S2 Ep.13 – Sally Winston - The evolution of employee listening

Sally Winston from Qualtrics dives into the dynamic world of employee experience. We explore how employee listening has transformed from annual surveys to a continuous stream of insights, empowering organizations to make informed decisions on their time, resources, and budget.

We also explore how employee experience is evolving as a role and function in shaping the employee journey. Sharing valuable and insightful tips to get started when evolving your listening program

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Want to connect with Sally:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallywinston/

Picture of the views :)

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EP. 037 Transcription

[00:00:00] Steve: Sally. 

[00:00:00] Sally: Hi Steve. 

[00:00:01] Steve: Welcome to the experienced designers. 

[00:00:03] Sally: Thank you. It's very exciting. So thank you for having me. 

[00:00:07] Steve: No, thank you for having me because and I think I'll post a photo of the view that we are currently enjoying. 

[00:00:14] Sally: Yeah, it's pretty epic on a very sunny, beautiful day in London.

[00:00:19] For once, probably the only sunny day for about three months. 

[00:00:24] Steve: It's amazing. So this is the Qualtrics London, is it HQ here? 

[00:00:29] Sally: No, HQ is in Dublin. Okay. But yeah, London, second biggest European office, I think. Nice. 

[00:00:37] Steve: It feels the second biggest European office. It's quite amazing views. I will post some, I will post this on the show page cuz I think it's something everybody should see.

[00:00:46] Sally: Yeah, it's like you, you could bring tourists here and they get a 360 view of all of the hotspots, don't they? Oh, it's amazing. I think even you can see Baty power station, my god. In the distance. You can basically see everything from this building, which is really cool. Yeah. 

[00:01:02] Steve: Sally question.

[00:01:03] I've I made up this question for in preparation for my last episode of the podcast, and I was like, oh, I like this question. I might actually keep asking for future guests. So you are now my second guest. I'm gonna ask this question too. You are now the, you are the second iteration of it. Let's see where we go.

[00:01:19] So Sally, what does a day-to-day human experience. Look like or your human experience look like on a day-to-day basis 

[00:01:30] Sally: in terms of what do I do in my day? 

[00:01:32] Steve: Maybe, but what does human experience mean to you? 

[00:01:34] Sally: Gosh, that's a question, isn't it? I think for me, I. I think there's a lot of things that happen that are like micro experiences that affect how I feel and how the people around me, how I can make them feel in every interaction that I have. So when I think about a day to day experience, that's what I think about the small things that happen or the small things that I could do. That might change things. And if I think about like today as an example obviously we're not, I haven't seen you in person since pre covid.

[00:02:05] You gave me a massive hug. That was nice. That was a good, like we haven't seen each other in such a long time. Absolutely. And I've had, just this morning like a couple of conversations with people where they've gone off on tangents. But it, that tangent has been like, super meaningful or super interesting.

[00:02:24] And that has been, yeah that's what I would define as being the things that have made my day so far. Nice. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to the big stuff that Yeah. It's happened. 

[00:02:34] Steve: I love that. I was actually thinking about this stuff this morning. Like the different macro, micro, mini experiences that happen Yeah.

[00:02:41] In our lives, our work, whether that's work or home or wherever. Yeah. I think we'll get into the intentionality of those experiences. I think yeah, from a business point of view, like how can we be more intentional around some of those Yeah. Experie. Yeah. 

[00:02:56] So what do you do every day? So for what?

[00:02:58] Sally: So I head up the solutions organization for a company called Qualtrics. Who are a technology company focused on experience management. Based out of the states but expanded across the world. And I essentially run a team of experts who help customers understand what they could be doing with technology to measure and improve experience.

[00:03:20] And those experts include consultants. Who've worked in employee experience or customer experience for their whole careers and are like real gus in this space. Like incredible brains make me feel stupid all the time. And then also a group of solution engineers who are the people that are like really deep in the tech and can really bring to life the tech for our customers and help 'em think through how they could use it.

[00:03:44] So it's a team of about 60 people working all the way across Europe. And the Middle East. Yeah. Yeah. And so in my day-to-day is really helping them be successful in their jobs. And Yeah. And making sure that they get like the, their, all of the blockers that are removed from them doing a good job and removed.

[00:04:02] Yeah. And that we are really thinking about what does it mean to deliver good experiences to customers. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my day to day. And then I have two kids. So the rest of my day today is stopping my toddler from having five tantrums. And today's tantrum was about a green T-shirt that she did not wanna wear. I have no idea why. 

[00:04:21] Steve: Okay. Okay. And isn't the amazing Yeah. 

[00:04:25] Sally: That would be my, that's my more important job. Yes. But yeah, absolutely. My second job is my, it's something 

[00:04:32] Steve: There's something I really respect with Qualtrics in amongst the plethora of tech out there, particularly in the HR space.

[00:04:43] Yeah, and it's something I really liked when I first connected with Qualtrics was they're very, they're clear about, and you said it there, which is what triggered was experience management. 

[00:04:54] Sally: Yes. 

[00:04:55] Steve: Not actually the experience itself. Yes. And I think I'm seeing these such interesting, like sales narratives.

[00:05:04] It will improve your employee experience or it will create a better employee experience or candidate experience or onboard experience. It's no, it doesn. No, it helps manage it and understand it. And improve it. Yeah. But it isn't the experience. Yes. And I love that about Qualtrics. So I just wanna honor that because I do think they're really clear about Qualtrics are really clear about what they are and what they aren't.

[00:05:24] Sally: Yeah. I think it's interesting that, cuz I do think that how you manage and measure experience is part of the experience. Yeah. If you think about as a, we did an event recently where we were talking, where I was interviewing a couple of panelists, and one of the questions we asked was like, give an example of the worst experience that you've had.

