Events

Earlier this year, we began to explore the concept of employee experience. Since then, we talked to more than 20 organizations to understand their approach to employee experience and identify leading practices. Now, this is the 2nd in a series of 4 articles highlighting our findings.

However, we wanted to uncover the nuances of what a supportive culture means for employee experience, and in our pursuit, we identified 2 components. Supportive cultures that have values, beliefs, and assumptions anchored in employee experience drive core behaviors throughout the organization.

“We have open door policies. Our CEO and I don’t have secretaries. You can dial us directly and we’re extremely approachable. We care about what our employees have to say and love to hear their feedback. They make us better every day and are critical to our success. It’s about having a transparent and collaborative conversation.”

Vivian Maza, Chief Culture Officer, Ultimate Software

We mentioned that a supportive culture is anchored in employee experience. But what does that mean exactly? In practice, progressive organizations have people – up and down the ranks – who accept the value of employee experience and model behaviors that reinforce it. Organizational climate, internal policies, and leadership – all constructs of organizational culture – contribute significantly to employee experience.⁴

“We have a very collaborative culture. So for us, it was very important that we bring people together to talk about the desired employee experience, then make recommendations and decisions.”

Kate Miller, Director of Employee Experience, Robert Half

Supportive culture anchored to employee experience: Values, beliefs & assumptions

A supportive organization weaves employee experience into its cultural fabric: It does so by clearly anchoring its values, beliefs, and assumptions to experience and accepting it as fundamental to success. Figure 1 shows what progressive organizations with a culture anchored in employee experience value, believe, and assume.

Figure 1: Values, Beliefs & Assumptions of a Supportive Culture | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

“Our first belief, and we think about our values in that order, is that happy employees enable happy customers. Happy customers want to innovate with us. The ability to have great innovation allows us to attract happy employees and do really interesting work, and that creates a virtuous cycle.”

Greg Pryor, VP of People and Performance Evangelist, Workday

5 essential behaviors of a supportive organizational culture

A supportive organizational culture also fosters an experience mentality that encourages people to adopt, at a minimum, 5 essential behaviors:

• Collaboration
• Transparency
• Psychological safety
• Alignment
• Feedback-sharing

While there may be other relevant ones in a supportive culture, we found that these 5 behaviors are tablestakes. We heard them mentioned over and over in our various conversations with organizational leaders. They also underscore the importance of employee experience as a fundamental priority to the wider organization.

In a culture that supports employee experience, everyone – from senior leaders and direct managers to individual contributors – plays a key role. Although the 5 essential behaviors may apply to everyone across levels, we found that, in highly supportive cultures, senior leaders and direct managers often demonstrate collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, and alignment. Individual contributors are also adamant about sharing meaningful feedback. Essentially, how leaders behave paves the way for employees to frequently share meaningful feedback about themselves and about customers. This creates a supportive and reciprocal environment rooted in employee experience.

“Autodesk has figured out how employee behavior and practices align to the culture we care to cultivate. The business and senior leadership fully support The Culture Code we’ve developed and encourage healthy behavior within our system of business practices. The CEO’s consistent reinforcement of The Code has reinforced the work our team does and helped us maintain the momentum for our most recent, successful business transformation.”

Andrea Robb, VP Talent, Culture, and Diversity, Autodesk

For more on this and other levers of employee experience – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report by clicking the image below.

It feels like every time we turn around another post, article, video, or report is discussing the changing nature of, well … everything. We’re constantly inundated with information showing the dynamic and ever-evolving world in which we live and work.

Rethinking How We Do Business: Responsivity

In previous times – when organizations could reasonably predict their environment for the foreseeable future – it was easier to set a course of action and revisit the plan every 3 or 5 years. That no longer works today. Businesses must now find a way to adapt and to change in ways that don’t become obsolete in the same amount of time it took to strategize about those changes.

So, what kind of organization will survive in the future?

Our prediction – the responsive organization.

But what exactly is a responsive organization and what steps can organizations take now to be more responsive?

Our current (working) definition of a responsive organization is:

An organization that identifies change, determines trends, and responds in ways that turns change and disruption into a distinct organizational advantage.

To begin understanding these organizations in more detail, we looked at more than 50 academic and business articles, reports, and books for this literature review.

What we saw

It may not come as a surprise that academic literature isn't flooded with research on the concept of “responsive organizations.” However, the concept has loosely been described throughout popular press and the foundational ideas have been rigorously studied. We looked at any concept we thought would help us uncover what makes an organization responsive (i.e., agility, decision-making, engagement, motivation, rewards, learning, empowerment, technology, performance management).

In reviewing the literature, we uncovered 5 themes of responsive organizations:

• Structure is still needed, but rigidity won’t work
• Authority and power can’t be held by the few
• Empowerment leads to chaos if learning is lacking
• The human element is a distinct advantage, now more than ever
• Technology has an increasing role as a supporting actor

Structure is still needed, but rigidity won’t work

There's a general agreement that traditional hierarchical structures are barriers for organizations wanting to be more responsive. These organizational structures were set up to address efficiency – as though humans would always just make widgets on an assembly line. However, work is no longer done in a linear manner and efficiency limits responsivity – to customers, changing market conditions, new technology, etc. The modern world of work requires a network of individuals and teams that balances stability and flexibility.

