was
incredibly inspiring to witness, and the company is asking the right
questions and challenging people to think differently about the experience
of work.
‘The People Experience approach is about dedication to what is the most
precious to us: our People. It’s about obsessively wanting to augment the
experience at every moment; from the daily ones to the ones that matter the
most. It is a powerful way to re-inject further people-centricity into our
organization,’ said Claude Rumpler.

Harnessing potential, prioritizing actions

Starting with several bigger EX projects, the mobility experience was an

initial target for improvement on a cross-functional basis. A team of
colleagues from across functions were brought together to define, design
and prototype a refreshed approach to mobility. With coaching and
facilitation sessions, the team worked through their ideas, conducted
research and presented a range of options that were designed to enhance
the overall journey. Not only did the project deliver some solid prototype
outcomes, but it was also a test case for how the company can develop
successful multidisciplinary and cross-functional teams to work on EX at a
global and regional level.
What was interesting about this approach is that it immediately set EX as
a business approach rather than locking it up and concentrating on any one
function like HR, for example, which is often the main instigator or
custodian of EX efforts. To be more holistically successful, EX will have to
be applied, designed and considered at the holistic level. The employee
journey and all those associated moments live beyond and between
functions, so this often changes the way companies build agile teams
around the EX. These teams can then operate quickly with flexibility, and
can mobilize actions effectively in dotted lines that connect colleagues and
teams on the structure chart.

A co-creation community – bridging experiences

L’Oréal has developed an approach that enables its leadership team to

strategize alongside a community that triggers actions. Aided by augmented
listening practices and augmented journeys in work, the brand is on the
front foot of change and transformation across the holistic EX, with well-
being and acculturation of people set as a high priority across the employee
journey. These are deemed to be the outcomes that will turn the people
experience into a major competitive advantage.
Co-creation really starts with the first follower. The colleague who is
brought in at a global level to orchestrate and guide the people experience
agenda for the organization. In this case, Claude Rumpler, Head of People
Experience, was the person charged with initiating the people experience
movement that has a long reach into all parts of L’Oréal. From the outset, I
worked closely with Rumpler as he set out to create the people experience
strategy for the brand. I can tell you that co-creation started from day one as
he navigated the organization’s structure chart to map existing EX
performance, roles and capabilities.
The term ‘experience bridges’ was something I coined during a strategic
workshop at L’Oréal because that’s exactly what the company was doing
with its co-creation efforts. People with influence and accountability from
across the EX were brought together in Paris to ideate, share and develop
the people experience priorities and strategic themes. As I reflected on the
wonderful dialogue and thoughtful reflection, I could see in real time that
bridges were being built between functions and people in the spirit of
harmony and a shared interest in the developing powerful people-centred
experiences at the brand. This is fine EX work and a phenomenal way to
enhance the impact of our work on EX from the get-go. Developing strong
cross-functional and cross-cultural bridges is a strategic EX priority, as
Rumpler highlights.
We have been gradually building a core cross-functional squad including internal
communication, digital experience, real estate, facility management and listening; stretching
towards additional functions like learning, IT or data depending on the moment focused on.

It is fascinating to see that the more the teams worked together, the more we discovered and
valued our interdependencies. The People Experience approach conducted us to go beyond
departments, silos and egos to focus on what matters most: ‘our People’.

Beyond moments that matter – people experience dashboard

From the outset, the brand has looked to improve a wide range of moments
across the employee journey, but it has also prioritized and categorized
elements that enhance daily work. How can we make a positive impact in
daily work and the everyday experience? This is a thoughtful question and
takes us far beyond moments and milestones along the employee journey.
This is an important distinction to make, as EX efforts can often be
concentrated on the bigger projects rather than the projects or targets that
can make an immediate and long-lasting difference for people as they go
about their business every day. This is where EX can cut through the noise
and make the greatest impact and impression on people.
To achieve the people experience vision, data was required, and lots of it.
The brand was careful to accelerate this at the start of its work on people
experience, and that has proven a wise move with key projects now coming
to fruition, including global and local pulse surveys to leverage the voice of
the employee at all points in the journey. This all builds into key
performance indicators for the people experience strategy that can be used
for monitoring and enablement across the organization. A big part of this
work is to also inject the brand Truth into each and every moment across
the employee journey – infuse the organization’s DNA (purpose, mission
and values) into the EX.
The key here though is to be in a state of continuous learning that helps
the company to improve and elevate people-centred practices, while
eliminating any pain points that are identified in the employee journey. As
an EX team, the feeling was that they wanted to care even more about the
details – because it’s in the details where great beauty can be found and
experienced by employees.

Workplaces that move people

Being immersed in the L’Oréal experience is about experiencing beauty on a

daily, moment-by-moment basis. It is no surprise then that the brand
already boasts a world-class estate and continues to evolve this still further
with state-of the-art workplace experiences a major part of the overall EX at
the brand.
The EX is a physical and virtual manifestation of how healthy and strong
a company really is. To this end, the brand is consistently focused on
improving daily work outcomes and how people experience and relate to
their workplaces. Another key aspect of this immersive workplace
experience is to honour the past, the heritage and the history of the brand.
In many ways, we build from the past into the present, and that connection
will determine our future. The rich history of the brand is never far away
from practitioners’ minds and this naturally flows through the work of the
EX team into tangible projects that immerse people into the brand
experience.

One L’Oréal

Only a holistic approach to EX can be effective in delivering a purpose-

infused journey in work. Purpose has traditionally been at the forefront of
the brand’s consumer business, and instilling its purpose into the EX is a
high priority. The path to purpose is found in the EX – what people are
immersed in every day – and this is what makes a beautiful and well-crafted
EX. Purpose alongside other augmented journeys such as digital ways of
working, the on-site experience and moments that matter naturally leads to
a more coherent, connected and stronger EX. Balancing the individual with
the brand has also been an important part of this work, and that’s why a
more personalized experience is a foundation stone in the overall strategy.
At L’Oréal, there are six values that people are immersed in every day.
They act as guidelines for people and leaders in their daily work, and help
maintain a pioneering spirit throughout the workforce. They are:

passion
innovation
entrepreneurial spirit
open-mindedness
quest for excellence
responsibility.

