S2 Ep3: Stop treating employees as “clustomers” with Toby Kheng

In this episode, Thankbox Co-Founder Tsvetelina Hinova sits down with Toby Kheng, Co-Founder of Freeformers, to unpack one deceptively simple idea: why saying “thank you” at work is so rare, and why that’s a problem.

Drawing on his experience redesigning employee experiences, Toby explains how many organisations treat appreciation as a checkbox exercise e.g. generic perks, vouchers, or gamified rewards,  rather than something deeply human and personal.

Together, they explore what happens when appreciation is missing, how it impacts motivation and performance, and why businesses that ignore it risk creating purely transactional relationships with their people.

💡 What you’ll learn

• Why most workplace appreciation efforts fail (and feel meaningless) 
• The concept of “clustomers” - and why treating employees the same doesn’t work 
• Why a simple, genuine “thank you” often matters more than money or perks 
• How lack of appreciation leads to disengagement and “bare minimum” work 
• The disconnect between what managers think they’re doing - and how employees actually feel 
• Practical ways to measure and improve human relationships at work 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to Lead with Bangs! In season one, we explore why appreciation matters at work. In season two, we're going a step further. Because believing in appreciation is one thing, but making the case for it inside your organization is another. In each episode, I'm speaking with leaders and practitioners who've had to justify appreciation in business terms, tying it to retention, performance, culture, and real business outcome. If you've ever struggled to get buy-in, budget, or belief from the leadership team, this season is for you. Toby, welcome. So excited to have you here for a chat.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

It's been a long, a long way coming, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

It has.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Ever since our first conversation, I've been a bit in an awe with you. I know that sounds very cheesy, but it's totally true. You take something that might sound really complicated, and like people analytics, employee value, like the connection between commercial and human, and you instantly make it relatable. And I've had so many moments with you where I just sat there and being like, hell yeah, that makes sense. And I can't wait for our listeners to go through that as well, through that, through those moments. I'm like, that makes total sense, of course. So super excited for today. To begin with, why don't you introduce yourself? Who are you, what you do, what you're passionate about, and then we can crack on with questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Well, firstly, thank you for that introduction. That that's amazing. Um, so thank you. I don't really know what to say other than thank you. But I think the the explanation on articulation of it has taken the best part of two years to refine. So when we first started talking, Freeformers has been going for about two years. Um, and it was kind of at the same time where I was like, oh, actually, okay, I kind of figured it out now how how to talk about it in the most, you know, the clearest, most succinct way. Um, and now I've got to do on a podcast as well. So you're really testing me. Can I do it in about 30 seconds? Um, but uh co-founder of a of a company called Freeformers. Uh, the reason we exist is to create a better world of work for everyone. So we bring together this balance of commerciality and humanity to redesign employee experiences end-to-end, right from brand awareness, not just employer brand awareness, but brand awareness, through to post-employment advocacy and really looking at everything through a customer experience lens and ensuring that you know we are adapting or reforming what we do based on you know what marketing, customer success, sales teams, product design teams, all the great work they've done in the customer world. How can we reflect some of that in in the employee world as well? And then the other thing we do is we just do awesome training. Um I my first kind of HR job was being a trainer and standing up, delivering workshops. And I have seen too many people do too many bad training courses to sit idly by and and not get back on that kind of horse in my in that part, early part of my career, and kind of go, okay, how do we genuinely get people to think and behave differently as a result of training rather than just taking them through 56 slides in a morning?