More specifically, responsive organizations remove layers – opting for flat, more networked, team-based structures. Working in a network enables businesses to organize around what matters most (i.e., specific challenges, products, knowledge, customers, markets) and to remove traditional notions of control and authority. Yes, there are some decisions that should be made by leaders and within a centralized structure but, by in large, there's a lot more opportunity for the employees who are doing the work on the frontlines to identify problems and take action on solutions.

Regardless of the actual structure, the key point is that old models which primarily emphasize command-and-control operations will become increasingly less effective in the future. Instead, organizations have to provide enough structure to direct work but be flexible enough to evolve in real-time. This idea of flexible, network-based organizational structure is central to the idea of the responsive organization.

Authority & power can’t be held by the few

One of the key benefits of more network-based, flexible structures is the ability to facilitate decentralized decision-making and shared leadership. In traditional models, authority is held by the few and decisions trickle down to workers lower in the hierarchy in a (slow) process. Responsive organizations recognize that power can no longer be held just by the few and embrace the idea of shared leadership. Power – the authority to make decisions and to act on behalf of the organization – has to be pushed down to the people closest to the challenges being solved.

Responsive organizations trust their employees and provide the psychological safety necessary for employees to know they won’t be punished if they act – in good faith – on behalf of the organization. This is critical. Evidence suggests that, when employees feel trusted, it positively impacts performance and these employees are more likely to make extra effort outside of their role.²

Decentralized decision-making and sharing authority are more than simply telling employees they can make their own decisions. Responsive organizations create cultures that value entrepreneurialism and encourage – even reward – employees for coming up with solutions.

“The need for organizational sharing of information, decision making and responsibility among project team members requires a new paradigm of how data and personal relationships will flow.”³

All that said, responsive organizations also understand that strong organizational norms, articulated accountability, and organizational controls are still needed. These set boundaries for employees and help them interpret shared authority through the same lens – ensuring that employees know when leadership needs to be involved.

Empowerment leads to chaos if learning is lacking

Traditional command-and-control models can impede how quickly individuals identify and address skill gaps. When individuals have little insight on strategy and no authority to make decisions, in real-time, they're simply doing a job. They’re not as often confronted with the reality of what’s needed next for them to be able to succeed.

On the other hand, responsive organizations are pushing individuals to operate in roles not easily defined. They're giving employees insights on the vision, strategy, and goals of the organization so employees can better respond to customers. But to respond effectively to customers, employees need to have the skills, capabilities, and knowledge necessary to meet customers’ existing and future needs. This requires employees to be continuously learning both the skills they need to perform today and those necessary to prepare for the future.

Unfortunately, our recent research suggests that a majority of organizations are falling short in helping employees learn and prepare for the future. Less than 50% of organizations are providing an environment to facilitate information-sharing, encouraging continuous learning, or helping employees identify what's needed for future success (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Developing and Preparing Employees for the Future | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

Employees in responsive organizations are constantly faced with the reality of their own limitations and must work quickly to address these. This requires responsive organizations to place learning and development (L&D) at a premium for 2 reasons:

1. Giving employees the power and authority to act on behalf of the organization and to take charge of problem-solving is great, unless they don’t have the necessary skills and abilities to actually do this.
2. Expecting individuals to operate in roles, not jobs, means they need to also identify where the skill or knowledge gaps are among the team and find a way to fill those.

Responsive organizations are also learning organizations that push individuals to continuously build upon their capabilities and teach employees how to learn.

The human element is a distinct advantage – now more than ever

It would be great if we could read the “Responsive Organization Playbook” and see a few chapters on structure, authority and decision-making rights, and L&D, and call it a day. But the truth is, there’s a human element in responsive organizations that is often overlooked when reading up on organizational agility (a term similar to and highly related to responsive organizations).

Responsive organizations balance profit with purpose.⁴ Sure, organizations have to make profit to survive, but “rather than viewing profit as the primary goal of an organization, progressive leaders see profit as a byproduct of success.⁵” That means, responsive organizations are clearly attuned to the human side of their organization – creating 2-way channels of communication to understand their talent beyond the profit they provide.

This enables responsive organizations to create cultures that are intrinsically motivating⁶ – creating an employee experience that minimizes control and micromanagement, and increases individual agency and competence. These cultures recognize and reward progress, not just goal attainment.

Technology’s role as a supporting actor

The sheer volume and speed of information coming into and out of organizations necessitates the use of technology. In fact, many of the articles we read highlight a need for organizations to leverage technology to capture and interpret data both within the organization and external to the organization. This is especially true for responsive organizations. Next-generation technology has to be embraced by the organizations of the future.⁷

This doesn't mean that technology should be seen as something which will come in and disrupt the human element of the workforce. In fact, responsive organizations will need to identify the unique attributes that humans bring to the workforce and leverage technology in a way which enables people to do deeper, more creative work.

Just as responsive organizations need to create flexible, networked, and agile structures – they also need to invest in technologies, systems, and tools that will evolve with them. More importantly, disparate technologies have to be able to seamlessly integrate with each other. Employees are tired of leaving one system to manually enter data into another system about what they just completed in the first system. Unfortunately, this is the reality in many organizations – technologies aren’t integrated with each other and many don’t fit into the flow of work.