[00:05:44] And I was like, thinking if I need to fill time here, what's my example? And my example was around, I went on a cinema trip with my son and he, and we were standing queuing for the highly priced popcorn, and you could see the guys behind the counter, right? And in they were, it was like total chaos.

[00:06:04] There were two of them, and they would. Doing everything for one customer. So they were like going to get the drinks and going to get the popcorn and going. And I was, it was driving me insane because I was watching this and I was thinking, why is one of you not dealing with the stuff on the left hand side and one dealing with it?

[00:06:21] That would be so much more efficient? And when I got to the counter, I asked that question, I said, you would be able to deliver this so much more efficiently. And my son died of embarrassment. He was, Oh my God, you are such a Karen. And I was just like and then, and the employee said, Yeah, my manager doesn't want to have that conversation with us.

[00:06:42] And that was their answer. And I was like, I cannot leave this experience without telling this company big cinema chain. Yeah. One of the top two. I cannot leave without telling them that this is the interaction I had and I could not find a way to give them that feedback. I could, like there was no survey.

[00:07:03] Yeah. Sent to, there was no like way of communicating with them. There was no chatbot, there was nothing. And so I found a i, I made a way. I found a way. I emailed someone who was like head of experience or something. I love it. It was a boring film. I was like, let's use this time. Productively. And I even said I work for the leading experience management company.

[00:07:23] We could help you. And I wasn't doing it to try and win a customer. Yeah. It's just this is a terrible experience and you are, the people are miserable. The customers are getting a bad experience. And the fact that you couldn't find that moment to give that feedback, I think said a lot about how they cared about experience.

[00:07:40] Yeah. And so that to me, long story, but. When I think about what we do, whilst we aren't about improving the experience, giving people that moment to share their views is part of what it means to deliver an experience. Like it should be fundamentally ingrained in everything we do. 

[00:07:57] Steve: I agree. I agree. I've always been, yeah.

[00:07:59] I've always had. I've always had, I've always been quite clear on that actually, of it should never be a bolt on or it should never feel out of place. Yeah. It should be part of the journey. Yeah. Whether it's a customer journey or an employee journey. Yeah. It just should just, it should just be there at the time at which it's meant to be or could be there And you're testing it.

[00:08:19] Yeah, but it's not seen as, Out of the ordinary doesn't, it doesn't look odd in the context. Like you're talking about context there of in a moment in a cinema watching this and not having a mechanism. Yeah. It's in that moment. It is. It's creating that kind of experience in that moment of how do I give feedback?

[00:08:36] Sally: Yes, exactly. 

[00:08:37] Steve: To do that. 

[00:08:38] Sally: Yeah. And an example actually from today of that is one of the solution engineers in my team has been building out this really cool he's been experimenting with like design principles around like how does the. The technology, look, how does it show up? And he's built this thing that basically allows us to tailor the way something looks to the experience.

[00:08:59] You are buying a pair of trainers. And like, how does that pop up in the moment and look like a seamless part of this experience Just from design. Just from the way it looks and feels and where it shows up. Yeah. And that, yeah, that stops it from being like an irritating. That feels so outta context to being something that is genuinely about this company wants to understand how I feel in this moment.

[00:09:22] And it's a small thing like how something looks and feels, but it is still part of that journey. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:09:28] Steve: Yeah. So you've been in research for a while, right? Yes. I know cuz you did qual you've done qual and Quan. Yeah. Both. Yeah. You have, what's, how are you seeing. Research and listening evolve in terms of how organizations are doing just that element over the last, say five years or longer.

[00:09:54] Choose a period of time. How have you seen that evolve? 

[00:09:56] Sally: Yeah, so I think I think the concept that you would ask people for their opinions. When I first started out in this space, like early two thousands even that was. A really new concept for a lot of companies. And it was something that was a predominantly quantitative, usually done on paper, like a giant beast of a thing, and and not, and then took ages to get the insights.

[00:10:25] Very little action. Obviously that's completely changed, right? You can get insight within. Minutes, seconds. You can get it in real time. You can do research in a, in so many different ways. I think what we are seeing at the moment is a really interesting merging of qualitative and quantitative and just the, and actually unsolicited feedback being the thing that lots of the energy in our space lots of our energy is focused on because there's a difference between asking people for their views. Collecting people's views and the technology exists that allows you to understand how people feel. Because they're sharing those views on an ongoing basis, right?

[00:11:07] Yeah. You don't need to even ask the question to find out that insight. No. So that, I think is, that's definitely where we are seeing things going, and that's where we're investing a lot of our time and energy. And how do you do that in a way that's meaningful? How do you not just feed that back?

[00:11:23] Two leaders within businesses so that they can take action, but fixing things in real time. That to me, is a really big shift in, in the world of experience management. It's not just about you deliver the insight and then a team of people sit in a room working out, what do we do with this?

[00:11:39] Which still happens and still needs to happen on certain topics, but also something's broken. Let me fix it right here and right now. And that's something maybe that is more common in the CX space that we're seeing Move into the ex space. Yeah. On unsolicited feedback, I think there's a really interesting discussion about how that shows up in employee experience, which is where most of my time has been spent.

[00:12:04] For example, you could, you can, there's the technology exists to scrape Slack conversations to look at Glassdoor data. You obviously there's like a privacy angle that is really important and that you need to factor in. But using when people are openly sharing their opinion and doing it in a way that is accessible.

[00:12:25] Yeah. You can use that insight to find out so many things. We've just acquired a company that looks at operational data and spots for issues around burnout. Yeah. For example. Yeah. Are people sending emails that very late at night? Are, is the tone of conversation that's happening on certain topics suggesting a level of frustration that we could fix for?

