The Employee

Experience Advantage
How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces They
Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate

Jacob Morgan
Wiley © 2017
304 pages
[@] getab.li/29189
Book:

Rating Take-Aways

8
9 Applicability • Everyone wants positive experiences, including employees on the job.
7 Innovation • The “employee experience advantage” occurs in workplaces where the employees’
8 Style desires and requirements intersect with the firm’s plan to satisfy them.

• Providing the right employee experience engages your workforce and gives you a
competitive advantage.
 
Focus • Deliver great employee experiences across three work environments:

• “Physical experiences” are based on your facilities and workplaces.

Leadership & Management
Strategy • “Technological experiences” depend on providing employees with the top-quality
Sales & Marketing
technology they need to do their work.
Finance • “Cultural experiences” come from the atmosphere that defines your company.
Human Resources
IT, Production & Logistics • Assess your employee experience based on fulfilling your purpose, satisfying 17
important variables and supporting your staff at pivotal moments.
Career & Self-Development
Small Business • To make your firm an “experiential organization,” you must know the experiences your
Economics & Politics employees want and deliver those experiences. Survey staffers to learn what they want.
Industries
• Experiential organizations have a “reason for being” – an aspirational goal.
Global Business
Concepts & Trends

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getabstract

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Relevance
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What You Will Learn
In this book summary, you will learn:r1) What makes a firm “experiential,” 2) Why delivering a positive “employee
experience” matters, 3) Where you should focus your experiential efforts and 4) How the top firms offer a high-
quality employee experience.
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Recommendation
A 2015 Gallup study found that only 32% of US workers feel engaged in their jobs. To combat this epidemic of
disengaged employees, embrace the concept of providing a positive “employee experience” in every facet of your
organization: cultural, physical and technological. Author Jacob Morgan explains how and why companies that give
their employees positive experiences become corporate winners. He provides vital information – down to a catalog
of specific metrics – on how to make your employees happier while boosting your profits. getAbstract recommends
Morgan’s affirmative manual to senior executives.
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Summary
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Making Employees Happier
Google provides its employee with perks that include free food, concierge services, haircuts,
subsidized childcare, oil changes, car washes, shuttle services and delivery of organic
groceries. Workers enjoy some of these perks for free or for reasonable fees that the
company negotiates with vendors. Google prides itself on providing positive “employee
getabstract experiences.” Pandora, the Internet music service, works out an individual agreement
“The future of work
is about completely
with each employee that identifies his or her job preferences, including what he or she
redesigning our specifically needs, wants or requests in order to be able to work most productively.
organizations to put Pandora managers oversee – and take responsibility for delivering – the terms, conditions
employee experience at
the very center of how and benefits in these agreements. Adobe Systems, the multinational computer software
they operate.” company, totally redesigned its work and discussion spaces, including outdoor patios,
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community areas, alternative workspaces, cafes, open floor spaces, places for games,
meditation areas, a gym and even a place to get an artisan sandwich. Adobe’s rank of
executives includes a vice president of employee experience. Many other companies now
include such officers on their leadership rosters.

What Is Employee Experience?

Employee experience is a vital corporate imperative. It’s shorthand for the conditions
and environment a company wants to establish for its people, the way it thinks their
getabstract lives at work should be. Companies can build in the right employee experience at “the
Companies’
“responsibility isn’t just intersection of employee expectations, needs and wants and the organizational design of
providing a job for their those expectations, needs and wants.” Experiential companies survey their employees to
employees. It’s also
looking after them and discover what they prefer as part of their working lives. Managers collaborate with their
taking care of them.” staff members and work with them to provide what they need to do their best. Such
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companies focus on the pivotal transition points that matter the most to an employee, like
onboarding when they start a new job.

Aspirational Goals
Focusing on employee experience is the natural evolution of employee engagement, now
supplemented and extended. Positive experiences engage your workforce. To foster such

The Employee Experience Advantage                                                                                                                                                     getAbstract © 2017 2 of 5

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 experiences, an organization needs an aspirational goal that helps employees understand
that their work has meaning. For instance, Starbuck’s corporate goal states its “reason
for being”: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one
neighborhood at a time.” A mission statement that sets out your company’s reason for
getabstract
“When you focus on existing can inspire your employees. The most effective aspirational goals share four
employee experiences, characteristics: 1) They don’t concern profits; 2) they focus on your organization’s positive
employees go above
and beyond to help not impact; 3) they motivate employees; and 4) they value “something unattainable” – an
only one another but impossible dream.
also your customers.”
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Experiential Environments
A positive environment has three major facets:

