OK, it looks like it's about 10 past one hour. So I think we'll make a start. Um So good afternoon. Uh Welcome. I'd like to start by saying how great it is to be back at Women Tech.Uh And how much I'm looking forward to exploring this topic with all of you. This is gonna be one of the 20 minute sessions. Um We'll have a few minutes for Q and A at the end. So please put any questions or comments in the chat and hopefully we'll get to them if you haven't already done. So please mute your mic. It sounds like everyone has. Um And finally, if you're interested in any of the sources that I reference or you want to chat about any further reading, please do connect with me on linkedin. I'll share those details at the end. Um And I'd be happy to share a bit more of that. So a bit of background about me, my name is Ashu. So my professional background is predominantly in project management, delivering technical products, service management, uh in terms of industry, I've had a real variety of roles because I previously contracted. So that includes advertising, retail, working with charities and nonprofits, digital transformation. I've been working as a scrum with agile squads, building and managing products. And most recently, I work as a transformation lead across large organizational change initiatives within a financial services company.

So last year I spoke at Women tech about identity and resilience because I felt that they were really topical, given the pandemic um with so many awesome tracks and options and topics to cover. It's always really hard for me to do something and narrow down my focus. But again, I've tried to pick a topic that feels like it's relevant at the moment. Um and also something that I'm quite passionate about and that's the employees experience. So you may or may not have heard the term employee experience used before. But fundamentally, it kind of refers to about what person experiences and observes during their time as an employee of an organization. So even though I'd heard the term used before, I was and still am I guess curious about, well, why is it important, how much does it shape outcomes and what organizations can really do to improve it? So, looking at this definition from Gartner, employee experience is the way in which employees internalize and interpret the interactions they have with their organization as well as the context that underlies those interactions. So this impression of what an organization it might start at the point where you're applying for a for a role with them going through recruitment and onboarding. Um It's the day to day experience of working at that company. You know, what is the culture like?

What are the people like? Do I feel like I belong here? Um How is the organization being led? What are their processes? Are those processes easy to follow the system is easy to use when and where can I work? Does that mesh with the rest of my life? So all of these different touch points and many more will form the overall employee experience. It's important to note that employee experience is not the same as employee engagement. So the experience of employees encapsulates their entire tenure at an organization engagement is intermittent.

It's a discontinuous kind of state it fluctuates, right. So some days we're more engaged than others. Sometimes that actually has nothing to do with the work itself. Sometimes it's directly as a result of the work. So employee experience, by contrast could involve act a complete redesign of an organization that puts employees at the center. So this idea isn't new, actually, companies have been doing it with customers forever. So, rethinking who sits at the center of an organization will be an ongoing journey.

But even if we can nudge employees a little further in, we're likely to see better outcomes. So we'll come onto that in a bit more detail. Shortly, going back to engagement too often, the sorts of initiatives are kind of these sporadic adrenaline shots to try and motivate staff.

So it might be perks, you know, free drink and food or a casual dress policy or, you know, even a working from home arrangement might be seen as this kind of like perk. Um, well, these sorts of things are great. Uh And they temporarily boost me. It's been shown that these initiatives rarely actually achieve the intended results. So if these perks don't matter to employees as individuals, the organization won't be able to get their best performance, retain them, which ultimately, it means that the organization isn't achieving their aims either.

So suddenly those kind of affordable initiatives are looking like a complete waste of time and money and, you know, engaging employees is actually so much more than just keeping people happy, you know, uh a free sandwich or an afternoon off is great, but it's kind of temporary.

And if you want to gain insight into employee experience, the first step is understanding that people want to spend their time contributing to something worthwhile. So work itself needs to feel empowering, you know, close relationships to our teams, a meaningful mission, a great purpose.

Um Feeling that we've got not just the tools but also the time to be successful in roles that we're suited to. These are the sorts of things that really keep employees fulfilled and therefore really productive. So moving on slightly, I think one of the topics for this was actually the, the tracks for this event was customer experience. And so you might have heard customer experience, user experience. Um The description for customer uh customer experience topic was as more of our lives move online, customer experience has become increasingly important. We expect more of the businesses that we engage with. Whether we're buying goods or looking for service. It's no longer enough to just offer static and dynamic information about your products and company personalized experiences and now essential to successful businesses can't the same be said for employees. Um The pandemic drastically shifted the way a lot of people were working.