The truth is, there are a lot of great technologies out there, and many solutions are trying to provide seamless integration in the flow of work. But we aren’t sure we’re quite there – yet. This suggests to us that responsive organizations may need to think differently about their technological architecture and use a buy-and-build approach to ensure they're arming their people with access to the right information, at the right time, and in the right way.

What caught our attention

Of the literature we reviewed, several pieces stood out to us. Each of the pieces below contained information that we found useful and / or intriguing. We learned from their perspectives and encourage you to do the same.

The Operating Model That’s Eating the World

Aaron Dignan

“These companies are lean, mean, learning machines. They have an intense bias to action and a tolerance for risk … They are obsessed with company culture and top tier talent, with an emphasis on employees that can imagine, build, and test their own ideas. They are driven by a purpose greater than profit….”

Highlights:

• Discusses the responsive organization from 5 key components, including purpose, process, people, products, and platforms
• Highlights the shift in each component of the responsive organization
• Gives an example of an organization that has made the appropriate shift in each area

This article gets us excited about the responsive organization of the future. It gives a simple overview of the components of the organization that need to be reimagined and calls out the organizations that have made shifts in these areas.

The Future of Organizations is Responsive

Mike Arauz

“This difference – between optimizing for certainty vs. optimizing for uncertainty – is at the core of what separates successful organizations from everyone else.”

Highlights:

• Illustrates that organizations are thriving – and will continue to – because they are responding to disruption by creating new ways of working
• Argues that traditional structures impede resource availability
• Suggests that responsive organizations optimize for uncertainty, rather than certainty

This video presentation (slides and transcription provided) illustrates why work isn’t working anymore and provides a compelling argument for organizations that embrace uncertainty. In addition, the presentation highlights where technology is best-suited to support organizations and where the qualities unique to human (creativity, collaboration, etc.) should be leveraged.

Elements of a Responsive Organization

Dean Kimpton

“The idea of placing purpose before profit, is not about blind altruism, but attracting the interest of people.”

Highlights:

• Gives a short review of the ideas central to responsive organizations
• Discusses the potential upside in risk and failure
• Outlines the link between engagement and responsiveness

This quick read offers a fast skim of what makes an organization responsive and outlines a few reasons why. It also highlights what organizations should consider when trying to measure responsiveness.

The Four Intrinsic Rewards that Drive Employee Engagement

Kenneth Thomas

“ requires workers to make a judgment – about the meaningfulness of their purpose, the degree of choice they have for doing things the right way, the competence of their performance, and the actual progress being made toward fulfilling the purpose.”

Highlights:

• Argues that intrinsic motivation is essential when workers are asked to self-manage
• Highlights the factors involved in whether a worker is likely to experience intrinsic motivation
• Discusses each fact in the context of how organizations can create a high-engagement culture

This article provides an overview of current thinking about intrinsic motivation. It highlights the 4 components that help individuals determine whether they are intrinsically motivated, including meaningful purpose, choice, competent performance, and progress toward purpose. It also provides 7 recommendations for how to build a more intrinsically rewarding environment to boost engagement.

The Darkside of Transparency

Julian Birkinshaw and Dan Cable / McKinsey & Company

“We’re getting used to transparency in our lives … But transparency can also cause pain without much gain.”

Highlights:

• Summarizes the potential benefits of transparency within organizations, but cautions where this can go awry
• Suggests there are certain times and internal practices that shouldn't be open to radical transparency
• Discusses the role of transparency in daily activities, employee rewards, and creative work

There's an increased discussion around sharing information and pushing it down to the right levels. With that discussion comes the debate around transparency. This article highlights that debate, suggesting there might be times when privacy wins out over radical transparency.

Overall impressions

When we started this research, we weren’t sure what we’d find. To be honest, there isn’t a lot of information outside of the popular press to help organizations understand what the idea means. It’s still a bit of a muddy concept, and we had to get creative about the avenues we took to research topics that supported this concept. However, in taking a step back, we see that yes, it is a thing – a real thing that’s more than just organizational agility.

Responsivity requires organizations to:

• Rethink how they're structured
• Invest substantially in learning
• Give up control, and push leadership and decision-making down
• Embrace technology
• Rethink the importance of the qualities unique to the human-side of their enterprise

Additional readings

1. "Responsive Organization Practices: Lessons from Pepisco, AirBNB, and Charity: Water," Responsive Organization Practices – Responsive Org – Medium, Seidman, D., 2018.
2. "Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage," Harvard Business Review, Reeve, M. and Deimler, M., 2011.
3. "Linking Empowering Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Influence of Psychological Empowerment, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creative Process Engagement,” Academy of Management Journal, Zhang, X. and Bartol, K.M., 2010.
4. "Knowledge Sharing in Teams: Social Capital, Extrinsic Incentives, and Team Innovation," Group & Organization Management, Hu, L. and Randel, A.E., 2014.
5. "The 5 Trademarks of Agile Organizations," McKinsey & Co., the McKinsey Agile Tribe, 2017.

In our research, The Makings of Modern Performance Management, we identified 3 levers of modern performance management (see Figure 1). In the course of 2 roadshows we’ve done since publishing the research, we’ve received a number of questions about one item in particular:

How can managers clear barriers for their employees?