The people experience is now positioned as a primary communication

channel to embody, role-model, exemplify and enable these values across
the employee journey.
‘The People Experience approach goes beyond enabling an always-on flow
of innovations to augment experiences. It also turns into a virtuous spiral as
each Moment on the journey has a unique potential to instil purpose.
Ultimately, it is a powerful enabler for our People to blossom within our
Why, in a world craving for more humanness,’ said Rumpler.
Under passionate, committed and skilled strategic leadership, L’Oréal has
already made giant strides in its work on EX. It is maintaining a rapid pace
across a wide-ranging portfolio of EX projects, and real community has
formed around the people experience. The company has been quick to
create an EX team and ecosystem, building experience bridges between
functions, and is growing a high quality set of EX capabilities around the
world. A beautiful EX moves people, businesses and the world to deliver
better outcomes – L’Oréal is at the very forefront in making that a reality.

Going deeper into the people and

human experience
Naturally, as the EX approach grows and matures, attention will
turn to the people and human experience – businesses will more
clearly understand how the employee and human experiences
connect and how that drives performance gains and outcomes. This
is evident because a large number of companies have workforces
now made up of many different constituents. Gig workers,
contractors and contingent workers have very definitely come into
the mix when considering the scope of the EX strategy. For many
though, the main thrust of the work on experiences will remain in
the employee space and they will then broaden out things that work
into other populations. There is no tension or conflict here. It is
simply the evolution of business, and I have discussed this at length
in my previous book, Human Experience at Work (Whitter, 2021).
Not all experiences have to be the same. Not all experiences have to
be standardized. There are business choices in this regard,
particularly when developing the EX strategy. Yet, the main area for
discussion is how a business treats people. Whether employee,
supplier, contractor, customer or shareholder, our work on EX
should further a connecting and sense of belonging amongst all
supporters of a brand.
The holistic EX, certainly in my teachings and advisory work,
transforms into the human experience very quickly. The deeper we
go into EX, the more humanity we will see and actively design our
organizations around. This is very healthy progress in strategic
terms. For me, the strategic focus is where it should be –
experiences and the quality of them. This is the right direction and
companies can also exploit and maximize all the in-roads that have
been made through customer experience practices. Indeed, there
will be a lot to learn from customer experience (CX) strategies, what
has worked and what hasn’t in how we approach strategies for
employees. Yet, as I’ve highlighted before, EX is not merely CX on
the inside. Employees are not primarily customers – they enjoy a
deeper and more connected relationship to the business, and that
needs to be respected at all points.

Beautiful designs, beautiful outcomes

There is still this tendency within HR and other support services to
think of internal work on EX as merely functional and
organizational improvement when it goes well beyond that. The
experiences that are designed or redesigned can touch people’s
emotions, increase their well-being and make the world a less
confusing, more certain place. It is a gift and privilege to do this
kind of work and to observe the very real and genuine impact that it
has on people. Bringing those feelings of joy, belonging and trust
into the organization is not easy work to do, yet EX leaders and
practitioners have the capabilities now to affect things quickly by
virtue of their actions. What does this mean in practice? Well, we
need to starting thinking about the total end-to-end experience of
the employee journey and all of its constituent parts. Beyond getting
the functional mechanics and processes right, we can add some
beauty to things we co-create through more intentional aesthetic
design, more thoughtful connection to the company brand and more
alignment with the people within our organizations. For this, EX
strategies will need a heavy dose of marketing and communication
expertise as part of the co-creation team. The communication, PR
and marketing teams are those that can enhance the reputation and
credibility of our EX work. Not only that, with our efforts we can
light a path for others to follow while attracting the right people to
grow the organization in the right way.
At times, sometimes there is a world-class experience occurring
but no one knows about it, and even employees simply take it for
granted and rarely give it a second thought. This matters in strategic
terms because if people don’t realize how good they really have it at
your business, they may well end up moving to your competitor to
find that out for themselves. With boomerang employees becoming
more and more common, there is a renewed line of thinking within
EX about making sure our communication practices are always on.
The story is always developing and being told, and it’s a narrative
driven by the people within the organization. Employer branding
and employee value proposition (EVP) often sit outside of the EX
strategy, and I’m not sure if that is the right call given the discussion
here and within the field. What would be helpful is bringing EX and
how it is communicated together as closely as possible. There should
be no gaps between the brand, the people and their experiences, and
it is this story arc that will generate interest, excitement and passion
about your company and the opportunity to work for it.

