Customer Contact Week—a conference focused on customer experience and customer care technology and trends—recently celebrated its 20th anniversary in Las Vegas. So, how has the customer experience evolved in the past two decades? While there have been some significant technological advances, attendees agreed that far more work remains to better serve customers. Business leaders and industry experts shared insights and identified opportunities to evolve even further.
Overcome CX transformation roadblocks
Back in 1999, smartphones didn’t exist. The Net Promoter Score had yet to be developed (it was introduced in 2003). And Customer Contact Week was known as Call Center Week. A lot has changed since companies were “just beginning to talk about something called digital technology” said Mario Matulich, executive director of Customer Management Practice, in a kick-off address. At the same time, some things remain the same. Companies, Matulich noted, still debate which metrics matter and strive to deliver value to the customer. The main challenge is staying ahead of customer expectations at a time when customers are more distracted, connected, and informed than ever before.
Transforming the customer experience to meet or exceed customer expectations is top of mind for many business leaders. The problem is, aside from making relatively simple changes, “people find it very difficult to implement change effectively,” said Megan Burns, founder and principal of Experience Enterprises. An aversion to change often results in companies inadvertently creating roadblocks that prevent successful transformations. Burns shared three ways to overcome CX transformation roadblocks:
1. Be specific – Shifting to more precise language can do wonders in uncovering true priorities and pathways. For example, when you’re told that a CX project is too expensive or has to be put on hold, “because of Wall Street, remember that there are two types of shareholders,” Burns said. “Investors who are in it for the long term and speculators who are looking for quick profits—so push back and ask, which type of shareholder are we most concerned with?” Knowing the answer can help CX leaders align projects better and increase their chances of being green-lit.
2. Help people see the invisible – Similar to the first point, examining something from a new angle or breaking a project down into smaller pieces could make it easier to visualize a way forward. Thinking of a customer journey map, for instance, as “a customer journey blueprint gives the connotation of planning before making a decision,” Burns said, and reduces the pressure to create the perfect map.
3. Leverage existing routines – It’s much harder to make room for a new task than to add to an existing routine. Another way to think of it is “jumping double-dutch,” Burns said. “Just as you have to get the timing right in double-dutch, look for initiatives that already have momentum and figure out how to join them.” Waiting for a budget meeting, for instance, to get approval for a project makes more sense than trying to introduce the project outside of that timeframe.
The future of AI is a human partnership
“We’ve experienced the age of the customer and now the age of the employee is upon us,” Matulich said. The understanding that great customer experiences are impossible without great employee experiences was a major theme at the conference. And as Lance Gruner, EVP of global customer care at Mastercard, pointed out, the age of the employee is concurrent with the age of AI. “Questions about retention and creating a good work environment still exist but people evolve,” Gruner told 1to1 Media. “And companies have to adapt, which is why understanding how to use AI and CX tools effectively is so important [to improving the employee experience].” More specifically, while AI is helpful for training customer care associates faster and taking on routine parts of customer interactions, technology is only a supplement to the human experience. “Tools and technology are essential, but they can’t replace the human element.”
Nick Cerise, CMO at TTEC (1to1 Media’s parent company) agreed. “AI serves a multitude of purposes, but the technology is even more effective when it’s paired with humans,” he explained. High-performing employees, for instance, are well suited for training an AI system to provide customer and education support, creating a “virtuous cycle where you’re using your best employees to train an AI that in turn trains more employees, which increases speed to proficiency and delivers an even better customer experience.”
Consistency beats novel CX
Customer loyalty is more elusive than ever, noted Shep Hyken, a customer experience and service expert. Part of the reason is not only are companies competing with other firms in the same industry, but “people also compare your service to the best service they’ve ever received from any sector,” Hyken said. However, trying to constantly one-up competitors with newer and better services and products is a fool’s game. “The best companies who are constantly seen as amazing are a little bit better than average all the time,” Hyken explained. Consistently good, personalized service is much more effective (and cost effective) than over-the-top experiences that may go unnoticed. How do companies know when they’re doing it right? Companies are on the right path when “the word always is followed by something positive [when customers speak of a brand],” Hyken said. “That’s when you know you’re in the zone of amazement.”
What’s next
Attitudes about the customer, employees, and technology’s role have significantly changed since 1999. At the same time, the pace of change has rapidly accelerated. As Gruner put it, “in the next five years we will see more changes in CX tools and AI than we have in the last 20 years.” If the past 20 years was about adapting to changes, the next 20 years will be about predicting change and preparing for it without your customers ever noticing.
Contact Center Leaders: Look Back to Look Forward
Employees Shine in Some of 2019’s Best Workplaces
In 2019, a great place to work isn’t always defined by a paycheck. The modern workforce is increasingly interested in an environment where employees feel they have meaning and can support the values of the company.
Research by USGBC found that 84 percent of employees desire a job with a strong, concrete mission and positive values. And findings from the University of Warwick show that happy employees are 12 percent more productive.
“This year, we’ve seen more employees tout a mission-driven culture they can stand behind, [with] clear direction from their senior leadership team on where the company is going, transparency around career advancement opportunities, competitive compensation packages, as well as unique benefits and perks, ranging from dog-friendly offices to free catered lunches,” says Glassdoor Community Expert Sarah Stoddard.
We reached out to leaders and employees from brands named in this year’s Glassdoor Employee Choice Award and Inc.’s Best Workplaces survey to find out what it means to be a part of a winning employee culture.
23andMe
The direct-to-consumer (D2C) genetic testing and research company 23andMe, which provides ancestry, health, trait, and wellness reports for consumers, has interwoven transparency into its culture. With a mission to help people access, understand, and benefit from their genetic material, the fast-growing company recruits and supports employees who embody a mission of understanding of the world from a microscopic to global level.
“I think that people have a sense of belonging to the mission, and when you feel like you are a part of something bigger than yourself, it’s deeply motivating,” says Jen Mease, head of recruiting at 23andMe.
The company was ranked 26th by Glassdoor in the best Small to Medium Companies to Work for in 2019, with a 97 percent recommendation rate on the website. Employee reviews on Glassdoor praised its work/life balance, mission-driven work, and investment in company culture as some of their biggest motivators.
“Knowing that behind every data point is a human being is truly inspiring for our employees,” says Mease. “We hear of stories on a daily basis of customers who find siblings or discover potentially lifesaving health information. Feeling like you are a part of that and connecting to the product is really remarkable and unique to 23andMe.”