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah. Wow, I love that. You've got such a big variety of experience behind you, so so no doubt you understand so well the connection between commercial and human within a workplace. Um obviously we're talking about appreciation. Obviously, you're here because you believe appreciation is powerful at the workplace. And my very first question is why? Tell us why. Why what do you see? Why do you think appreciation matters in the workplace?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

I think it matters because more often than not, what tends to happen is organizations, companies try and put in these kind of catch-all approaches to cover cover appreciation off, ticks the b tick the box of appreciation, which is weird because it happens so much in HR and people functions, right? That you know, oh, we need employee benefits. So here you go, here are the benefits for everybody. This is the appreciation, this is the appreciation for everyone, and so you end up um MailChimp did a really good marketing campaign about two years ago called Clusters. When you clump all your customers together and you treat them all the same, it's like what an ineffective way to do it. And I I just love that language, and I think what we tend to do in HR is we, you know, lump all of our employees together as customers, and and therefore appreciation is a lot more personal, uh personal and bespoke, or it has more meaning when it's personal, when it's bespoke, when it's when it's given to the individual, and you know, just to slap on a 10 quid Amazon voucher in an email or giving people badges and stuff, I think is what you have in Microsoft Teams, right? Yeah, this gamification of uh of reward, and it's like the thing that really matters is how that thanks is received and how it makes that person feel, not what is given and how it's given. It's about how can you get that message from A to B in the most human way possible, and I think the uh the other thing is that uh people always equate it to money and remuneration, and it's like that's not necessarily the case. Most of the best work I've done has the satisfaction I've got out of it has not been like linked to money at all. Particularly in the case of starting freeforms, because you know, bootstrapped to uh bootstrapped company, you know, we're not ladled late ladled labelled with cash. But um so I I think to answer your question maybe quicker, is that it's about it it's about these the the the human relationships um which are particularly in larger organizations, you we try and we try and do human relationships in the most efficient way possible without thinking actually are they any good at all?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Yeah, you're right. We are we're constantly focused on automation, on making quicker and sleeker, but does it actually work? Yeah, we s we see that a lot actually. People say, Oh, we've got an add-on of appreciation, and when you ask them, is anybody using it? and they're like, Well, no. And you're like, Well, it's not working then, is it?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Exactly. Like it's you know, platforms and benefits are products and services that you're offering to your customers, it just happens to those customers are employees, and so therefore, if they are not you making use of that product or service, there's there's one or two one of two things that's going on. Either that product or service isn't needed or wanted by your organization, or you've done such a poor job of launching it and communicating it. Now, usually it's six of one and half a dozen the other, because you know, like I go back to go back to my previous point is that most platforms and services that you might deliver to your employees are designed to try and get get everybody to use them and to be happy. And that's like that's impossible. That doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't do it with customers, so why are you trying to do it with employees? You'd arguably are a more diverse group of people than your customers, because customers is like, well, we have cans of coke and people buy cans of coke, and there might be three or four different profiles of people that buy cans of coke, but an employee base tends to be a bit more diverse, but just because you've got everyone there for very, very different reasons, whether that be motivations, whether that be job function, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

What I see often is, especially with appreciation, like some people are sick of hearing, like you know, employee engagement and appreciation and recognition, and they immediately feel like this is a bad word because they've had bad experience or negative experience, or it wasn't personalized enough, it was just a tick box, is what you said. When you change the language a little bit, people get on board a lot quicker, and then the result is still very helpful to the organization and employees.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

So the one of the things when I was kind of preparing for this podcast, I was like, how many times has someone said thank you to me at work that hasn't been a bonus or a gift or something like that? When has someone genuinely said thank you? And and I can tell you it's it must be close to zero, um, particularly in the past eight years, um, having left corporate. Because I I I can't take praise when someone says thank you, and someone I get really awkward, I go red in the face and I do not know what to say. So because of that tri that that kind of trigger that happens, whatever's happening in my body, I tend to remember it because it makes me feel weird and uncomfortable. Um, you know, like you did at the beginning of the call. You said some look you said some lovely stuff, and I was like, yeah, thanks. Don't really know what to do with that. But it feels it feels good, right? And you remember it. Um I I can tell you, I can tell you the people that have said thank you to me at work. You know, there's I got a boss called Andy, a boss called Christine, a boss called Kalie, a boss called Andy, numerous colleagues, but if I go for just bosses, because I can't list everyone I've worked with, I can tell you people that have turned around and genuinely said thank you. I can also list the people that haven't. And you're like, like at some point, like I th you know, we're we still live in an economy or a workforce that is built on Victorian methodologies, where it's like people are components within a big machine. Um and they are cogs to be tweaked and tinker with when actually just a thank you would go an extremely long way. You know. I particularly my last two jobs, broke a couple of records with with you know with you know commercial goals and awards and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

