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Tag: Employee Experience

The Engine of Productivity: Wellness in the Workplace

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

How we define the workplace has changed radically over the last few years. Offices no longer represent the primary workplace, and remote and hybrid modes of working are becoming the norm rather than the exception. And this has greatly disrupted the way we work. The “office rhythm” is out the door when you’re zooming with people three time zones away one minute, taking a call from the car while you drive your kids to school the next, and collaborating with colleagues face-to-face once or twice a week. It’s hard to connect. Hard to disconnect. And it’s hard to orient yourself in a culture without the daily cues to keep you on track.

All of this leads to wellness issues. The stress of being connected all the time. Or the self-doubt that leads to quiet quitting behaviors. The physical toll of being rooted at your desk all day. The erosion of mentorship in the workplace, and the rise of coaching to fill the gap. HR professionals are on the front lines of a crisis, and they’re responding by paying more attention to wellness than ever before. Employee well-being has emerged as a major focus as organizations replace the free-lunch and foosball-driven ethos with programs aimed at helping people thrive personally so they can thrive professionally.

The data supports this trend: corporate wellness directly influences the emotional and physical health of employees and, by extension, the health of the entire organization. Companies that prioritize wellness not only see an uptick in morale but also in productivity and retention​​​. In fact, 83% of employees report that having a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace correlates with a significant increase in productivity.​​

Crafting Cultures That Resonate with Employees’ Needs

Leaders in HR play a pivotal role in translating these programs into strategic elements of the company culture. The trend is clear: holistic wellness programs that address the full spectrum of well-being—mental, physical, emotional, and financial—help retain people and attract new talent. They make people more productive, as happier employees take fewer sick days, are more loyal, and bring a higher level of creativity and energy to their roles. And they add to your overall organizational resiliency, which is critical to navigating the ups and downs of today’s volatility.

How to make well-being a strategic element of your employer brand

1. Define a Wellness Philosophy: Have a candid conversation with leadership about why your organization values wellness, and how much you’re willing to invest in it. This is a crucial first step to getting your leadership team aligned on the value that wellness creates for the entire organization. You’ll need to address the holistic equation of well-being—physical, mental, emotional, and financial—and how each dimension drives employee performance and satisfaction.

2. Consistently communicate your POV on Wellness: Use every communication channel to consistently reinforce how wellness is woven into your corporate culture. Share stories that highlight the positive impacts of wellness initiatives on employees, strengthening the perception of your brand as caring and supportive.

3. Align Wellness with Strategic Goals: A key part of your wellness initiatives involves connecting the dots between employees’ well-being and the strategic objectives of the company. For example, link mental health programs like mindfulness sessions to innovation to demonstrate how they result in a more creative and productive workplace.

4. Showcase the Impact: Evidence that wellness works only deepens belief in it as a necessity. Share real-life examples of how wellness programs have improved workplace outcomes. Highlight case studies and testimonials from employees who have benefited from these programs. Create case studies that demonstrate improved productivity, reduced stress levels, and better teamwork.

5. Lead with Wellness: When leaders actively participate in and advocate for wellness programs, it sends a powerful message that no matter where you sit in an organization, you’re still a person with the same needs for support. The more leaders participate and evangelize your wellness programs, the more they become a core part of the company ethos.

6. Offer personalized Wellness Options: There is no one-size-fits all when it comes to well-being. By offering personalized wellness options that can be tailored to individual needs, you underscore your commitment to supporting each employee uniquely. This flexibility makes the programs more effective and highlights your company’s dedication to its workforce.

7. Measure Success and Adapt: As your employees engage with wellness programs, their needs will change. You need to continuously assess and adapt your wellness initiatives to keep the offerings relevant, the energy fresh, and the impact high. By actively managing the portfolio of wellness offerings, you show your workforce that rather than checking a box, the organization is committed to making wellness a foundational element of your employer brand.

Thinking Beyond Wellness Programs

Wellness programs alone can feel like Band-Aids if they’re not connected to the employer brand—the internal expression of your mission, purpose, and values—that drives your organization. As employee well-being emerges as a dynamic force that shapes every aspect of workplace engagement and productivity, employees need to feel that it is part of your organizational DNA.

At Emotive Brand, we specialize in connecting business strategy to culture strategy to develop employer brands that are not just smart—they resonate emotionally. Making sure that employees experience wellness programs as part of a larger narrative around how you value people is essential to delivering the experiences that contribute to an organization being a great place to work.