Research from Imperative has shown that employees who feel a strong purpose with their company are 30 percent more likely to be high performers in the workplace. 23andMe seeks potential employees with relevant job experience and skills, but more importantly, Mease says the company wants to employ people who embody its core values.
“I think it can be relatively simple to provide someone with tools and resources to get better at their job, but it’s more difficult to teach someone to align with your core values. Ideally, we want everyone we hire to make a long-lasting impact at 23andMe,” says Mease. This helps create a work environment that she described as fun, collaborative, innovative, and imaginative.
Additionally, the company is bolstered by the strong leadership of its CEO and co-founder, Anne Wojcicki. As of March 2019, Wojcicki had a 100 percent approval rating as CEO on Glassdoor and was ranked as the 24th Top CEO of 2018 by the site. Despite the company’s growing size, 23andMe hosts an all-hands meeting every Friday to discuss the state of the company and dedicates time for Q&A from employees with Wojcicki and her executive leadership team.
Team Rubicon
There are a select few organizations that inspire their employees to literally go the distance and enter harm’s way to help others. Founded in 2010, Team Rubicon is a non-for-profit volunteer organization that recruits military veterans, civilians, and first responders to help with the unmet need for disaster relief and humanitarian aid across the globe. An important objective of the organization is giving veterans a chance to use the skills they learned in the service to help others, with former military making up almost 70 percent of the volunteer force.
The organization has helped during disasters such as Hurricanes Michael, Florence, and Maria, which impacted parts of the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
“Many of Team Rubicon’s values, standards, and roots can be found in the military service of its founders, leaders, and volunteers,” says Josh Anderson, talent management at Team Rubicon and a Marine Corps veteran. “Many of our organizational values have to do with the delicate balance—the compromises—that must be struck during periods of conflict, stresses, hazards, or moments of severe consequence. In disasters, as in combat, the stakes are high.”
Employees and volunteers commented on Glassdoor that its mission-driven, challenging, and collaborative culture is a big driver as to why they are part of the organization.
Research from Team Rubicon found that 78 percent of those deployed report contributing to a greater purpose. “Our values are fundamentally different from what many experience in their adult working lives. They are strong, fearless, liberating, and bold,” says Anderson. “If you embrace them, live them, they free you up to become your best self, to really show up and make a difference in an authentic way. They also create a lot of value for those we serve.”
Purpose- and value-driven employees are essential to creating a positive and impactful environment. A survey from BetterUp Labs revealed that nine out of 10 American workers would give up 23 percent of future earnings to have a more meaningful career.
“We have a bias for action, but we are accountable for our actions and can’t afford to be reckless,” says Anderson. “The people who rely on us most can’t afford for us to be anything but precise, bold, and efficient. But they also need us to be totally human, to help bring them peace when they’re experiencing their worst day.”
Boll & Branch
Launched in 2014, Boll & Branch is a D2C textile (bedding, sheets, etc.) seller founded by husband and wife Scott and Missy Tanne. The pillars of the company focus on care, fair trade, and ethical workplace cultures. Reviews on Glassdoor praise the company’s ethical supply chain, family atmosphere, and values.
With a belief that family comes first, Scott Tanne wanted to ensure that those values are equally ensured to his employees. “We encourage our employees to find the balance that works for them. And, as leaders, we ensure that people feel trusted and empowered, knowing that we focus on measuring our outputs and results vs. over-emphasizing late nights in the office and trivial things like that,” he says. “The result is an office of workers that feels [and looks] more like a home with people who treat and trust one another like family.”
According to Gallup’s “State of the American Workplace” report, over half of respondents said that the ability to have a better work-life balance and personal well-being is very important to them. To Tanne, a big perk of the company’s D2C model is the ability to have a centralized team compared to traditional retailers that are more spread out. This enables the company to home in on work-life balance and flexibility by all working in one location and managing similar work schedules.
As a Fair Trade Certified company, the brand also follows ethical standards around reduced water use, no child or forced labor, living wages, and premiums to the factory and farms associated with the company.
Tanne encourages a work environment that begins with a one-on-one discussion of the company mission during hiring, and continues with transparency and reports for employees following factory trips. “When the Fair Trade impact report is released in June we present that to the full team,” says Tanne. “Things like this we prioritize to ensure we’re keeping people, our mission, at the heart of Boll & Branch’s culture.”
High ethical standards is a key ingredient to employee engagement and great workplaces. LinkedIn’s 2018 “Workplace Culture Trends” report found that 87 percent of American workers say pride in the company they work for matters, with 46 percent citing a positive impact on society as a key factor.
goodr
Founded in 2015 in Los Angeles, goodr’s small team of 39 employees runs a successful line of athletic sunglasses for runners, cyclists, and various athletic competitions and training. The brand has a lively and unique employee culture backed by autonomy and ethical workplace awareness.
For starters, everyone who applies for a position at goodr has to submit a drawing of an octopus fighting a pirate.
“What’s interesting about our brand is we’re a super vibrant fun company. And if you see us, I think there’s this idea that we slam margaritas all day, but nothing could be further from the truth. We actually work very hard,” says Stephen Lease, co-founder and CEO of goodr. “We have a super in-depth onboarding process because we realized our culture is so different and we have to deprogram people from normal ways of thinking.”
The company’s extensive onboarding process, which it calls goodr.OS (goodr operating system) is made of eight pillars that the staff, both new and current, go through. Examples include:
• New hires get a swag bag of books that goodr feels are cornerstones to its culture.
•Team members are encouraged to put together a personal productivity system.
• Training and test on an Enneagram (a tool for measuring personality types) so employees can better understand each of the nine personality types and how to best work with each other’s differences and strengths.
• The production of a weekly “Learn goodr” video that the team watches and discusses.
Goodr also has a flat reporting structure where there are no bosses, which they find isn’t for everyone. “You have a role you know what to do, we try to train leaders and adults, not followers,” says Lease.
What it takes to be a best place to work
These brands prove to be not only exceptional on the outside, but meaningful and impactful for those making it work on the inside. As consumers become more aware of unfair, toxic, or mistreated workforces, leaders need to look at the brands that are creating forward thinking and ethical workplaces to be impactful.
Forrester CX NYC 2019: How to Break Through Stagnant Customer Experiences
At Forrester’s CX NYC 2019 conference, the message was clear: customer experience has a hit a wall. The failure to understand what customers really want and deliver value has led to irrelevant experiences and disengaged customers. Across a total of 16 industries in the research firm’s latest U.S. Customer Experience Index, 81 percent of the brands have a stagnated customer experience.