We thought we’d take a few minutes to share with you a bit of additional information, in case you are also asking yourself this question.

Figure 1: Three Levers of Modern Performance Management | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

You see a mountain, I see a mole hill

One of the first steps for managers is to align with their direct reports on what barriers they are facing in the first place. For example, a direct report might see a major, overwhelming amount of work on their plate, whereas a manager may simply see a need to prioritize better. Therefore, a great first step is for managers is to include pretty simple question during their check-in conversations:

What obstacles are you facing and how can I help remove them?

This is similar to what happens at Intermountain Healthcare, a Utah-based, not-for-profit hospital system, where managers are encouraged to cover 3 types of discussions during their check-in conversations:

• Connecting and removing barriers
• Contribution towards results
• Growth and development

Now, of course, the manager then needs to know how to respond appropriately – and specifically to understand when it is a barrier that only they can remove or if it's one that their employee needs help figuring out how to address for themselves. This type of insight is usually the result of managers using a coaching mindset – which they may have to learn through some form of learning and development resources. It's important that organizations offer these resources for managers to better understand how to coach their employees and that the organizational culture and organizational incentives then reinforce those behaviors.

Build barrier-busting mindsets

Once managers and employees have sorted out which barriers need to be broken down by whom, it is up to the manager to empower their employees to do their part. Organizations should provide a clear framework of when and how to escalate issues, to that employees know which problems they should tackle on their own.

In addition, managers need to encourage employees to find and document solutions to common problems. For example, if a certain type of email has to be sent out regularly, that should be kept in a central repository for everyone to access it (yes, we know this sounds simple, but this is the stuff of which barrier-busting is made). In addition, managers need to reinforce to employees that they will not be penalized for trying to break down major barriers if, for some reason, the effort goes awry. It’s critical that when managers ask employees to drive and own change, that they believe they are in a psychologically safe environment to do so.

Bust barriers, manager style

Finally, it's up to the manager to bust down some of those barriers themselves. The first step here is for managers to look at themselves and determine the activities or expectations they may have put in place that could be causing barriers.

For example, take the all-team meeting. Depending on the size of the team, it may not be terribly useful for everyone. However, no one is going to tell the manager that they shouldn’t have that meeting, even though it is largely a waste of time. It is on the manager to instead make sure that meetings have a clear objective that couldn’t be achieved without the meeting – and to then fix things when that isn’t the case.

Another example is when managers have put in place processes or expectations that are causing barriers to working being done effectively. Again, managers need to create a psychologically safe environment that allows employees to let them know when something could be improved – and to then not react negatively when it does.

Managers need to look outside themselves, and determine how they can help remove organizational barriers for employees. It might be laying the groundwork for an employee’s initiative or working with other leaders at their level to address a specific challenge. Another, absolutely critical manager task, is managers helping employees build the networks they need to solve their own problems. You likely know of other ways to break down barriers for employees – and we’d love to hear them! Please share them in the comments or give us some feedback on what you read here today.

Also, please have a look at our report, in which we dive into each lever in our model in detail and provide examples of how organizations bring them to life.

Over the course of our research, it became clear that the most progressive organizations have a very clear philosophy of employee experience – who it's for, what it is, and how it differs from employee engagement. This philosophy then guides all other decisions organizations make with regard to employee experience.

Target audience: Focus of experience efforts

Before we could get into the weeds of precisely defining employee experience, we first had to figure out who it's for. When it comes to employee experience efforts, there are 3 viewpoints that organizations tend to focus on: employees, customers, or both.

We found that a lot of organizations focus on the 2 far ends of the spectrum. Only a few consider what both employees and customers want in an integrated fashion. But those that use a blended focus tend to see some of the most desirable employee and customer outcomes.

“HR people are used to working in waterfall, slow, 18-month release cycle models when it comes to process and technology, and that’s not how employee experience works. If I see that 80% of my workforce is breaking down in a process or not being engaged at any given moment, I don’t wait a year to deal with it like in old employee engagement surveys. I want to deal with it today.”

Jason Averbook, CEO and co-founder, Leapgen

Clear definition: What employee experience is

• “Designing an organization where people want to show up by focusing on the cultural, technological, and physical environments.”¹
• “The extent to which employees of an organization are enabled or constrained by its adaptive work environment and collective work habits to do their jobs today and reimagine their jobs of tomorrow.”²
• “The combination of organizational culture, technological environment, processes, and physical environment that determines how employees perform and feel about their job.”³
• “Employees’ holistic perceptions of the relationship with his/her employing organization derived from all the encounters at touchpoints along the employee’s journey.”⁴

While we found these definitions adequate as they capture important aspects of employee experience, we also found them lengthy and convoluted.

Therefore, we developed our own concise definition of employee experience:

Employees’ collective perceptions of their ongoing interactions with the organization.

Another important point to call out is that employee experience is fluid. It involves constant dynamic human interactions and, as such, it's an ever-evolving target. To adapt to its fluid nature, progressive organizations adopt an iterative stance. They ask, listen, and act on employee and customer feedback in a frequent, swift, and repetitive manner. Thus, they leverage real-time opportunities to capture, process, and address experience feedback.