Beautiful experiences, beautiful people

Every person is beautiful in their own way. There is something that
stands out about them, and there is something that defines and
differentiates them from others. The EX is one of the most
sustainable ways of celebrating that beauty and that difference on a
daily basis. Through experiences, we can view our own potential and
that of our organizations. In this sense, beauty is attainable within
every company – we will just need to develop the EX with wisdom,
in the style that suits our people and business, and in a way that
builds a long-lasting connection with all stakeholders. As
practitioners and leaders, this means the people experience at work
takes on a whole new level of reverence. And why not? This is not a
simple body of work. Working with humans is complex and can
often get emotional, and to do this with skill, compassion and
empathy is where EX strategists come into their own. By raising
standards in how we think about organizational work, we can start
to see even bigger opportunities to affect EX performance and raise
ambitions in relation to the mandate and the movement we have.
For EX practitioners are artists, sculptors, architects, painters and
musicians; they help bring an organization to life and create the
kind of beauty that is evident every day and in every way across an
organization. It’s the kind of beauty that’s not just skin deep.
12
Conclusion
No one has ever promised that working on employee experience
(EX) was easy. Indeed, it is the challenge of a career to truly lead
and help to install EX into the organization as the default and
dominant approach in achieving people outcomes. Yet, it gets so
much easier if leaders co-create and co-lead the EX strategy across
the business. If we can share our power with people and leaders, we
can accelerate our progress with EX on all fronts. That’s what an
inspired strategic approach gives us – it puts the EX work on the
front foot and sets the tone for what follows it, and what follows is
usually strong and targeted actions that make a difference for people
and the brand. While great care needs to be taken in aligning the EX
strategy to both people and the organization, not simply one or the
other, the benefits of doing so are numerous.
Answering strategic questions about
ourselves
In digesting all the information and guidance within these pages,
I’m sure you’ll be looking forward to getting stuck in and start
designing the EX strategy for your company. But before you do, let’s
perhaps take a step back and consider what this strategic approach
gives us directly as leaders and professionals. Leading and
developing strategy at an organization-wide level is not something
to take for granted. It is a huge privilege and with our actions we can
have immeasurable positive impact on those we serve and those we
are in service to. There are some things though, as a pragmatist, I’d
like to draw out for your attention.
When starting to co-create and work with the organization on
strategy it can be tempting to be a source of answers – to be the
expert and the knowledge in the room. Many fall into this trap and
assert their dominance and authority over a particular domain of
organizational life. They set out to prove something or another, and
demonstrate their expertise at all points. EX leaders are somewhat
different in this regard and it’s worth highlighting what that
difference actually is.
For me, I’ve spent an incalculable amount of time developing the
EX field through coaching and advising the most senior EX leaders
within a company, coaching their teams, and generally working with
colleagues and clients that are ready for EX. What I’ve noticed time
and time again is that by far the most effective and impactful EX
leaders are the ones who don’t have all the answers and don’t claim
to be experts on the topic. They defer to employees, partners and
others, and set out to leverage the expertise of their co-creation
partners. It is never about them, it is always about the brand, the
people and the organization.

Brand leadership through EX

Strategic EX leadership sets colleagues apart because they do certain
things in a certain way. That’s perhaps an apt sentence to describe
what they do best. They bring certainty to people that the
organization cares, can be trusted and is working to help people
become the best that they can be – in life and work. Never claiming
or wanting to be viewed as some kind of perfect authority, they
present in a way that is disarming, inclusive but also inspired by the
possibilities that EX brings forward. They are the archetype brand
leader – caring for people and the organization that enables them.
There is no conflict in this regard: for people to be strong, the
organization must be strong too. Of course, several more things
stand out about their approach to building EX strategically, not least
their commitment to co-creation, connection and communication to
get things done, but also their willingness to try things, experiment
and fail as necessary. Though their kind of failure is always about
failing forward, learning from setbacks and challenging the
organization to be better than it was yesterday. That approach is not
failure of any kind in my view.
As they move forward with EX strategy, they also light a path and
signpost the way for others into EX. It becomes a shared moment, a
shared movement, and authority goes into the background – in this
sense, EX leaders can be the great organizational unifier, and part of
their approach naturally establishes several important aspects
within their own personal experience.

Credibility
EX leaders develop credibility with their peers, senior leaders and
employees by role-modelling EX practices within their own work,
teams and functions. They do what they ask of others, leading from
the front initially as a catalyst, but they are equally happy to fade
into the background to give people the ownership and autonomy
they need to take full responsibility for EX outcomes. Giving power
away is harder than it sounds in practice, but they are keen to do so
to deliver outcomes and sustain team performance. EX leaders
literally co-create their way to credibility.

Clarity
EX leaders, due in no small part to their obsessive focus on people
and their experiences, create clarity in their organizations. Clarity
about what EX means to the company and its people, but also clarity
on how everything fits together and the related performance of all
those parts. They paint a complete picture for maximum
organizational gain. Yet, at the same time, they ensure clarity is
maintained and developed for employees at all levels too, but this
clarity is more concerned about demonstrating that the organization
cares, is committed and trusts its employees, and can be trusted as
an employer. This is what strong EX work yields in abundance – a
new or renewed perception and appreciation of the organization and
what it stands for.

Coherence
Part of strategic EX leadership is to help the organization make
sense of itself. To hold up a mirror and sincerely ask if this is what
the company wants to be. The truth is found in the EX and they are
very keen to share it with others to prompt change. Leading beyond
their function is normal and natural as they seek to scale up a
coherent EX that is aligned to what matters most within the
organization. A coherent and holistic employee experience that
makes sense on paper and also levels up organizational storytelling
is something that only wise leadership can deliver.
Challenging and co-creating with the
status quo
We have to be effective with what we have in strategic terms.
Whatever circumstances or issues present themselves, that’s what
we’ll be working with. There’s zero point in complaining about
something that will not change. This is where EX leaders excel along
the employee journey, finding ways and means to make those minor
and major gains in partnership with others. Lack of budget or lack of
support rarely gets in the way as showstoppers in their EX efforts –
there is always something to be done and there are always willing
co-creators within a business – we just have to find them and bring
them into the EX fold. This is also what good EX strategy delivers –
positive and productive cross-functional relationships where real
value is created. The status quo in your company – it is what it is,
but that doesn’t mean that’s what it will always be. We’ll need to put
a lot of effort behind our communication practices to extend the
impact and involvement in our work on strategy, but let’s not forget
that the process of designing a strategy is an excellent and wise way
to build healthy networks, teams and well wishes in support of EX
performance. The whole thing about bringing a strategy into being is
that it’s an excellent way to engage with people, learning about their
priorities, and perhaps how they can get aligned and contributing to
the EX strategy from the get-go.
Employee experience is a question of
time
Whenever the concept of time comes up within the organizational
context, it tends to be centred around employees. How can they
effectively manage their time in work and manage it appropriately to
be more productive and less stressed? The idea of time management
though shouldn’t be the exclusive domain for personal
accountability. When EX is applied effectively, it is usually
associated in some way to time. This makes perfect sense, doesn’t it
given that people trade their valuable time for a salary? That has
been the basic level exchange between employers and employees –
time.
Yet, a more enlightened view is starting to take hold in business
and this basic time/money transaction is being challenged within
the EX strategies of today. EX leaders are more consciously focused
on value rather than time, and that is rewiring companies from top
to bottom. The headline-stealing initiative in this regard is the four-
day week. The excitement around this is palpable and it is now being
positioned as a big part of the future of work. What are we saying
here with developments like this? Well, employers are saying very
clearly that time is important throughout life and work, and they are
striking a better balance based on the expectations of workers and
employees. Companies are giving people time back to spend in ways
that raise the quality of their human experience while receiving
more intense and focused periods of work time where things are still
getting done, and, usually, much more besides.
Shopify, the e-commerce giant, has joined companies like
Citigroup, Twilio, Meta and Atlassian in purging what they deem to
be useless and time-draining meetings from the business. There are
now meeting-free days mandated at the business, alongside other
meeting controls that are enforced by a bot about the types of
meetings people can attend and take part in. This takes place at a
time when the company has been downsizing its workforce by 10 per
cent (Nawrat, 2023). It is experimentation with time as the company
continues to learn from its foray into becoming a work from
anywhere organization during the pandemic. Yet, looking across the
EX we can see how much of our impact is based on giving people:

fast internal technology-enabled transactions and touchpoints

throughout the employee journey
timely career design, development and progression support
time to provide feedback, praise and share learning about their
EX
high-quality time with their families, friends and loved ones
the ability to urgently respond to any personal crisis with full
support
the space and time to focus on their well-being, health and
wealth needs
 time with their manager to discuss their EX and experience
real-time coaching and mentoring
the opportunity to define and make choices to personalize
their EX and way of working in a way that enables their
lifestyle and personal circumstances
policies that are human-centred and ensure quality time is
built in to experience the milestones of life/work (maternity,
paternity, house moves, birthdays off, etc.).

The list is endless! It is that way because time is the most valuable
resource human beings have. Employers that respect and revere
time will naturally consider any practice, policy or experience that
takes time away from people unnecessarily. This perhaps offers
some explanation as to why heavily archaic and bureaucratic
organizations are loathed by employees – they are time stealers,
literally, so it’s no wonder employers are stepping into to force
changes through in this regard, and if those interventions are co-
designed with the person in mind and are established to unleash
their potential then even better. The real headline here is that the
EX strategy is a great foundation on which to make the most of time
across the organization; this will benefit the brand, human and
employee experience in more ways than we can imagine.
Every X matters
As the EX field matures, so too does its connection with the other
Xs. The customer, brand, shareholder, community, supplier and
worker experiences all connect and amplify each other. The same
holds true for X leaders too. The more each respective leader
embraces the experience that they are focused on, the more they
realize they are dependent on others. To become a world-class brand
and company, there is an inevitable conclusion that experiences all
around the brand must be of a very high quality.
Several global clients I work with understand this fully. They are
amongst the most ethical companies in the world and have the
awards and certifications to prove it. To become a supplier to a
brand like that, my company was assessed on its ethical standards
based on how we do business and interact with the world. Many
companies protect their brands and experiences by ensuring the
high standard they set is internally also met by vendors, suppliers
and partners. The connection matters and it is increasingly the case
that companies will formally take a stand and defend their
principles. EX is a huge part of this and our wider EX strategy will
need to ensure that the connections between all stakeholders around
a brand are progressing the company in the right direction.
Strategic milestones, moments and
momentum
EX performance, as we’ve discussed, is built from moment to
moment. EX management platforms and dashboards can be very
helpful in making sure performance stays on track and the strategy
is doing what it was co-created to do – affect people and
organizational performance positively. The sense that real progress
is being made across the EX will not be hard to establish if we
consistently keep an eye on the performance of each and every
touchpoint with employees across their journey in work. There will
be a wide variety of owners for moments and milestones along the
journey and EX leaders will need to get really good at sharing and
discussing performance in relation to EX. The great thing about EX
is that performance cannot be hidden in plain sight – the
experiences, from pre-hire to retire – are evidenced daily and will be
significant markers of perpetual progress. Have we simplified
processes? Is it easy and efficient to find the information we need?
Do we have the right tools to do our jobs? Does this experience bond
me more closely to the organization and the people within it? Does
this moment immerse people into the Truth of the business? Does
each experience enhance and elevate our well-being? Is the
employee journey strong, coherent and connected – does it feel like
a compelling story is unfolding? Every strategic intervention and
improvement will create a story, an impact, and a ripple within the
company. In performance terms, we need to ensure that it is a
positive story that is being told and experienced daily by employees,
as this is where strategic momentum will come from – positive
outcomes and the related anecdotes, statistics and research that
brings that to the surface of the collective consciousness around the
company.