The good news is with the right strategy, data insights, and a healthy dose of experimentation, companies can break through the wall to drive greater customer engagement and loyalty. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the conference on how to do exactly that.
1. Think POST
While cutting-edge technology is a key driver of great customer experiences, it isn’t the only component that matters when making a buying decision. “Too many firms don’t put the customer in the center of their CX technology buying decisions—or they’re not taking a holistic view of how the technology fits within the rest of the organization,” said Forrester Senior Analyst Faith Adams at a breakout session.
The result is a waste of resources and unsuccessful customer outcomes. Adams suggested the acronym POST (People, Objective, Strategy, Technology) as a smarter and more effective way to integrate technology into a company’s CX initiatives.
Kathy Schwartz, director of customer experience at pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, shared additional tips for implementing a successful CX strategy based on her own experiences. Being transparent in the RFP process about the sources of data that vendors would be asked to work with and asking them to demonstrate their capabilities quickly pares down the list, Schwartz said.
Also, defining the success metrics of the CX program early on is important, but “don’t overcommit to those metrics,” she advised. As the CX program matures, companies should remember that KPIs and priorities could change, so it’s also important to do regular assessments.
2. Engage values-based consumers strategically
In an increasingly polarized environment, more and more consumers are selecting brands that reflect their values. Globally, 64 percent of consumers choose, switch, avoid, or boycott a brand based on its standing on a societal issue, according to the Edelman Earned Brand 2018 report, which is up 13 percentage points from 2017.
Brands, though, should be wary of adopting and broadcasting values simply to attract customers, warned Harley Manning, VP and research director at Forrester. “What’s hugely important is authenticity,” he said. Customers, Manning noted, are very quick to spot opportunistic attempts to win business.
Brands need a strategy to bring social, political, or moral values into their business models, added Manning, who helped create a values-based experience framework for exactly that purpose. The framework outlines nine potential approaches brands can take to integrating values into the customer experience. There is no right or wrong option, Manning said. It’s just a matter of “figuring out do our values match our customers’ values and how intensely do we want to depict those values?”
3. Unlock empathy by humanizing data
Research shows that employees provide better and more effective service when they feel empathy for a customer. The challenge is triggering empathy when employees are quickly numbed by the volume of customer complaints and requests that they receive daily. A possible solution is video testimonials.
“Creating empathy is the key to inspiring action in CX,” said Raj Sivasubramanian, customer experience insights manager at Airbnb, in a presentation. Sivasubramanian shared a pilot he recently launched in which a small group of Airbnb users were invited to submit short videos with feedback about the rental company’s service.
Video elicits emotions that compel the viewer to act faster in a way that text doesn’t, Sivasubramanian claimed. To support his point, Sivasubramanian shared several video testimonials that ranged from a man on a hospital bed thanking Airbnb for promptly issuing him a refund when he was unable to use his reservation, to various disgruntled customers. “Our customers provide more context and deeper insight via video,” Sivasubramanian said. In one case, when a customer angrily complained about the company’s confusing cancellation policies, the video prompted the necessary teams to re-examine the text and simplify it.
Of course, video testimonials present their own challenges, such as being easily overwhelmed by the volume of content. Yet humanizing customer data can help produce better and more effective support. As companies look to pull more insights from their data, they should consider whether there are ways to visualize and tell a story better or add emotion that was stripped from another channel. Or as Sivasubramanian put it, “don’t lose sight of the human element in your data.”
4. Employee experience matters
In Forrester’s employee experience track, analysts dove into the importance of creating genuine and meaningful interactions inside of an organization.
Getting an employee experience right is tough. Forrester analysts Angelina Gennis, Sam Stern, and Adrian Chapman explained that it’s complicated to create a healthy employee environment because so many organizations shape their workers’ experience around customers’ rising expectations. Instead, they advocated that organizations design experiences that fit their employees’ expectations first. “We think what truly matters to the employees is the ability to connect to them and [for them to] stay productive on the work that matters most to them,” said Chapman.
This means fostering an environment for “purpose workers,” employees who are encouraged to incorporate their own values and meaning into the work they do. According to Forrester’s 2018 Workforce study, 96 percent of workers at high EX firm are willing to stay for the next 12 months, while fewer than half are willing to stay at a low EX firm. Additionally, 85 percent at a high-ranking firm would recommend their company’s product, while only 16 percent at a low-ranking firm would do so.
While organizations have been using customer personas for some time to better understand their customers, the analysts stressed that organizations need to paint a better picture of their employees too. Gennis outlined three steps to create an employee persona, a snapshot that represents a large segment of employees as a single individual.
- Set a clear goal: Personas need to let an employee tell a story. Let it show how an employee can have (or what may prevent) a ‘perfect’ day at work. Then have the persona focus on a specific objective of what the end product should be and how it can be successful.
- Plan research to inform insights: Analyzing a single employee persona does not provide a big enough picture to solve a problem. Use qualitative research to cast a wider net on an issue and use this technique to connect the dots between employees by articulating their shared experiences.
- Strive for inspiring and actionable: Use the story told and research collected to discover mindsets and personality traits that can be attributed to different demographics in an organization. By better understanding groups of employees’ desires at different stages of your career, an organization can introduce actionable insight.
For several years, firms have been able to elevate the customer experience by taking advantage of quick wins and simple fixes. Such opportunities are increasingly rare as more companies compete on the customer experience. As analysts and industry experts at the conference suggest, it’s time for companies to climb higher and leverage data, technology, and human creativity in more strategic and innovative ways.
Make Your Channel Experiences Harmonious
The line, “if you build it, He will come,” may have worked for Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way in customer service. From social media and mobile apps to chat and video, businesses have many more ways to support customers in addition to the telephone. However, it’s not uncommon for customers to miss or ignore these tools. The good news is there are ways to change those behaviors with a robust data analytics and customer education strategy.
Find the right mix of humans and technology
There’s a misconception that customers only want to speak with human associates. What customers want is to have their problem understood and solved quickly, regardless of whether they’re communicating with a human, a bot, or on their own. However, bots have limited uses—they can only respond to straightforward questions and perform simple tasks.
As a result, many customers turn to what’s familiar: calling the business’ toll-free number. This tendency isn’t limited to Baby Boomers, either. In fact, millennials call their bank at nearly three times the rate of older customers, according to a study by Bain & Company.
