Out of all the employees and business leaders whom I have interviewed over the years, the vast majority of them have always told me that culture is what they care about most. Unlike the previous two environments, the cultural environment isn't the one that you can see, touch, taste, or breathe in. This is the only environment that you feel. That feeling is the pit in your stomach when you don't want to go to work or the excitement and butterflies you get from wanting to go to work. Simply put, the cultural environment is the vibe of your organization and the actions that are taken to create that vibe or feeling.

The culture of the organization determines how employees are treated, the products or services that are created, the partnerships that are established, and even how employees actually get their jobs done. What's fascinating about culture, though, is that it exists regardless of whether the organization realizes it or decides to create it. A technological environment doesn't exist without actual things that the organization deploys. A physical environment doesn't exist unless the organization creates or designates one. But the corporate culture is like air. It's around all the employees who work there even if they aren't always aware of it. This is why it's so crucial to actually create and design a culture instead of just letting it exist. So what does the cultural environment actually look like?

There are 10 attributes that organizations must focus on to create a CELEBRATED culture (see Figure 7.1):

• Company is viewed positively
• Everyone feels valued
• Legitimate sense of purpose
• Employees feel like they're part of a team
• Believes in diversity and inclusion
• Referrals come from employees
• Ability to learn new things and given the resources to do so and advance
• Treats employees fairly
• Executives and managers are coaches and mentors
• Dedicated to employee health and wellness

COMPANY IS VIEWED POSITIVELY

Have you ever dated someone who you thought was a great catch, and then all of your friends and family members told you that they didn't like him or her (please tell me I'm not the only one)? Even if you thought this person was the one, you started to have doubts and reservations about this person. The same is true in the business world. If you start working for an organization that you believe to be a good fit and then hear about how much people don't like the company you are working for, you will start having doubts. This doesn't necessarily mean you will quit the company, but your overall employee experience will be affected negatively. I'm sure you can think of several examples of organizations that have treated animals cruelly, represented unethical business practices, harmed employees or the environment, or treated customers unfairly. Keep in mind that this isn't just about employees viewing the company positively but the public as well. We live in a very open and transparent world, so when an organization does something wrong or unethical, people tend to find out. Similarly when an organization is admired and revered, people want to work there.

Look at the most recent Fortune list of the World's Most Admired Companies:

1. Apple
2. Alphabet (parent company of Google)
3. Amazon
4. Berkshire Hathaway
5. Walt Disney
6. Starbucks
7. Southwest Airlines
8. FedEx
9. Nike
10. General Electric

Chances are that when you look at this list, you aren't surprised to see these organizations.

Sometimes organizations aren't viewed positively because they are simply engaging in poor business practices, but other times organizations don't do a good enough job of letting the world know what they stand for, why they do what they do, and what it's like to work there. In either case the situation needs to be corrected.

Dell does a great job of telling its story to the world, and to learn more about what it does, I spoke with Jennifer Newbill, senior manager, global candidate attraction, engagement, and experience. At Dell employees can go through a social media and brand certification program that enables them to become brand ambassadors of the company. These ambassadors feel a greater connection to the company, and they help share the Dell story and purpose, what it's like to work there, news and announcements, and much more. They feel like true representatives of the organization. Not only do these brand ambassadors make the rest of the world more aware of what Dell is doing and working on, but also these individuals have a higher employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) than others at the company.

You may have heard of the website Glassdoor. I used their data as a source for the analysis in this book. Glassdoor is a website that provides an amazing amount of transparency into virtually any organization. Simply visit the website and type in your company name. Of course, not every company in the world is listed there but many are. You'll be able to see the overall company rating on a five‐star scale, the CEO approval rating, salary information, candid reviews of the organization, pictures of the offices, the benefits, the interview process, and much more. The amazing thing is that this information is put up on the site by employees! So imagine you're looking to work for an organization. Before even submitting a resume you basically have all the information you need to decide whether this is a place you want to work for. Of course, Glassdoor is one example and is perhaps the best and most transparent company and career website in existence.

I used to think that lists that highlight the best or greatest companies to work for were a bit foolish and had no real business merit. However, although I might not always agree entirely with how and why all of these lists are created, I acknowledge that they have an impact on the overall brand perception of the organization and an impact on the overall employee experience. Employees feel a greater sense of pride when they are working for one of these awarded organizations, and from my observations it also appears that they stay there longer. What's interesting about these lists and awards is that some of them are quite hard to get onto and require significant financial and people resources. In other words to get the award or to make the list, you genuinely have to make some changes in your organization, which is a good thing. There are many of these lists and awards that are given, which include most admired companies, most sustainable, best or great places to work, happiest places to work, greenest companies, and so on.

Today, this company perception often falls under something called employer branding. HR is responsible for all the people inside of the organization, and marketing is responsible for driving awareness of products, services, and the organization as a whole. It's not hard to see why these two roles need to come together to focus on the overall company perception. Lydia Abbot, Ryan Batty, and Stephanie Bevegni's Global Recruiting Trends 2016 report found that almost 50 percent of HR professionals “share or contribute to employer branding with marketing.”¹

General Electric has a killer brand, but it, like many others, has realized that the brand isn't enough to get the best people to work there.