If you have thoughts about the role wellness programs play in culture strategy, please add to the conversation below. And if you’re thinking about ways to get your culture better aligned to your business strategy, we are always happy to help you think through how to approach the challenge.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel a brand, culture, or business forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

HR and Marketing: Building Your Employer Brand Together

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Finding the Right Fit: HR’s Number One Challenge

HR and Marketing? The role of HR has evolved significantly in recent years. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is a high priority for executives, and most companies place this responsibility on HR. According to PwC 18th Annual CEO survey, a full 73% of respondents are concerned about the availability of talent – a 10% increase from 2014. Executives worry that it’s getting harder to recruit and keep the people who are both skilled high-performers and ‘fit’ within their organization’s culture. And without top talent, maintaining a competitive advantage, adapting to industry change, and growing business is nearly impossible.

Fierce marketplace competition makes it difficult for candidates to know if they are a good fit for the brand without some guidance. Ensuring employee ‘fit’ means your brand needs to know why it matters. That’s where an employer brand comes in. Your employer brand must do the hard work of being clear and consistent about its promise (EVP), communicating an authentic, meaningful brand experience across all touchpoints. When done well, an employer brand helps attract the right talent, allows prospects to self-select for fit with your organization, and increases the likelihood that they will develop into long-term, low-churn, high-producing members of your team.

The Heat is On

Today, HR is tasked with creating an employee experience that markets the business to recruits and employees. Crafting a relevant and resonant employer brand involves aligning your organization’s aspirations, values, needs, and wants with the people you are looking to recruit and retain—no easy feat.

The pressure to create a unified, engaging experience for employees and prospects is real. And, launching an employer brand often involves obtaining budget from a CEO who may not see its value. What’s more, building an employer brand can become nearly impossible if the corporate brand is outdated, or worse, non-existent. When HR operates in a silo, getting budget and approval can be an uphill battle.

We’ve worked with a number of clients with varying global challenges around recruitment and employee engagement and there’s one thing they all agree on: successfully building an employer brand can’t be done in isolation. Engaging and partnering with marketing from the very beginning is essential.

Five Ways to Create a Successful Partnership Between HR and Marketing

  1. Designate an owner. Clarifying ownership is key. There is no better steward of an employer brand than the CEO, but gaining alignment from the rest of your leadership team, including key stakeholders, securing budget, and taking the project to the finish line won’t happen without a designated decision maker from either the HR or marketing team. 
  1. Map the employer brand to the corporate brand. Even if the corporate brand looks outdated or lacks relevance, the employer brand needs to build off of the brand’s foundation, otherwise it is confusing to your employees and the marketplace. Use what assets the brand has and build from there. If your corporate brand has a brand promise, find a way to use that as your North Star. The authenticity of the employer brand depends on HR and marketing working together to create an employee experience that is true to the brand.
  1. Get a commitment from key stakeholders. Getting the leadership team invested in the employer brand is more than just establishing a committee where people can voice opinions. It’s also important for each leader to understand the reach of the employer brand as a key influencer of your brand’s image and reputation. Leadership needs to have skin in the game from the start. This up-front work will help you and your marketing team move quickly with alignment and see the project all the way through.
  1. Build a coalition. Once you’ve got your employer brand strategy in place and support from the key stakeholders, you’ll need advocates from both marketing and HR to roll-out the employer brand. Unfortunately, there’s no “launch” button for your employer brand. To make the biggest impact, you’ll need a team dedicated to the project who have always been part of the journey. Marketers know how to drive and measure audience engagement, create engaging experiences, nurture audiences, and tell a story that keeps people interested and engaged over a long period of time. And you don’t just need the marketing execs on board, you need the whole marketing team.
  1. Don’t forget purpose. Your employer brand needs to be rooted in purpose and meaning in order to emotionally connect to and successfully recruit and retain the type of talent best suited for your business. HR understands what matters to employees, but marketing knows how to capture their attention, authentically win them over with purpose-driven messages, and create valuable brand experiences at every touch point. When HR and marketing collaborate on an employer brand strategy together, they ensure that the company lives up to its promise and executes it every day.

Collaboration Wins

HR and marketing are not used to collaborating on strategic initiatives, especially those driven by HR. But not engaging marketing in the project can be a fatal mistake. Marketing owns the brand and they need to be brought along on the journey. Marketing will appreciate being asked to participate and HR will save time and angst by getting them involved from the start.

Top talent have their choice of companies to work for. Access to information and opportunity has accelerated a new employer brand rule book where companies are continually learning to adapt the hiring, retention, engagement strategy, and practices for success. By coordinating these efforts with HR and marketing, your business will reap the benefits in terms of the talent you attract and how well they ‘fit’ into the company.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

The Value of Leadership that Inspires

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Leadership Leads to Inspiration

The strength of a company depends heavily on its leaders and their leadership. Successful business leaders have to be smart, hardworking, and able to get things done. But, often, that’s simply not enough to fuel a thriving business. Today’s companies require more than just intelligence and drive. As a result, more and more companies are seeking out and focusing on developing their ability to drive inspiration and motivation. And in modern business, whether a leader can inspire, motivate, and engage employees is what sets one leader apart from the next.