But it can be equally frustrating to wait several minutes to ask a quick question or be forced to repeat the question. This leaves companies with an undesirable scenario: spending a lot of money to deliver a poor experience to the customer. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that consumers will switch providers after just one bad customer service experience. More and more companies, therefore, are coming to the realization that they need to overhaul their customer experience and provide customers with the right kind of support, both digital and traditional.
What is channel orchestration and why do we need it?
Channel orchestration is an approach that leverages customer preferences for different channels while driving down costs and improving the quality of the experience. Just as an orchestra is composed of various instruments coming together harmoniously, it’s about bringing different interaction channels together to perform harmoniously for the customer.
For example, a financial services client was experiencing high call volumes at its contact center despite efforts to digitally transform the customer experience. Although the firm offered robust mobile and digital self-service options, there was a group of frequent callers who continued to rely solely on the phone to handle all their banking needs.
We started with an evaluation of the call volumes. The analysis helped identify four customer segments, each with a different reason for calling. The four segments were: no self-service option; not aware of self-service; tried self-service unsuccessfully; and aware of self-service option but didn’t try it.
Our next step was to launch a test-and-control pilot to identify the segments that were most likely to respond to a customer education program on the benefits of self-service channels.
• Frequent callers were directed to pilot or control associates. Control associates performed their duties as usual, but the pilot associates offered the caller information about the self-service options.
• The primary objective of the Caller Education Inbound Pilot was to deflect future frequent callers (digitally active and non-digitally active) to self-service/digital channels through a series of bundled communications and call treatments. This pilot provided frequent callers consistent enhanced service throughout the pilot period.
• Pilot associates educated callers using advanced features such as co-browse, simulator, and on behalf of, in addition to other personalization methods. Associates also followed up with a personalized email to customers to reinforce the self-service functionality, or walked the customer through a demonstration of the self-service IVR system.
Having a test-and-control framework enabled us to drill into the data and produce insights that would have been impossible to produce otherwise. For example, we determined that caller education helped reduce call volume for only certain call reasons. With this information, associates only offered information about the self-service options when it was likely to reduce call volume.
Overall, the Caller Education pilot helped reduce the 30-day callback rate by 18 percent and these improvements were sustained in 60-day and 90-day callback rates. Supported by these findings, we developed a data-driven rollout plan (prioritized by call reason) that provided close to $3 million in annual savings for the company.
Therefore, instead of having customers call the bank for routine questions, such as checking an account balance or changing a PIN, we were able to understand the reasons they were calling and use that insight to teach them how to use the digital self-service options, allowing them to get the help they needed faster and more conveniently. This also freed up associates to focus on more complex consultative calls or account issues.
A word about channel orchestration metrics
Understanding which metrics are important for guiding a channel orchestration strategy and measuring its success is also critical. Before deploying channel orchestration, there are several key questions to ask: Which channels are my customers using? What percentage of customer transactions are completed via self-service versus a phone call? And what percentage of those phone calls could be resolved through self-service?
These questions will help determine which channels to focus on. Real-time data may also affect those decisions. Increasingly, data insights are being derived from both traditional customer feedback surveys and real-time analytics. As a result, companies are able to be nimbler in their responses. For example, if a payroll company notices that a processing error in one area of business will disrupt other areas of the business, it can proactively communicate the disruption to its clients in real time through preferred channels in a way that’s organized and consistent.
What we’re also seeing is that channel orchestration metrics are becoming more personalized and outcome-driven versus being solely focused on operational effectiveness. For instance, instead of prioritizing average handle time, service level, and other operational metrics, companies are increasingly asking about outcome-based metrics like customer effort score and customer satisfaction.
Also, while customer lifetime value is a common metric for estimating marketing costs, it’s not typically used in contact centers. With the advent of data integration, that’s beginning to change. Now, a contact center associate can see, for instance, that this individual has been a customer for five years, has interacted with the brand’s website three times in the last month, and is worth about $20K in potential revenue. This information could help personalize the products or services that the associate brings to the customer’s attention, whether it’s over the phone, social media, or chat.
Hit the right notes with customer understanding
While it wouldn’t be as catchy, Kevin Costner’s famous line would be more accurate if it read: “If you build it, test and iterate, and incorporate feedback, they will [most likely] come.” Creating great customer support requires more than the latest digital tools—it requires a keen understanding of customer needs, preferences, and expectations and the willingness to try new approaches. Only then, will companies hit a home run with customers.
Allbirds Co-Founder Dishes on Direct Customer Relationships
The direct-to-consumer (D2C) model for manufacturers grew rapidly in 2018, with brands like Quip, Dollar Shave Club, and Warby Parker providing easy ways for consumers to purchase online and manage a close relationship with the brands they use.
With the D2C market becoming saturated, products and customer experiences must be exceptional to stand out and succeed. Especially for footwear, where it may seem impossible to win in an industry with corporate giants like Nike and Adidas.
Nevertheless, the U.S. shoe company Allbirds proved naysayers wrong with an eco-friendly and innovative D2C brand now valued at over $1 billion. We recently spoke to Joey Zwillinger, co-founder of Allbirds, to get some insight on what it takes to be one of the most innovative hypergrowth shoe brands and D2C sellers in the market.
Dylan Haviland: How did the company start?
Joey Zwillinger: Allbirds was founded out of a desire to make better things in a better way. My co-founder Tim was playing professional soccer in his native New Zealand, when he came up with the idea to make a simple, comfortable shoe out of wool. Our wives were college dormmates and remain great friends, and after years of Tim thinking about and working on this idea on his own, they suggested we chat.
I come from a renewable materials and engineering background, so together we were able to create a product that wasn’t just well designed and incredibly comfortable, it was actually kinder to the planet. Tim and I are co-CEOs, sharing the role traditionally reserved for a single person; Tim focuses mostly on product and our creative design, and I lead the operations, technology, and material R&D to continue our focus on our sustainable design with novel solutions to historically high-polluting supply chains.
What does it take to be an ‘innovative’ brand in 2019?
JZ: The courage to be bold, and to know that even a small company can make a very big impact on an industry as large as shoes ($80 billion+ in the U.S. alone). Product innovation takes time, so companies need to invest early and often—our sugarcane-based foam has been in development for three years! Needless to say, we have a lot of products and materials in the pipeline for the future, and we are incredibly excited about the experiences we plan to create for our customers.
What makes Allbirds an innovative brand in the D2C footwear industry?
JZ: We think of innovation in two ways. First is the way we interact with our customers, operating exclusively in a direct-to-consumer model with our entire business listening to feedback from consumers and improving our business as a result.