Humanizing HR (and all support

services) continues
Predictions about the impending decline of the HR profession have
proven true at a global level and with challenger companies that
have been questioning the merits of the traditional organization and
how it builds communities. These companies don’t steal time from
people, they tend to steal fans and market share from their less
progressive competitors. Which would you pick? A company focused
on EX and a positive employee journey, or a company that continues
to treat employees like kids and payroll numbers? No heavy maths is
required to deduce which companies employees prefer, and
preferences count, especially when talented people are costly and
hard to acquire. The early pace-setting multinational corporations
have seriously shifted the entire profession (and all the roles and
teams within it) well and truly into the people space.
 Getting the HR house ‘in order’ is often a first step with EX to sort
out messy processes or painful experiences that are dealt from HR
services, tools or products, and while it’s a good step, a far more
effective approach for EX, as we’ve discussed through these pages, is
to share responsibility for it quite quickly. If it starts life as HR-
owned and stays there, that is far from ideal. The EX strategy has
the scope to challenge this narrative and positioning, especially if a
strong mandate from the C-suite is also in place. Yet, in saying this,
HR is a vast and well-installed profession, and humans as resources
is still there in the corporate lexicon. Time will change this unless
there is a collective management lurch back to control, authority
and power over people that they once enjoyed en-masse around the
world. I’m inclined to be optimistic about this, given the newer
generations are demanding fast and rapid changes to the
organization as we know it – to be more social, more ethical, more
planet and people friendly. These are positive trends and companies
will have to continue to move with the times.
A lot of talk about humanizing HR relates to the policies and
procedures of the function. There is so much potential for a painful
experience to be manifested directly out of HR policy. Indeed, the
policy and performance suite associated with HR can be problematic
in building healthy relationships, and some often run counter to that
objective. Disciplinary, grievance, capability, absence management
and others tend to leave a lasting impression. At the very least, these
policies need to be humane, but ideally we should be looking at all
these policies to assess what the organization (and its community)
needs to do about them. What do I mean? Well, for those who have
spent a decent amount of time in the EX field who then go back and
reflect on the HR policies and practices of the day, it can be a
challenge not to want to make considerable revisions immediately.
Human centricity and our focus on experiences changes the way we
see things and the outcomes we can potentially create. In any case,
HR continues to have a strong role in EX and we should use that
role wisely to move closer to the business and people – and this
includes the HR business partner model in its entirety. There can be
a lack of alignment with that valuable group of colleagues
sometimes within companies who are bringing in EX as an
approach. As a strategic approach, HR business partners will need
to start seeing EX as a core part of their role and how they lead their
work. For this, capability development is going to be a key
development to drive the behaviours and practices that fully unlock
the potential of EX from project to project.
However, things have already changed in a considerable way.
Historically, if the EX went wrong, it would be HR that faced heavy
criticism. Not so now. EX naturally expands and shares
accountabilities for performance outcomes, both positive and
negative, so it is becoming an increasing challenge for heads and
directors of other functions that interact with employees to avoid
serious scrutiny. The other positive aspect of EX is CEO culpability.
The correlation between EX and CEO leadership is now written in
stone thanks to employee ratings platforms like Glassdoor. Positive
EX, positive CEO is a nice pattern across great brands and
organizations, and the CEO role in EX is significant to say the least.
I worked with a senior HR leader recently. Before finding one of
my virtual certification programmes, EX was not even on their
radar. They’d never considered this idea of experience and how it
can be co-created and co-led holistically. They mentioned that the
programme has radically transformed the way they look at the
organization and its people. There is no moving away from EX as a
management concept – it sticks, it’s effective and it brings about
lasting positive change. There may be reactions, power grabs and
lurches back to a more organization-centred model, but our job is to
keep the organization and managers centred and sensitive to the
quality of the EX on a consistent, sustainable basis.

Present moment performance

The present moment is all we have. Right here, right now is what
always matters. The past and the future live in the mind. A good EX
strategy yields higher quality present moments in work and life. It is
a defining yardstick of overall EX performance.

Does the employee journey deliver when employees need it

most?
Is daily work enabled effectively so people can prioritize things
that grow themselves and the organization?
 Are any disruptions or problems with performance in the
present evaluated and dealt with swiftly by a unified EX
ecosystem?

Any delays or inaction on EX will inevitably contribute to weaker

overall performance. Likewise, any delays in capability building
programmes that develop leaders and practitioners that make the
most of the present moment will affect performance. As part of our
monitoring efforts, it will be a wise move to ensure that all of the
colleagues that interact with employees have what they need to
make excellent choices, excellent decisions and run excellent
projects. A sign that an EX ecosystem is in a healthy state is the
speed at which improvements can be made across the company.
We can test this in real time now. If a pulse survey, or other body
of data and insight, surfaced a pattern of feedback relating to the
same painful experience along the employee journey, how long
would it take your organization to mobilize and fix it? The only
acceptable response is fast or very fast. I treat employee issues the
same as I treated customer issues when I worked in the customer
experience (CX) field early in my career. Nothing should get in the
way of a positive experience. The extent to which your organization
is set up to be agile will affect this greatly, yet there are many ways
to mobilize and scale rapid actions within the business. Indeed, if
the organization looks like a spider’s web, our role is to facilitate and
maintain that web as much as possible in a quick fashion, or the
whole web – its strength and longevity – will be affected negatively.
Once again it comes back to what we can do in the present moment
and in real time. This means that our capabilities, connections and
the communities around will need to be consistently robust under
challenges and pressures.

The AI-enabled employee experience is

here
For many organizations, using chatbots and AI capabilities across
the EX will still be feeling like something beyond their scope and
something that is really rather alien to them. Chatbot market growth
is expected to hit $3.62 billion by 2030 (Straits Research, 2022) and
Gartner has forecasted that 50 per cent of knowledge workers are
expected to be using an AI-driven and chatbot-based executive
virtual assistant by 2025 (Bradley, 2020). There has certainly been
an uptick in chatbots serving the EX during and since the pandemic
as EX services are augmented by AI and chatbots to run
conversational processes and transactions across the employee
journey. The groundbreaking launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI and
subsequent integration with a popular search engine has created
massive interest (and trepidation) about what is coming down the
line from technology generally, and its applications in the
workplace. The announcement of such powerful chatbots that upend
industries and create such a strong reaction from the general public
is testament to their potential for good and for bad. It’s going to be
fascinating to see how this evolves and we need to start exploring
this topic right now to benefit our work on EX while remaining
ultra-focused on balancing humans and technology as part of our
holistic employee experience (HEX) thinking. I’ve said it before, and
I’ll reinforce it again here: without checks and balances in the
system, the connection between humans and technology may get
weaker before it gets stronger. We need to tread very carefully here
in how we strategically augment and automate elements across the
EX.
AI’s benefits for humans could be ‘so unbelievably good that it’s
hard for me to even imagine,’ said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (Roose,
2023). Given these emerging capabilities, I am optimistic that EX-
minded leaders will be the difference here and help translate new
technologies into the work context while maintaining that laser-like
human-centred focus. If they don’t, there will be many more
strategic people challenges on the way, especially in larger
organizations that release chatbots, AI and augmented practices in
an iterative state. The backlash against ChatGPT and the criticisms
it has faced regarding the accuracy and sometimes nonsensical
nature of its output since launch is a good example of why calm
heads and considered steps will be required with such advanced
capabilities like this being unleashed within organizations.
Driving strategic EX progress
EX is now the primary driving force behind the organization’s work
to install the purpose, mission and values of the company into
everyday work and the employee journey. The companies that excel
at this will create greater outcomes for all the stakeholders around a
company. The organizations that fail to act now will miss the boat
and will likely get swept away from the sectors and industries under
a disastrous (and entirely preventable) wave of anti-employer
sentiment. The record-breaking wave of strikes that are going on
around the world offers a glimpse of what more is to come unless
employers get their EX strategies right in the first place. The leading
organizations on the planet tend to place their bets early and
heavily, and the bets they made on EX several years ago have been
keeping them at the top of their markets and in the public eye for
the right reasons.
EX improves everything and the learning experience evolves with
it too. Indeed, the more an organization learns about EX, the more
they learn about the reality of their organization and how it affects
performance. This insight changes what people learn, the defined
capabilities that people need, and it also transforms how people
apply the learning in practice. Learning is applied in a tangible way
to elevate people and the organization at the same time. In this
sense, driving strategic EX programmes will depend a lot on the
quality of the learning that takes place within EX roles, teams and
leadership generally, and how fast that learning is action to affect
EX performance. How quickly can your team turn insights into
actions? This is a good measure of EX maturity and how strongly
you can progress EX within your context.