But I can't remember ever being said thank you at all, which is which is nuts and really s really sucks. Surely that meant that you're just not as devoted to the company. You know, you you talked about the transactional relationship, like the company gives you something and you give them back. And what I find from our research is like when you when you are being appreciated, when you're being made to feel seen and valued, you your discretional effort towards the company rises because you feel like it it would matter what you do there. Did did that have that impact on you when you when you weren't set? Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah, I I think because it's when the honeymoon period ends, which is about for me, I've kind of reflected it's about nine months, you know, where it's like, wow, it's all new, it's amazing. I don't care what anyone says or does, because I'm just happy to be here. Then the reality sets in on what it's actually like to work there, and then it gets to two years, and you're like, I've one of the problems I have is like I this sounds such like a a guy on the apprentice, but I always try my best. I will always try my best. I cannot phone it in. I physically can't do it, up until the point it feels like a transactional thing, and then I'm like, well, fine, if you're gonna be transactional with me, I'll be transactional right back and I'll do the bare minimum. I will do what I need to do to get by because you don't appreciate me, and you know what? I don't appreciate you. We are exchanging goods and services for cash. If that's the relationship you want to build with me, that's the relationship you're gonna get you're gonna get. And you can't come to me and complain about that because you're literally the one that kind of has most of the control here in in terms of the the pecking order of the the this this transaction that we're we've entered into.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

So is this what do you think? Is this the reason why companies should, why it's beneficial, why it's commercially viable for companies to invest in appreciation?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, the difficulty is is measuring the impact, right? To like how do you directly correlate with someone saying thank you to me to me being happier? Yes, it will make me happier, yes, it might make me stay longer. I think what you what you get into, and again, we've just been talking about this with a client in the past week, is like, you how do you really understand the relationship between a team and a manager or a leader and what's going on there, right? Because the first person that should be saying thanks is a manager or leader, hands down, but generally they're the they're the worst ones at giving it. It's always your your your teammates kind of come in and say, Thanks, you know, you had my back, you stepped up, all that kind of things. But again, because there's no transaction there, right? With your peers, there's no transaction, you're not doing it because you're being subservient or working for them, you're working with them. But in most poor organizations, the m role of a manager or leader is you're doing this for me, and I'm doing this for the company. So, by the nature of this waterfall kind of thing, that you you should just be appreciative that you're in such a glorious position that you're able to even do these things for me, you lucky young son of a gun. So I I think it's it it is really important, but what you have to do is quantify it in human-centered terms, right? You know, it's this it's this curiosity is one, but it isn't the be-all and end-all. You've got to be able to back it up with being having the right conversation to get that insight, saving that insight somewhere, you know, looking at employee personas, customer journeys, value proposition canvases, all these things are in product design. How do you you how do you use that? But most organizations don't do that because it's difficult. And this is why startups work quite well, right? Because you've probably got one founder, maybe two, two, you know, six or eight employees, and they can do employee listing really well. Why? Because literally they can talk to every single employee every single day about what they're doing, about what their life is like. So they can do employee listing. That's why they don't need infrastructure or leadership or doing anything like that, because it's such a small microcosm that you can control it, but then when the company gets to 30 or 50, that then becomes an issue because like those founders can't do that anymore, so they have to disseminate it through leaders, and then you build in this hierarchy of transactional relationships because the leader isn't there because they love the startup, they're there because they want a job, and then you kind of go, Well, the leaders aren't very good at it, so we'll get a HR of people person to do it, and they go, Well, I'll just buy a piece of tech to talk to people. And it's like and it's it's not difficult, right? We worked with an LD team, there's seven people in the L and D team. I think there's like 11,000 employees. They have they they have they set their own team target every month. They will go and have three 15-minute conversations with their end user employees, right? And so each month they're getting 21 15-minute interviews, which soon rack up, and then they use our approach to kind of synthesize and understand what that data means. Their stakeholders can also interrogate that data set and get verbatim quotes and get thoughts and feelings rather than oh, well, they scored a 7.5 out of this. It's like, and what? What are you gonna do with that information? With that information, you kind of go, well, I probably don't need to double-click and un uncover that. If it's a two out of ten, okay, I need to go and that drives the questions I go to go and do my listening. That in itself isn't the listening finding that number.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah, that's very interesting. It's a hard job for for HRs because obviously when you've got a bigger team spread around the world, you do need some piece of technology, but it can never be just the technology that does the work for you. Is that that's what we say, at least like on our side, it's a partnership. We're gonna give you the platform that you need, we're gonna make it as automated as possible, as helpful as possible, but and at the end of the day, it's you who have to who have to put the the work in as well. Um so imagine you are an HR person, obviously thinking a lot about like the employee experience and that, and then you are a leader who is thinking a lot about what value do you get from employees? How do you link the two in terms of appreciation? How do you go as an HR who says we have to appreciate our people, we have to show them they matter, they're seen. How do they go to the leader who is a Ryanair leader and says, Do you know I don't care? I need to get I need to get as much as possible and convince them that the two together work well.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