The second and most important aspect of innovation is related to our product. Especially in the footwear industry, innovation has historically meant adding new features, whereas at Allbirds, we try to distill products to their simplest form. This reductive design philosophy, coupled with novel (and sustainable) materials create a differentiated experience that our customers love.
Why do you think companies are increasingly moving toward a D2C model?
JZ: We can’t speak for the whole industry, but at Allbirds, our customers recognize that instead of paying a retailer to sell our products for us, we put that money right into the quality of every pair of shoes—this means that for a very reasonable price, customers can enjoy the amazing, premium materials that we use to make our products. We also believe that the feedback loop between us and our customers is critical, and the improvements we make to our product as a result resonate with our customers. For example, we’ve made over 35 changes to our original Wool Runner since it initially launched in 2016, almost all based on the concerns and experiences of our customers.
How is Allbirds able to compete in the tough footwear market?
JZ: Tim and I started Allbirds to create a stylish alternative that didn’t have the flashy logos and uncomfortable synthetics of other shoe brands. The response to our products has been beyond anything we could’ve ever imagined, and it shows that there’s a real appetite for simple, comfortable, and sustainable footwear.
Customers are increasingly looking for brands that can relate to their values. How does your brand mission resonate with customers on a personal level?
JZ: As a B Corp, our dedication to sustainability is written into our company charter. Regardless of customer demand, we see environmental conservation as non-negotiable and we prioritize it in each part of our business.
And while consumers are paying more attention to the provenance of what they’re buying, sustainability doesn’t necessarily drive purchase decisions. First and foremost, our customers buy our shoes because they look and feel great. We’re proving that customers don’t have to sacrifice on price or design in order to buy green products.
What steps do you take to ensure that customers will continue to come back to you?
JZ: The best way to make sure that customers return to your brand is to make great products. Though we believe it is critical to have top-notch customer support and social media teams so customers know where to go when they have a question, there’s no replacement for good design and execution.
What are the biggest challenges you see in the D2C space?
JZ: We don’t think that a direct-to-consumer model alone is sufficient to create a lasting brand. This is a wonderful way to sell products given the advances of technology, but without incredible product, the selling approach is not enough. And inventing really great, differentiated products is hard. It’s this challenge that we work on tirelessly every day.
A Unique Way to Engage Your Employees
Recently I did a workshop for employees at Southern AgCredit, a financial services organization with a novel method for ensuring that its employees work together in cohesive, highly productive teams.
Joe Hayman, Southern AgCredit’s CEO, contracted with me to create and conduct a workshop to help his employees “feel more like owners” at the company. Southern AgCredit does mostly real-estate lending for rural customers, including full- and part-time farmers, ranchers, and recreational enthusiasts.
As a co-op, Southern AgCredit prides itself on being 100 percent owned by customers, and every year the vast majority of its net profits are distributed directly back to customers in the form of an annual dividend. Operating as a co-op also gives the firm’s employees a cohesive sense of real purpose, because success is based not just on making loans and liquidity available to customers, but doing so in a cost-efficient and productive manner, so that every year the customer dividend would be impactful.
As part of my initial briefing from Joe, he sent me the results of two recent customer surveys—one involving new borrowers, and one “exit survey” of customers who had paid off their loans during the period. Both surveys showed amazing results. In fact, the numbers were astounding—higher on satisfaction than I had ever witnessed in any organization. For example, of the 217 new borrowers surveyed, in a question on customer satisfaction that used an A to E scale, 214 of them rated their satisfaction as an A, two were a B, one was a C, and no one chose D or E.
In the end, I was able to put together one of the most advanced workshops I’ve ever done on the nuances of creating genuine customer advocates, and focusing on several value-adds that can cement and strengthen a relationship with supportive customers—such as purpose-oriented content (with different content for hunters and farmers) and social-capital-based programs to motivate customers to build the business more effectively through their own efforts.
Rethinking employee incentives
One of the most interesting things I learned had to do with the unique way in which Southern AgCredit encourages its own employees to operate in cohesive, highly cooperative and engaged teams. While most of the company’s annual profit is distributed back to customers in a dividend each year, a portion is distributed to employees as an incentive bonus based on performance.
Unlike most companies, each employee’s bonus isn’t based on individual performance, but on the performance of their team. The bonus pool is established by overall company performance, divided up based on the performance of the team at each office, and then divided among the employees on the team in equal percentages regardless of their title or level of compensation. If, for instance, 40 percent is available for branch “A”, then each employee within the branch would be eligible for a 40 percent incentive.
Every office team works extremely hard to ensure that their office is absolutely as cost-efficient and productive as possible. They’re also careful only to bring on new employees who will make genuine contributions.
Moreover, because the individual employees on a team aren’t competing with each other for a share of the team’s bonus pool, Southern AgCredit’s employees help each other.
What’s more impressive, even though annual production goals are not established at the employee or branch level, Southern AgCredit has grown from $500 million to over $1.1 billion in total assets since the incentive plan was implemented ten years ago. And the annual dividend to the customers is the highest of its peer group! The success of this company shows that no matter how big or small, a commitment to employees will reap benefits for customers and the bottom line.
What’s the State of Digital Transformation?
If there’s one constant in an enterprise transformation strategy, it’s disruption. Even the strategies themselves rarely remain unchanged from ideation to completion as new priorities, processes, expectations, and goals come into play.
Case in point: Today’s digital transformation strategies have greatly evolved over just a few years, observes Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet company, in a recent report, “The State of Digital Transformation.” More specifically, digital transformation is becoming an enterprisewide initiative; ownership is moving to the C-suite, and employee experience and organizational culture are rising in importance, among other trends. We caught up with Solis to discuss these developments and their impact on the customer experience.
Proving ROI from digital transformation initiatives is still a top challenge, according to the report. But at the same time, companies are expanding the budgets for digital initiatives. Are leaders softening their ROI expectations or are they just kicking the can down the road?
Brian Solis: The fact that CEOs are becoming more involved is a blessing in that digital transformation is getting the attention of the C-suite and the CEO understands that this [transformation] will affect the balance sheet. For example, not too long ago, the CEO of Unilever said something along the lines of, we want long-term investors because we’re trying to compete for the future. In other words, stakeholders have to accept costs. Transforming a business in some ways is like renovating a house—it just keeps going. It means that [ROI data] expectations have to change.
At the same time, if you’re not going to deliver ROI results today, you at least need KPIs that show you’re on the right path. And so, we’re starting to see metrics get much more focused on business transformation and business opportunity. It’s not unlike what you’d see at startups as they’re growing.