Relationship to engagement: How experience & engagement are related

Now that we’ve clearly established our definition of employee experience, let’s distinguish it from employee engagement. It's important to do this for a few reasons. First, many people use the two terms interchangeably – and they are actually quite different. Second, the historical legacy of employee engagement has influenced how people approach employee experience. Having a clear understanding of the differences between the 2 enables us to chart a clearer path forward for developing a strong and compelling employee experience.

All that said, we define employee engagement as:

A measure of energy, involvement, and concentration that's exhibited in work attitudes and behaviors.

Employee engagement is fundamentally different from employee experience (see Figure 1). It's a measurement of what employees do – their “exhibited work attitudes and behaviors” – versus what they perceive. There are other differences as well. For example, in engagement, organizations use a top-down process to develop strategies and implement activities that impact engagement scores. In employee experience, organizations use a bottom-up process to develop strategies and implement activities that impact employees’ perceptions.

Figure 1: Summary of the Differences Between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

For more on this and other levers of employee experience – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report by clicking the image below.

This article is a continuation of our recent study, The Makings of Modern Performance Management. Specifically, it explores the practices of performance management (PM) as they relate to frontline workers: Are they currently treated differently? Should they be?

The Criticality of Frontline Workers

Forward-thinking organizations have looked at frontline workers differently in the last few years. Whereas they were once seen as cogs in a machine (who, it was believed, just work for a paycheck, are inherently disengaged¹²), they're now seen as a source of future leaders, innovation, and a strong customer experience.³

We think that, as the focus on these workers increases, organizations will take a closer look at their PM practices – perhaps reevaluating how these workers are measured, engaged, and developed.

We recently looked at more than 20 academic and business articles, reports, and book chapters to better understand these changes. Not surprisingly, some of the things we learned align nicely with what we found in our modern performance management model.

What we learned

From our review of the literature, it appears that organizations are waking up to the notion that many workers on the frontlines have significant impact on customer experience,⁴ and as such, need more attention. As an example, a 2018 study by The Institute of Customer Service shows that increasing employee engagement also increases customer satisfaction.⁵

In general, we uncovered a collective urgency to move frontline performance management away from traditional operational-driven approaches to more modern development-driven ones.

Three overall themes emerged from our review of the literature:

• Frontline workers need empowerment
• Frontline managers play an important role and should be held accountable for performance development – their own as well as their workers
• Frontline engagement likely requires moving away from industrial-era performance management approaches

We take a look at each of these in the following sections.

Frontline workers: Empowerment

With the current focus on customer experience and its perceived role in driving market competitiveness, there is a general sense that frontline workers need to be better empowered.

To do this, forward-thinking organizations are using development to equip frontline workers – especially those directly serving customers – with soft skills (anywhere from emotional intelligence and communication skills to problem-solving and conflict resolution) so they can better address customers’ needs.⁶

Additionally, real-time and individualized feedback are also seen as ways to empower frontline workers^7,8 – including those in manufacturing roles – to think critically, solve problems, and make effective on-the-spot decisions.⁹

Frontline managers: Accountability for performance development (theirs and their workers)

The bulk of the literature on frontline performance management focuses on managers. The idea that frontline managers play a crucial role in the development of frontline workers is widely accepted (and aligns with what we found more broadly in our recent research as well). Most of the pieces we read mentioned the lack of accountability for the development of their people as a pervasive problem among frontline managers.

Some advocate for offering more formal training to frontline managers in traditional performance management aspects such as: giving and receiving feedback, engaging in frequent 1:1 conversations, setting goals, and addressing performance concerns. This suggests that organizations are beginning to rethink the role of frontline manager from enforcer and doer to manager as coach. While it may seem generally appropriate, it will require changes to their responsibilities and mindset, not to mention to the systems and processes that support them.

Frontline engagement: Leave behind industrial-era PM approaches

The literature suggests that performance management practices for frontline workers are somewhat stuck in the industrial era. And if we ever want to build a fully engaged frontline workforce, then organizations need to re-think how they currently evaluate and address frontline performance.

For example, there is a tendency to measure frontline workers against operational efficiency metrics such as: hours clocked, calls handled, and products assembled. While tracking these metrics may be necessary at times, organizations are itching to improve frontline performance in a more developmental manner,¹⁰ and as such, bring more value to customers. Some recognize the importance of connecting frontline workers’ performance to the organization’s mission and making sure that frontline workers see the big picture.¹¹

There also seems to be a desire to make performance management for managers and employees more meaningful – moving it away from only a transactional process focused on hard skills to a developmental process also focused on soft skills.¹² This is in large part driven by the current focus on providing a positive and compelling experience for both employees and customers.

What we read

Several pieces stood out from the literature we reviewed. Each of the following pieces explored ideas that we found useful in expanding the way we think about frontline performance management.

Frontline Workers and the Skills for Tomorrow’s Economy

College for America

“Even jobs considered ‘entry level,’ or frontline, such as call center customer service reps, require workers to do more than merely handle a transaction; technology now handles those straightforward processes.”

This article defines U.S. frontline workers. It also describes industries with the greatest number of frontline workers and the specific skills they need to be able to fill market needs.

