PAFOW Experience: Employee Experience: News & Direction
Al Adamsen All right, welcome. Here we are February 11. Thursday, we're gonna talk about worker and employee experience today. Thank you for joining. I'm going to go through the agenda in a second. But first off, I just want to thank you for joining live. And I'm going to orient you to this technology as we go.
If you have questions, by all means, put them in the feed, or the q&a section, I'm going to be sharing some slides here in a minute. But again, I want to make this as interactive as possible. And that not only goes from my session here to kick off the day, but ongoing. So with that in mind, I'm gonna start, I'm usually in the morning, I fumble with a few things. So bear with me. Well,
again, thank you for being here. We're going to talk about a topic that has garnered a lot of attention over the last couple few weeks and last a handful of years. And I'll explain why in a little bit. And so before I get into things, I want to acknowledge the native peoples of this land. Here I am in Santa Cruz, California at the bottom of this photo, I'm inspired by my
experience in Australia over the past few years, where they do an acknowledgement of country. And I actually have a little handout here on how to do it. I'm not going to go through the formal acknowledgement, but I do wherever you are, if you can acknowledge and reflect on the people who are native to that land. It I think it's something that particularly we as Americans, yeah, there was an indigenous people on this land, many of them were display, some of them are no longer around. And when we're talking about doing people data for good, we're talking about promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and themes like that. I do not want to forget ever the native peoples of
America and again, wherever you might be acknowledging as appropriate. Here is our agenda today. So I'm going to go through some news and how to embrace this opportunity that we're calling employee experience. In the second segment, starting at the bottom of the hour, I'm going to go through a model and also comment on design thinking so listeners can actually bring that to life. And again, we're going to talk about technologies. We're going to talk about approaches. We're gonna talk about a lot of things today. And one of the most, I mean,
there's been a handful of people who have really focused on this over the past couple years and have achieved success. One of them is Samantha woods. She's gonna be joining us from Paris, and she'll be talking about how the employee experience needs to deliver on the promise that we're putting out into the marketplace when you Okay, you want to be an employee here. What do we have to do to actually deliver on that value proposition that we're putting out another extraordinary individual sweat to Bandy from Adobe, she has an uncommon clarity on how technologies are going to enable or limit the employee value proposition from coming to life. So she has exciting things to share we'll be discussing at 10am Pacific, then, followed by Melissa Arantes, I do not have to tell you that Medallia has long been one of the leaders in customer experience, and employee experience and bring those two together. So she'll be talking about that model and how listening is not enough. We're actually going to have to take appropriate action. At noontime Pacific, we're gonna have lunch and networking,
then we're gonna have a break from one to two, you can come in early, we can network certainly, in that hour as well of I am actually going to take a break and get some food as well. And then in mid afternoon, Ryan mulk is of leap Jen is going to talk about an actual design thinking experience. So how to bring workforce digitization the future of work to life. I'm really excited about that hands on experience that he'll be delivering. And finally we're gonna wrap up the day with Stacy Sherman guard stasia, a couple years ago did a research project on employee experience. She wrote an extremely insightful article on the heels of the release of Microsoft's Viva. I'll point everybody to that as we get closer to that time of it, she and I are going to have an interview on the topic. So if you have questions, that would be a great
time to ask them as we wrap up the day. With that, if you're just joining us for the first time, we are about people data for good. What is people data for good is promoting the ethical and responsible use of people data analytics and AI for the benefit of individuals, first and foremost, teams groups, including diversity groups, organizations and society at large. We're in the process of becoming a certified B Corp. It's going to take a while to get that but we want to make sure that we are promoting Voting, what we call people data for good. So learn more about this at the FAL dotnet. You can see here we're on February 11. This is one
of what we're calling our profound experiences. Now those are in the blue circles. We're going to have a Career Expo on March 11, one month from today, we're going to have to fall global again at the end of May, but go to our website to see our full calendar of events. This is another way to look at that same calendar, what you can see here, we're going to have a variety of themes. worker employee experience is today's theme. In two weeks time, we're going to talk about talent, assessment and development, we're gonna have a host of subject matter experts on that theme, delivering that experience as well. I'm really excited to announce that pathol Live, will now be airing daily. So I'm going to start a daily show, starting one week from today, actually Thursday,