It's an age-old question about kind of middle management, not necessarily leadership with an organization, but certainly the the the permafrost, as someone I used to work with, called it, you know, that middle layer that have been promoted to being a manager because they're really good at their job. Or they've been there some in the worst cases, they've been there a long time, so then you chuck them in there, or they they have some institutional knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Um that's not good enough, but it has to happen because either you've got you've got to give someone management skills before they become a manager. Which saying out loud, one of our clients actually does. Like phenomenal, I can't name them, but the they they have embarked on a massive kind of I say program, I know you kind of shot down programs, but the this kind of framework, this process to be able to take on managers before they're even managers, and then when there's management roles, they go off and they they don't step into those roles and go, oh crap, how do I be a manager now? It's like, no, no, it's fine. I'm ready for this. Um and and that's kind of it, right? Is that you you don't you don't know what you don't know. And the the problem is, is most management textbooks will tell you like frameworks to have great conversations and conflict resolution and managing different types of people who are how do you identify the different types of people and stuff like that. All good stuff, but there are just some fundamental human things that that that need to happen to build trust and and have a you know have a great relationship with a person at work. Um and for me it's just like the most basic one. I've done something for you and I will say thank you in the best way I can. I I'm not not giving you money, I'm not giving you a gift. You can do that if you want, like be my guest, but like, you know Do I remember the times I've been bought a box of Krispy Kreme donuts for a job well done? Not really. Probably eating too many Krispy Kreme donuts as a result. But you know, like I I I remember those times when And they're the best bosses, right? I named them all. I'm able to name I'm I can name them, I can tell you did it because they said thank you. Um and they weren't, you know. Let me go back. Andy, Mel, Cully, Christine. None of them none of them gave me any gifts, none of them tried to give me any didn't have didn't have the any capability of giving me more money, e even though I asked. Um But I still worked for those and have the huge amount of respect for those four individuals because of the way they worked with me. I was that's the key, uh the subtle wording, right? But they worked with me. I didn't work, I didn't work for any of those four people. I worked with them. They allowed me into that relationship to have have that. No other boss since has done that. It's always been you work for me. That's sad. That's so depressing to say out loud.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Well, do you know it's it's a very key thing because I think people forget it, and I think people call appreciation and building relationship and connection as a soft thing when you talk about you know the business KPIs and the commerciality of it, they all call it soft, but in reality, it's the basics, isn't it? It's like the basics that we should all know if we want to have a successful business. You're building your relationship with customers, you're building that trust, you're putting a lot of emphasis on, you know, showing them that they matter to you, them showing you that you matter to them. Why do we not apply this to our employees? And I think it's a hard job, you know, like when a business is struggling, it's a hard job to convince the management that you have to invest in appreciation. But in reality, people need to understand that without that investment, the business is gonna struggle even more.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

