Clare: Today on HR Trends.
Anna Hewlett: For an employee listening to be successful is for employees who are giving you their time, their candor, their thoughts, their efforts, to see a return. And that return is taking action. You can't take action on everything and you can't give every employee what they want, but to acknowledge that you have heard them and to say, "This is what we've heard, and this is [00:00:30] what we will be doing about it."
Dora Clements: The biggest thing to what Anna just went through is as an organization, know thy self, right? So when you are doing this employee listening, when you're taking these things in, really step back and think about what the infrastructure that you have set up to react to that feedback is and that listening, and the insights that you're gathering. So size certainly for an organization can be a determining factor there, but I would almost... And [00:01:00] I'll get a little IO on you here, going back to our prior conversation. I think about organizations, are you more on the organic end of the spectrum, more on the mechanistic end of the spectrum? Meaning are you really structured? Do have clear pathways and ways you can push changes and messages out there? Or are you a little more unstructured and every everyone's in everything and it might be harder to implement some change? But it also might be easier to drive some cultural elements. And really [00:01:30] just step back and think about how your organization is structured as you think about your ability to drive change and react to some of the listening.
Clare: Welcome to HR Trends. Today, we are talking about the employee experience and why it is such an important time to be deeply discussing this very topic. We have with us today to [00:02:00] extraordinarily intelligent and experienced experts. We have Anna Hewlett, an XM Scientist at Qualtrics. Anna is an industrial organizational psychologist with over a decade's experience leveraging data driven insights, to understand the interdependencies between business strategy and the employee experience. She currently serves as the chair of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Salary Survey [00:02:30] Committee. She regularly presents at their annual conference. She's been published in a lot of journals. Anna, we're so glad you're with us.
Anna Hewlett: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
Clare: We also have with us Dora Clements, who's the Vice President of Digital Transformation at Unum Group. Dora has been leading change efforts for both the Unum and Colonial Life brands. And she's specifically focused on improving the customer experience through delivering digital first experiences. [00:03:00] She's been with Unum Group since 2013 and is another trailblazing leader. Welcome, Dora.
Dora Clements: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Clare: I'm just so excited you're both with us because you're both industrial organizational psychologists. That term alone is just fascinating to me. And I wonder if we can just begin. Can you just unpack what this means? I'm sure many people in the audience are very familiar with what the IO [00:03:30] psychologists do, and you're both trained in this. But Anna, let's start with you. What does this mean?
Anna Hewlett: Thank you so much, Clare. It is a bit of a mouthful, but essentially what it means is that our expertise as IO for short psychologists is the psychology of the workplace. So this is both in terms of the systems and how to maximize systems for the best experience of work, as well as the interpersonal and individual [00:04:00] experiences that we have in the workplace.
Clare: Amazing.
Anna Hewlett: So this can be... Oh, sorry.
Clare: No, go ahead.
Anna Hewlett: This can cover a wide range of topics, really all parts of the talent life cycle from recruitment and selection to onboarding and training all the way through things like understanding the employee experience, growth and development, and onward through succession planning and retirement and exit
Clare: [00:04:30] Dora. Any thoughts to add to that?
Dora Clements: No, I mean, I think Anna summed it up really, really nicely. I always talk about it of it's the study of how people work. I know that one of the things that really struck me when I started in the IO space was the program that I was in talked about, it's how humans shape business and business shapes humans. And that was really fascinating to me. I actually have been working in the transformation space for almost a decade [00:05:00] now, which is crazy to think, but it wasn't until a couple years ago that I actually went back to school to focus on IO because I wanted to be better at transformation. And it's how people think, how they handle change management, how they're going to thrive in a workplace. And that's really what IO is focused on. So it's something that I'm passionate about of making workplaces that are going to encourage people to perform at their best.
Clare: And that's why it's the perfect time to get you both in, because [00:05:30] coming out of the pandemic, there's so much volatility, there's so much change, and so this feels just so topical. If we look at where we're at right now, and I know recently you were both on a SHRM webinar, which we will link to in our show description. A great title, How to Not Lose an Employee in 10 Days. I know it's a very popular webinar and you were both giving all this great advice around how to create those great employee experiences. [00:06:00] But I wonder if we can just begin by reflecting in this time of this labor market, massive acceleration and digital transformation, heightened employee expectations. As people are really immersed in the world of employee experience, how important is it right now? Maybe Dora, let's start with you.