[00:12:47] And do we need to wait for a survey to. That information or can we just use that insight to drive the change quicker? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I think there's the other area is the personalization of listening is really important. Yeah. You don't need to ask every single person the same things at the same time.

[00:13:08] You don't, you can, it's so easy. To tailor what you are doing to the individual's moment and to what their like experience is. Don't ask new joiners questions about how they feel about things versus a year ago at a very basic level. Don't ask. Yeah. People who. I don't know. Have told you the same thing three times in a row.

[00:13:31] Don't ask them a fourth time. 

[00:13:33] No. And 

[00:13:33] Steve: that's where the intelligence comes in of the tech to allow that, to enable that. Yes. Yeah. So it becomes more contextual rather than consistently the same questions. Like an annual engagement survey sometimes can be. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So from an ex point of view, how have you seen that evolution over the last six, seven years say?

[00:13:52] Because how long has Qualtrics done ex? 

[00:13:55] Sally: Gosh, that's a good question. Eight-ish, I would say. Yeah. Probably about eight years or so. Yeah. Qualtrics has been in the ex space seriously within the Amir region. So I joined in 2019. And that was a point when we'd started working with some really big brands and we were building momentum.

[00:14:14] And so I would say kind of 2018 onwards really big growth but for a few years before that as well. Yeah. 

[00:14:22] So how is 

[00:14:23] Steve: cause listening employee, listen. It's quite an interesting, I mean there's still, from what I see, there's still a lot of work to be done in this space. Yes. I think some of it is attributed to this shift of more outcome based stuff, which we've been so previously connected to, which is engagement or satisfaction which is all obviously outcomes.

[00:14:44] Culture is an outcome of lots of inputs. Yeah. And as we move more towards ex, which. And it's true for me, in my mind anyway, is more around designing it from the bottom up. If we look at it purely from a hierarchal point of view it's more about the experiences then create the outcome of potential satisfaction or engagement.

[00:15:02] Yeah. How are you seeing that from your lens, from a data and a listening perspective, that evolution and that shift from, let's say, even from an engagement. Employee listening. 

[00:15:15] Sally: Yeah so it's super interesting because I think for lots of companies the. The need for metrics is really important.

[00:15:24] The ability to, and I understand that because the ability to say across, I don't know. Say you're an organization with thousands of teams and hundreds of thousands of employees to be able to take one measure or a couple of measures and look holistically across, helicopter view where our problems, where are high spots of like best practice.

[00:15:45] It's very difficult to do. Outcome metrics. Yeah. That allow you to, that roll to roll everything up to, and also a lot of the statistical analysis that you do still has outcomes attached to it. What are the things that are driving engagement? But I think what is interesting is, Instead of focusing in on those numbers, what we're seeing is people focusing in more on the, what are the key things that are driving those numbers and using that information and surfacing that as like the thing that leaders and managers need to know about.

[00:16:16] And also building in operational data. Yes. Which I think HR people of and leaders in this space have known is important. But it's so hard. It's been so hard to get that data into a good space and to connect it seamlessly with the insights that you've got. Yeah. And I think that's becoming much more easy for companies to do.

[00:16:37] Yeah. Yeah, so I would say I, I don't see, I don't know, I don't personally, I don't see a world in any time soon where people stop tracking outcomes. Yeah. But the con, how those outcomes are evolving. Yes. Is gonna be interesting. Yeah. Like the idea that, like what is engagement? And how is that measured?

[00:16:59] That's shifting and changing and we've got people, scientists, like constantly thinking about how that's evolving. Yeah. How does the model need to change, is intention to say the same. Even as it was before Covid Yeah. To, to now. But yeah, I don't Does that answer your question? Yeah. I mean I, 

[00:17:17] Steve: yeah, let's riff on it.

[00:17:18] I'm really curious cuz it's, we're mo we're moving and technology of course is enabling it, but we're moving from this just pure engagement still. Lots of companies have still doing just once a year engagements. Yes. And even just that is, feels very outdated. Yes. Already. And we're not even, I think we've got so much more to go in terms of the tech ev evolving even more.

[00:17:41] I'm just, yeah. For me I'm like where does the. Yeah. Where does that next step for the organizations in that space look like? Yeah, and to get them into a thinking around moving from a, just a pure outcome. And that is important. I'm not discounting, I think it's a, it as a wider listening strategy or a wider intention around capturing more insights from your people.

[00:18:04] But I'm just curious, like Yeah. Like moving them from that state into a future like employee journey. Whether it's employee journey, whether it's into obviously more than connecting into operational data. Yeah. Which will we'll also give some clarity on in a minute for those that might go over there.

[00:18:19] People's operational data, let's collector in. 

[00:18:21] Sally: Yeah. But so I, it. It still surprises me how many companies are still doing an annual engagement survey as the only thing that they do. That really surprises me because I don't the te, but I think it's interesting to discuss the reasons why that's the case, right?

[00:18:41] Because the technology exists. To measure very frequently, like the and to action really frequently. Absolutely. And that's part of the challenge of moving to continuous listening is the expectation of action. Like you, particularly in an employee setting, if you're a customer and you give feedback and no action's taken, that's a bit irritating, but.

[00:19:02] You it, it is what it is. If you're an employee, like you're so invested in that organization and you want to give, you get, we get incredibly high response rates to our research because people care Yeah. About sharing their views, but they also expect action. So I think that's one of the reasons why companies are afraid sometimes of more frequent listening because it requires more frequent action.

[00:19:24] I think. Contradicting my point earlier about metrics. The problem with metrics is then boards start to attach themselves to those metrics and they want to have that data on, a particular moment in time and that become, and it's really important that is part of the scorecard that leadership teams think about.

