Employee Experience Boiled Down To One Word

Good morning. It’s John Garrett with another episode of Green Apple Slices and I know Rachel threatened last week not to pick up, but she did. Here she is. The accountant’s group leader for Canada in Sage or something like that. I don’t know all those learns are on her business card. Rachel Fisch.

Rachel: Hello. How are you, John?

John: Doing well. Doing well.

Rachel: Good.

John: Despite that intro, I am doing well. We always get together and talk through an article we find online. This one was on chiefexecutive.net which is a real thing and the blog article maybe by Luior Arussy. It’s Employee Experience Boiled Down To One Word. I was like, oh, this is going to be a super short article because I thought it was just going to be one word, but it’s not.

Rachel: You just need to know the one word. I’m reading from the top, and I’m like I just need the one word. What’s the one word?

John: Tell me the word.

Rachel: It finally tells you, did you want to announce to the world with the one word?

John: No, you can do it. It’s all yours.

Rachel: Impact, its impact.

John: Impact.

Rachel: Yes.

John: There it is.

Rachel: Okay. We’re done.

John: There it is. Its impact, everybody. Hope you’re having a great week and go out there and —

Rachel: We should probably try to talk about how this actually works and why it matters. I kind of schemed over some of this because he was talking about kind of the surge in conversation around employee experience and how all of a sudden cultures seems to be important in it. I didn’t totally disagree because I think that people are talking about it more, but people being more aware of something that isn’t right, isn’t a new thing. It’s just maybe we’re being a little more vocal about it.

Before you were in jobs for 35 years and you would work until you retired and that was just kind of the thing. Now, it’s — well, no. I need to be happy with what I’m doing as well. We’ve had other articles that talked more about baby boomers as millennial, generational gap and the expectations and employers and stuff like that. Although, I agree that people are talking about it more, this is not by any means a new problem. But I think that in trying to figure out what it is that the organizations can do to improve their culture, this is where we’re really digging into those conversations about how that actually works. He has this research of 30,000. I think you’re almost up to that many people in your survey as well, right?

John: Pretty close, pretty close.

Rachel: It was talking about what’s actually driving all of this. He had the example of one organization that had a 95% employee engagement rate which is phenomenal and it came down to impact. How does impact — how is it connected to anything or everything within an organization. What are some of the highlights you took from this?

John: What I loved, this part here was just the difference between employee experiences driven by benefits like the Ping-Pong tables and the scooters and free food and stuff like that versus employee experience driven by impact is super clear, because one is the things that you do to employees and one is enabling employees to do things for others. People that are enabled are going to take that and run. The thing that I find that’s so alarming to me is firms and companies hire adults because they’re good at their job, but then they babysit them, and they don’t like them go be adults. People are going to become what you treat them like.

Rachel: Isn’t there Steve Jobs quote that talks about, we don’t hire smart people so that we can tell them what to do, but so that they can tell us what to do. Remember, the quality of these people that you wanted on your team and then now shut up and do as I say probably executed that work very well.

John: Right. It’s insane. It’s completely insane. I remember when I worked in a corporate world, actually my last corporate job — I had a manager that would give us projects to do and then would hover just monitoring what we were all working on, on our computers and I become like a seven-year old kid. Therefore, I would always have espn.com’s website up on my screen every time you walked by my cubicle.

Rachel: It sounded like a seven-year-old kid.

John: Exactly, see. We did not get along well. But it’s, let the people be adults and then let them understand how their work makes a difference and how not only to their coworkers but also clients. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that there’s a coworker impact as well that you have there and it’s finding out people’s passions and interest outside of work and having an impact on that.

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. If I can just kind just crush my employer a little bit. I think Sage has done a phenomenal job. I’ve been there actually a year tomorrow. So we’re kind of at my one year anniversary here at Sage. Looking past over last year, I can definitely see things that I’ve done or driven that has made a difference at Sage. On those days, when it just feels like a grind, I’m really kind of proud to say that I know I’ve done things that have made a difference, I hope anyway, unless I’m totally reading that wrong.

John: No, absolutely.

Rachel: But I can see that and I can feel that and it makes me more excited and empowered to do my job better, because I know that for as being the new employee and stumbling around this I was, we were still able to accomplish things that made a difference in the market. Then I think another part that Sage does really well is not only the visibility to be able to see that impact externally, but also through Sage Foundation, giving time to every employee and doing group initiatives that raise money for Sage Foundation which is really pretty cool when you’re talking about being downtown Toronto having 20 of your closest colleagues writing a big bike for benefits and things like that for Sage Foundation. It’s really cool. These are a couple of things just within the last year that I’ve seen that do absolutely make a difference in working there.

John: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Excellent. Well there’s nothing else to say after that. That’s as good as it gets. That’s awesome. Well, if you like to read the article, you can go to greenapplepodcast.com and don’t forget to hit subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes. Yeah, hope you have a great rest of the week, Rachel, and get a lot of cake for your Sage anniversary. Let me wish you a cake all the time anyway. There you go, All right. Well, have a great week.

Rachel: You too. Talk to you later.