So many who had kind of traditional office based roles, their work pattern included office based interactions. So water cooler moments that people talk about face to face meetings, you know, maybe collaborating with a white board or pen and paper. Um um So for many of us, that kind of immediate shift to virtual working where effectively our whole professional life went online was a little bit disorienting. Um But obviously, we had no choice and we kind of were forced to adapt. So now the change that's happening is that businesses are moving to a hybrid working model, which obviously brings its own challenges about how we work. But how is that affecting the employee experience? How are people working in a hybrid way? If you think about employee experience at a really fundamental level using systems, it's about user friendly platforms of tools that help people work more productively. So the experience of using Microsoft Word as compared to a typewriter or using a cloud storage platform instead of carrying around portable hard drives. The goal of an ex solution is to make people's working lives easier. So after all, if it's done well, employee experience can yield better engagement and productivity retention of staff and ultimately customer success too. So this shift in customer expectations is actually completely applicable to employee experience too.

So my view is that as more of our work lives move online, the employee experience is just as critical in the long-term engagement and retention of an organization's workforce. So staff expect their employment to be more than transactional. At this point, they crave meaningful experiences from an organization with a clear purpose. Um you know, for a lot of people, particularly younger generations kind of emerging into the workforce, a job needs to be more than a paycheck study. After study will show that millennials and Gen Z in particular, you know, they expect organizations to take a stance on issues that matter to them. So the best way to reach this demographic, whether they're customers, employees or both is purpose. So why does purpose matter?

Uh industry leader and hr analyst Josh Burson has described in some detail, his interpretation of what constitutes employee experience and purpose ranks among one of the most impactful elements there. In his article, the Irresistible Organization Burson groups, the key drivers of employee success, meaningful work, supportive environment, you know, strong management, growth opportunities, trust in leadership. And that last one, the trust in leadership that kind of encompasses an organisation's mission and purpose.

As you can I see here, it's split it up um as well as how transparent they are, how well they communicate with and inspire employees. You know, I really wish I had the time to look at all of these different elements and details, we will revisit this slightly. Um But I kind of wanted to summarize what are the kind of key themes here across this kind of driver view. So ultimately, ex really comes down to three things, culture, physical workplaces and technology. So they're all interrelated, lots of different overlaps. But broadly speaking, this is what constitutes an employee's experience of an organization unsurprisingly culture, of course, that's critical. It encapsulates much much of those drivers we saw on the previous slide, what's the company's attitudes towards learning? What are the accepted behaviors and practices?

Are there mechanisms in place to support management and growth? I think much of this stuff kind of underlies how we think about organizations kind of past and present. So, you know, think about the organization you work for now and jobs you've left in the past, try to remember your reasons for leaving, you know, more often than not the culture of an organization is at least a consideration for employees looking to join a company or to leave um, the next group is kind of what I've called places and Spaces.

So this is a little bit broader than just the office. Right. It's everything we can see, taste, touch, smell. So it might be the office, but it's everything in there too, the comfort of the chairs, the type of coffee they have in the kitchen. You know, some of this stuff is conscious but, you know, our sensors pick up on all sorts of things that we might not even be fully aware of. You know, have you ever worked in a basement office with no windows or a building? That was absolutely freezing or an open plan office where it's just noisy all the time. So all of these surroundings are gonna affect our mood and, and productivity differently. Um It's not just the physical location but the stuff around it. So what is the actual journey into the office? This is more prevalent now, right? With the hybrid working, what's my commute? Is this location convenient to get to if I'm catching public transport? Are there lots of changes? Can I drive? Is there parking all these sorts of considerations?

So it's not just the location, it's the facilities in and around too. Um And that might be an office, it might be at home, you know, at the start of the pandemic. Um I'm sure I'm not the only one but my, you know, my office was a laptop and a stack of books in my kitchen. Um But if you look at that over the last few years, obviously, I've refined that set up over and over again. So now my homework environment is convenient, comfortable productive, but you know, where and how we work really informs our experience of an organization. The last element here is of course, technology just as much as the other two take place, such a live role in our day to day experience of work. When we find tools that make our work easier, it's such an managing boost of productivity as technologists, I think we all get really excited about that. So when you can find efficiencies, be it through automation, whatever it can, it almost feels like magic, right? But we've also all been in the opposite scenario where if the tech isn't working or we've not been sufficiently trained or things don't integrate or whatever, it can just be so frustrating. So technology should really be there to enable better outcomes for the people who use it.

But workplace tech isn't always chosen with the employee front of mind. Um When employee experiences an afterthought tech can often be disruptive. Um and you know, sometimes it leaves people feeling like it's holding them back or even worse, just just wasting their time. So in the 2018 analysis from PWC, we see that, that I, in addition to tech not always facilitating those outcome, there's a real disconnect between how leaders and staff see technology in the workplace. So when surveyed 90% of c level execs said that when choosing new technology, their company pays attention to employees needs, however, only 53% of staff actually agree with that statement. So there are probably a few different reasons for that discrepancy. Um You know, the first thing that pops comes to mind is that a lot of execs just aren't using technology day to day in the same way as stuff, if something breaks or it's frustrating them, they can just delegate that. Um staff don't always have that option. And sometimes you just have to persevere until you find a solution. Uh Likewise, if something breaks uh or, you know, a user can't figure it out. Um many of us work in it, right? It get the incident logged and, you know, rightly are expected to resolve the issue, but they're also an employee.