[00:19:42] Because without that then you can't get stuff through on a people agenda. But, I, yeah, I think we're seeing one of the thi one of the things that was really interesting at the beginning of Covid, we launched a solution that was free to any company that just wanted to check in with its employees.

[00:19:58] And we did that because, we had the technology to do it. We could see that this was just gonna be like a fundamental. Shift in what companies needed to think about. Yeah. And so we launched it and we had like thousands of companies within days using this technology. And what was super interesting was there were a couple of brands that I was working with who wanted to move into continuous listening, but were a bit afraid of doing it and a bit concerned about how much effort and energy it would take. And just did it because it was free and like they needed to find out how people felt. Yeah. At that moment in time. And then it fast tracked all of their thinking on this topic. We can do continuous listening. It is more insightful.

[00:20:41] It does give us data that we can work with in a totally different way. It is way more interesting for the leadership team because it's in the moment. It's so flexible. Let's just go ahead and experiment with it. I think that's the thing. That's lovely. It's like fear of experimentation sometimes.

[00:20:56] Steve: Massively. Yeah. You always see it all the time. It's the challenge with experimentation is that there's no concrete outcome that you are pitching to someone. Say, Hey, this is what we're gonna get on ROI or a specific. Concrete outcome. The nature experimentation is you test and learn along the way and it might fail and move to something else.

[00:21:13] And some environments just aren't naturally set up for that or have the mindsets in place to support. Yeah. But I think that's a lovely example because it's a moment in time that everybody went through Yeah. And was having a, an experience of, in some. Or form. So it was a really nice move to enable people to do that because then it, as you rightly say there, it just, I can imagine a light bulb moment must have come on to think what if we kept creating feedback or capturing feedback in the various moments of future work life?

[00:21:44] Yeah. Here's the value that we could get from this. It must have really been. 

[00:21:48] Sally: Yeah. And I think interesting. I think the other thing is like when you think about continuous listening thinking about it as something that needs to be super flexible. So it's really useful in a context where you can say I don't know, we're about to look where the, there's an example where You know, like in a call center environment where I was talking with a company who knew that there were certain moments where customer satisfaction fell through the floor because.

[00:22:16] There was something new being launched, and that was, the employees weren't enabled properly, or they weren't supported properly. So what we designed for them was a solution that essentially allowed them to, every time something was launched quickly check in with employees. Do you have the information that you need?

[00:22:32] Is this clear? Check in as the first set of calls are happening. Are you facing blockers? Are you, do you have the empowerment you need to answer this customer's questions. That to me is like really powerful experience management because it's very tailored to the situation that employees are in. It's not like we're ask, we're asking the same questions every month.

[00:22:53] It's, we're zoning in on a moment that's important and we're gonna give people the chance. To like test and learn and feedback at that point in time. 

[00:23:04] Steve: Yeah. Cuz if you look at an organization, there was waves going up and down everywhere at any given moment. Whether it's a, an IT rollout or a cultural shift or a, yeah, I don't know, like leadership program or something that, that, leadership development's big this year.

[00:23:17] Year's huge. Huge. Yeah. This year. So I hope there's lots of people doing doing some listening around that in terms of impact, create the. To see the difference in that. It's a big one, big area. 

[00:23:26] Sally: And there's also there's also societal changes that massively impact employees. Yeah. The war in Ukraine, lots of companies have employees.

[00:23:34] Based in locations where that was hugely impactful and challenging. So the ability to check in with employees in those locations, the, some of the stuff that happened in the. Around, women's rights, the ability to check in with women on how they were feeling at a certain point of time.

[00:23:50] Yeah. It raises a question of what's the role of the employer? Yeah. As is, is it like a parental role or not? And that's obviously a huge debate. Yeah. But I think for me it's about showing that you care about people. Yeah. And using that information to help improve their experiences. Yeah, it's, yeah, 

[00:24:07] It's huge.

[00:24:08] I, 

[00:24:08] Steve: I, what I'm hearing here is just huge flexibility. Yeah. So there's external influences. So societal, these things that you can react to and be nimble to to, obviously, Pick in and respond to. And then internally you've got this ability to flex around shifts that happen, different patterns emerging.

[00:24:25] Yeah. And then you've got your continuous listening of various moments along the employee life cycle Yeah. As well. Yeah, exactly. And anything in between. So there's so many different contexts in which you can apply this. Yeah. 

[00:24:35] Sally: For HR teams, that could be terrifying. 

[00:24:38] Steve: I can as I just said it, it came outta my mouth.

[00:24:40] Sally: I was like, yeah, that's, we're saying this is so exciting. 

[00:24:42] This is so good. 

[00:24:43] Yeah. But we're not running an into our department. 

[00:24:45] Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. 

[00:24:47] So I think that's about like creating a framework that is, this is how we're gonna do and this is how we're gonna do listening. This is what, how it fits with our experience management strategy.

[00:24:57] This is, these are the tools that are available if and when we need them. Yeah. And these are the basics that will embed and not overthinking it more than that. Yep. To be honest that's, yep. I think maybe that's oversimplifying, but that's how I would frame it. I think, 

[00:25:11] Steve: from my side as as a ex designer we work with, Clients to, or we encourage people to just start with one journey.

[00:25:19] Yes. If we talk about employee experience holistically it's it's massive. It's too big a, it's too big a chunk to Yeah. To even get started with. In fact, there's still lots of people saying, what is the ex we're still very much in that education phase in many contexts. Yeah. Because people can see it, use it in different ways.

[00:25:36] So we encourage, we always encourage, Find the moment in your employee lifecycle where there's some existing data, where it's showing some form of pain point or something's got some kind of attribution to something that's a challenge. Maybe if you're lucky, you connect it into the CX side.