Speaking of investing in the future, the report also found that most transformation efforts are focused on modernizing customer touchpoints and infrastructure before focusing on the employee experience. Why is that?
BS: In most cases, it’s easier to connect the dots between modernizing customer touchpoints and increasing efficiencies with immediate impacts to the bottom line. Which is why customer experience is at the top or close to the top of these initiatives. But our hypothesis is that employee experience is also going to have to become paramount because employees are consumers too and they have their own growing expectations.
And unless the employee journey is modernized, companies will eventually fall apart due to the lack of employee engagement. In fact, we started to see last year—and definitely going into this year—a greater focus on employee experience. It’s still not at the point that it matches CX, but it is on the rise.
Is the increased focus on employee experience mainly because of the labor shortage?
BS: No, I think it’s a lot of things. You have millennials, for instance. The idea that younger employees are different is overblown, but there’s some truth to the fact that they’re used to working with digital devices and it’s only going to continue with the centennials and so on.
When employees are being asked to use dated applications and devices that literally conflict with how their brains are wired, it’s not an intuitive or productive experience. In fact, it’s counterproductive. Which is to say, companies have to consider whether their employees have what they need to be successful.
There’s also AI and machine learning—technologies that demand new skill sets. Marketing, for example, is starting to have access to data it didn’t have before. When you bring in all these new datasets, you need the knowledge and the skills to ask different questions of the data, as well as translate and assign it to a journey. That introduces the need for people with the right skills and talent.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s widely regarded just how sweeping this transformation of recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining human talent will be. Companies are more focused on their immediate needs.
What are you seeing in terms of how well companies are balancing their immediate needs with their long-term digital transformation plans?
BS: The longer-term plan is usually a 10-year plan for digital transformation and by short-term, I mean five years. We’re seeing a lot of scrambling when it comes to balancing [those plans]. However, these shorter-term investments are teaching companies what’s needed for a longer-term investment and giving them the experience and expertise to prioritize.
For example, going back to our discussion about the need for new and developing skills, most people who are leading their company’s digital transformation are not experienced in digital transformation per se—they’re learning what’s needed as they go. And that’s why CIOs and IT professionals continue to be involved, because they understand the technology aspect best.
But as these plans mature, we start to see cross-functional plans start to take shape because they’re touching more and more areas while silos are crumbling. Different teams that have their own priorities are being forced to come together.
This is also why both short- and long-term initiatives are overlapping as people try to work together.
You noted that many digital transformation strategies don’t include an adequate understanding of the customer. What’s an example of thorough customer research?
BS: Last year and the year before we had seen that most companies were digitally transforming in the name of CX. Meaning they were using CX as the banner to drive most of these investments. But when we asked if they had been studying a digital customer as an indicator of how to make those investments, only 35 percent of those companies said yes. So, they were making investments without necessarily understanding or having access to the data that would guide it.
This year, we started to see that change. More and more companies are investing in a much more sophisticated data infrastructure to at least have the insights to guide the transformation. That includes studying touchpoints, behaviors, and journeys. There’s also a move toward data as a service. A lot of this is becoming part of the marketing regime where AI/machine learning systems are being built that are tracking all kinds of things across the customer journey and the customer experience.
And marketers are feeding those data points into systems that are allowing them to better understand how to segment customers, how to make improvements, or introduce new opportunities for engagement.
The other thing I’m seeing is the companies that get really good at using data start to build an infrastructure around real-time analytics. They’re not just using data to study what already happened, but to also predict demand and the evolution of the customer. What you’re seeing is organizations that are augmenting real-time analytics with predictive analytics.
What other developments are you expecting to see next as digital transformation continues to mature?
BS: It goes back to what I mentioned before: With new technologies comes a demand for people to run and apply these technologies, which is why I think we’ll see employee experience become much more important over the years to come.
8 Ways for CEOs to Rethink Employee Engagement
“CEOs need to connect with their employees.” This statement shouldn’t take any business leaders by surprise. In past decades, though, it was hardly a requirement. These days, leaders of Fortune 500 companies and startups alike are taking a different tack. Instead of remaining out of reach, more CEOs are making the effort to engage their employees—some are even humble. In fact, 78 percent of business leaders are focused on raising engagement and retention, according to Deloitte.
So, why is it essential for CEOs to be more engaged?
Studies show that when employees have confidence in their leaders, they are more likely to be engaged in their work and committed to the organization. However, many leaders haven’t done a good job of communicating with their employees. Only 13 percent of employees strongly agree that the leadership of their organization communicates effectively with the rest of the organization, reports Gallup.
The notion that CEOs can lead from behind a desk is not only outdated, it’s bad for business. A smart CEO understands that employees can’t be taken for granted. A strong connection with employees is necessary to continue driving productivity and growth. So, how does a CEO connect with his or her employees? Our research uncovered eight ways top leaders succeed.
1. Question your assumptions
“You always want to question your own assumption about how you’re doing as a leader by soliciting feedback,” says Marcel Schwantes, a speaker, leadership coach, and consultant. “Ninety percent of the time there’s a large discrepancy between how well senior leaders think they’re perceived and what employees think.”
Soliciting feedback requires eating a lot of humble pie, Schwantes adds, but savvy leaders understand the value of doing so, which has contributed to a shift toward more humble leaders.
Microsoft’s recent turnaround success has been largely attributed to CEO Satya Nadella’s collaborative leadership style, for example. Similarly, Warby Parker Co-CEO Neil Blumenthal described entitlement as “the root of all evil in a company,” in a LinkedIn blog post.
2. Be social savvy
“A CEO’s leadership style must evolve to stay current…CEOs must find ways to leverage the power of social media as a means to bring their story to life and connect with customers, investors, and other audiences, including employees,” writes Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO of the communications firm Ruder Finn, in a report.
Savvy CEOs create buzz within their communities while connecting with followers. For example, T-Mobile CEO John Legere has amassed over 6 million followers on Twitter, where he tweets about the telco industry, shout-outs to his employees, and hanging out with celebrities.
Research also shows that socially savvy CEOs are seen as strong leaders and communicators by their employees. Companies led by CEOs who use one or more social channels are more than twice as likely to be on the Fortune or Glassdoor 100 Best Places to Work lists, according to Ruder Finn.
3. Lead by example
Zlatko Vucetic, CEO of FocusVision, a research technology software company, says he reminds himself that his employees have lives outside of work. “I’m a strong believer that family comes first in the lives of my team,” Vucetic says. “I structure my working time and efforts so I am able to be home every night for dinner with my wife and daughters. And I expect my team to be able to use the same balance of commitment and time management to do the same.”