February 18. And we'll have daily guests, I'll do a recap of recent news. And so with that, please look out, go to profile dotnet. To follow us on LinkedIn, we're also going to be airing those episodes on our YouTube channel. So if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, please do so we're going to have playlist and in some cases we already do on variety of themes. So we're creating in the heels of this employee experience playlist. So you just be able to listen and watch videos will also do the same thing on SoundCloud, and Spotify. So you have playlists where you can just
listen to subject matter experts thought leaders influencers on a specific topic. So follow that. We're also if you don't know a membership organization, this is something that we did in the wake of COVID. So if you become a member, which is roughly $50 a month, and there are discounts available, you'll be able to access on demand programming. What does that mean? After each of our events, and this includes pathol Live, you'll be able to access videos, audio files, text transcripts, and presentation files in a very organized way on the profile community app. This is what we're calling our resource library. The resource library will also contain tools and templates. And we can organize regionally and do a variety of things. You also get discounts to what we call learning labs. These are facilitated experiences
on a variety of themes. And you can learn more about that at FAU dotnet. And again, this is all anchored by a profile community app which is a member only app that houses a resource library and all our programming. This is what it looks like a snapshot you can go to Google Play, or the App Store Apple's App Store and download it and become a member. And again, these are what our Learning
Lab is not only taught by me or facilitated by me, but some awesome subject matter experts including Tess Walton, Mahindra Jeff Higgins, Heather Whiteman. And we'll be recruiting others in the coming weeks and months. Finally, our people data for good newsletter has just been relaunched. So sign up for that you can follow us on our social media channels, I want to get to this, this would not be possible without our sponsors. So give them some love by going over and visiting their pages here on the air meet. platform. And finally, I'm going to get into my specific content about what's been going on in the world of employee experience. Now, just for some housekeeping,
I am going to go probably a little bit past the bottom of the hour with with this content, we're going to take a five minute break. And then I'll start the other session probably about 840 pacific time. And I'll just go for a brief stand to talk about design thinking and some other key features that I believe need to be considered when putting together employee experience initiatives programs, because it's not as simple same thing I wish it was. But it's
not there's some nuances or some intricacies that we have to appreciate it. Appreciate. And this is something that's going to be emphasized by sweater, and Samantha and Melissa and others as we go through the course of the day. So what's been happening over the past couple of weeks? Well, there are some highlights Microsoft launched Viva the employee experience platform. This
significantly impacts glint and its evolution in supplying data and insight to not only leaders and managers but also to individuals themselves. And I'll get to that in a minute. workday acquired pecan, which is huge news. They're now not only talking about engagement, but employee experience as well. And medallion Qualtrics. And perceptive x and culture app and
ServiceNow have long positioned themselves in the employee experience space. Now it invites the question. All right, what does this mean for analytics people analytics technologies and HR tech in general? Is this just another buzzword? Is it a reframing on something that has been around for a while, this is something that we're going to discuss, I certainly have my perspectives and ideas. And so I'll be sharing some of those with you here momentarily. That said, if you have questions, I see them right there, I will come over and do my best to fill them as we go, if we don't get them in my session, and we can certainly get to them during the course of the day. And if I cannot do that, during the course of the day, I will follow up personally, and try and get your questions answered, as, as soon as possible. So Microsoft, Viva, the employee experience platform, I gotta say, I'm moved to Office 365, about two years ago, and it took me a while to get into a flow with teams. And now that I am into a flow,
and now that I'm able to use other apps to augment what we're doing internally, it's actually really exciting. I'm starting to become more comfortable as our, our members of our small company here. how this is gonna affect us as a small company, I have no idea obviously, is built primarily with larger companies in mind where there's personas, and there's large amounts of information and, and content being shared it So Microsoft Viva is based on these four pillars, connections, insights, Viva topics, and Viva learning. connections, obviously, keeping everyone informed topics I found very interesting as a naming convention, but it's really important. It's something I struggle with personally, and I know many people do, because they're overwhelmed by information content, where do you find it, and that is an attempt to actually organize, work, better insights for our community is not only exciting, and I'll get to this in a second. But it's really something that I believe not only can help organizations,
but can help individuals as well, which is related to this final point. As you know, Microsoft owns LinkedIn. And now they're placing a big bet that, hey, this micro learning this ability to take learning and put it within the flow of work is going to be key to their ongoing success and the success of Viva specifically. So that is exciting, how it's going to actually manifest is to be