[00:25:53] That's a great place to get started. Yeah. And just start there. Just start small. And even like onboarding, experience design. That's quite big and chunky. Even that can be quite big and cumbersome. Yeah. Even get even multiple moments more into it. 

[00:26:06] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:26:08] Sally: That's and that's actually something that lots of, so that concept of starting with one moment or one journey, I think is really important.

[00:26:17] One of the con, one of the conversations we're having a lot more, and it'd be interesting to know if you are seeing this as well in the current economic environment especially, is like return on investment. And this connects in with what we mean by Outcome metrics and, operational data and all of that stuff because we, so we've got a team of people who build out ROI models and, value models, which helps companies to spot the moment. Like all the journey. Of all of your employee life cycle touchpoints. What do you know about onboarding? Like how. Time and this goes out of the creative space right. And into the card numbers. Yeah. But what what is it about the onboarding process that, that is problematic?

[00:26:59] Is it the time it takes to onboard people and get 'em to high productivity? Is it the cost of onboarding? Are you losing people? Yep. Like with high attrition. Yeah. And then you can actually put, you can put numbers to that and then said, you know what, if we focus here, we can improve this by X. Yep.

[00:27:14] Amount. And we are hearing from a lot of CHROs that is becoming an increasingly important discussion. When they're trying to, fight for budgets and Yeah. Demonstrate value just to be able to put monetary values to things. I agree. 

[00:27:29] Steve: We see that, and I think there's, for me it's like meeting, meeting the co meeting every business is different context, of course, but meeting them where they're at.

[00:27:38] I'm not trying to invent something that's new. Yeah. So yeah I totally say I did. I look quite, I've done quite a lot onboarding in the last couple of years. And there are, yeah, first contribution, there's the, the time from. This contract through to then probably end the month one.

[00:27:54] Like where's some of the kind of the, either the cost piece in that, like where can you start to influence some of that? Yeah. There's also like training costs. Where I haven't quite got to on this as well is the cost of an empty seat also of it being empty. Because there is a cost to that. To the business.

[00:28:12] Yeah. Not just, oh, we have somebody there. Now. They're actually engaging, but there's also micro interactions. If somebody, if you're not making it clear to somebody and giving them signposts and the things that they, if they need this thing to go to here, if it hasn't been considered or thought about or mapped out effectively, then that individual is more likely to.

[00:28:29] A colleague and ask those questions, which may then disturb that colleague from doing something. Yeah. So there's all these like little micro things, quite hard to get into, like firm numbers, but there is a cost to the business in that. Yeah. And then there's innovation. I worked at the company recently whereas all their employees were pretty much coming into the organization going straight into the function and had no idea about any other function in the organization.

[00:28:52] So they crossed laterally. They just couldn. There just wasn't a clear understanding. And what they weren't doing was enabling innovation, was enabling conversations across function in order to bring different perspectives. 

[00:29:04] Yeah. And they probably think they're being highly efficient because they're just getting people in Exactly.

[00:29:09] Do the job, but without that bigger picture view of what Yeah. The organization is all about. If 

[00:29:14] you go straight into customer success, then you are seeing also your viewpoint as one element of the customer. Holistically for that organization. So if you're getting exposure further upstream or downstream, yeah, you are more likely to bring your context and make suggestions outside of your area.

[00:29:29] Yeah. Say actually no. In my previous company we did this. Actually, this might bring some value because for me it's like free consultancy. Anyone new into your business. The first three months they are. So golden to you because as our brains we automate stuff naturally. So when you walked through your office here, so many stuff you just don't see cuz your brain blocks it out because it's normal to you.

[00:29:51] Yeah. I saw more walking through that office. Did he today? Did he what did you see? Probably no my, because my brain, it was new cuz I was in like buying mode. Oh my god. In that wonder mode of curiosity. 

[00:30:01] Sally: Yeah. So that's like a new, so then Ima, imagine an onboarding. Onboarding, like measurement process that actually asked people what ideas have you got?

[00:30:11] Like how could we do things better? Just asking that one open question and then there's so much stuff you can do, obviously we come in it from a technology angle, right? Yeah. There's so much you can do with technology to then analyze and understand that insight. You don't need to know every question you need to ask somebody.

[00:30:27] You just need to ask them some brilliantly crafted, open yes questions. Yeah. And for new employees, I think sometimes you come into a business and you have all of those ideas. You've got nowhere to put them, have you? And then they get beaten out of you. Yeah. You just forget you move on.

[00:30:44] Yeah. Or you tell them to the person that you are disrupting next to you and they're like, no, that's not how we do things around here. Or I once tried to get that changed and it never worked. Yeah. So you lose all of that wonder and that kind of, you do, 

[00:30:55] it's like it's free consultancy. I used to call.

[00:30:58] Steve: Yeah, it's free consultancy. Like open, open the, open it up and say, okay, what do you see here? Feel, yeah. Capture it. Just enable it. It's there to be hard. If you are, especially if you're scaling as well, if you're scale up or a large organization, doesn't matter who you are. I think that it brings value in different ways.

[00:31:16] I think. 

[00:31:17] Sally: Also the, with the sort of concept of experimenting, you don't need to, you might find things to say in an onboarding process that need changing. You don't need to change it for everyone. You could change it for, it depends how big you are, right? As an organization. But you could change it for a few people and then measure the impact on that group.

[00:31:34] Yeah. If it was like a drug or something. Yeah. Yeah. And just did this. And then what would the value be if we then rolled that out more broadly? Yeah. Yeah. There's there's time to go on for hours. There's so much cool stuff that you could do in this space.

[00:31:48] Steve: I think I just want to go back to the Ooh, what do you call, I can't, oh, I should know this.

[00:31:52] Hang on. The operational data. Operational data, the oh x and O data. Yeah, of course. Yeah, let's expand on that a bit because I think for those that aren't, people that just don't know, are new to this, listening piece or employee listening or even crafting a survey effectively.