Company perception can have a tremendous impact on the business. A study by LinkedIn, which was summarized in a 2016 blog post by Wade Burgess called “Research Shows Exactly How Much Having a Bad Employer Brand Will Cost You,” found the following:

• The cost of a bad reputation for a company with 10,000 employees could be as much as $7.6 million in additional wages.
• Employers who fail to invest in their reputation could be paying up to an additional $4,723 per employee hired.
• Nearly half of US professionals would entirely rule out taking a job with a company that exhibited the top three negative employer brand factors, no matter what pay raise they were offered. Even a pay raise of 10% would only tempt 28% of us to sign on the dotted line.
• Companies with most (3 in 5) of the qualities encompassing a positive employer brand can attract 41% of full‐time US workers without any pay increase. This rises to 46% if they have all 5—job security, more professional development opportunities, the opportunity to work on a better team, an organization with the same values as you and an organization that is talked about positively by present or past employees.
• Companies with all 5 qualities can win over nearly half (49%) of those aged 18–34 and 46% of those aged 35–54 with no pay increase.²

However, this doesn't mean your goal should be simply to make every list that's out there. Sure, that would be nice, but instead it's far more important to understand what the organization wants to be known for and how it can effectively tell that story and build the employer brand around it.

What This Measures

• Organizational effectiveness around telling its story
• Impact that the organization is having on the world around it
• Employer branding
• Pride

What You Can Do

• Look on sites like Glassdoor to see how your company is perceived by people who work there.
• Keep a good pulse on the news and conversations happening about your organization.
• Encourage HR and your marketing teams to work together.
• See what honorary lists your organization can become a part of.

EVERYONE FEELS VALUED

Compensation and benefits, having employee voices heard, and employees being recognized for the work they do, all fall under “every feels valued.” We will look at all of those components here.

Do you want to work for an organization where you don't feel valued? If your answer is yes, then you need to put this book down and look for something in the self‐help category.

For the rest of you I'm assuming this is not the case, but still, imagine being part of this type of organization. How would you feel when you show up to work, and more important, would you even want to show up to work? I've worked in and visited these types of organizations, and after spending some time there I genuinely started to hate them and relive that moment in the film Office Space when someone sets fire to the company (not recommended). Keep in mind that feeling valued and appreciated are not the same thing. Typically feeling appreciated is more relevant to a specific project or task, and feeling valued is the overall and ongoing feeling that employees have. So, if you feel regularly appreciated, then you will in turn feel valued.

Value can be quite subjective—we are all unique creatures with different beliefs, aspirations, values, and expectations. Ultimately, the best way to understand what your employees value and care about is to ask them and get to know them more personally. With that caveat in mind there are some common things we all care about that help us feel valued in the workplace. You can look at table 7.1 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

Depending on the reports you read, compensation and benefits is either one of the most important or one of the least important things that employees care about. For example, a recent Society for Human Resources Management report called “2016 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement: Revitalizing a Changing Workforce” found that compensation and pay ranked number two when it came to overall job satisfaction.³ However, if you look at research done by career website Indeed called “The Indeed Job Happiness Index 2016: Ranking the World for Employee Satisfaction,” it found that compensation actually ranked last on the list of variables that employees consider when reporting on overall job satisfaction.⁴ Two different studies done during the same year with very different results.

It would be a bit silly simply to discount the importance or value of fair compensation. I've talked to employees and executives who put compensation at the very top of their personal job satisfaction list, and I've talked to plenty of people who don't. Interestingly enough, not many people are willing to work for free, so compensation and benefits remains a topic of conversation and discussion for every employee.

Even when looking at organizations such as Netflix, which publicly released its culture slide deck a few years ago, it's clear that although it does offer all sorts of fun perks and rewards, it's also explicit in acknowledging that it pays employees well. I have found this to be the case across all organizations that are interested in exploring and designing employee experiences. It's very hard for employees to feel valued if they don't believe they are at least being paid what they are worth.

HAVING EMPLOYEE'S VOICES HEARD

The typical structure inside of many organizations is the pyramid where information, decision making, and power flow from the top down. Although we are starting to see this break down and flatten out, this shift will naturally take time. Because we are all so used to managers and executives controlling all the information and making all the decisions, this concept of employees having their voices heard can come as a challenge. Thanks to social media and the Internet in general, this process is now being forced to speed up. When it comes to the voice of the employee, there are four approaches I've seen organizations take.

EMPLOYEES ARE RECOGNIZED FOR THE WORK THAT THEY DO

Recognizing employees for work they do should be a common practice, and there are many ways that this can be done. Sadly, we have spent so much time turning everything we do into a process or a formula that recognizing employees for their hard work doesn't even feel special anymore or even human for that matter. I fly quite a bit and on a recent flight, a United Airlines representative handed me a card when I boarded the plane. I opened the card and it had a message typed on there that said something along the lines of “Thanks for being a loyal flyer” with some person's signature at the bottom. The lady who handed me this card did so while she was announcing, “Now boarding Group 1.” This isn't recognition; this is process. It's the organization's way of saying, “For all people who travel X number of miles, hand them this piece of paper.” Granted, I'm not an employee at United Airlines, but this is the same feeling many employees get inside of their organizations when they get a $50 gift card for being at the company for three years.

The key distinction here is that just because an organization has a program to recognize employees doesn't mean that they actually feel recognized. This doesn't mean all rewards and recognition programs are bad. Clearly they aren't. I just want to encourage you to think more about the people being recognized and less about the template or the process being used to recognize them. How about a personalized, handwritten note? A special project for them to work on? A round of applause in front of their peers and other leaders? Here are some things to consider. You can look at table 7.2 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

• Leverage technology but don't forget the humanity.
• Understand what employees care about and how they want to be recognized (ask; don't tell).
• Look at recognition not just from a monetary standpoint but also from an emotional perspective.
• It's okay to have a process and guidelines in place, but remember you're dealing with people, not robots.
• Ask yourself, “Would this make me feel recognized?”