Highlights:

• Defines frontline workers, their demographics, current skills, and the skills they need to develop to compete in the marketplace.
• Offers a framework for evaluating frontline workers' skills.
• Recommends developing frontline workers in higher-level cognitive and soft skills such as: problem-solving, critical-thinking, and relationship-building.

Developing America’s Frontline Workers

Kevin Oakes and Kevin Martin / i4cp

“Companies need to be clear on the positive business impact of frontline worker development, provide the support mechanisms to reinforce this, and measure it through the performance review process and reward (or hold accountable) managers accordingly.”

This report presents findings from a study on development practices for frontline workers among 365 US-based businesses. It describes the increasing demand for skilled workers to fill US-based jobs. It discusses the need for greater frontline manager involvement and accountability for frontline worker development.

Highlights:

• Shows a high correlation between bottom-line business impact and when frontline workers take advantage of development opportunities.
• Examines the current skill level of frontline workers and emphasizes the need to upskill this segment of the workforce for future growth.
• Supports the idea that managers serve as coaches and mentors to those on the frontlines.

Ten Steps to Supercharge Performance Management

Tony DiRomualdo / American Management Association

“HPOs replace annual or semiannual formal performance reviews with regular (monthly or quarterly) informal discussions between frontline managers and their direct reports. This establishes better communication and helps to both maintain consistent focus on what needs to be done and gauge progress.”

This article outlines ten ways in which organizations can improve their performance management practices. It also provides ideas on how organizations can improve the effectiveness of performance management practices for frontline workers and their managers.

Highlights:

• Discusses the importance of creating an environment of ongoing frequent conversations between frontline workers and managers.
• Proposes maintaining a consistent performance management culture throughout the organization to gain buy-in and enable high performance.
• Emphasizes the need to train frontline managers on effective performance management practices.

Frontline Managers: Are They Given the Leadership Tools to Succeed?

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services

“…feedback managers receive is largely punitive: ‘Only negative feedback when failures happen. Punishment in the form of bad performance reviews, notices of corrective action, and terminations are the rewards for failure’…”

This article highlights findings from an online survey to HBR’s readers aimed at understanding the importance of frontline managers to organizational success. It discusses frontline managers’ influence on key organizational outcomes. Yet, it contrasts frontline managers’ importance to organizational success with the lack of managerial effectiveness.

Highlights: 

• Describes how frontline managers are crucial in helping organizations reach business goals.
• States that few organizations invest sufficient time and resources in the professional development of frontline managers.
• Argues that frontline managers lack basic leadership competencies and need further development.

Unlocking the Potential of Frontline Managers in Global Health

Arnab Ghatak, Srishti Gupta, and Ying Sun / McKinsey

“…the typical frontline manager is time strapped, multitasking, and lacking critical elements needed for success: an understanding of priorities, management skills, motivation, autonomy, and information.”

This article examines frontline managers in a healthcare setting. It outlines specific challenges that frontline managers face in their role and suggests six ideas for improvement. It also provides examples of successful frontline management development programs in health-related facilities globally.

Highlights: 

• Mentions the adoption of a service industry framework to better understand and relate to customer-facing employees.
• Suggests a 6-pronged approach to support frontline managers in healthcare settings throughout developing countries.
• Advocates for disciplined performance management practices to motivate and develop frontline managers.

Other good reads (if you have some time)

1 “Developing Skilled Workers: A Toolkit for Manufacturers on Recruiting and Training a Quality Workforce,” The Manufacturing Institute, 2019.

2 “How to Motivate Frontline Employees,” McGregor, L. & Doshi, N., Harvard Business Review, 2018.

3 “Front Line Staff, the Patient Experience and Your Bottom Line – Avoiding the Cultural Hourglass,” Warren, B. & Kinney, T., Select International, 2015.

4 “Maximizing Frontline Sales in Retail Banking,” Maxwell, M, Derraik, R., & Ross, E., McKinsey, 2014.

Ten years ago, the most complex questions learning leaders faced about their learning technology was which LMS they were going to use and how much it was going to cost. That isn’t true today. Now, learning leaders are faced with both higher expectations and unprecedented choice when it comes to creating a learning environment. Why?

Expectations have increased

Expectations of L&D functions have increased. Whereas they were once only responsible for creating and disseminating training, organizations and individuals now expect more.

Organizations need results.

Industries are constantly being disrupted, causing organizations to rethink both their products and their business models in order to properly compete. This has affected not only how organizations compete, but if they compete at all: nearly 9 of 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, or contracted, demonstrating the market disruption and churning in the last 6 decades.¹

Likewise, organizations face changes internally. They have flatter structures, greater connectivity, increased collaboration, and thinner organization walls (e.g., gig economy workers). More work is done in teams, roles are increasingly more flexible, and there are fewer concrete career paths. As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development  solutions – customizing them to specific challenges and ways of doing things their organizations face.

As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development solutions.

The good news is that the C-Suite seems to be doing what they can to enable the L&D function. As of 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge. Additionally, 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.²

It’s getting easier: In 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge, and 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.

Employees want better experiences.

We have talked to nary a learning leader or vendor that is not aware of the expectations employees have of their organizations for learning and growth. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report³,

• 68% of employees prefer to learn at work
• 58% of employees prefer to learn at their own pace
• 49% of employees prefer to lear at the point of need

Whereas the organization and L&D function used to have more control over who was taught what when, today, employees have essentially taken the reins. They want more control over how, what, and when they learn, and technology has enabled them to do so.