determined, and the fact that they're working with many third parties, again, it's a very inclusive approach, which I think is a winning approach. Here's the essence of and this is taken from a white paper that Microsoft produced in 2019. But it is effectively laid the groundwork for what was just lost with Viva. As you can see, I'm not going to go through this in too much detail. We don't have the time right now. But it goes without saying it per the visualization that the employees
at the center of the design process here, where you have resources where you have communications, where you're looking out for your own well being we're able to access communities, it's truly putting the employee first. And it's something that in our space of people analytics, I have long question and advocated for so if I am generating data consciously through a survey, or if I know the organization is capturing data based on my behavior with these technologies, what's the benefit for me? How do I know there aren't people who are going to use it improperly, there has to be a high level of trust, not only a high level of trust, there has to be transparency on how that data and information is used over time and who it's being used by. So with that in mind, when we start bringing this data together in this way over time, what is going to be the communication on how the data are being used. I believe there's huge opportunity because and this is where I get really excited. It's not only about leaders, being more effective managers being
more effective, I get really excited about this far left column where we have personal insights, where we can actually reflect on our own behavior and interaction with these technologies and say, oh, wow, you know, hey, I am working a lot. Can I take it off? Can I manage my workload? Can I do things different, to help not only myself be more productive, but look out for my physical health, my emotional health and my psychological health. So this is very ambitious. If you see in the product release, several videos are partnering with headspace so they're bringing mindful practices into the flow of work, how that's gonna uptake I to be determined because this is new. That being said, I celebrate the approach and I personally am Looking forward to interacting with it and committing to how I organize myself day to day. All I just shared is a it aligns with an article I put out I think three years ago now called people MX three dot o and I'm not going to walk you through it in too much detail other than to say this. On the far left people Alex one Dotto has been around for 100 years in one form or another event based research, if you will, to Dotto has been around for the past 20 plus years where it's aggregating data and visualizing it so others can consume it within your organization, namely, executives and HR business partners. Three Dotto has been in process for the last five plus years,
arguably longer, in some cases, arguably shorter in other cases. But you can see down at the bottom, that this is capturing behavioral data, passive data data exhaust, and it's not only benefiting, again, HR business partners and team leaders and executives, but the individuals themselves, this is where we're going in not only the people analytics space, but in the HR technology space in general, and certainly with employee experience. So one way to frame it, and I'm going to accelerate through this and you'll be able to access these slides, is if we go back in time we have a employee going through an organization over time, they might get promoted, they might move. There's all these technologies underneath that experience that are capturing data. These, by and large are transactional systems. They're not meant to optimize the employee experience. And nor are they meant to provide data for analytical purposes. Now we're in this stage where we have these collaboration tools. And so one
example is workplace analytics by Microsoft, where time in meetings, emails, all this stuff that providing insight to the organization as well as to the individuals in some cases on how people are spending their time. Is that valuable? Absolutely. Is it going to be used appropriately to be determined, and that's what we're going to talk about today is how to be very conscious about this data collection, as well as how it's used afterwards. And the key distinction here is we have this data that's both inside and outside the organization. And when we talk about employee experience, we're talking about data primarily, and for the foreseeable future that is going to be captured and analyzed within the organization. So understand that these are not only HR technologies, that these are, frankly, technologies that we're using in our day to day work that it owns not HR it. And that means that we need an overarching platform to bring this data
together and think less about standing up and improving a process for the processes sake, but thinking more about the employee experience and putting that as the guiding light for designing what technologies to adopt. Another thing that's happened over the past couple few weeks is workday acquired pecan. Now this has been in my view, in the works for quite some time because workday has needed employee engagement data, something to shed light on how people are thinking and feeling the fact that they're bringing together in this platform. That is Phil Wilburn, and his team are doing some great work over there. pecan has a first rate team,
I'm very excited about what lies ahead for them. If you're a workday customer, this is something to get excited about and inquire about. Again, the models that we're going to put forth around employee experience are going to apply here as well, in my view. Similarly, Medallia has formed a partnership with busier busier is aggregating data from everywhere, including outside the organization. So with Medallia's employee, sorry, Medallia's employee experience, data and approach and processes, it's gonna provide uniquely valuable insight as well. So this requires a holistic view of the not only employee experience, but how we're bringing technologies data, and the actual people. I want to get ahead of myself, because I want to talk about governance in a