Vucetic also says he believes in an open-door policy where “any employee can provide me—or anyone on my management team—direct and honest feedback without being penalized because it’s ‘not their place.’”
4. Spend your time wisely
How leaders spend their time influences their ability to lead. Sealing yourself off inside an office makes you seem aloof and detached from your employees, but monitoring your staff gives the impression that you’re a micromanager. Ideally, leaders should aim for something in the middle, according to a study by Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School, and Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Conducted from 2006 to 2018, the study examined how CEOs of companies with an average annual revenue of $13.1 billion spend their time. The study found that more than half (53 percent) of a CEO’s work was done outside of headquarters, “visiting company locations, meeting external constituencies, commuting, traveling, and at home.”
More specifically, the CEOs spent their time in the following manner:
- 61 percent of the CEOs’ time at work was dedicated to face-to-face meetings.
- 15 percent was dedicated to phone or reading activities and replying to written correspondence.
- 24 percent was spent on electronic communications.
The majority of CEO time is spent on face-to-face interactions, which the study’s authors note, “is the best way for CEOs to exercise influence, learn what’s really going on, and delegate to move forward the multiple agendas that must be advanced.”
5. Don’t be an island
As leaders take on more responsibilities, many feel pressured to “act like a boss,” losing touch with their ability to be empathetic and connect with their fellow employees, notes Rod Brace, an executive coach and former chief learning officer for a major health system. “An emotionally intelligent CEO will resist the temptation of falling victim to these pressures,” Brace says. Instead, the CEO will strive to connect with team members at all levels of the organization.
“Effective CEOs act as if they have no authority and seek to build relationships before they tackle the challenges of operations,” he says. Brace also advises leaders to speak directly with their employees as opposed to hiding behind hierarchical processes.
6. Listen actively
It’s not enough for leaders to listen to employees who drop by their office—they must seek out opportunities to connect with employees, says Dan Goldstein, president and owner of Page1Solutions, a digital marketing firm.
“All leaders should take the time to actively listen to their staff,” Goldstein says. That includes spending time with employees in team-building events and informal gatherings. Goldstein recommends identifying staff who seem to have their ears to the ground and gather information from them. “Most important, as a leader, you must look for opportunities to improve both business processes and morale,” Goldstein says, “even when the staff doesn’t realize there are opportunities for improvement.”
7. Talk with people—not at them
At staffing agency Worldwide101, the onboarding process includes a session on how to speak up. “We encourage our team to over-communicate and we make a big deal of staying in touch through various means to build trust,” says CEO Sandra Lewis. “This is especially important as a fully remote company where we don’t see each other at the office to gauge the mood of the day.”
Managers, in particular, receive training on how to listen. “If there is one tip I would give about employee engagement and motivation,” Lewis says, “it would be to train and inspire your managers to always be curious, which translates into keen listening skills.” At team meetings, managers often ask open-ended questions such as, “What can I do to help?” in an effort to empower team members to engage in conversations that are solution driven. In result, “employees feel heard, engaged, and understood, and retention is high,” Lewis says.
8. Share your vision
It’s essential for CEOs to lead with transparency and honesty, according to Antonio Wedral, CEO of NOVOS, a digital marketing agency. Making your employees “feel that they’re a part of something more than a job is essential,” Wedral says. To do so, Wedral says he shares with his staff “the story of the business,” including its five-year plan, why the business exists, and what the employees’ roles are in the story. And on a daily basis, he shares good and bad moments with staff.
And while employee perks are appreciated, they mean even more when they’re personal. “For example, we know someone travels on a very long and expensive train to work, so we offer to pay 30 to 50 percent of their monthly travel costs,” Wedral says. While personalized perks can be difficult to scale, the point is to make employees feel that their needs are understood.
Engaged leaders aren’t made overnight
The key takeaway is that there isn’t a fast and easy way to become an engaged leader. “There’s no magic pill,” Schwantes says. “This isn’t a one-off program, it’s a shift in mindset. And it can take months or longer before getting it right.” With that in mind, leaders who approach these changes as a collaborative—rather than solo—effort are already off to a good start.
Harvard University Makes the Grade on Financial Wellness
It’s difficult to provide an excellent customer experience when an employee is worried about whether he or she can afford a financial shock, such as an unexpected home repair or a medical emergency. For many customer-facing employees, one unexpected expense can quickly snowball into a larger problem: repossession, eviction, or other life-altering situations.
The financial well-being of a company’s employees has a significant effect on their performance, the customer experience, and ultimately the company’s bottom line. Simply raising wages isn’t always an option, though, which is why employers are turning to other ways of helping employees stay financially solvent.
Harvard improves EX with credit resources
Harvard University is one such organization that has drawn a connection between financial wellness and the employee experience. And while financial wellness programs are not new, the scope, objectives, and efficacy of the programs vary. Kerry Beirne, director of human resources for campus services at Harvard University (which includes dining, housing, buildings & facilities, and other services), says she was looking for a program that in addition to “just providing information, produced concrete results quickly.”
In 2015, Beirne learned about Working Credit, a nonprofit organization that helps employees build strong credit scores and reduce expenses that were inflated by poor credit or no credit. The program starts with a 45-minute workshop in which employees learn about how the credit system works, how a credit score is generated, what pushes the score up or down, how credit affects their daily finances, and how to build credit.
At the end of the presentation, attendees could sign up for individual financial counseling sessions. The counselor reviews the employee’s credit score and goals, and helps the employee create a personalized Credit Action Plan. The counselor then reviews the latest credit report and score with the employee every six months for 18 months and offers personalized advice. For example, if an employee had been paying inflated insurance premiums due to poor credit, once the employee reaches a threshold score, the counselor may advise the employee to negotiate a lower premium.
Having the opportunity to meet with a financial expert who can guide employees through the process of improving their credit score was an essential part of the program’s success, says Susan Simon, senior human resources consultant at Harvard University. “It’s not as if you hear something once and then forget about it. Working one-on-one with a counselor is incredibly valuable.”
The first time the program, Make Credit Work For You, was introduced to campus services employees, was in 2015. Of the 125 people who attended the workshop, 77 percent signed up for the counseling sessions. Results included a 39 percent increase in the number of employees with prime FICO scores (> 660). The number of employees with at least $1,000 available on credit cards also increased by 45 percent.
Recently, the university offered Working Credit’s program a second time, and “employees who had already participated, actually stood up and said the program helped them purchase homes and refinance their car,” Beirne says. “We didn’t expect people to share that, but it’s evidence this program works.”