And from that angle, you know, did the it team get a say in the implementation of that service so often it are kind of left supporting applications and services that they didn't particularly choose. So that's, you know, just another angle. But um it, it just shows that employee experience really does come down to tech quite often. Uh Another reason for the disconnect could simply be that execs have overlooked how much a category like technology encompasses. Because if they are thinking in the sense of hardware, you know, say their company uses really good laptops with the great spec they might just think, oh, tick job done, right. But the technology landscape of an organization includes any and all tools that employers use to get their work done. So yeah, physical devices like laptops and mobiles, a UV equipment in meeting rooms, applications, software, the list goes on. So the fundamental point there is that you actually cannot separate technology from your people's experience and what motivates them. So, in the same way that, you know, painstaking effort is made um at customer centric organizations to map customer journeys and under understand how they engage and interact with products and services.

We need to give that same like sufficient amount of energy and thought to understanding the daily journey of employees to slightly rewind here. I'm just gonna go back to Burton's drivers um because there were really four things that emerged from this that, that particularly resonated with me.

Um These seem to be very important and yet sometimes really subtle traits of an organization. Um It's the stuff that you can't always quite pin down. Um We talked about why purpose is so important, right? It's core to motivation and performance. Uh a clear purpose and mission is what drives most people trust and transparency here, they're so closely linked. Uh I really firmly believe that when leadership teams are open and trusting of their employees, that employees reciprocate that. And the last bit for me is positivity.

So again, you know, I'm a millennial myself. I can say it's just so important to believe that you work for an organization that does the right thing. Um And with all of all that, we know about the benefits of inclusivity diversity, you know, for a lot of people, it's not just a turn off when organizations don't sort of walk the walk for many people. It's actually getting to the point now where that's becoming a deal breaker. Um So looking across these things that underlie those interactions, there are definite opportunities for technology to enable better outcomes. If your or organization can kind of nail those elements, you're likely going to see more engaged employees performing better. So some of you, you know, putting employees at the center as opposed to the customer of us, it, however you wanna phrase it, it might seem like this kind of radical risky approach. But when you put employees, first, companies are actually seeing greater profit and better customer satisfaction scores, um actually not just better, like double the MP S customer satisfaction score when compared with their competitors. So there is something kind of happening here.

Um You're also more likely to not just gain but retain your talent. So following this kind of great resignation, everyone's talking about, uh we're seeing a new kind of job market and recruitment teams are kind of telling us that there's, there's just now such a sense of urgency.

Um you know, make an offer before someone gets snapped up. And uh you know, when there are so many opportunities, organizations are at a really high risk of losing people if they overlook the employee experience. So I would argue that actually not embracing the potential in the space, that's the risky approach to take. Um And it's an almost guaranteed, guaranteed way to lose people. And in my view, lose your best people, uh your experienced employees, high performers, they're likely to be inundated with lots of offers. But even people earlier in their careers, you know, that younger generation that we talked about, if they're purpose driven and have a growth mindset, then, you know, they're typically gonna be completely willing and able to look elsewhere. Obviously, people leave organizations for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes that's really complex. Um But a kind of prevalent myth about resignations is that they're most often due to bad management. Um So, uh you know, most of you have probably heard this, people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. Um don't get me wrong. A bad manager. I imagine that can have quite a profound effect on your working life. I've been pretty fortunate to always have really good managers, but I know from colleagues and friends it can be really deflating if your manager isn't supportive, doesn't understand your role.

You know, anything that would make you categorize them as a bad manager. Um Is that really the reason that people leave jobs um pool actually put this theory to the test and they found that poor leadership more so than poor management actually makes the biggest difference in people's intent to stay with an organization. So of the respondents, um that felt that both the leadership and the management were strong with their organization, 89% of them said that they intended to stay, but 60% of staff intended to stay even with a poor manager if they felt that the leadership was strong. So it seems that yeah, you know, management matters, but leadership matters more if only leadership were a quick win, right? So let's look again at the person's idea of the irresistible organization. You know, we have to acknowledge that no company is perfect. We're all on a journey.