Inspiration not only leads to more engaged employees, but it consistently leads to increased innovation and business achievement. A company that can cultivate the skills that will inspire, motivate, and engage employees across the organization will gain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. Why? Because motivated employees make things happen.

New Requirements for Leaders

Recent changes in the business world have reshaped the workplace, and therefore reshaped what’s required of leaders. Here are three key shifts that are happening today:

1. Focus on the customer experience

The move from product to customer experience is a major source of competitive advantage for businesses today. While companies will always need to deliver high value goods or services, high customer experience has become just as essential. Thus, customer-facing employees have tremendous influence on the success and future of a business. If employees feel inspired and engaged, they will then amaze and inspire customers.

2. Increased independence

This concerns the nature of the work itself. Today, increasingly more jobs rely on collaboration and independence. It’s become common in the workplace for people to collaborate across departments, do their work remotely, and manage themselves. People are expected to generate their own ideas, and take responsibility more than ever before. Being able to stay motivated and creative, especially with little supervision, requires both dedication to your team and passion for your job.

3. More millennials means = demand for meaning

We can’t forget the millennial generation. While the ways in which we work, and the work itself, have both changed, so have today’s youngest employees. Millennials’ value proposition is not related to traditional motivators. The millennial generation will work hard for a company if they believe in its values and purpose, not necessarily for a larger salary or better title. So creating inspiring and meaningful workplace for this generation is critical to attracting and retaining today’s top talent.

How do you motivate employees in an organization when the classic carrot and stick approach will no longer work?

In order to inspire and engage, leaders must energize those around them and create a climate of trust. Their leadership must extend beyond just their own team and be linked with a company’s strategy and overall workplace culture. While there is no “right” way or one way to be inspirational, these types of leaders tend to have courage and lead with authenticity. They utilize empathy and empowerment. And their leadership style flexes and adapts depending upon what’s required of them in the workplace.

To be a next generation leader, these are the key leadership skills to develop and practice:

1. Individualistic

Leadership is not a one size fits all. It takes time to learn and cultivate the abilities, strengths, and motivators of each person. Each person has their own style, motivations, and way of thinking. When you focus on the differences between individuals, you change from trying to build the “perfect” team to building a “great” team — one that will be more productive and engaged.

2. Focus on strengths

Cultivating someone’s inherent talents leaves people feeling authentic, valuable, and empowered. An inspirational leader has a good sense of his or her own self, and therefore, sets a good example by developing their own strengths and offsetting their own weaknesses. When people work in strengths-based environments, creativity and productivity increase. Everyone feels like they can do what they do best.

3. Self-aware

Having a sense of mindfulness promotes better overall health and workplace satisfaction. Being self-aware is the essence of leadership itself – being able to stay calm under pressure, cope with stress, and empathize with others. A leader must be able to reflect on their actions and revise as needed. Remaining open to new ways of thinking and interaction creates a required sense of trust and connection to other people.

4. Optimistic

Remaining resilient and positive in the midst of challenges demonstrates a sense of confidence and level-headedness. Leaders who are optimistic don’t just have a goal in mind, they have a strategy to achieve it, and the motivation to implement their plan. Optimistic leaders are able to inspire people to believe that the future will be better than the present. And furthermore, that they have the power to make it so.

5. Visionary

Orienting people toward an aspirational future creates individual purpose and joy. When people feel relevant, they are more likely to participate and contribute. Proactively developing a culture of “you are part of something larger than yourself” creates a common platform for everyone to make unique contributions towards.

Lead the Employee Experience

In order to deliver a great customer experience, you must deliver a great employee experience. And understanding that employees are looking for more than just a paycheck and a “job well done” is the first step in becoming a successful 21st century leader.

In today’s workplace, the opportunity to be a leader is open to anyone who develops their inspirational skills and combines them with their own unique strengths, enthusiasm for the job, and authenticity. Valuing inspiration throughout an organization teaches everyone to be more aware, reflective, and empathetic. Ultimately, a team that reinforces the core principles of inspiration will have a competitive edge, and a more productive and resilient future.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

 

Building the Employee Experience

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

It’s no secret that the employee experience with HR has developed a bad rep. The reality is that most people associate HR with two things: hiring and firing. For many organizations, HR is rule enforcement, the behavior police, gliding in when the people problems arise. And even when employees do have a positive experience with HR, it’s often limited to the brief experience of onboarding.

Building Responsibility

We’ve mentioned that attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is the top priority for executives today. And for most businesses, this responsibility falls on HR. It’s no small responsibility, either. The competition for top talent today is intense, and this talent often feels overwhelmed at the options, lost in a sea of thrown-around benefits, unsure if they really are a good fit, or confused about what their work experience would really be like.