We’ve only just begun

We have come to the end of our strategic exploration of employee
experience, yet our journey continues indefinitely. There is always
another problem to solve, another experience to improve and
elevate, or another advancement in our understanding of what
matters most within EX. This is the natural order of things, and we
should cherish this work that has the potential to affect so many
people – employees, families, shareholders, partners, community,
society and the planet overall. In my view, the very best businesses
are co-created with people. They are built and maintained together.
Every action, decision and experience has the opportunity to
strengthen (or weaken) the organization and its people, so it is more
important than ever before that we enable people in the best
possible way.
There is now a worldwide community of leaders and professionals
that are moving the EX forward every day through their example,
and through their compelling strategic leadership. They, together
with employees, are literally reshaping what we know to be true
about an organization. Indeed, the very idea of the organization has
been challenged, and EX leaders have been at the forefront of
radical changes and experiments that redesign work and redesign
lives. The employee and human experience are more connected and
more important than they have ever been within the corporate
world. Our EX strategies and their impact will make that connection
ever closer to the great benefit of our companies.
As I mentioned earlier in this book, enjoyment is not a metric that
is often talked about within EX, but maybe it should be. Employees
enjoying their experiences in life and work, and organizations
enjoying strong growth, performance and productivity. These things
can all be achieved in harmony and I encourage you, as an EX
leader, to help make it so through your work on the EX strategy.
Enjoy the experience.
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benewswire.com/news-release/2022/06/2
9/2471371/0/en/Chatbot-Market-Growth-i
s-projected-to-reach-USD-3-62-Billion-by-
2030-growing-at-a-CAGR-of-23-9-Straits-
Research (archived at .
INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures

and tables

8XP framework 53–60, 58

Accenture 107–08
activism 29
campus activism 11
employee activism 23
AI (artificial intelligence)
capabilities 172–73
chatbots 98
Airbnb 100, 123, 124
Algorithmic HR 3
Alphabet 136
Altman, Sam 172
Amazon 55–56, 108, 136
American Psychological Association 20
Apple 100
Atlassian 167
augmented reality (AR) 70–71

Bournville 104
brand 2–3, 12, 13, 17, 56, 94, 96, 101, 134, 171
brand leadership 164–65
brand leadership role 151
employee brand 104
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44
EX understanding 52–53
EX vision 66–67
experience mindset 67–68
holistic approach 45–48, 47–48
L’Oréal (case study) 154–59
people and human experience 159–61
people-centred brands 136
 performance tracking 168–69
rusted and positive community 135–37
team performance 77–79
see also employee experience performance,
planning
Bureau of Labor Statistics data 109

Cadbury 104
Cambridge 141
capability gap 108
capability(ies) 5, 27, 31, 95, 108, 110, 114, 117, 121–22,
127, 134, 170, 171
AI capabilities 172–73
EX capabilities 105, 144, 151, 159
experience mindset 67–68
leadership capabilities 108, 110–11, 113, 114–19,
115, 118
performance 59–60
strategic challenges 44
careers 9, 10, 52, 56, 71, 79, 122, 143, 146, 163
 career decisions 138
career journey 2, 73–74
cross-functional career mobility 6
challenges 11, 13, 56, 75, 86–87, 149, 150, 166, 169,
170, 172, 173, 174
co-creation 114–16, 115
critical challenges 108
employee experience, universal approach 42–43
EX vision 66–67
experience mindset 67–68
human-centred challenge 3–4
in-moment impact 127–28
leader challenges 109
management idea 1–3
organizational challenges 82–83
performance 59–60, 92
strategic challenges 44
technology 152
see also co-creation; employees
Champs-Élysées 141
change management 39–40, 110
ChatGPT 98, 172–73
Chesky, Brian 123
chief people officer (CPO) 3, 9
Citigroup 167
co-creation 12, 27–30, 29, 114–16, 115, 152
campaign 39–40
challenging and 30–31, 165–66
consultation 150
EX, strategic approach 163–64
L’Oréal (case study) 154–59
people and human experience 159–61
co-creation (continued)
performance tracking 168–69
requirements 31–37
transformation 37–39
universal approach 42–43
see also employee experience, ecosystem; EX
teams; experience masterplan; HEX
performance; workplace
colleagues 73, 74, 76, 155–56, 170, 171
brand leadership 164–65
co-creation community 156–57
8XP framework 53–60, 58
employee experience, holistic approach 45–48, 47–
48
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44
employee experience, universal approach 42–43
employee journey 4–7
EX understanding 52–53
EX vision 66–67
experience mindset 67–68
financial crisis 20–21
global pandemic 9–11
mindset 7
organization, map of 69–70
people leaders, emergence 2–3
people strategy 16–19
return on experience (RoE) 92–93
 workplace performance 99–101
see also co-creation; EX teams
communication 8, 9, 39, 44, 53, 70, 98–99, 114, 117,
119, 131, 140, 143, 145, 160, 164, 166
high employee experience performance 81–88
L’Oréal (case study) 154–59
relationships and connection points 128–29
community 2, 6, 64, 78, 93, 104, 134, 136, 144, 158,
168, 174
co-creation community 156–57
community performance 101–03
global management community 127
leadership community 55, 111, 113, 121, 126
practitioner community 107
consistency 37, 46, 84, 86, 153–54
consumer brand 66
COVID-19 pandemic 19, 108, 135
creativity 39
Credit Suisse 19
customer experience (CX) 3, 33, 49, 53, 63, 68, 159,
172
customers 33, 56, 64, 68, 98, 135, 150, 159
cynicism 37