Dora Clements: Yeah. I mean, it can't be understated. We are in the midst of a huge portion of our workforce thinking about what's important to [00:06:30] them in the workplace, thinking about what's going to motivate them. And I always talk about what's going to bring you joy and satisfaction as you go through your career. And that's leading to a lot of folks making different decisions and changing whether it be employers or roles for a variety of reasons. And so understanding what those reasons are and how employers can really speak to those needs and the things that an employee is looking for, whether it be benefits or culture or the environment or career [00:07:00] development. Understanding all those different levers is critical right now, if you want to be able to not only retain, but also attract really good talent that's now suddenly maybe looking where they weren't before. And so there's an upside there too, right? Of you might be able to woo some people that maybe weren't thinking about it in the past.
Clare: That's great. And Anna I'd love your thoughts too. I know prior to-
Anna Hewlett: Sure.
Clare: Prior to Qualtrics, you were a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. You were working with a lot of Fortune 50 companies. Thoughts on where [00:07:30] we are right now.
Anna Hewlett: Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree with what Dora just shared. And I think what I'd like to expand on a bit is the pandemic didn't cause these changes. These primary topic areas that we're seeing changing in terms of our priorities broadly as working people, were already bubbling up and just under the surface, in terms of things like wellbeing, [00:08:00] flexibility, and a focus on diversity, belonging, and inclusion. But the pandemic catalyzed those things, it accelerated those trends. Those trends, we were approaching them, but we sped up and met those head on when the pandemic started.
And so with that catalyzation, we have also really radically rethought societally, how we think about work, our experiences in work and how we want [00:08:30] work to be part of our broader lives. Things are changing in terms of priorities. Drivers of engagement, engagement is still really important, but what's driving that engagement has changed since the pandemic catalyzed our change in our priorities. So those things I mentioned earlier like wellbeing, flexibility, autonomy, and diversity, inclusion and wellbeing are really what I've been seeing as the primary reprioritization [00:09:00] of what we'd like to get at work and experience in our work life.
Clare: So-
Dora Clements: And I think it's... If I can weigh in.
Clare: Oh, go ahead.
Dora Clements: I think it's drived this solutioning around some of those things as well. Things that I think we all collectively knew didn't feel great or were starting to be unacceptable in the past, whether it be slow analog or paper based processes or things like that. And we all knew we needed a digital solution and suddenly we were forced to have a digital solution [00:09:30] and we got to accelerate. And there's pros and cons to that because you have to adjust and adapt and keep up. But it really did slingshot us forward into needing to address a lot of those needs head on.
Clare: That's wonderful Dora. And I would love to pick up actually something you said in that SHRM webinar. You were talking, so this idea of leading digital transformation, right. That acceleration we're moving through and how yeah, we need to be offering those digital experiences [00:10:00] for customers also. And you said this great line, "A digital experience starts with you putting yourself in your customer's shoes and understanding the experience you are trying to create for them and understanding how you can position your employees, your most important resource, to be able to serve those customers." I would love if you could speak to that a little bit.
Dora Clements: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, at the end of the day, we all want to provide our customers the best experience that we can. [00:10:30] Especially when I think about Unum and working in the insurance industry, we sell a promise, right? I don't have a tangible product that I can hand to you. And so it's really about living up to that promise. And it's about being there when we said we would be there for you. And we want that to be an amazing experience for the folks using our benefits. So how do we make that amazing experience? What are they looking for? Let's back up into it. And so much of that is going to be empowering, and I'll stick with Unum as my example, empowering that Unum workforce to be able to serve those customers.
[00:11:00] And that might mean that we have folks that are building really great digital assets, that are putting those out there for folks to self serve with. But it also could be that we're equipping our resources with data, with insights, with tools and things that are going to allow them to serve our customers better. And I always talk about, if you can really embed in your employee's DNA, your mission, your purpose, they're going to take it from there. They're going to go provide the best experiences, they're going to be energized and motivated [00:11:30] because they understand what their north star is that they're chasing and results are going to follow. And so I really think it all starts at home with, are you giving your employees what they need to make your customers happy?
Clare: Anna, I'd love your thoughts on that too.
Anna Hewlett: Yes. I have a couple of points to press on there. So the first thing that I love, Dora, that you said in this quote in the SHRM webinar was your employees are your most important resource. And I can't underscore [00:12:00] that enough. And so investing in your employees, listening to your employees, understanding their needs and how to better meet them, is paramount for organizations to continue to be able to meet their ultimate customer's needs. And something related to that, the second point that I'd like to bring up, is that at Qualtrics we're starting to look at the connection between the employee experience and how those variables impact the customer experience. [00:12:30] And we are seeing relationships between better employee experience leading to better customer experience. So not only is it important for you to be able to best utilize your talent as a resource to invest in that talent and to listen to that talent and listen to their needs. But it also there's evidence that this will positively impact the experience of your ultimate customer base.