Uh And we're all gonna have different maturity in different areas. So even within that trusted leadership category that we've talked about, there's gonna be degrees of success. Uh This isn't a game of bingo. It's not like if you get any five in a row that you win and everything's fixed. Um You know, it, this is just a helpful reference point, hopefully, um to take a view of what your organization should do to bring you closer to being that kind of irresistible place. So I'm gonna leave you with this, think about how this resonates with you and your organization. Do these impact ratings feel right to you. What's your maturity across these are there some of these things that you guys are actually already doing really well, where are the biggest gaps?

And can you see how tech could help fill those gaps and shape better outcomes? If your organization can adopt a continuous improvement mindset, leverage the technology to facilitate better outcomes and keep employees front of mind, then you'll already be well on your way to achieving that competitive edge with a superior employee experience. So just quickly now, before we look at the questions and comments in the chat, I did just wanna touch on my original intention with this topic. And part of the description was to talk more about how you can take this to the next level. So if you've kind of got you on board and yes, we need to look at employee experience for who runs the initiatives. How do you get buy in from leadership? Um As you can probably tell, I'm absolutely fascinated by this as a top. I talk about it for hours. Um With the time that I had, I couldn't cover all of that. So if you are interested in learning more about how you take this forward with your organization, please do connect with me. Um I'd love to continue that conversation. So thanks for listening for now. Um I'm just gonna have a quick look at the chat and see if we've got anything in there. Let's have a look. Oh gosh, we've got a few things. Oh, have you got sound? Oh, no, I hope that I had sound ok.

I've got a couple of people sending messages. Thank you. Yeah, weather for sure. Comfortable place. It, it, it, it really does make a difference, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. No, Simone Moore. Thank you. That's a really useful point as well. I think. Um, you know, I'm not going to be unrealistic for organizations. Obviously, cost is always a consideration when they're looking at new technology, understandably. Um but you know, you either pay now or pay later, sometimes sometimes it ends up costing you more in the long run.

So, you know, cost needs to be considered, but it shouldn't be the only consideration. Yeah, Denise, lovely. Yeah, the there organizations can talk about it what they want but um being able to actually listen, you know, seek, listen and action feedback is really important. Um the organization needs to become a destination company for employee. That's a, that's a really interesting. Yeah, I mean, in a way it's interesting because a lot of the kind of rhetoric on customer experience is about that, that differentiation or having that kind of unique selling point, right?

Buying a product. Um I would actually argue that choosing to work somewhere and give not just, you know, uh you're not giving them your money, you're giving them your time, your energy, your passion in a way sometimes that's, you know, you're buying more. So yeah, making it a destination and having that unique selling point as a prospective employer. Very interesting purpose driven. So, um there was a question there, what can I talk more on what I mean, when I say purpose driven? So most organizations have a purpose. Very few of, I can't think of a single example where uh an organization's sole purpose is just to make money. So it's normally to make money by doing some good either. There's, there's some social value, there's some, you know, filling a gap, meeting a need somehow. And so it's, it's not just about having that purpose, but communicating with it. Having employees be uh participating in the definition of that, having that just so embedded in the culture that everyone feels united about what it is that you're trying to achieve. That's, that's a bit more what I talk about. Um When I say purpose driven, that's what I meant. Great. Yeah. Good. Good point on the MP S. There's a question there about whether it is the most important metric in employee enjoyment surveys. Surveys are really interesting one.

I don't have a simple answer on that. Thanks for the question though, Kim, let's connect and talk more about that. Um It's even intent to stay is interesting because that's often a question, you know, satisfaction scores are one thing, but then there's, oh, you know, do you see yourself here in two years? Five years that, that tells you something as I've, I've talked about the intent to say that tells you something about people's um kind of, I guess plans and how you're retaining people. But I also think that sometimes the decisions, as I said, it's quite common. Sometimes the reason that people leave organizations has actually nothing to do with the role, nothing to do with their manager, nothing to do with the leadership. Sometimes it is personal rather than professional. Um the resource I'm going to share on that actually talks about.

Um And I wish I had more time to cover it, but that the bigger differentiator, more so than management or leadership is development opportunities. So in organizations where the staff feel that the uh uh progression opportunities, so promotions or, you know, learning and development basically is below average.

It doesn't matter how high they rate their manager, there's zero difference from people who say their manager is 10 out of 10 to people who say zero out of 10, their intent to say is exactly the same. So I think what that tells us is that if you're in an organization where there's no room to move or there's no culture to support that you could have the best manager in the world. Where are they gonna take you? Um So I'll make sure to share that. Let me just double check. Last time I missed some Q and A on a separate tab. No, it looks like that's it. OK? I think I'm a little bit over time, so I probably need to wrap it up there. But um thank you so much for everyone that joined and I hope you really enjoyed it. And uh yes, please do connect with me. I would really love to uh continue talking to you all, so I will leave it there. Thank you very much.