What This Measures

• Employee satisfaction with overall compensation
• Whether employees feel like they are being listened to
• Recognition and feeling valued

What You Can Do

• Spend some time understanding your people; talk them about nonwork things.
• Try to move beyond the typical process to focus on the human aspects of making employees feel valued. It's okay to be creative.
• Empower managers to go beyond the typical recognition template to make employees feel good.

LEGITIMATE SENSE OF PURPOSE

It's no surprise that having a sense of purpose is part of creating a CELEBRATED culture. Any engagement, culture, or workplace survey typically has some component that looks at an employee's sense of purpose and for good reason. A sense of purpose helps employees feel connected to the organization they are working for, but it also helps the organization make sure that employees are doing their best work and, most important, that they are doing the work because they want to do it, not because they need to do it. But where does this legitimate sense of purpose come from? Is it something the organization has to create and provide, or is it something that employees have to bring with them? The answer is both.

Employees don't have the luxury of just wandering around waiting for the organization to help them find the meaning of life. That's not quite how this works. There's plenty of due diligence that employees need to do to make sure that they end up working at an organization whose values and purpose matches their own. A big part of creating a sense of purpose comes down to self‐awareness: understanding who you are, what you care about, what drives and motivates you, who you want to become, and what impact you want to have. This is not something that any organization can provide for you, and this is the very first step that has to be taken when purpose is discussed in relation to work.

But organizations can certainly help create that sense of purpose, and the most effective organizations that do this focus on two things. They connect the work that employees do back to the reason the organization exists and allow employees to see the direct impact of the work they are doing.

As the story goes, in 1962 President John F. Kennedy was visiting the NASA space center. While taking a tour he noticed a janitor carrying a broom. President Kennedy stopped his tour to say hello. He walked over to the man and said, “Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?” “Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I'm helping put a man on the moon.” The janitor didn't say he was cleaning the floors or emptying trash. He felt like the work he was doing had a much greater impact. If you were to ask employees at your organization this same question, what sort of responses would you get back?

Salesforce.com does a great job of creating a sense of purpose and alignment through something it created called V2MOM, which stands for:

• Vision—what you want to do or achieve
• Values—beliefs that help you pursue that vision
• Methods—actions to get the job done
• Obstacles—challenges you have to overcome to achieve the vision
• Measures—measurable results you aim to achieve

The corporate V2MOM starts at the very top of the organization and then moves down to teams, functions, and even individuals. In fact at Salesforce.com all employees have their own V2MOM, which helps them clearly understand how their involvement and contributions affect the company. All the employees at Salesforce.com can see each other's V2MOMs, which makes this a very transparent process.

Clearly this approach is making a difference at the company because over the years Salesforce.com has won dozens of awards highlighting its workplace practices, including being featured on Fortune's Best Places to Work list for the past five years and Forbes's World's Most Innovative Companies list for the past six years (most recently being ranked second).⁵

Many years ago I used to work at a movie theater behind the concession stand. Actually, I worked at two movie theaters (both large chains). When selling products we were always encouraged to upsell customers to get the larger popcorn and the larger drink (because we all need a trough of popcorn and a gallon of soda). “For just a dollar more you can have a large popcorn and a large drink. Do you want to upgrade?” We did this because we were told to do this, and at the end of each month, the person who upsold the most would get some sort of gift card. Where did the money go? How was it used? What impact did we have on the business by doing this? Did anyone even care? Did customers appreciate this? We didn't know anything except for the fact that we needed to try to get everyone to upgrade. Employees at the movie theater had no idea how what we did affected the company or the customers who came in. The only training that employees were given was about the tactical aspects of how do their jobs, in other words how to ring up a customer, how to make the popcorn, and how to change the soda bag when it ran out. Even though we were selling popcorn in a movie theater, these large chains could have helped create that legitimate sense of purpose. After all, this is where the world came to watch all of their favorite stars. Entertainment happened at the theater! That to me sounds like a compelling story to create purpose.

Let's contrast this same approach with the employees who work the concession stand at the San Diego Zoo, the same nonprofit we met earlier in the technology section of this book. They are also asked to upsell customers and encourage them to walk away with more, just like when I was working at the movie theatre. The difference is that at the San Diego Zoo, the employees know why they are doing this and what the impact is on conservation efforts and on the animals the zoo houses and tries to help. These employees aren't doing it because they get a gift card. They are doing it because they love animals, and they want to help save, rescue, and take care of as many animals as the zoo can. What do they do to make this connection between what employees do and what the impact is?

It starts with the hiring process. To achieve the vision of ending extinction, the zoo must first ignite a passion for wildlife within the daily responsibilities of the employees. This is why one of the factors that the San Diego Zoo looks at is an applicant's roar factor, essentially the passion for wildlife and the spirit to share this passion with guests and colleagues. This goes beyond just hiring someone based on his or her skills or ability to do the job, which is what many movie theater employees and I were hired for. The zoo wants engaging and enthusiastic employees because it believes that every person from the food server to the scientist makes a difference in the wildlife.