In addition to partnering with Working Credit, the university has invited experts to share information about mortgages, retirement savings, and other topics that their employees may find useful. Speaking with employees and paying attention to their needs is key to understanding what employers can do to help, Simon says.
The impetus to introduce a financial wellness program like Working Credit’s, “didn’t come from a survey, but from conversations with some of our employees about their struggles as working mothers, difficulties getting to work, and other challenges,” Simon says.
Financial wellness pays off for employee engagement
Financial stress, which is sometimes due to a lack of financial literacy, affects people across industries at home and at their jobs. According to a study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 83 percent of HR professionals reported that personal financial challenges had a large impact or some impact on overall employee performance. On a similar note, almost half of employees who are worried about their financial health are less productive at work and spend at least three hours each week dealing with personal financial issues, according to a PwC report.
The impact of employee financial wellness on productivity and quality of work is obvious. Employers are taking notice. Last year, nearly 50 percent of employers offered financial advice in some form, according to SHRM, and that percentage is expected to continue to grow.
There’s a growing awareness of the connection between employee financial wellness and the customer experience. Wise employers understand that their job is to enable employees to be successful at their jobs, which includes helping employees be financially healthy. Creating an atmosphere that encourages financial well-being allows employees to perform to their full ability, which naturally benefits the business as well.
Aetna’s Mindfulness Initiative Leads to Unique Employee Engagement
In today’s job market, what constitutes an engaging employee experience is constantly redefined. There was a time where a fun lounge area with games and snacks was viewed as a key factor in retaining employees. But look at Google. For all its hip attempts to create a fun work environment, it has one of the lowest median employee tenures at little over a year, according to PayScale.
“If employees aren’t engaged and satisfied at work, they’ll move on to the next best opportunity to advance their career or better fit their lifestyle,” says Sarah Stoddard, a community expert at Glassdoor. “As such, an unsatisfied workforce can negatively impact a company’s bottom line as they spend more time and money to recruit, hire, and train new employees.”
The American workforce is increasingly demanding that employers provide meaningful benefits to retain their skill and time.
Aetna invests in mindfulness
Over the last decade, health insurance firm Aetna has sought out a healthier and more impactful employee experience with the introduction of mindfulness. The mindfulness program, in which over 20,000 Aetna employees participate, has shown that a great employee experience can be in the moment and developed into a passion.
Cheryl Jones, director of mindfulness at Aetna, defines it as paying attention to the present moment with an attitude of openness and curiosity. It functions under the bigger umbrella of wellness as a way to encourage healthier habits and outlooks on life. “Mindfulness empowers people with a way to navigate our fast-paced and overloaded modern life and experience more joyful moments at work,” says Jones.
Jones, alongside Andy Lee, chief mindfulness officer, and Cheryl DuBois, a senior project manager and mindfulness advocate, have guided a journey of well-being that was led by Aetna’s former CEO Mark Bertolini, a champion of living in the moment. Bertolini, who suffered a life-threatening skiing accident in 2004, has long been a prominent voice in promoting mindfulness and meditation as a path to self-betterment. In 2008, Bertolini spurred an internal study at Aetna to see the effects of mindfulness on employees. It discovered that mindfulness helped reduce stress, improve sleep, and better manage physical pain.
Not to be limited only to meditation, Jones described in a blog how mindfulness can be associated into everyday work by breathing to clear one’s mind before calls, avoiding multitasking, and carefully considering what one may send in an email. “When we are practicing mindfulness, we are aware of breathing, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and surroundings,” she explains. Participants are paying attention to all of this whenever they pause and tune in to the present moment during the workday.
Empowering values
To accommodate its large employee population, the Aetna mindfulness initiatives are made available to all employees through a variety of platforms. This can range from videos and audio practices on the internal website, to newsletters, blogs, and a streamed speaker series with external experts.
In 2017, the healthcare company made a significant leap in its mindfulness program by opening its first Mindfulness Center at its headquarters in Hartford, Conn. The center aims to be a space employees can visit to collect and calm themselves, participate in weekly activities, and learn from speakers. Employees outside the center are able to join many of its functions virtually.
It’s part of an effort to make mindfulness values and practices available to anyone who’s interested, regardless of their location. An effective employee benefits program needs to be inclusive and easy to reach for all locations, says Jones, especially if it wants to inspire adoption of mindfulness to create workplace well-being.
According to a survey by Thompson Online Benefits, 81 percent of employees who have easier access to their benefits said they feel more loyal to their employer and 77 percent who better understand what they are offered see themselves staying with their employer.
One of the biggest strides Aetna takes to encourage mindfulness is its mindfulness advocate program. Jones describes it as a training program for colleagues who want to become leaders of mindfulness in their workspace. Advocates can help build awareness of the principles and benefits of mindfulness as well as lead practices. An employee becoming an advocate at Aetna is not an official title, but instead a pursuit of their passion and values at the company.
“People want to work for a company that has clearly defined its core values,” Jones says. “When leaders endorse mindfulness, employees are more likely to give themselves permission to practice it during the workday. Over time, this impacts how people ‘show up’ for work and transforms workplace culture.”
Many findings have pointed out that a large majority of employees do not fully understand the core values of their company. According to a study by Gallup, only 27 percent of U.S employees believe in their company values, while only 23 percent can apply those values to every workday.
Mindful results for Aetna
Getting employees to actively participate in a program that coincides with a company’s beliefs can be a tough initiative for even the biggest of brands. The high involvement rate in several of Aetna’s mindfulness programs is a testament to the decade of work they have put into building a healthy workplace culture that employees would choose to be a part of, Jones says.
For the last four years, Aetna has hosted the Mindfulness Challenge, a four-week series of mindfulness topics, with new topics every year for employees to engage and learn from, including how mindfulness improves resilience, energy, and focus, and how it can impact physical health, emotional well-being, and social connection.
Despite the name “challenge,” there is no award at the end. It’s the journey that counts.
“We had over 8,000 people participate last year with no incentive,” says Jones. “We believe the prize is well-being, that you actually feel good from doing this. That’s your prize!”
Additional results from the 2018 Mindfulness Challenge included an 18 percent reduction in stress, 4 percent increase in the corporate employee engagement survey results, and an 87 percent employee recommendation rate.
Employee mindfulness is more than a passing fad
Aetna’s origins in the mindfulness space has been a push not just toward profits, but also to creating and engaging a positive space that encourages employee retention in the workplace.