[00:32:08] Yeah. Asking the right questions. Just, I'm gonna go off a tangent really quickly and not to ask the questions that you want to hear. Yes. Is a huge one. I we'll get, we'll come back down. Yeah. It really bugs me that But yeah, let's talk about X and O data and why it's important and to just explain it for people who are at the beginning or don't know what on earth we're talking about when we even talk about X and O data.

[00:32:29] Sally: So what X and O is like how when I first joined Qualtrics, we talked about the world in that way, and I think it's still a really useful way to think about things. So X Data that you capture on how people are feeling and what they're experiencing, right? And operational data is either what is it that defines them or the outcomes, and that, that's not the formal definition, that's just how I think about it.

[00:32:50] Yeah. You've got, and if you think about all of the stuff you're capturing about employees, firstly in your HR systems, So you've got depending how sophisticated it is, but you've got, you know their age, their gender, their ethnicity, their tenure, all of those pieces.

[00:33:05] If you've got that information, it can tell you something about that person that helps you understand their lived experience and it helps you focus energy on action. Yeah. And The, those are like the classic examples, but there could be others, so I, for some companies, particularly in the current environment with this sort of shift towards return to office and all of those fun topics, there's, how long does it take people to get to work?

[00:33:32] What is their family setup? And I think it's really interesting cause I think it depends on the culture of, and it depends, and that varies by country. It depends on the culture of a company as to how op and also the demographics of the workforce, how open they are to sharing that information.

[00:33:48] But if you can create a culture where people know that you are using that information for good. Yeah, I think that can be really powerful. And I think that'll be like the next. Yeah. In terms of how in terms of how people feel about the data that they're sharing and giving. Yeah. So there's that kind of stuff.

[00:34:04] And then there's the operational outcomes. Like I know you're in a call center. How many calls are people making? How many of those calls are successful? Real business outcome data? How many salespeople are hitting target? All of this information you collect usually. Disparate systems. And that's the challenge.

[00:34:22] That's yeah. But you can bring it all together. Yeah. And sometimes people use our systems to bring the stuff together cuz it's, yeah. The one place where you could, they could do that. Often they're using systems internally to do that. And then you can, push our data into those systems.

[00:34:36] Those would be the, that's how we think about operational data. Yeah. So stuff that's about people and stuff that's about the business outcome. 

[00:34:43] Yeah. Yeah. I think just a add, add to that. Just imagine capturing. People's experiences, thoughts, feelings, and then slicing and dicing that data Yes. With operational data.

[00:34:53] Yeah. To give you greater insight on that experience data and vice versa. 

[00:34:58] Yeah. And so you can slice and dice. Definitely. The other thing you can do is, so we have in our technology, we've got like inbuilt analytics that will crunch that information in real time and tell you I don't know.

[00:35:11] The most impactful thing that impacts whether people can complete call s successfully is the amount of days they've spent in training. Yeah. Yeah. It could be something like that. Yeah. And it could, you could get to a space where it's I don't know. The likelihood of this person staying in the organization is dictated by how.

[00:35:32] Many emails they're getting in a day, I'm making this up. Which tells you how stressed they are. Yes. Yeah. There's so much stuff that you can do with this analysis. And that you don't need to have a stats degree or a team of people doing it. You can literally press a button and it tells you the answers. 

[00:35:47] There's there's fun in data. There's so much stuff in data. Huh? Do you think? Yeah, I think. I think so. I think so too. I think it can feel overwhelming for people of course. And it can feel super geeky of course. But yeah, there's so much you can get. 

[00:36:00] Steve: You mentioned this earlier as well, and I think this is an another thing around perceptions of surveys and asking for feedback and different mechanisms is, Companies then actioning it.

[00:36:13] Because I think there's I also use this kind of in my head, I dunno why it's a poor analogy. You might laugh at me or you might go, that's really good. I dunno, let's test it. I think of it like this of like American football team with the quarterback waiting for the ball to come out the back before then picking it and then throwing it towards two, some one.

[00:36:33] One of the other team members to run a touchdown and in my head the survey. Outcome. You should be waiting for stuff coming out. So rather than oh we'll action it. It's really 

[00:36:45] bad, isn't it? I, it's probably not bad, but I'm like a woman, a British woman. I know. I 

[00:36:50] don't think about America.

[00:36:52] 50% of our listeners are in America, so they're gonna get what I'm saying. No, but it's more like the, they should be waiting. They should be like, as soon as that data's coming out, what is the low hanging fruit? That we can action immediately, that's gonna build trust. Particularly if they're on a journey where they're just starting to implement, or they're trying to get more value out of the feedbacks from their people, because they're always gonna be some low hanging fruit to take.

[00:37:14] And then action pretty quick. Yeah. To then build common oh, okay, no, something has happened because of that pretty quick, low effort, high impact stuff. Yeah. If it's high impact, high effort, then of course those things can take a little bit longer before. They start to surface or for people to, for that to be visible to people.

[00:37:33] How are you seeing companies do that, and what do you think's important to, once that data's being extracted or showcased or the insights are being generated, what are some of the good companies doing and how are they doing that? I think more importantly 

[00:37:49] Sally: So I think there's two things I think.

[00:37:53] The ultimate goal that you want to get to is a place where this data is used to inform every decision, just naturally and organically. The leadership team is sitting down in a board meeting and they're having a debate and discussion about something. They log into, in our scenarios, they log into the Qualtrics dashboard, but it could be whatever, and they're accessing that data to help inform the decision.