• “Cultural” environment – This refers to the company’s intangible atmosphere and

tangible priorities – what it cares most about. Your corporate culture should envelop
your employees, give them a warm view of your organization and show that you value
them. To create the right corporate culture, your company must convey that it has a
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“What’s the cost of “legitimate sense of purpose.” It should practice diversity and make staffers feel like
treating people well, team members. In the right cultural environment, workers can keep learning, executives
giving them flexibility
and autonomy, hiring a function as mentors and coaches, and the company treats employees well and dedicates
diverse group of people, itself to them.
and giving them the
opportunity to learn • “Technological” environment – Today’s employees depend on technology to help them
and grow?” work together, communicate and perform their jobs. The technology that has become
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essential in many workplaces includes “videoconferencing platforms, internal social
networks, task management tools, human resources (HR) software, billing and invoicing
systems,” and much more. To satisfy your employees’ work requirements, make
technological tools available to everyone, install gear that meets high-quality consumer
standards and fulfill your employees’ needs, not just your business requirements.
• “Physical” environment – Pay attention to the spaces where your staff members
getabstract work. Avoid out-of-date, monotonous decor, with drab carpets, walls painted in muddy
“Technology…helps neutrals and desks tucked into rows of cubbies. Instead, create “employee experience
enable much of the
future of work and centers.” Modern office environments should offer work-arrangement flexibility, reflect
employee experience; the organization’s ethos and values, and encourage employees to invite their family and
it acts as the glue
and the nervous
friends to see their offices. Companies can leverage “multiple workspace options.”
system that power the
organization.” Long-Term Changes
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When corporations try to foster employee engagement, they often try short-term, cosmetic
changes. That doesn’t work. Improving your employees’ experience requires positive, long-
term change. Compare typical employee engagement campaigns to giving an old car a new
paint job, new upholstery and new tire rims. It’ll look great, but it’ll still run like an old car.

Employee experience, on the other hand, means replacing the engine, which will improve
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performance no matter how the car looks. Rather than spending money on “well-being
“Regardless of strategies,” pursue programming that will improve your employees’ lives and boost your
how hard you try to
create the perfect
firm’s performance.
employee experience
for everyone, there will “People Analytics”
always be people who
are less than satisfied.” People analytics, a subset of data science, can help you learn more about your staffers and
getabstract what they need. Such analytics can give you a “core foundation” for planning employee
experiences. This expanding field gathers data for companies and gives them the insights
they need in order to make informed decisions about their staff. For example, IBM embraced
formal people analytics in 2010. It now employs 70 experts in the field. The company used

The Employee Experience Advantage                                                                                                                                                     getAbstract © 2017 3 of 5

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 people analytics to reduce turnover and to launch “Blue Matching,” a program to facilitate
employees’ “internal mobility.”
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“Executives must see Notable Employee-Experience Firms
themselves not at the An evaluation of 252 companies’ employee experiences identified the 15 firms that
top of the proverbial
company pyramid, are doing the best job of giving their staffers a good employee experience: Facebook,
where everyone climbs Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Ultimate Software, Airbnb, Microsoft, Riot Games, Accenture,
to them, but at the
bottom of the pyramid, Salesforce, Hyland Software, Cisco, Amazon, Adobe and Worldwide Technology. These
where they push experiential companies know who their employees are, what they want and what makes
everyone else up.”
getabstract them feel good. Armed with this essential knowledge, such companies redesign their
organizations to become places “where people want, not need, to show up for work.”

Employee-Experience Categories
Most companies fall into one of these nine employee-experience categories:

1. “inExperienced” – These companies just exist without any identifiable mission. They
seem content do to business as it was done prior to the 1990s. Money is their motive.
getabstract 2. “Technologically emergent” – These firms provide advanced high-tech tools.
“Engagement has
remained relatively 3. “Physically emergent” – These companies focus primarily – or solely – on improving
unchanged despite our their physical spaces.
collective investments.”
getabstract 4. “Culturally emergent” – These organizations strive to develop the robust corporate
cultures that support employees.
5. “Engaged” – These firms work hard to improve their culture and their physical settings.
6. “Empowered” – These organizations succeed in technology and culture, but offer a
poor environment.
7. “Enabled” – These organizations have a good physical plant and fine technology, but
their culture is inadequate..
8. “preExperiential” – These firms do well, but don’t excel in all three environments.
9. “Experiential” – This is the top rank for firms that offer great employee experiences.
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“In organizations
where managers Attributes of Employee Experience
act like rulers and Seventeen special attributes – factors that are important to your employees – distinguish
dictators, the employee
experience suffers
experiential firms. Visualize a pyramid as the outline of your plan. The base of the pyramid
tremendously.” is your firm’s essential purpose. The next level contains the three employee experience
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environments: technological, physical and cultural. Then come the 17 variables:

1. The technology is of high quality.

2. It is always at hand.
3. Employees have the right technology to do their jobs.
4. People have choices about where to work.
5. The company’s setting communicates the firm’s values.
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6. Workers proudly show it to others.
“If employees 7. Staff members work with independence and flexibility.
don’t speak up and
participate, then they
8. People feel that their work is purposeful.
don’t have much of 9. Leaders treat people in an evenhanded way.
a say when it comes 10.Employees know that the company values them.
to shaping…their
experiences.” 11. Supervisors serve as coaches or mentors.
getabstract 12.Everyone has the security of being a team member.
13.The company provides the resources for people to keep learning continually and to
advance professionally.
14.Employees refer their friends to seek jobs in your firm.

The Employee Experience Advantage                                                                                                                                                     getAbstract © 2017 4 of 5

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 15.The company is known for “diversity and inclusion.”
16.Employees know the firm cares about their well-being.
17.People have a positive feeling about the company’s brand.

The top of the pyramid focuses on giving employees special attention at pivotal moments,
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“Checklists and steps like when they begin a job. These measurable attributes differentiate your firm from
are great for putting companies that believe that their employees are just part of a machine, “managers are
together furniture and
baking cakes…simply zookeepers and work is drudgery.”
ticking off the boxes
won’t result in great
employee experiences.”
Experiential Firms Succeed
getabstract Experiential companies routinely outperform firms that don’t offer positive employee
experiences. In the metrics that matter, “experiential organizations had…40% lower
turnover, 1.5 times the employee growth, 2.1 times the average revenue, 4.4 times the
average profit, 2.9 times more revenue per employee, and 4.3 times more profit per
employee when compared with nonexperiential organizations.” As a rule, experiential
firms’ stock prices do better than those of other firms. Experiential companies score high
for innovation, brand value and customer satisfaction. They tend to be “smarter, greener,
happier and more diverse.”
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“Experiences stay
with us throughout Going Experiential
our lives…they shape You can’t transform your company into an experiential firm by copying Apple, Airbnb or
who we are as human
beings [and] help us Amazon, or by applying a rigid checklist to your operations. Instead, adopt psychologist
connect with and build Daniel Kahneman’s famous System 2 thinking: aim for something purposeful and
relationships with
others.”
deliberate. Base your planning on people-analytics data and input from your employees.
getabstract Focus on them and what they want. Avoid short-term fixes. Becoming experiential is a long-
term, multisided, continual effort. It is an “infinity loop,” a constant circle of interactions
and communications from the staffers to the company and back. This loop travels endlessly
through these phases:

• “Respond” – Seek employee feedback to learn what your workers like and want their
experiences to be. Utilize “apps, internal social networks, surveys, focus groups, one-
getabstract on-one interviews” or whatever method works for your firm to gain this feedback.
“Life is short. We all
deserve…to work for • “Analyze” – Use the feedback to develop insights about your next steps.
an organization that • “Design” – Create your experiential program.
has been (re)designed
to truly know its people • “Launch” – Start your employee experience program; have it address your firm’s
and has mastered the physical, technological and cultural environments.
art and science of
creating a place where
• “Participate” – Your employees participate in new positive experiences.
people want, not need,
to show up to work.” To make your organization more people-centered, provide a range of positive experiences
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for your employees. They will thank you, as will your customers. And your bottom line
will benefit. A positive employee-experience program also will improve your recruiting
especially as your firm becomes increasingly well known as a great place to work.

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About the Author
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Best-selling author, speaker and futurist Jacob Morgan’s previous books include The Future of Work and The
Collaborative Organization. You can go online to take an assessment of how your company ranks on the 17 variables
at https://TheFutureOrganization.com.

The Employee Experience Advantage                                                                                                                                                     getAbstract © 2017 5 of 5

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