Employees get immersed in the mission and vision of the zoo from day one with the new employee orientation called Explore the Roar. This program along with the GRRREAT customer service training program were redesigned at the end of 2015 to include The Call, that is, the strategic initiatives to Unite, Fight, and Ignite. In 2016 the zoo brought in around 1,000 seasonal employees, and every one of them is reminded that they can have a powerful influence on their guests, coworkers, and the public to join in the fight to end extinction. The president and CEO of the San Diego Zoo tells the employees, “Every zoo has lions, tigers, and bears. What they don't have is you. It's you who make us world famous!”

In addition to hiring the right people, all the internal communication efforts highlight the topics from The Call, especially the ways the zoo is leading the fight to end extinction. They share conservation and animal welfare stories regularly to make the connection between work and impact. The GRRREAT News e‐mail publication is also a regular reminder of the important achievements of employees, as well as compliments from guests and teammates.

All retail employees participate in The Spark training program, which shows employees how their work directly contributes to the achievement of the zoo's vision of ending extinction. The program includes the value and importance of upselling and how that extra revenue contributes toward the vision of the company. Check out the story and the message that these employees receive and experience, taken directly from the San Diego Zoo.

Close your eyes. Picture your favorite wild animal. Picture it in its native habitat. Raise your hand now, if your animal is in danger due to pollution, poaching, loss of habitat, climate change, or disease. Just about everyone should have their hand raised, as there is no wild species that is not affected by these dangers.

We are all in the right place, as the zoo is leading the fight against the very things that are endangering our favorite species. And through our Uniting Call, we are partnering with outside organizations to make sure that our efforts reach every corner of the planet. Now we just need the funding to make this happen.

Close your eyes, once more. Picture your location. Picture your gift shop, restaurant, cart. Now picture it busy, lots of guests, everywhere. Now, narrow your gaze to just one guest, standing in front of you. This guest is not just a tourist or a member. This unique, special individual is the key to saving our favorite animals. They are the hero and champion for your favorite species. Imagine the impact your guest can make with a purchase, a vision, or a passion that they can carry home and share. Can one inspired person make a difference? Of course! Now broaden your gaze again, see all those other guests in your location. Think of the impact all of them can make, with our help. We can truly make an impact, if we ignite these guests to our cause. You can make that impact.

So how do we Ignite our guests? We need to be the Spark.

The r in Spark stands for Reach, and the training encourages the following to expand the reach:

1. Offer a personalized addition to their transaction
2. Inform them of the value in an upgraded item
3. Direct them to additional experience enhancements

As an employee of the San Diego Zoo, how can you not want to upsell every customer after reading something like that and being immersed in the fight to end extinction? For every extra burger sold, for every drink that is upgraded, or for every toy that people walk away with, the employees at these concessions stands know how that extra money will be used to help the zoo. That's a legitimate sense of purpose.

KPMG is one of the big four professional services firms and employs almost 200,000 people around the world. In 2015 it launched a new purpose statement for the company, which was “Inspire Confidence. Empower Change.” Quite an interesting purpose statement for an organization that is typically known for doing auditing, accounting, and consulting work. Still, KPMG realized what many organizations today are figuring out. Words are meaningless without something to back them up. So KPMG embarked on a journey to create and inspire a sense of purpose among its employees. To do this it created stories to show how KPMG affected global historic events, such as managing the Lend‐Lease Act, which helped defeat Nazi Germany, and certifying the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1994. Perhaps most important is that KPMG created stories on an individual employee level. Over 42,000 employees were featured in posters that said things such as “I combat terrorism” or “I help farms grow.” These posters featured employees' names and faces along with how KPMG does these various things. The end of each poster stated, “KPMG. You're here for a purpose.”

Simply by telling these stories and connecting what employees do to what KPMG stands for, Bruce N. Pfau, partner, Human Capital Strategy and Culture Transformation at KPMG reported that 90 percent of employees saw the higher‐purpose initiatives increased people's pride in KPMG, and 76 percent of its employees said their “job had special meaning (and was not just a job).”⁶ Not surprisingly, employees whose leaders discussed this higher purpose with them scored considerably higher on all of KPMG's internal metrics than those whose managers did not discuss the higher purpose.

In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant shared a great story of how helping people feel a sense of purpose improves productivity. To explore this he looked at paid employees who worked for a university fund‐raising center. These employees had the responsibility of calling people up and asking for contributions. As someone who did something similar many years ago, I can absolutely say it feels like a thankless job and it's hard work. Adam found that when these employees were given the chance to actually meet someone who had benefited from their fund‐raising efforts and speak with them for a few minutes, over the next month, their weekly fund‐raising went up by over 400 percent.⁷

Making these connections and helping employees understand the impact they are having is the best way to help create that sense of purpose. These stories are not unique nor are they rare. A legitimate sense of purpose is the cornerstone of a CELEBRATED culture. You can look at table 7.3 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Connection and commitment to the company
• Organization genuinely cares about employees
• Personal and organizational value alignment

What You Can Do

• Help employees feel like they are a part of your organization's story.
• Connect the work employees do back to the Reason for Being.
• Physically show employees how the work they are doing is affecting customers, the community, or the world.