data 2, 8, 57–59, 58, 60, 78, 93–94, 100, 121, 146, 157
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44
EX understanding 52–53
laws 82–87
LUCK 32–37
work and time 125–28
Davos 143
decisions 57–59, 58
Dell 124–25, 126
Dell, Michael 125
design 57–59, 58
Deutsche Bank 19
Dewaele, Tom 105
Disney 100, 136
diversity 6, 17, 50, 139

empathy 17, 33–34, 37–39, 95–96, 117, 122, 130, 132,

153, 161
employee experience, ecosystem
approach 42–43, 50–52
challenges 44
8XP framework 53–60, 58
evolution 41–42
EX understanding 52–53
focus 44–45
and HEX 45–48, 47–48
outcomes 48–50
employee journey 4–7, 8, 88, 102, 103, 105, 150, 155–
58, 160, 166, 169
designs and practices 9–13
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44
employee journey mapping 73
EX teams, performance 77–79
 experience mindset 67–68
holistic employee experience (HEX) model 44–45
MAD milestones 128–32
present moment performance 171–72
see also employee experience, ecosystem;
leadership, reinventing
employee value proposition (EVP) 66, 160
employees
certain leadership 133–34
co-creation, transformation 37–39
communication 117
EX technology 8
EX understanding 52–53
financial crisis 20–21
global pandemic 9–11
HR, role 169–71
insights 149–54
journey 4–7
leadership 95–96
MAD milestones 128–32
 management ideas 1–3
micro management 125
pay scale 21–22
people strategy 16–19
strategy and roles 24–26
team performance, creating 81–88
time management 166–68
and uncertainity 19–20
workforces, expectations 22–24
see also co-creation; HEX performance
employer brand 85, 140, 142, 145, 160
employers 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 136–37, 150
financial crisis 20–21
metaverse 70–72
strategy and roles 24–26
sustainability 137–44, 138
talent shortage 21–22
time 166–68
universal approach 42–43
see also HEX performance
EX leaders 76, 136, 142, 144–45, 164
articulating EX 30–31
belonging 6–7
brand 145–47
brand leadership 164–65
challenging and co-creating 165–66
co-creation groups 29–30, 29
8XP framework 53–60, 58
EX understanding 52–53
experience and performance 24–26
high employee experience performance, planning
81–89
holistic employee experience (HEX) model 44–45
insights 149–59
leadership, reinventing 109–19, 113, 115, 118
LUCK 32–37
management ideas 1–3
people and human experience 159–61
profile of 68
role of 74
 team approach 80–81
technology performance 97–99
time 166–68
workplace 9–13
EX playbook 30, 42, 143
EX strategy, winning
actions 144–45
brand 145–47
rusted and positive community 135–37
sustainability 137–44, 138
EX teams 42, 53, 56, 68, 146, 150–51
performance 77–79
practitioners, mindset of 79–80
team approach 80–81
team performance, creating 81–88
EX workshop 29
EX, evaluations
insights 149–54
L’Oréal (case study) 154–59
people and human experience 159–61
ExecOnline 108, 109
experience masterplan 63–66, 65
actions 69
experience mindset 67–68
focus on 73–74
map 69–70
mechanisms 73
moments 74–76, 75
technology 70–72
vision 66–67
ExpressVPN 72

feedback 38, 49, 64, 94, 116, 140, 144, 171

workplace performance 99–101
flexibility 9, 22, 92, 94, 123, 12, 156
Forbes 125
France 141
future of work 3, 100, 108, 166

Gartner 172
Glassdoor 18, 136, 170
global pandemic 9–11, 16, 24, 37, 71, 86, 92, 152, 154,
167, 172
technology performance 97–99
and uncertainity 19–20
see also HEX performance; workplace

Hastings, Reed 112

HEX performance 93–94
community performance 101–03
human performance 94–95
leadership 95–96
purpose and impact 103–04
structural performance 97
technology 97–99
Unilever (case study) 104–05
workplace performance 99–101
Hogan, Kathleen 37
holistic employee experience (HEX) model 44, 45–
48, 47–48, 53, 59, 73, 85, 114, 117–19, 118,
 128, 141, 165, 172
see also leadership, reinventing
Houser, Dan 68
HR. See human resources (HR)
human capitalism 3
human resource director (HRD) 81
human resources (HR) 17, 23, 70, 96, 140, 141–42,
155
disruption of 3–4
employee journey 4–7
global pandemic 9–11
HR strategy 50–52
LUCK 32–37
metaverse 70–72
people and human experience 159–61
people strategy 16–19
positive relationships 133–34
role 169–71
talent rotation 7
technology performance 97–99
 transformation of 150–51
see also HEX performance

