Culture, Operations, Outside In, People, Policy, Professional Development

Creating a Better Employee Experience

January 31, 2019

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Here in the Bay Area, where competition for top talent runs rampant, hiring is as much of a science as it is an art, and the companies are combating the average two year stint of a software engineer. There has been a vital shift in the way organizations have deployed their HR function to attract and retain the best individuals. Airbnb’s past Chief HR Officer, Mark Levy, distinctly highlighted this movement when he changed his title to Global Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb in 2015.

All functions that touch the employee journey should be 'in service' to the employee.

Mark Levy Tweet

His shift follows the evolution that changed the vocabulary of customer support to client experience or client success. Employers are looking to be as thoughtful of the workplace experience for their employees as they are for their customers. In addition to the name change, Mark expanded the typical HR functions at Airbnb (recruiting, talent management and development, HR operations, rewards, etc…) to include facilities, food, global citizenship and more – virtually anything that touches an employee’s life within the company from recruitment, through their typical workday, to their development, and even how they exit or transition to their next opportunity.

Elizabeth Pinkham, the Executive Vice President of Global Real Estate, at Sales Force is another primary example of this. She comes to the position, after many years creating brand experiences for Salesforce’s clients, including running the team behind their annual DreamForce conference. Her move to Real Estate was in response to the question, “Why can’t DreamForce be lived out daily by their employees through the workplace?”

What’s the takeaway for architecture and design firms looking to attract and retain the best individuals? That we need to treat all of our employees with the same thoughtfulness that we approach our client relationships, and it starts the instant they have any contact with the firm from recruiting through the entire employee lifecycle.

Here are five ways to immediately improve your employee experience:

Regular Ongoing Feedback – To know where you stand with your employees you have to create a baseline so you can understand how to create a better experience for them. Have you ever considered administering an annual employee survey? The savviest employee experience professionals would go so far as to say annually is not enough, especially with larger organizations. Quarterly surveys of the population help you make continual improvements overtime that employees feel. The newest pulse survey techniques go so far as to get weekly and daily feedback.
Offer Learning Opportunities – In our world in the AEC industry, this could be as simple as bringing some of your younger staff along for the ride, to client meetings, site visits, and interviews. It also doesn’t hurt to formalize a learning and development program which enables employees to learn new skills or even better yet – tackle the AREs together.
Create better or more regular communication pathways – This is something that I see most organizations struggle with, but AEC firms are especially horrible when communicating internally. Decisions made regarding the firm, its goals, project wins, and even individual employee successes (wins, newborns, adoptions, licensure, etc…)should be shared often and regularly through a medium that reaches the majority of your employees – if that means turning a lunch-in-learn into a monthly all-hands meeting that’s fine, even if it’s a brown bag lunch. At least you are making an effort.
Remove Process and Barriers – Sometimes we formalize things out of necessity, like contracts. Other times processes come to be because that’s the way they were at our former firm, or that’s the way “we’ve always done things.” Are there ways to make things less formal and cumbersome? Instead of submitting an official vacation request form can it be a matter of sending a calendar invite to the manager to approve or deny? Scheduling these things on the office or even a project calendar may even make employees more aware of what’s coming up and how the timing of their vacation may affect workflow. Adjusting timing is especially true of employees who can move their vacation because they are not limited to the schedule of their kid’s school calendars or the like.
Be Honest and Open About the Change – Creating any change within the employee experience is not always going to be an instant home run. That’s OK though, giving your employee’s a voice in the process will get them that more engaged, especially if they understand what you are doing is to make them proud to be apart of your firm. Be patient and open with the changes you are trying to make and you will likely find you have a more patient more receptive workforce.