EMPLOYEES FEEL LIKE THEY'RE PART OF A TEAM

Work is a team sport that relies on multiple people and groups coming together to achieve something. These teams can either be formally structured or be created on an as needed basis. Sometimes these teams comprise individuals in the same geographic location, but in today's globally distributed and connected world, it's far more likely that these teams are spread out all over the world. Today we think of teams in terms of departments, such as marketing, sales, research and development (R&D), HR, and so on. However, teams need to be thought of as groups of people that can be pointed at various problems that need to be solved or opportunities that need to be uncovered. This means that someone in marketing could be a part of an R&D team that is looking to design and develop a new product. Someone in HR could be part of a sales team that is looking to sell consulting services to other organizations. Teams are meant to be dynamic, nimble, and adjustable versus being confined to the common organizational chart. An article written by Susan McDaniel, the president of the American Psychological Association, called “Why Teamwork Surpasses the Individual Approach” stated that “errors in aviation and health care were often linked to traditional hierarchies that shut down communication from anyone but the leader. Teams with diverse membership, flattened hierarchies and rich communication were more likely to have positive outcomes.”⁸

Priyanka B. Carr and Gregory M. Walton from Stanford University tested this idea further in five experiments. Participants were asked to solve a puzzle and were told that they could have as much or as little time as they needed. Half of the participants were given hints and cues to suggest that they were a part of a broader group working, and the other half of the participants were not (suggesting they were working independently). Those who felt like they were working on this puzzle as a part of a team worked 48 percent longer than those who didn't. Not only that but participants were also asked to complete a survey after the experiment, and those who felt like they were a part of a team rated the puzzle as being more interesting. According to Walton, “Simply feeling like you're part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges.”⁹

Our organizations, and for that matter our educational institutions, haven't done a good job of shifting from focusing on the individual to focusing on the team. In fact many training programs or courses on team building and development are actually designed for individuals to take them, which is a bit paradoxical.

When you join an organization, you want to feel like you belong, like you are a part of something, and like you are around peers. You want to feel like you are a part of a team where you are in this with others and where you know that you can rely on others to have your back. This is why companies like LinkedIn are so explicit in creating a sense of belonging and why Airbnb's mission is to allow people, not just customers, but also employees, to feel like they belong anywhere.

According to Deloitte's “Global Human Capital Trends 2016,” this is one of the key priorities and strategic imperatives for organizations around the world. Employees are more empowered than ever, customer expectations are higher, competitors are moving faster, technological change is growing exponentially, and products and services need to be created and pushed out faster. Our organizations are simply not structured to deal with this. One very clear sign of this is the focus on the annual individual employee review. That very concept and practice already signals that employees are being analyzed as individuals, not as team members.

At Facebook all the language used internally is focused on the teams and not on specific individuals. In fact job titles inside the company don't really matter. All the business impact that Facebook sees is brought back down to the team level, and the company is constantly hosting team building events and contests to help drive home this mentality. At Facebook, you are a part of a team.

Employees who don't feel like they are a part of a team will be more reserved, conservative, and less inclined to share their ideas, to think outside the proverbial box, or to go above and beyond expectations to help others. You can look at table 7.4 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Creating a cohesive and welcoming environment
• Trust
• Psychological safety and feeling like someone has your back
• Communication and collaboration

What You Can Do

• Create teams based on needs and opportunities, not based on organizational charts.
• Reward teams as a whole, not just individual star performers.
• Use social cues to help people feel like they are a part of a team.
• Allow employees to be a part of more than one team.

BELIEVES IN DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Every person and talent executive whom I have spoken with in the past few years has always referenced diversity and inclusion as a key focus area. In my previous book, The Future of Work, I talked about the importance of having more women in senior management and executive roles, but of course, diversity includes more than just gender. Diversity also means having a diverse group of people based on religion, race, generation, sexual orientation, and more. The Royal Bank of Canada has a great definition of diversity and inclusion: “In simple terms, diversity is the mix of people; inclusion is getting the mix to work well together.”¹⁰

Forbes Insights published a study called “Global Diversity and Inclusion: Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce,” which highlights how diversity affects innovation, productivity, job satisfaction, ability to attract and retain talent, and the like, and being diverse is just the right thing to do and helps contribute to the overall brand image of the organization and hence the overall employee experience. People want to work for organizations that value diverse thought and people of all backgrounds and beliefs. This is also something that millennials and Gen Z employees care about. A study by PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) called Millennials at Work: Reshaping the Workplace found that “millennials value diversity and tend to seek out employers with a strong record on equality and diversity.”¹¹

Karyn Twaronite is a partner and the global diversity and inclusiveness officer at EY, a multinational professional services firm with over 200,000 employees around the world. In an hourlong discussion I had with her, I asked her what she does, and her response perfectly explains what diversity and inclusiveness is all about. She said, “My role is about our firm appreciating the unique differences and talents of all our people in the 150+ countries [where they operate] and then allowing our teams to best leverage those collective differences so that they can be higher‐performing teams, provide the best client service, innovate, and deliver better solutions.” Karyn also shared with me that diversity and inclusiveness is not just about gender, religion, and sexual orientation—but it also includes diversity of beliefs, experience, technical expertise, and pretty much anything else that makes people different. Karyn and her team at EY also tie their diversity and inclusiveness efforts to real business impact. As a result they have seen lower turnover, higher retention, higher revenue growth and gross margin, greater team collaboration, and increased brand favorability.

Kaiser Permanente is a healthcare provider with almost 200,000 employees. DiversityInc recently ranked it as the number one company for diversity, which is a tremendous achievement. At Kaiser diversity is embedded into every aspect of how the organization operates internally and with suppliers and how it interacts with customers. In fact the chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, Bernard J. Tyson, personally signs off on executive compensation tied to diversity, diversity metrics, and progress, goals, and achievements for supplier diversity. Looking at the Kaiser Glassdoor rankings, it's also quite apparent that this focus on diversity is not only noticed by employees but also extremely appreciated.

