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Does the Employee Experience Movement Leave Us Stuck on an Escalator?

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Employee experience is the big new shiny HR object to improve work. Some have even proclaimed 2018 as the Year of Employee Experience. Frankly, I think I am more comfortable with 2018 from the Chinese perspective as the Year of the Dog.

There are countless conferences and consultancies extolling the virtues of this new view of employees taken from the work on customer experience. Employee experience is considered to be composed of 3 areas: culture, the technological environment, and the physical environment. Organizations are busy learning lessons in how to improve the experience for employees ——— but what about the employees themselves?

In my 25 years teaching counselling psychology at the University  of Manitoba we categorized experiences as what happens to people. In one of the most popular textbooks in the field, The Skilled Helper, Gerard Egan wrote,

“because experiences often dwell on what other people do or fail to do, experience-focused stories at times smack a bit of passivity. The implication is that others – or the world in general – are to blame for the client’s problems.” (Egan, page 82)

Employees already are in the center of their own experience, we must do a much better job of not only acknowledging this but educating employees to assess, design, manage, and master their experiences at work. Otherwise, you know what happens, as demonstrated by this classic escalator video:

David Zinger is focused on how to successfully weave the employee experience into employee engagement for the benefit of all to achieve results, build relationships, and cultivate wellbeing.

Employee Engagement in Doha: Geometry and Sun Light

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I am currently in Doha, Qatar to work on employee engagement. I strive to be influenced by the sights, feel, geography and architecture of wherever I am working. Flying to Qatar from Montreal I watched a brilliant video about I. M Pei and his architectural design and work on the magnificent Museum of Islamic Art by the Doha Corniche.

Creative commons Image by Jan Smith (Flickr) http://bit.ly/1OBUuwN
Creative commons Image by Jan Smith (Flickr) http://bit.ly/1OBUuwN

 

I was very impressed with the spirit, enthusiasm, smiles, discipline, and demands I. M. Pei had for this project. Two themes really stood out for me with some metaphoric parallels for employee engagement.

Pei was influenced by sand and water and Islamic architecture. He wanted the building to change based on the movement of the sun. He stated: “the movement of the sun makes the building come alive.” It made me think of engagement in our organizations never being static and the movement of energy offers vibrancy to help the organization come alive.

Pei also made use of water in the building. He talked about the power of water for sound, movement, ripple, stillness, trickling, and reflection. I believe in the same way we need to see the properties of water within our organizations. We need reflection at times and stillness. We need sound and movement. And we should see engagement as continually flowing, not merely an annual snapshot from a static survey.

I appreciated how Pei came from New York and used his insatiable curiosity to understand what needed to be built. There are many people in Doha from other parts of the world that play a role in employee engagement in Qatar. Pei gave massive credit to his team on the project and like employee engagement in an organization no one does it alone. Pei will be 98 in April — his smile, his way of working, and his engagement is an inspiration to me as I work on employee engagement in Doha, Qatar.

Employee Engagement Speaker - David Zinger

How to Live Fully at Work: The New Employee Recognition

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We need more authentic and robust employee engagement and recognition.

Klinic World Suicide Prevention Day

I am honored to be invited by Klinic Community Health Centre in Winnipeg to speak during lunch hour at Vimy Ridge Park in Winnipeg during “Connecting Canada” for World Suicide Prevention Day.  If you are in Winnipeg on September the 10th., I encourage you to come by for the short presentation and the free community barbecue.

Yes, I believe that a strong organization or company will help all employees live fully at work – with a full life and a life full of meaning and mattering. We need to recognize when employees are struggling and what we can do to help. This adds a lot of oomph to how we work and relate with each other. Because our focus on September 10th. is on suicide prevention I plan to to offer a brief focus on what I consider the opposite of suicide — living fully.

To live fully is to have a full life in years while putting fullness into each day. It embraces and acknowledges life’s joys and suffering,  both our own and others, letting in compassion and support.  Living fully is about living for both us and for others. Living fully at work is more about work/life integration than trying to find an ideal state of balance. Living fully at work is the new meaningful employee recognition when we are attuned to others in our work community and we recognize and connect with them during progress, celebration, setback, struggle, and loss.

Consider accepting even one of the following 10 invitations that life offers us at work:

  1. Accept each day as an invitation to live fully.
  2. Be mindful of moments and in touch with all your fluctuating emotions.
  3. Engage with both your work and the people you work with.
  4. Acknowledge impermanence – know that even negative experiences will change over time.
  5. Move beyond isolation from others by making connection and contribution.
  6. Flourish at work with positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment, and strengths.
  7. Open your head, heart, and hands to your coworkers.
  8. Transform the ritual question of “how are you today?” into an authentic curiosity and really listen and respond to what the other person says.
  9. Face fears and create safety at work by caring for others and caring about what they are trying to achieve in their life.
  10. Know that small is big, by taking small steps day after day you will make a huge difference in your life or the life of someone else.

Bonus: Entertain a playful serenity with this modified serenity prayer: God grant me the laughter to see the past with perspective, face the future with hope, and celebrate today without taking myself too seriously.

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who resides in Winnipeg Canada and works around the world. David was also a volunteer counsellor at Klinic over 30 years ago.

David Zinger’s New eBook Waggle Coming May 29 (Table of Contents Page)

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My new eBook Waggle: 39 Ways to Improve Organizations, Work and Engagement will be released on May 29th. I hope you will return to this site on Wednesday to read or download this free eBook with ways to improve organizations, work, and engagement based on my work with honeybees, office objects, and computers for 3 summers. My favorite waggle is: One bee matters.

Here is the table of contents page from the book:

Waggle Table of Contents Promotion Page

David Zinger conducted a 3 summer experiment attempting to convene honeybees and humans into a shared space. David’s is devoted to improving engagement for organizations and individuals.