Clare: It's so true and so fascinating. And [00:13:00] Anna, you talked there about employee listening. And that is again, talk about a topic for the moment when there's so much movement in the labor market. There's so many people leaving when HR is needing to really understand where are employees and what is important to them. And I wonder if you could just share some best practices for those companies that might be just really beginning or growing their employee listening program, as well as those who are just [00:13:30] the large, big organizations out there who've been doing this for years. Maybe let's start with these smaller organizations, any tips there.
Anna Hewlett: Sure. Yeah. So some of the overarching, really key principles of employee listening, which can be a bit of a jargon term. If you're not familiar, it's essentially collecting and paying attention to and responding to feedback from employees. So that's what we mean [00:14:00] when we say employee listening, and this is typically done in a form of a survey sent out to the organization. So that's largely what I'll be speaking to when I reference employee listening. So what is really important for employee listening to be successful is for employees who are giving you their time, their candor, their thoughts, their efforts, to see a return, and that return is taking action. You can't [00:14:30] take action on everything and you can't give every employee what they want, but to acknowledge that you have heard them and to say, "This is what we've heard, and this is what we will be doing about it."
That is the key. That is the key to have a continued culture of employees who will continue to give you that feedback and to participate in those employee listening efforts. There has to be that feedback loop between me sharing as an employee, [00:15:00] what my thoughts are and what I care about. And you, the employer saying, "I hear you, I acknowledge you. And here's how we're going to address that." That is the most critical piece of employee listening at a conceptual level. And organizations small or large are always asking, "How can we get more employees to participate? We have X, Y, Z participation rate. We'd love to increase that." It's taking action [00:15:30] and not just taking that action, which many organizations may do, but you have to communicate to your employees that you've taken those actions. I see organizations all the time responding to employee feedback, but if the employees don't know that that has been addressed or that something has been done about it, they'll continue to believe in the absence of information that nothing has been done. So it's taking action and making sure employees understand that [00:16:00] action has been taken.
Clare: So just for a moment, I love that taking action, that key of respond. And it makes me think actually, Dora, just for a moment, the parallels to benefits, right? You might have the best benefits package in the world but if you're not communicating it.
Dora Clements: Absolutely.
Clare: People don't realize it's there. They don't realize the value that the... So this is similar. Dora, I'd love your thoughts on that just briefly.
Dora Clements: Yeah. No, you're [00:16:30] 100% correct. I mean, we could be putting out there, "Hey, here's a really important benefits offering for you or a package of benefits we think fits with you." But if we're not explaining the why behind it and connecting those back to your individual experience as a consumer, as someone who's making benefits decisions, it's not really going to mean that much to you. And I would just emphasize what Anna was saying around take action. And that doesn't always mean that [00:17:00] you have to do the specific thing that was being asked for, or respond in a certain way, but it means a addressing it and saying, "Hey, here's what we can do or can't do in this space, and here's why," and bringing those dots together.
I think one of the common things when we've done consumer research or I think about when I talk to my own team and we do employee listening ourselves is, "Help me connect the dots. Help me understand our bigger vision, and then walk me [00:17:30] through how we get to some of the more tactical things that we're doing. Because if I can trace it through the line and see how things progress or how decisions are made, I'm a lot more motivated to continue to help push that forward and continue to help that experience." And so that's something that we spend a lot of time on and effort on because it is critical to keep folks engaged in the experience.
Clare: And also exactly how it builds that trust, right. I'm reading a lot right now about trust [00:18:00] being so important in the employee experience, right. And Anna, I wonder if you could maybe speak to that and also then pivoting maybe to the larger organizations.
Anna Hewlett: Sure.
Clare: Yeah.
Anna Hewlett: Sure. So you're absolutely right, Clare. That trust is key. And that feedback loop that we talked about and that Dora also underlined is that when you are able to have this pattern of asking employees to share [00:18:30] their perspective, acknowledging that their perspective has been heard and then sharing what you're able to do about it and why, and how you're going to approach it, that builds the trust. So that the next time you ask for their feedback, I can say, "I'm going to give you this feedback because I trust that you will do something about it or that you will at least understand it. Even if you can't change the thing that I really want to be changed, you can say, 'I've heard you, I understand that you want [00:19:00] that. Here's what we can do. Here's what we may not be able to do, but we will acknowledge that you have shared this with us.'"
And so one important getting down to a bit more tactical, granular level of all of this piece is I also hear organizations often wanting to know, "How often should we be asking for employee feedback?" And there is no cookie cutter answer. Every organization is different. But the principle [00:19:30] that I think is really important to emphasize here is a balance between the frequency, because you don't want to go too long and information is stale and things change and there's a pandemic and suddenly last year's information doesn't really hold the same, but you want to balance that frequency with your ability to take action. So for some organizations, quarterly employee pulse surveys is a cadence in which they [00:20:00] can get frequent information and turn around and take action and communicate that action out. For other organizations, that would be really, really an aggressive timeline.