[00:38:15] Yeah. Because they know. They just know that somewhere there's that in that insight exists or they're just saying, we don't have that insight. Let's run something quickly. Capture that insight and use it. Yeah. So I think that to me is like it cannot be a once off process. Even just getting a once off process to a place where it works Yeah.

[00:38:33] Is important, right? Yes. And I think that's sometimes why people don't move away from the annual engagement survey because they can't work out how to drive action. That then creates that environment where leaders want that data on an ongoing basis. Yes. I also think That you have, you can't just, you have to see action as being like multi-layered.

[00:38:53] And there's stuff, there's like a lot of tools out there that just talk to it's all on the manager. The manager is the most important and the experience of the manager and we don't really, we don't need to think about anyone else. Cause if managers are driving change, I agree. Then that's the end, that's the ultimate yeah.

[00:39:08] Goal. That's the only answer. As a manager, there's some things that you can act and absolutely you are fundamental to that process, but there's also stuff that is not for you to fix. It's for, it's way higher up. Yeah. In the chain. It's for the company to fix strategically, or it's really tactical I don't know, people's computers are broken.

[00:39:31] Hugely frustrating. Like we get so much data that suggests stuff like that leads to people leaving companies. So why are we not telling the people that can fix that in real time? You've got a problem over here to fix. Yes. So I think you have to think about it as all the different groups that should be taken action in a company.

[00:39:47] Yep. I'd love to play this to a America Footballing team. American Footballing. I might edit it out. Not even how you say 

[00:39:55] it in, I might edit it out. The beauty of podcasting, you can't, I now I'm gonna keep referencing it so you can't edit. 

[00:40:01] Steve: It's okay. It's okay. I, I. Yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind that, 

[00:40:05] Sally: It's on me, Steve, for not knowing anything about that.

[00:40:08] Steve: No, I don't. I'm more than comfortable making an ass of myself. It's totally fine. So I just, the last error I wanted to ask you, cuz this is something I think we could probably riff on. I hope, here's my hunch again, American football, then this question employee experience as a function and as a discipline.

[00:40:26] Yeah, and as a career choice because I know I'm seeing it and you'd have to be fairly blind if you're not seeing it in HR right now, but it's definitely happening. I think it's amazing that we are seeing more of evolutions of ex functions inside organizations. Yeah. And I'm. If you'd asked me two, three years ago, I would've said no.

[00:40:47] But I actually am now have changed my mind and I think it more Yes. Now is I'm seeing HR evolving towards EX as a function. Yeah. And it's very contextual. Some companies have gone all out and built a team, others are evolving their HR. Laterally, yes. To enable ex in different ways, not just the reactive HR stuff.

[00:41:11] And when you would've said it doesn't sit with hr, where did you think it? I would've 

[00:41:16] gone, I would've said separate team. I would've said specific competence team. Design team. Yes. Yeah. Okay. But now I'm seeing like from a people function perspective I'm seeing more and more HR starting.

[00:41:29] Even do the stuff like design thinking, training. Yeah. To design sprints, to learn human-centric design. It's very exciting. 

[00:41:37] Sally: I think it's because, so I, firstly I'm sure there was a report recently. A from, sorry. Very unuseful. That's cause I can't remember what it was. That's, but it was the, it's one of the fastest growing areas of jobs.

[00:41:49] Yes. Like it's definitely a thing. It's definitely a career path. Yeah. I think that I think what's interesting is when you think about what HR might have been in the. And I think hrs always been quite strategic in lots of businesses, but it might have been given responsibility for process and policy.

[00:42:08] And so it wasn't thought of in that kind of creative experience design space. But so much of what employees expect of their employer. Is about experience design. Yeah. And you can't create a policy or a process without thinking through what that is in relation to agree. So you can't, hybrid working would be an absolute classic problem that every company's facing at the moment.

[00:42:31] There are so many aspects to what that means, and you cannot think about it in terms of let's just be clear with people what the process. It's have we created the right office environment? Are we understanding the impact on productivity? There's so much, there's so much. So HR being like super connected into every aspect of the business, I think is gonna be really interesting as well, cuz you can't own and impact all of that.

[00:42:54] No, a lot of it sits with the technology team. Yeah. And actually we're seeing the emergence of experience leaders and the owners of employee experience in the tech team, in the IT team. Whoa. So they're seeing it as, Hang on. Like when people log on in the morning and every as that's they, that's how they define experience.

[00:43:15] Yep. But it's not the only aspect of experience, so No, 

[00:43:18] no. The holistic one is so much more complex and human. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, hybrids forced us to really think about the different places. We've got the first place, the second place, the third place. First is home, second is work. Third is Starbucks.

[00:43:31] Yeah. Third place. And the first And the second. Now have merged. Yeah. Complet. Wow. Now designed for that. 

[00:43:39] Yeah. And think, and I still interesting. Personally, I still think that all sits, it was inter when ex employee experience first emerged. I used to see it sitting with quite a lot of comms teams.

[00:43:50] Yes. And that was interesting. 

[00:43:52] Steve: Yes. Yeah. Because still I still is in a way that I've seen it. Not too much. But yeah, I've seen a bit and 

[00:43:56] Sally: I think I would say, and this is generalizing, but I would say you see more experimentation, then you see more Like the concept of continuous listening and a conversation, so that's quite exciting.

[00:44:07] Yeah. Yeah. But the outcomes are still very hr, like they're in hrs responsibility. Yeah. And the themes that are emerging at the moment, diversity and inclusion, burnout. Yeah. Like the hybrid work and what that means. 

[00:44:23] Steve: Getting people back to the office. 

[00:44:24] Sally: Yeah. All of those themes are like, they're real hardcore people issues.

[00:44:28] And I don't see where else it could sit. No agree. So I think it's really exciting for hr. Oh, it's amazing. As a practice, I think it's hugely exciting. I think the nature of the team is we're also seeing the nature of the team changing. So we're seeing like the requests for people with data skills.