And this is where what HR and people's I go back to the the question I think before was about how do you convince someone to do it, right? So you I can I can go off and sit on my soapbox or stand on my soapbox and say everything I just said. That will resonate with some people, some managers, some other managers don't care. The Emily uses the phrase what's measured is managed, right? So what most organisations will then do is put in some sort of survey, the uh annual pull survey that says, This is how managers are ranked, this is how everyone in their team is ranked, and this is how you know your team have answered most of their questions three out of ten, so you must be a bad manager. Make them not threes out of ten, make them sevens out of ten. That's your mission to do that. Now, never in the history of um the corporate world have I ever seen that methodology work because it's not tangible enough, it doesn't make sense, there's no action plan out of it. So you have to get to you have to get to a better level of understanding trying to or trying to measure human behaviour. Um, another great old boss of mine, Will actually, uh, had the the most beautifully simple and exquisite measurement for understanding the relationship between um managers and their people. You asked the manager, uh I add in an extra question. So you asked the manager, how often do you have a meaningful one-on-one conversation with person X? During that last one-on-one conversation, what percentage of time did you spend talking? And in that conversation, what percentage of time did you spend listening? Now, obviously that's kind of one question because you have a slider. Then you ask the team member the same question. When was the last time you had a meaningful one-on-one conversation? How much talking, how much listening? Now, what should be happening is managers should be doing lots of listening. And you know what? A lot of managers think they're doing lots of listening. However, you flip it on the other side, is most um team members think that their managers have lots of talking and not a lot of listening. Uh, and I go to my last manager that I I I had as an employment, and I could tell you I think that they thought they did a lot of listening, but they did pretty much 90% of talking.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Interesting. That's kind of like you know. If I can translate that into the appreciation chat, it's it's kind of like you think you're doing a lot of appreciation, you think you're saying thank you, you think you're acknowledging effort and that, but in reality, are you actually doing it or not?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Absolutely. And and the perception is only but the the only right answer is does the person on the receiving of that feel that that was it was received in that way? No one ever goes into that understanding uh like is that how it was received? Um did an another bit of research for a consulting firm and worked with their graduates, and we asked all the leaders of the graduates, like, how often do you talk to your people about your these graduates talk about well-being? And they go, Oh, uh, I mention it in every one-to-one, so once a week. You ask the graduates, how often do your leaders talk about well-being? They go, Oh, he's never, you know, they've never talked to me about well-being. And so so the leader thinks that like ticking the box of making sure that they're having these pastoral conversations, uh pastoral care conversations with these graduates, but the graduates don't feel like it's being received in that way. So it's like, cool, well, there's a clear message. But you can do something with that information then. You can you can take that to the managers and go, look, I know you think you're doing this, but but you're not. You need to change it up. Yes, I know they're a different generation, yes, I know they have different intrinsic motivates, blah, blah, blah. But that is your job as a manager or leader to really understand that and act accordingly, because they're not going to flex to you, otherwise, that becomes subservient leadership and that doesn't really benefit too many people.

unknown 23:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

I love that. Um, yeah, it's such a trap to get into right in your own head, like thinking you're doing something right, but actually, in reality, are you actually doing it? That's why we need measures. Um, but we need meaningful measures, right? Thank you so much. That's been incredible. We've covered so much. I am super grateful for your time. Really appreciate it, and lovely to speak with you.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Ah, likewise, thank you for having me. It's been great.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Thank you. Let me stop. I hope this episode gave you some practical ideas on how to turn appreciation from a nice to have into a business priority. If you like the episode, please reach out and share your thoughts with me. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it too. Thank you for listening and don't forget to share appreciation.