second. But the people, the technologies, the processes, the underlying data, we have to think systematically and to do that we need to have the right people in a room I'm going to get to that in a second. Finally, on the vendor side, perceptive is also doing some great things particularly with their daily polls and their ability to capture data with a such a frequency that it sets not only trends and provides leading indicators for certain downstream behaviors. When we talk about the employee experience, we're going to have to talk about adjusting and nudging it over time. So has these technologies evolved, knowing what to look for and knowing where the
shortcomings are and knowing where the competitive advantages are, is going to be very important. Per septics did a great session with representative from city and pathol Global a couple weeks ago, so I'll make sure to highlight that in the chat as we go throughout the day as well. So what about the Oh Ma and niche vendors? Whether they be people analytics vendors, or di vendors or engagement survey vendors? What does it mean for them? I do not know yet.
But what I do know is that these are not the data cannot live siloed it has to be consumed somewhere and visualized with a not only an integrated view, but with an integrated story. It has to have context. So for these to live in isolation is not going to persist are these going to be partnerships are these going to be acquisitions, probably is going to be all the above but it is going to impact on a vendor's significantly, Relationship Analytics is not going to go away, it's going to be a massive compliment to employee experience. But we're gonna have to define what the heck employee experience is, which is going to be the next segment that we do. So with all this in mind, employee experience tech, you know, there's this, again, specific vendors that are talking about it. What does that mean relative to people analytics technology, this is something that we're going to talk about, which taisha Gar, mid afternoon starting at 3pm. Similarly,
there's HR technologies, what does it mean for the base HCM vendors? And finally, we're also talking about information technologies, things that have lived outside of HR, which invites the question, you know, how are we going to govern this over time, it's not going to be just HR. However, to look at the other coin, HR data still needs to be secure, there's information that's not going to be shared widely, namely, diversity data. So what is going to be the governance model, this is something that we have to think about beforehand. So with that in mind, we and I'm going to emphasize this point, we're gonna think about first who, then what, and then we're going to talk about the how, and that's how we're going to frame the second segment. So briefly, and I'm going to hustle through this because I think this is really important for everybody to know, employee experience is seemingly new. Certainly, it's hotter than it's ever been, and with good
reason. That being said, I was first introduced this concept. In the mid 90s. Specifically, were really gained a supercharged in my life and in my career was in 1997 1998, when I was at Clearwater, in Moscow, Russia, and Kiev, Ukraine, I was splitting time between the two cities, and I founded this company in Kiev, and my partner Scott nickel, provided he was on a trip to the states and he brought back the experience economy. And the experience economy was booked by Joseph pine and James Gilmore right there. And it highlighted stories from Disney and a variety of
other companies that were creating experiences and monetizing those experiences. Obviously, Disney theme parks being the easiest example to absorb this book reference this other book, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler that actually talked about the economy and the need to connect emotionally in moments that matter over time. And so it wasn't just a one off transaction is that we're creating a cognitive connection with the person that is going through an experience something a memory, in other words, and that's a memory elicits an emotion. So if we can consciously create this experience that then that connection is going to be sticky, people are going to come back, good things are going to happen. So the idea of a customer experience, a worker experience has been
around for quite some time and experience economy just for the record talks not only about customer experience, but it does talk about worker experiences, as well. So fast forward, you know, what has happened over the past? You know, 20 years well, we've moved from these real life experiences like in a Disney theme park, although that still happens to these two dimensional screen experiences, you know, with our phones here, where we have software that we're playing with and the thing that is really key to think about is these experiences by and large are designed for for a specific purpose, the number of personas although there are infinite number, what is really the case is that it's not as complex as designing an employee experience, which is dynamic. And there's multiple facets, multiple factors influencing a individual's response to to work. And I'm going to get to that in a second segment. There's also this case that has arisen that we have so many choices by apps, information sources, we also have too many distractions, arguably, with notifications and things like that the data is being generated, it not only is good, but it can adversely affect individuals and groups.