So it's all about that balance. And of course, there's no magic answer, but think about for your organization, whether small or large, what is a realistic cadence of keeping information up to date, along with the ability to act on that information. Because [00:20:30] as soon as you fall behind on the action piece, you start to lose the trust and the buy-in and the motivation of your employees to engage with you in the future. So if we talk a bit about larger organizations or even smaller organizations who may have been engaging in employee listening for some period of time, we talk a lot about maturity in terms of your employee listening [00:21:00] muscle, if you will, at Qualtrics. And we see various stages of a maturity journey. And so we often recommend that organizations start with an annual organization wide engagement survey, and why we recommend to start with that annual survey is exactly what I was just saying.
We want to set you up for success. We want to build trust. We don't want you to have to jump through all these hoops [00:21:30] on a timeline your first go around when you're not exactly sure how things will play out, how the change management will work, those kinds of considerations. So starting with an annual survey is a great place to get your feet wet. Over time, as your organization starts to understand what the process looks like, managers understand the cadence of, "Okay, I send the survey, I get the results. I create an action plan for my team. We communicate progress on that action." [00:22:00] As those processes occur over and over again, you can build that maturity and perhaps increase the frequency in which you're asking employees for feedback. Maybe bi-annual, maybe three times, quarterly.
The other consideration as you increase in your maturity for employee listening is integrating, listening from other parts of the employee experience journey. So you could integrate onboarding feedback, [00:22:30] training, and development feedback, exit survey information, and pull across these various sources to connect insights and start to see, "Okay, what happens in onboarding that eventually engagement? What kinds of experiences in an engagement survey are employees sharing that matter that are also showing up in an exit survey as why they might be departing the [00:23:00] organization." So integrating your insights from employees across all these different phases of the life cycle along with your engagement survey, can be a great next step to elevate your employee listening programs as a larger organization or an organization regardless of size that may have been on your employee listening journey for quite some time.
Clare: Wonderful advice there. And Dora, I would love to punt it over to you because obviously you [00:23:30] are leading this transformation efforts at a large employer, over 100... Sorry, 10,000 employees. Not 100,000, but 10,000 employees. And any thoughts on that and what Anna shared and your own experiences.
Dora Clements: Absolutely. And I would say, I think the biggest thing to what Anna just went through is as an organization know thy self, right? So when you are doing this employee listening, when you're taking these things in, really [00:24:00] step back and think about what the infrastructure that you have set up to react to that feedback is and that listening, and the insights that you're gathering. So size certainly for an organization can be a determining factor there, but I would almost...
And I'll get a little IO on you here, going back to our prior conversation. I think about organizations, are you more on the organic end of the spectrum, more on the mechanistic end of the spectrum, meaning are you really structured? Do you have clear pathways [00:24:30] and ways that you can push changes and messages out there? Or are you a little more unstructured and everyone's in everything and it might be harder to implement some change, but it also might be easier to drive some cultural elements. And really just step back and think about how your organization is structured as you think about your ability to drive change and react to some of the listening that you're looking for there.
But I think when it comes to driving transformation especially [00:25:00] in the large employer space, it is not easy to turn a big ship really quickly, right? So it might take time. And recognizing that and I think coming at it with the energy of wanting to move quickly and see results, but also giving yourself some grace when it's not done tomorrow. And then recognizing that transformation is hard, but it's about that continued diligent effort and not giving up on it as you continue to progress it forward. [00:25:30] And I think that can be hard in larger spaces sometimes, but it doesn't mean that the work is any less meaningful, even if it takes maybe more effort to get there.
Anna Hewlett: I really like that perspective, Dora, especially the know thy self recommendation. I think that's really wise. And like I said, I get a lot of questions from organizations as to what am I seeing broadly? And of course we do see some things broadly, but [00:26:00] at the end of the day, every organization is a little bit different. And knowing what works in your organization, what may not work in your organization, and being honest with yourself about that is going to be a key differentiator in your success of a transformation related to employee listening. So I wholeheartedly agree, Dora.
Clare: That is awesome. And it's a great place for us to end, I think. I have this image of this large ship slightly changing course, and us all having grace. And I think that's probably every company right now in the world. [00:26:30] So thank you both so much for joining us. Hope to get you back on soon.
Anna Hewlett: Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure.
Dora Clements: Thank you. It was great to be here.
Clare: Unum is a registered trademark and marketing brand of Unum Group and its ensuring subsidiaries.