[00:44:45] But we see that a lot, right? Because people need to have some, even though it's easy to use, they need to have some level of like data. 

[00:44:52] Yeah. Like data analysis or data. Data, yeah. 

[00:44:55] Like people, analytics teams are emerging and lots of the bigger organizations that we work with Yeah.

[00:45:01] As one of the key people that uses this data and surfaces it and thinks through the design and, yeah. Yeah, but it's super exciting. I think. 

[00:45:12] Steve: Employee Experience Manager was the top, I think it was eight in the top 10 growth roles in the US last year. 

[00:45:18] Sally: That's the, yeah, that's the report. Amazing. 

[00:45:21] Steve: Yeah, I just think that's amazing.

[00:45:23] I think the fact we're even sitting here talking about we intentionally designing employee experience I think is I, I always take those reflection moments of yeah, we're actually talking about this stuff. We're never go back, what, 6, 7, 8 years? Were we really talking about intentionally designing employee experience?

[00:45:39] I'm really, yeah. I'm grateful to be in this industry and to see it, to be part of it and to see it grow. And I think another five or 10 years, my God, wonder where we're gonna be again. Yeah. Yeah. I see, I genuinely see this as career moves for people in the future. I think we'll start to cement what those roles are.

[00:45:57] We, we've seen a slight. Divergence of this at the moment. So you've got like workplace experience, people dedicated purely to the workplace experience 

[00:46:07] As in like the way work places are structured. Yeah, everything, open plan, all of 

[00:46:11] that sort of stuff. Yeah. Like even down to even down to like events or all of that stuff is being so I've seen people, I've seen people doing that, those types of roles.

[00:46:22] And then there's other others that are a little bit more focused around just looking at employee experience, cross holistic, which on a more smaller scale in the smaller organizations anyway. And then also like for companies like in Sweden, like Mentimeter is a really great company for this.

[00:46:37] They have my God, they've, they don't even have hr Actually. The competence they've hired is design thinkers. Experienced designers like. More thoroughbred like thoroughbred experience designers out of context. And they're responsible for building culture and people experience. 

[00:46:53] Sally: That's interesting.

[00:46:54] Yeah. And they'll come with innovative thinking, right? Yeah. They'll help shape what the future of this kind of space looks like, which is, yeah. You need that. Different thinking to come into the, into this world as well. 

[00:47:04] Steve: And that's not discluding. I think hr, we still need HR A need a hundred percent.

[00:47:08] Yeah. Need those components that are still massively important. I just see this as a layer, just another layer of additional where they can bring more proactive. Proactive value to the organization. So if you're sitting in a HR function, you see the opportunity to just test some experiential work.

[00:47:24] Yeah. I would be encouraging them to do that because it brings new value in 

[00:47:27] new ways. 

[00:47:27] Sally: Yeah. This is making me think of, so we're in a WeWork building. Yeah. And did you watch the the Apple documentary? It's not a, it's not a documentary, it's like a show about WeWork. No. That we crashed. No, I haven't seen that one yet.

[00:47:39] It's incredible. It's worth watching because what that, WeWork are an example of like lots of the. Innovation that was about experience being about workspace, right? Came at a time when WeWork was forming. And that is it. Oh, I would recommend everyone watches it because it's such an awesome example of how that innovative thinking is really interesting.

[00:47:58] But done without HR is an absolute train wreck. And just some of the things that happened Yeah. That are commonly known. That happened within the WeWork organization. Yeah. Yeah. Just play out on screen. In such a brilliant way. So look, we all need each other at the end of the day. We do. We do.

[00:48:14] We need that disruption, but we also need to, yeah, we think about what it means for people. 

[00:48:19] We need the creativity, we need the innovation. We need the experimentation. But on a, on built around some form of like foundation. 

[00:48:26] Exactly. Yeah. And like human empathy and, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Watch.

[00:48:31] Wicked. Very entertaining. Wicked. 

[00:48:34] Steve: Sally, last question. Any any advice for anybody getting started with listening? Just any couple of tips just for people to think about or consider with 

[00:48:44] Sally: them? I, yeah. Yeah. So I think the key things are

[00:48:47] Like pace is really important. And I would actually say don't like, don't do too much because the expectation of action is there and never goes away. But I would say don't stay in the space of annual listening. Just try doing something that's more frequent and see what impact that has on behavior and on the pace of action.

[00:49:09] Because it just automatically, naturally and organically speeds things up. Yeah. In a way that is really impactful to the business. I would also say don't be afraid to experiment. And I think, and don't assume that just cuz you start doing something in one area, you have to keep it forever. Just as long as you're setting the principles in a clear way, then you're not saying expectations.

[00:49:29] It doesn't matter if you do something and focus in on one. For one quarter or one six month period, and then you move to another area, people get it. That's exciting. And dynamic. And I think the other piece I would go back to is your point around journeys and just picking the journeys that are most broken or most important.

[00:49:49] Yeah. And starting there. Yeah. And then don't, you don't need to map out the entire thing, just starting in one place, prove the value. Yeah. And then go beyond that. I think. Yeah. That to me is super important. 

[00:50:00] Steve: Yeah. Love that. I support that. Good stuff. Sally High five. Thank you so much.

[00:50:08] Amazing. 

[00:50:08] Sally: I thought we were gonna miss there. Huh? I thought we were gonna miss this. No, 

[00:50:11] Steve: No. I was watching the whole way with that one. 

[00:50:13] Thank you for joining and thank you for having me here in London. I think we should go and grab bites to eat and definitely. Have a catch up. Definitely welcome.

[00:50:20] Thank you for joining. Much appreciate it. See soon. Thank you.