And that's shown to be true. So as we create these employee experience platforms, again, thinking about the ethics and responsible use is going to key people are working longer and healthy relationships and overall well being or being compromised. Particularly now we had this little period where, particularly younger people entering the workforce are putting boundaries on their time at work, which is a good thing. However, as we're in this state of the pandemic, workers now have more power. And they're taking advantage of that in many cases where they're
having people work the same or similar amounts. And the idea that they're unaware in many cases of maybe two kids running around in the background, or taking care of an elderly parent, or what have you, is is not happening. So this employee experience, opportunity really can shed light on these specific again, personas. And we can accommodate them, if we take a virtuous approach. Now, some organizations are actually doing just that they are looking at the employee experience, they are looking at personas. And then it invites the question, well, how is that going
to be managed over time through what systems and processes and so forth. And that's what we're going to discuss today. Finally, as I mentioned, millennials, and others are not only wanting, but they're demanding, and creating new ways of living and working. And that's going to continue. I often say that I and others of my generation grew up in the suck it up generation, where Hey, you're lucky to have a job, just do what you're told. And that's just the way it is. Now,
particularly what I would call high value talent, they have choices, they can say no. And as the economy starts to recover, in the midst of in the wake of this pandemic, we're going to see this a lot more. So those organizations that have tightened up their employee experience processes and actually deliver on the promise, like we're going to talk about Samantha woods, in a bit are going to actually win the talent. I don't like say war, but the the war for talent, the battle for talent over time. So finally, where are we heading. And I'm going to be really quick about this. And we'll take a break. And we'll come back with the second segment. First to then what then how I mentioned that at the outset, models and mindset, we need to be aligned. This can be a very esoteric concept, I'm going to talk about one from red thread
research. I know Josh Burson is working on one. These need to be comprehensive. And they can be really complicated and intimidating, which really is going to get to that point where we need really good governance, design thinking for experiences. This is not design thinking for product. And again, I'm going to talk about that in the next segment. Experienced for personas and people, these need to be prioritized. It's going to be the case where we can create a platform where not only we're designing for personas, but for people, so managers and others can be agile in response to an individual's needs, that's going to be a winning strategy. In most organizations, we're not there yet. But we have to get there. And that's it. That's definitely part of the future of work.
Also, part of the future of work is not only about employee experience about worker experience, the title of this program today is just that worker and employee experiences. Employee experience is kind of the buzzword. It's you know what the hash tag is and all that. But we have to think beyond that. Think about workers in general technology, data analytics
and an experience strategy. That means we have to get the right people in the room. And again, this is going to be a key factor going back to the top first, who then what? privacy confidentiality and ethics. I'm going to be spending a lot of my time here in 2021 and beyond on the specific topics. I'm not going to go into that right now. But look for that throughout the day and in future discussions on employee experience and other topics because we're collecting data that is both awesome from an analytical standpoint, but also as a worker as an employee like hey, you know, what do you doing with that data? Are you really you grading me? Are you actually looking to help me so that communication, that trust has to be built over time. And if we, if any one organization screws this up, we're all going to be impacted. So again, that's where I'm going to be spending a lot of my time moving forward. So that's the first segment
we're going to wrap. Now we're going to take a five minute break. We're actually I didn't do too bad on time. So this next segment, I hustled through this someone Obviously, I'm not going to take questions right now in this next segment, we'll start at 20 till so about, you know, 767 minutes from now, you can go into the lounge, you can network there, there are tables there, you can go check out the sponsor booze. I'm going to
come back and then we'll have a discussion with design thinking as model and the retro research model as the guide. So with that, I will see you in a few minutes. Thank you.
2021-02-21 07:22