Organizations have a lot of choice.

Learning leaders also have more choices than ever before. Gone are the days when L&D functions vetted and chose one LMS to serve the entire organization. They are now choosing from a wide variety of technological solutions, and the many vendors that offer those solutions.

How much choice do they have? We keep a fairly close eye on the learning technology landscape. Ten years ago, there were roughly 60 players in the market (that still exist today). Today, we have a vetted list of over 200 vendors, with another 40 on our list to talk to. That’s a lot of choice.

To make it even more complicated, it’s more difficult to put vendors in boxes. Whereas offerings used to fall neatly in the LMS or Microlearning or Coaching categories, new technologies span many categories, making it harder for learning leaders to ensure the right solution without doubling up unnecessarily.

These expectations and choice have resulted in a sort of panic when it comes to the technology that enables employees to learn. Many leaders go after the new and shiny; many shy away from choices for fear of making the wrong ones; and many have failed to acknowledge the changes at all, instead opting for the traditional one-platform system with little deviation or addition.

For this research, we interviewed over 30 very thoughtful learning leaders about their learning tech ecosystems. They were incredibly generous with their time and candor, helping us to understand not only the challenges they face in choosing and implementing technologies, but their best ideas for doing it better.

What did we do with that information? We wrote a report. In it, we outline the findings of those 30+ interview and provide examples of real-life learning tech ecosystems and get their thoughts on how they should think about ecosystems, including their  philosophy, structure, sustainability, and evolution.

To access the report, click here.

The term “employee experience” is hot – in a global 2018 study of five hundred CHROs, 83% of organizational leaders emphasized a positive employee experience as crucial to organizational success.¹ There is also evidence that organizations with a strong employee experience have twice the innovation and customer satisfaction and higher profits than organizations with a weaker employee experience.²

However, despite this enthusiasm, there is not a lot of clarity on what the term means and what exactly organizations should do to improve it. We, therefore, began a study of this topic earlier this year. In this new report, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results, sponsored by Medallia, we focused on one primary question:

How should organizations create a compelling, delighting, and sustainable employee experience that results in high-performing, satisfied employees and loyal customers?

Some of the Myths and Realities We Uncovered

Over the course of our investigation, we encountered some very strong perspectives on employee experience. Some of the “myths” we identified early on in the research are below – as well as the counter-balancing reality we discovered through our reading and interviews (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Myths and Realities of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

So, given the realities of employee experience, what should organizations do? Our research identified some very actionable steps organizations can take.

The Four Levers of Employee Experience

After analyzing the breadth of what we learned, we identified four critical levers of employee experience: a clear philosophy, a supportive culture, articulated accountability, and an aligned measurement approach (see Figure 2). When combined together, these four levers can have a powerful impact on employee experience.

Figure 2: The Four Levers of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

• A clear philosophy: Identifies a target audience and clearly defines employee experience and its relationship to employee engagement.
• A supportive culture: Anchors employee experience to the culture via employee-centric values, beliefs, and assumptions that reinforce five essential behaviors: collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, alignment, and feedback-sharing.
• Articulated accountability: Distributes responsibility for employee experience strategy and large-scale issues among senior leaders. It also centralizes responsibility among individual contributors for sharing meaningful feedback and among mid-level leaders for effectively responding to it.
• An aligned measurement approach: Takes into consideration an organization’s data analytics maturity and a clear data analytics strategy aligned to key business metrics.

The most progressive organizations we interviewed were able to use these four levers effectively to create a clear and compelling employee experience.

Within the report, we provide details on how organizations can approach each lever and provide numerous quotes and examples of organizations who have done each one well. While interviewed organizations’ outcomes varied based on what they were trying to influence, the below quote from Greg Pryor at Workday sums up nicely many of the themes we heard:

“Our first belief, and we think about our values in that order, is that happy employees enable happy customers. Happy customers want to innovate with us. The ability to have great innovation allows us to attract happy employees and do really interesting work, and that creates a virtuous cycle.”

Greg Pryor, senior VP of people and performance evangelist at Workday

For more on each lever – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report. You can also join us at Workday Rising, where we will share the full results of this research for the first time.

Excerpt from: Diversity & Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market

On the surface, technology seems like the magic bullet for helping conscientious companies combat D&I challenges. After all, we recognize that no people are truly free of bias, so why not rely on bias-free technology? That all seems perfect until we reflect on how software is created and chosen by those same biased people. So how should we think about AI in the context of D&I?

In our recent study with Mercer, we examined the emerging market for D&I tech, and we also tackled the question of AI and raised some questions about its inherent benefits and risks.

Here is an excerpt from that report which looks more closely at the role of AI in D&I:

The potential dangers of AI in D&I technologies—and some ways to address them

To debunk some of the myths associated with the use of these technologies, we’ve outlined the potential dangers and limitations of using AI when it comes to decision making. We’ve also suggested some considerations leaders can take into account, below to become better informed consumers of AI products.