And in a fervent search for the right people, businesses are now realizing that people want to be treated as just that, people. Not tools for production. Not numbers on a salary sheet. Not expendable workers. But people who are important to the present and future success of the business, who want to feel like their experience and work matters to employers. Money is no longer the sole motivating factor for talent today. Employees need to feel meaningfully connected to the brand they work for.

A Shift in Role

With the challenge of getting talent on board as top-of-mind, many agree that HR needs a rebrand. This means a shift in focus: away from money and people as resources and towards the creation and building of a holistic, compelling experience for employees. As a result, some organizations are saying “Bye, Bye, to Human Resources?” altogether.

In fact, several of the pioneering companies under-going this shift have renamed HR: “Employee Experience” or other people-centric terms that are among the most popular new names. Although notable, a name change isn’t enough to really elevate your brand and differentiate your workplace. The brand must also behave in a way that puts its people and their experiences first – at every touchpoint. And placing people at the center may be the most promising competitive advantage brands can create today.

Mavericks in the Move

Going against the grain is never easy, but HR leaders who want to succeed need to become mavericks. Building something that goes against the norm, challenges the status quo, and sees beyond the perceived limitations of HR, takes courage, hard work, and drive. And there’s no cookie cutter approach to building a successful employee experience. It needs to authentically reflect your own brand’s purpose and promise.

To be a maverick in this shift, collaboration is key. Oftentimes, businesses steer towards trying to segment different components of the employee experience by dividing areas like “talent,” “recruiting,” and “ground control.” However, by bringing them together under one roof, your team can more easily discover disconnects, divides, and unearth more key areas that need focus. By coming together, conversing, and aligning, the whole brand experience will be more cohesive, powerful, and compelling.

Consider the Whole Journey

Every interaction with the brand matters: a potential employee’s first landing on your website, the first day of work, the last day, and every experience with the brand before and after. It’s not only about building an experience that makes current employees more engaged, productive, and inspired (which with a focus on employee experience, you’ll do). Nor is it about throwing some beanbags in a room or pasting your mission statement on a wall for all to see. It’s much bigger. It’s about building an entire brand experience that extends from employees’ first encounter to long after they’ve worked for you.

The employee experience should reflect and drive your culture, helping employees live your promise and lead with purpose. So consider your entire employee journey from start to finish. How do you support employees along the way? How do you connect people to the journey and how does the journey make them feel at each stage? Putting energy into a 2-day onboard is great, but how do you extend this kind of care? Your brand needs a dedicated team – whether that’s HR or the ‘People Team’ – responsible for the employee experience along the entire brand journey.

Employee Experience = Every Touchpoint

Despite the buzz around employee experience, a clever renaming isn’t enough. For companies that are finding success with this shift, the rename is only a catalyst for change. Your business must consider how to influence each and every touchpoint in a positive way. Building and growing a holistic employee experience is no small task. So make sure your HR team has a seat at the table, and a strategic seat at that.

To stand out and compete, your brand must resonate with people at every interaction. Your brand promise should be reflected in the voice of your communications, positively modeled by your leader’s workplace behavior, and reinforced by everyone within the organization. A thoughtful employee experience should breathe your promise and motivate and inspire people towards your purpose.

Placing focus on each and every touchpoint of the entire employee experience will help your business recruit, retain, and add meaning to every interaction people have with your brand. Investing in your employee experience is investing in your brand and its long-term success.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Business Success is All About Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein

A business’ fate is determined in large part by its culture. A business culture is the reality created by how people act, react, and interact with each other based on their attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions.

The most damaging business cultures are those in which aggression, neglect, and punishment leave employees feeling they have no reason to commit their energies and skills, share their ideas, or help the company advance.

Wanted: A culture that unites and connects employees

A culture built principally around rewards for individual or group performance pits individuals and teams against each other, often in ways that create class systems, in-fighting, and divisive loyalties. The winners in such cultures find meaning in their rewards. The rest are left wondering what the point is for them and their employer.

A passive, benign, and inert business culture leaves the business subject to the aggregate confusion that results when each individual employee’s quirks, tendencies, and potentially questionable morality and ethics are accommodated.

The most beneficial business cultures are those that unite employees around an ambition, make them feel emotionally connected, and surround them with people who share their ambition, feelings, and behavior.

4 factors in transforming your culture

By consistently and intentionally conveying a meaningful ambition and evoking a set of unique and positive emotions, businesses can transform the meaningful outcome of every aspect of the work experience:

  1. The physical environment – the aesthetics and functionality of the workplace;
  2. The policies and procedures – the actual rules of the company as well as the way in which employees experience them;
  3. The attitudes and behavior of fellow employees – the feelings evoked when dealing with superiors, peers, and reports;
  4. The moment of contact – the nature of company/employee and employee/outside world interactions.

A Meaningful Workplace culture is based on the way employees experience these factors – what meaning is conveyed and how they are left feeling.

This excerpt is the sixth in a series from our white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace.

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