Sodexo is a French food services and facilities management company with over 400,000 employees around the world that also has a strong diversity and inclusion effort going on. DiversityInc ranked it the number six company for diversity.¹² At Sodexo 25 percent of the executive team's bonus is tied to how well they perform on their diversity scorecard. For management the percentage is 10 to 15 percent.¹³ Sodexo credits its diversity and inclusion programs with increasing overall employee happiness and satisfaction as well as expanding its business development opportunities.

The Sodexo diversity and inclusion effort is based on four things:

1. Connection to the business—Build the value of the brand, attract and retain the best people, drive innovation and productivity, grow new business, and improve customer service
2. Leadership commitment—All executives at Sodexo are expected to show their commitment to diversity and inclusion through their words and actions
3. Top down, bottom up, and middle out deployment strategy—Grassroots efforts, executive role modeling, and the cross market diversity council led by midlevel managers
4. Accountability and measurement—Metrics such as the diversity index, which influences pay (discussed earlier)

These are just a few examples of organizations that believe in diversity and inclusion, which makes it easier for them to attract and retain the best and brightest talent in the world. You can look at table 7.5 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Creating an open and welcoming organization
• Respect and appreciation for all employees (and people in general)
• Psychological safety

What You Can Do

• Define what diversity and inclusion means to your organization and what it looks like.
• Tie the program to something meaningful, such as executive and management compensation.
• Make it public for the world to see.

REFERRALS COME FROM EMPLOYEES

In the realm of customer experience, there is something called the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is used to measure customer loyalty by asking a very simple question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” Many organizations have adopted a similar approach with respect to measuring employee loyalty with an eNPS score (the e stands for employee). The question is almost identical but instead of focusing on the customers, it asks, “On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work?” These questions are fine to ask, but I have found that organizations that create truly great employee experiences actually see a high referral rate. That is, employees like working there so much that they tell others to apply.

Many organizations around the world have referral programs where they offer financial incentives and rewards for employees who refer others to work there. Referral programs have been quite popular as of late, thanks to social media and our ability to quickly build networks that organizations would love to tap into for prospective candidates. Although the cause is noble, it misses the whole point of why people refer others for anything. If you go eat at a restaurant and the service and food are terrible, would you refer your friends to eat there if the restaurant gave you $50? Probably not. What if you had this same experience with a babysitter, house cleaner, mechanic, or hotel? Again, chances are that if you don't have a good experience with something, you won't refer your friends or family members to that establishment, even if you get a financial reward. So why do we think that this rule doesn't apply inside of our organizations? It absolutely does. Employees won't refer other people to work at your organization just because you promise them a financial reward. Perhaps more important, would you even want employees to refer their friends just because they are getting a cash reward? When the only incentive is money, the outcome will always be transactional, which is not a good way to think about your people. The financial reward acts as an incentive only if the employees genuinely have a good experience working there to begin with.

Google figured this out quickly. Originally it set its employee referral bonus program at $2,000, meaning an employee would get $2,000 for referring someone who got hired. It wanted to increase employee referrals, so it did what any company would do: doubled the bonus to $4,000! This approach proved unsuccessful. According to Laszlo Bock, Google's former senior vice president of people operations (who still advises the company), “It turned out that nobody was meaningfully motivated by the referral bonus People [who referred other employees] actually loved their work experience and wanted other people to share it. Only rarely did people mention the referral bonus.” So what was Google's solution? Simple, it just made it easier for employees to refer others by nudging them with relevant openings and hosting “Sourcing Jams.”¹⁴

People refer others to work at your organization when the employee experience is great. That's why this is a useful question to ask and a metric to look at. According to a Facebook executive I spoke with, their employee referral rate is between 30 and 50 percent, which is quite astonishing but not surprising, considering it scored higher than any other organization on the Employee Experience Index, which shows that people truly want to work there. We also have to remember that the employee referral door swings both ways. Sometimes employees will refer their network to work at your organization, but sometimes they will send warning signs to anyone and everyone they know who might be applying to work there. You can look at table 7.6 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Whether employees genuinely like working for the organization
• Loyalty and commitment to the organization

What You Can Do

• Shift away from asking whether employees would refer their friends to work there to do they actually do so.
• Have a goal for what you want your employee referral rate to be and track it.
• Create programs that don't focus on just financial incentives for employees. Otherwise the referrals will occur for the wrong reasons.

ABILITY TO LEARN NEW THINGS AND GIVEN THE RESOURCES TO DO SO AND ADVANCE

Albert Einstein famously said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” As I mentioned earlier, humans are naturally curious and inquisitive. When we learn we grow, both as individuals and as employees. So what happens when you feel like you are in a position where you have nothing left to learn and nowhere to grow? At that point you're really just a body inside the organization until you can (and eventually will) find something better. You become someone who is just there for a paycheck, and your experience is negatively affected to the point where you no longer even want to be a part of that organization. Randstad, a placement agency with around 30,000 employees around the world, recently surveyed about 11,000 U.S. workers and found that the number one reason people leave their jobs is lack of career path.¹⁵

One of the key things in a career path is the phrase “given the resources to do so.” This means that the organization actually gives employees whatever resources they need to grow or advance. This could be mentoring programs, cash to take courses online, internal training sessions, employee groups, guest speakers, or a whole range of other things. Employees need to feel like when they want to grow, they can.

Let's break this attribute down into the individual components because although they are all related, learning and development and advancement are not the same.

TREATS EMPLOYEES FAIRLY

Let's say a new promotion comes up at your organization that you are clearly qualified and ready for, but instead your manager gives the promotion to someone who used to be his or her college roommate (and because of it). Clearly that's not a fair situation and would cause anyone to be quite upset. Fairness means free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice. This isn't an easy thing to do because as humans we all have subjective ways of perceiving people, things, and situations. If an organization is biased, dishonest, and plagued with injustice, then why on earth would anyone want to work there? But treating employees fairly doesn't mean treating everyone the same.

Let's say someone on the marketing team leaked confidential information. You don't fire the entire marketing team. Similarly if someone in sales brought in a big client, you probably won't reward or recognize the entire sales team. Treating everyone the same is a great approach for making employees feel like cogs. After all, these employees have different jobs, work preferences, tasks they are working on, skills and abilities, and personalities. Do you treat all your friends the same? What about your kids? If you have a 13‐year‐old daughter and a 22‐year‐old son, do they both have the same curfew, allowance, and rules they have to follow? I'm guessing the answer is no. Still, it doesn't mean that you can't treat your kids, and employees, fairly.

Fairness is a tricky animal because as humans we are inherently flawed, and whether we realize it or not, we aren't always fair to one another. We've all been in situations in our personal lives where we weren't treated fairly. These are not typically pleasant experiences. If employees report that they are being treated unfairly, then clearly this not only becomes an employee experience issue but also becomes, potentially, a legal issue.

It's very easy for us to identify when we are being treated unfairly, but it's much harder for us to identify the specific things that are required for everyone to be treated fairly. Among other things, treating employees fairly means:

• Knowing them as people, not just as job functions
• Understanding personal circumstances and situations
• Listening to all employees
• Giving everyone a fair and honest opportunity without stacking the deck
• Being empathetic and when needed sympathetic
• Acting like a human and treating other employees like grown‐ups

This is why many organizations today are offering training in the areas of bias detection, empathy, and emotional intelligence. The goal is to help all employees feel like they are treated fairly. You can look at table 7.8 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• How employees are treated
• Balanced and flexible approach to employee relationships

What You Can Do

• Communicate your practices of being fair but not homogenous.
• Try to eliminate biases when and where you can.

EXECUTIVES AND MANAGERS ARE COACHES AND MENTORS

For the longest time we have had this collective assumption inside of our organizations that executives and managers sit at the very top of the organizational pyramid and everyone else sits below them. Those at the top typically have all the power and all the information, and everyone else below them simply do what they are told. In this type of organization the managers and the executives are the supreme rulers, and everyone else is just there to do their job. This assumption was well justified because the entire field of management and the existence of managers was created to enforce the status quo. The whole point of management and managers was to make sure that people fell in line.

Thankfully this way of thinking is being challenged at every company I have come across and for good reason. Senior leaders play a big role in shaping and designing employee experiences, so in organizations where managers act like rulers and dictators, the employee experience suffers tremendously. According to Gallup, managers account for a 70 percent variance in employee engagement (which is the outcome of employee experience).¹⁷

Instead, managers and executives must see themselves not at the top of the proverbial company pyramid, where everyone climbs to them, but at the bottom of the pyramid, where they push everyone else up. In fact I'm a firm believer that one of the measures of success for managers should be how many people and how often they help make other people more successful than themselves. This was something that was discussed at length in a great book called Superbosses by Sydney Finkelstein. Not coincidentally at Google, being a good coach is also the number one behavior that makes a great manager. I should also point out that Google discovered this after doing extensive research and analysis which looked at employee surveys, exit interviews, performance and satisfaction data, and turnover. Then they ran several internal tests and experiments.

When you hire a trainer at the gym, his or her responsibility is to help get you in shape. Trainers give you meals plans and workouts, check in with you on the phone, encourage you, and push you to achieve their goals. They also get to know you as an individual and customize training programs that meet your needs. In other words, their job is to help make you successful. Managers are the modern‐day organizational fitness trainers.

Chances are you've heard the saying that employees don't leave organizations (or jobs); they leave managers. One of the best ways to keep that from happening is by embracing the coach and mentor mentality. Help employees succeed and if you can, help them become more successful than you! When Facebook did an internal study to find which behaviors the best managers exhibit, “they care about their team members” was number one on the list.¹⁸ You can look at table 7.9 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Managers invested in the success of employees
• Having the right managers in place

What You Can Do

• Educate and train managers to think of themselves like coaches and mentors.
• Explore the success rate of the people whom managers oversee to determine which managers help others succeed the most.

DEDICATED TO EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND WELLNESS

A few years ago when I would ask executives whether they had employee health and wellness programs, they would say, “Absolutely, we pay for their gym memberships and they get healthy snacks.” We've come a long way since assuming health and wellness is about food and muscles. Today health and wellness means focusing on the mind and the body. According to the American Institute of Stress, our jobs are by far the leading cause of stress in our lives, but this isn't just true in the United States. This is common in various regions around the world. We work longer hours, we're more connected, our attention spans are shorter, and we just can't seem to find the time in the day to do everything we need to get done. Oftentimes this means we skimp out on the time we need to keep ourselves healthy. We don't have time to eat breakfast, so we grab a giant caramel mocha and an egg sandwich from McDonald's; we'd love to work out, but we have that big presentation that's due, so we have to skip the gym; and we can't relax and have time to ourselves after work because we keep checking our e‐mail every 5 seconds. Then, of course, we have family and all sorts of other things going on in our personal lives that we need to deal with. The point is we live in a new world where things move faster and we're always connected.

Workplace stress can lead to all sorts of unhealthy habits and problems that affect our bodies. Weight gain, poor eating habits, heart problems, trouble sleeping, depression, and anxiety are just a few of the common things that we can experience because of workplace stress. This keeps us from doing and being our best at work and at home. Organizations around the world are acknowledging this shift and are doing all sorts of things to help keep employees' minds and bodies healthy. Health and education training programs, healthy snacks and meals, gym memberships, access to nutritionists, team and company fitness contests, nap rooms, wearable fitness devices to track activity, and walking meetings are just some of the things that are being implemented at organizations around the world. Then we have to focus on the mind, which includes stress workshops, financial planning advisors to help with saving for retirement and college tuition, yoga and meditation classes, and the like.

The forward‐thinking organizations understand that part of their responsibility isn't just providing a job for their employees. It's also looking after them and taking care of them. Although health and wellness programs are typically experienced while employees are at work, their impact are oftentimes felt at home as well. Employees who feel taken care of will be more relaxed, will have more energy to give their friends and family members, will feel better about themselves, and in general will lead a happier life. There are plenty of benefits for organizations as well, such as reduced absenteeism and healthcare costs, higher employee morale, and lower employee turnover.

Still, health and wellness doesn't mean offering short‐term solutions to long‐term employee needs. It means having an organizational commitment to looking after employees. An article published the Harvard Business Review by Hector De La Torre and Ron Goetzel, PhD called “How to Design a Corporate Wellness Plan That Actually Works” stated that “one‐time events masquerading as health promotion programs—that is, activities not integrated into a comprehensive workplace health promotion strategy—are likely to fail.”¹⁹

Marriott International is a global hospitality company with around 200,000 employees around the world, and it truly believes in employee health and wellness. In fact its global chief human resources officer, David Rodriguez, believes its wellness program helped save his life. He was diagnosed with leukemia and through its TakeCare program was able to successfully make it through chemotherapy while learning new habits that helped put him in a better physical and mental place. In 2016 (and onward) health and well‐being became something that Marriott really wanted to push globally, so this became a unified goal that started at the top with the CEO of Marriott International and was spread to all of his direct reports, which includes every president across every geography. All of these executives were tasked with helping employees learn about the various programs and take advantage of them. This included everything from physical fitness classes to online courses, to financial planning assistance, to getting involved with local community efforts. In turn they see employees become more committed to the company and what it stands for. You can look at table 7.10 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies for this variable are.

What This Measures

• Commitment to overall employee well‐being
• Taking care of employees

What You Can Do

• Offer programs for health and wellness that employees are craving.
• Think of health and wellness beyond snacks and gyms.
• Consistently evaluate and update your programs.

HOW ORGANIZATIONS SCORED

The maximum number of points that an organization could have received for each of the above variables was 7 for a total of 70 possible points. Out the 10 variables here, the one with the lowest average (4.5/7) was “Employees feel their managers are coaches and mentors.” This is not surprising because the traditional concepts of management and the manager are exact antonyms of “coaches and mentors.” Shifting the traditional mentality of management is a major struggle for most organizations. There were two variables that tied for having the highest average with a score of 5.4/7. The first is “Employees feel that the organization they work for is diverse and inclusive,” and the second is “Generally speaking, the company has a strong positive brand perception.”

On average, the 252 organizations I analyzed scored a 5.1 for each question, or 51/70 for the cultural environment. This comes to 73 percent of the maximum that an organization can get. Again, if this were the University of Employee Experience, then collectively these organizations would get a C for their cultural environment grade.

For many organizations around the world, culture continues to be the elusive beast that they have yet to capture and tame. As you can see culture clearly has the largest impact on employee experience, and it's the most challenging to execute on. This is because unlike physical space and technology, which oftentimes have specific deliverables and actual things that are created and developed, culture deals with more of the human side of things, which oftentimes can't be translated into a deliverable. It's the equivalent of following steps to bake a cake or put together furniture versus following steps to create a healthy marriage. As anyone who has been in a relationship knows, you can't just follow a blueprint or a template to get the perfect relationship. Still, there are plenty of organizations around the world that have done an excellent job of creating a culture worth celebrating—and others that haven't.

Although there are some organizations around the world that are doing an excellent job of investing in employee experiences, the collective average of all the companies I analyzed is far below where we deserve for it to be. When it comes to the cultural environment, you can look at table 7.11 to see who some of the highest and lowest scoring companies are.

When looking at these 17 variables, it's also important to look at what these variables actually measure. For example, when your organization's values are physically reflected, this doesn't just mean you are living your values, but this also measures honesty, integrity, and a commitment to your people. When you give all of your employees access to consumer grade technology, this doesn't just mean you're doing it to be nice or cool. This measures your commitment to empowering your people and driving innovation and collaboration. If employees feel like they are a part of a team, this doesn't just mean employees work well together. This measures trust, psychological safety, and communication and collaboration. The point is not just to focus on the first layer of what these environments and variables actually are, but also to focus on what these things measure. In other words, what does it mean when you have an organization where employees are coaches and mentors? What does it mean when employees have access to multiple workspace options? What does it mean when your organization has a strong diversity and inclusion program?

When you look at employee experience in terms of “What does this mean?” then you will realize the deeper significance of what needs to be done and why.