Potential Dangers of Artificial Intelligence in D&I Applications:

• Decisions based on AI algorithms have grown in complexity (often lacking a clear logical flow that humans can understand), opaqueness (as of result of limited transparency, regulation, and accountability), ubiquity (AI has become mainstream), and exclusiveness (especially if developed by small and/or homogenous teams).
• There are increased concerns around algorithmic design stemming from inadvertent human biases that can embed unintended discriminatory features into the algorithm. Introducing diversity and inclusion principles into algorithmic outcomes can be difficult if said principles are not practiced before designing the algorithms because machine learning is based on existing data.
• In instances where there is limited human oversight and involvement in the development and/or implementation of AI technology, there may be limited transparency and accountability on how predictive tools reach their decisions. AI systems are like black boxes, making it hard to identify potential bias and analyze decisions reached by predictive tools.
• AI can amplify stereotypes, adversely impacting underrepresented and marginalized populations.
• Widespread use of AI has moved fast, with little scrutiny and oversight from regulatory bodies. The responsibility of upholding ethics is often in the hands of AI developers, which brings the need to establish and sustain a code of AI ethics to the forefront.

Five Key Considerations for Using D&I AI in Organizations:

1. Recognize that AI and algorithms are not neutral because they are created and trained by humans with innate biases. Therefore, make every effort to understand their full benefits and limitations. Ask D&I technology vendors if they conduct algorithmic audits and risk assessments to determine how their predictive tools reach decisions and their potential impact on underrepresented populations.
2. Become well-versed in understanding your D&I technology data by becoming aware of how D&I data is used, stored, and processed within algorithms. Use your internal HR and workforce analytics to monitor and better understand the impact of using D&I technologies on your specific organization.
3. Establish a governance process that maintains a holistic view across sources of data and algorithms.
4. Formalize and communicate a standard organizational framework that establishes a shared understanding of how and when your organization makes decisions stemming from AI technologies to ensure transparency and accountability among stakeholders.
5. Use artificial intelligence information directionally, as one piece of the larger puzzle, rather than as an absolute. Consider the macro-level picture of AI data by incorporating other sources of information to better substantiate your decisions.

How should organizations create a compelling, delighting, and sustainable employee experience?

Our latest study, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results, highlights what we learned from progressive organizations and how they create an experience that results in highly satisfied, engaged, and loyal employees and customers.

RedThread Research would like to thank Medallia, our sponsor that made this research possible!

Get insights on:

• A clear and concise definition of employee experience and its relationship to employee engagement
• 4 levers for a holistic employee experience approach
• Leading employee experience practices from progressive organizations
• Specific behaviors and actions to foster a thriving employee experience environment

Over the last decade, organizational leaders have focused on changing performance management practices to better respond to what employees want and organizational realities require (e.g., disrupted business models, greater competition). Given all the changes, we thought it was high time for an investigation.

In our latest report, The Makings of Modern Performance, we examined the impact of new performance management practices and asked — were they actually the magical elixir to an organizations' problems?

Let's take a look at some of the key findings.

What’s not working in modern performance management

Turns out (surprise, surprise), that modern practices aren’t always having the impact we had hoped – but probably not for the reasons you are thinking.

In the early stages of the research, we learned there are a few things fundamentally broken when it comes to the way many people look at performance management practices (and HR practices more broadly). Here’s what we found:

• Many HR leaders tended to put too much weight on “best practices” versus identifying the broad levers that drive performance for their organization.
• There is an over-focus on process and an under-focus on the actual performance outcomes organizational leaders are trying to drive.
• There was a tendency, in this last performance management “revolution,” to throw the baby out with the bathwater, when it came to some core tenants of performance management, such as procedural fairness.

The three levers of effective performance management

So, what should organizations do instead? After an extensive literature review, of 50 academic and popular press articles, approximately 20 interviews with HR leaders, and a survey of 368 HR leaders and employees, we found some really compelling takeaways.

First, leaders need to be clear on the outcomes they most want to drive with their performance management and enablement practices. In our interviews we identified three that were of primary importance:

• Individual performance
• Organizational performance
• Employee engagement

Then, organizations should focus their efforts on the activities – which we call levers – that can drive each of those. Specifically, our research finds three levers (see Figure 1) that drive performance and engagement:

Figure 1: Three levers of modern performance management; Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

• Culture: While it’s often a nebulous concept, our research uncovered the importance of culture in performance management. More specifically, performance management practices should support a future-focused culture that values fairness and feedback.
• Capability of managers: As modern approaches to performance seem to hinge on the manager’s ability to conduct ongoing development and performance discussions, this lever is critical. Managers have to have to capabilities needed to move past evaluating performance and delegating tasks.
• Clarity: Employees have to understand what is expected of them in the near-term and in the long-run. Improving upon performance, over time, requires that organizations provide insight into current performance and development needs, but also help employees understand what will be required in the future for continued career success.

The impact of focusing on these levers is significant. For example, organizations that scored high on culture were 32% more likely to experience high employee engagement and 97% more likely to experience high organizational performance. In the report, we identified significant levels of impact across the other levers as well.

In the report, we dive into each lever and discuss themes that are especially critical in each. For example, within culture, organizations should pay particular attention to providing fairness, feedback, and a focus on the future. We also provide examples of practices from our quantitative data that illustrate the different ways that organizations could align to the lever.

Learn more

For more on each lever we uncovered in this research we encourage you to download and read the full report.