Iger, Bob 100, 136

inclusion 6, 50
information 33, 35–36, 38, 72, 99, 128, 163, 169

Keats, John 138

Kierkegaard 26

L’Oréal 154–59
La Maison Sanofi 141
labour market 20, 24, 92
layoffs 45, 92, 96
leadership, reinventing
alignment 109–10
capabilities 110–11
core capabilities 114–19, 115, 118
quality 111–13, 113
learning and development (L&D) 17
Lever, William Hesketh 104
life bingo card 74–76, 75
lived experience 24–25, 26, 50, 60, 87, 110, 121–22,
127, 139
Lyft 100

MA 141
management
co-creation, requirements 31–37
employee journey 4–7
focus 44–45
global pandemic 9–11
ideas 1–3
mindset 7
people strategy 16–19
strong strategy 19–20
managers 22–23, 37, 50, 80, 81, 107, 171
aligning 151
HEX leadership 117–18, 118
leadership quality 111–13, 113
MAD milestones 128–32
marketing 45–46, 53, 70, 81, 85, 128, 142, 160
Meta 136, 167
Microsoft 23, 37
A Million Conversations (Sanofi) 143
Musk, Elon 112–13
Nadella, Satya 37

Netflix 100, 112

Nike 71

Office for National Statistics (ONS) 10, 22

OpenAI 172
opportunity 4, 9, 13, 21, 30, 44, 52, 59, 96, 105, 127,
133, 142, 152, 160, 174
organization and planet (OP) framework 34
organizational culture 24–25, 30, 75, 104

Paris 141, 156

Peltz, Nelson 136
Pixley 109
Pixley, Sara 108
platforms 41, 46, 58–59, 83, 86, 87, 121, 168, 170–71
EX technology 8
global technology platform 1
leadership capabilities 110–11
rating 18
technology performance 97–99
Port Sunlight 104
PricewaterhouseCoopers survey 22

‘quiet quitting’ 2, 23–24, 109, 130, 132

Redmond, Eric 71
return on experience (RoE) 57, 92–93
Rockstar Games 68
Rumpler, Claude 155, 156

salaries 20, 128, 138

Sanofi 139–44
Schueller, Eugène 154–55
shareholders 159, 168, 174
Shopify 100, 167
skills 4, 5, 17, 31, 39, 46, 59, 68, 74, 113, 161
HR skills 141–42
leadership capabilities 110–11
stakeholders 12, 28, 30, 37, 49, 108, 129, 135, 161,
168, 173
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44

technology 10, 13, 27, 34, 35, 78, 88, 93, 109, 144,
152, 172
EX technology 8
global technology platform 1
HR model 3–4
leadership capabilities 110–11
metaverse 70–72
outcomes 48–50
technology performance 97–99
workplace performance 99–101
Twilio 167
Twitter 112
UK workforce 10
Ukraine 20
Unilever 104–05
United Kingdom (UK) 22, 102, 104
United States of America (USA) 20, 72, 141

Venice 97
Verma, Raj 139, 140–42
virtual reality (VR) 70–71

Washington Post 109

workers 7, 10, 12, 44, 56, 66, 71, 100, 104, 124, 172
co-creation 29–30, 29
human performance 94–95
pandemic and 20, 92
people and human experience 159–61
progress 144–45
talented workers 122
Workplace Intelligence 108
workplace
 area of 122–23
co-creation, requirements 31–37
coordinate and connect 123–25
designs and practices 9–13
employee experience, understanding of (case
study) 139–44
financial crisis 20–21
L’Oréal (case study) 154–59
MAD milestones 128–32
metaverse 70–72
pay scale 21–22
people leaders, emergence 2–3
people strategy 16–19
performance 99–101
positive relationships 133–34
technology performance 97–99
work and time 125–28
workforces, expectations 22–24
World Economic Forum 143
‘Your Voice’ 140
 Publisher’s note
Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the
information contained in this book is accurate at the time of
going to press, and the publishers and authors cannot accept
responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No
responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person
acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in
this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or
the author.

First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2023 by

Kogan Page Limited

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private
study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be
reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case
of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and
licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the
undermentioned addresses:

2nd Floor, 45 Gee Street

London
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United Kingdom

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Kogan Page books are printed on paper from sustainable forests.

© Ben Whitter, 2023

The right of Ben Whitter to be identified as the author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.

ISBNs
Hardback 978 1 3986 0884 9
Paperback 978 1 3986 0882 5
Ebook 978 1 3986 0883 2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Whitter, Ben, author.
Title: Employee experience strategy : design an effective EX strategy
to improve employee performance and drive business results / Ben
Whitter.
Description: First edition. | London ; New York, NY : Kogan Page,
2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary:
“Designing and implementing an exceptional employee experience
strategy is crucial for business success. From a leading figure in the
EX field, this book provides everything needed to succeed.Employee
Experience Strategy explains how to assess the needs of the
organization and its employees, define and build an effective
employee experience (EX) strategy and embed it successfully in the
business. There is also guidance on how to get stakeholder buy-in
from the rest of the business, and make sure that the EX strategy
works for remote, hybrid and in-person working. It also covers how
to overcome common challenges and measure the ROI of the
strategy. Most importantly, this book shows how to ensure that the
EX strategy delivers on the financial and performance goals of the
business. This book is underpinned by primary data, research and
global case studies from organizations including Microsoft, Google,
GSK, Unilever, Tesco and Starbucks. There are also practical
examples throughout and interviews with leading figures who have
successfully implemented a robust employee experience strategy.
Written by Ben Whitter who was recognized by Thinkers50 in 2021
specifically for his work in employee experience, this is an essential
book for all senior talent professionals needing to build, embed and
sustain an effective EX strategy”– Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023021693 (print) | LCCN 2023021694 (ebook)
| ISBN 9781398608825 (paperback) | ISBN 9781398608849
(hardback) | ISBN 9781398608832 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Employee morale. | Employee motivation. |
Personnel management. | Strategic planning.
Classification: LCC HF5549.5.M6 W453 2023 (print) | LCC
HF5549.5.M6 (ebook) | DDC 658.3/14–dc23/eng/20230505
LC record available at LC ebook record available at
Typeset by Integra Software Services, Pondicherry
Print production managed by Jellyfish
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY