We've all heard of mission statements that typically set out to explain the purpose of the organization. Oftentimes they talk about being the market leader, providing shareholder value, delivering superior customer experience, or something else along these lines. Although these statements may talk about what the organization is trying to do, they don't go beyond that to make the leap from business to human. These statements or ideas do little to inspire employees (or anyone else for that matter) or to encourage action. Organizations that deliver amazing employee experiences transcend this basic concept of a mission statement by connecting what the organization does to the people who are actually affected. In other words, it answers the question “What impact does the organization have on the world and on the community around it?” This isn't about shareholder value, customer service, or profits, so you won't find any of these things mentioned. A great Reason for Being is also something that is unattainable, which forces the organization to keep thinking and dreaming big. Last, this needs to be something that rallies employees and ignites them; why should they care and why should they stand by you? You can see the four attributes of a Reason for Being in figure 4.1 below.

In a New York Times article titled “The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love,” Robert H. Frank, a professor of Cornell University, stated, “One of the most important dimensions of job satisfaction is how you feel about your employer's mission.”¹ This is based on a book he wrote called What Price the Moral High Ground? This, of course, should come as no surprise, but it should also force us to move beyond typical mission statements.

Look at the following statements and ask yourself whom they belong to and how they make you feel. Do these read like typical mission statements or Reasons for Being? The differences are quite stark. Which companies would you rather work for?

STATEMENTS FROM LEADING ORGANIZATIONS

• People working together as a lean, global enterprise for automotive leadership, as measured by: Customer, Employee, Dealer, Investor, Supplier, Union/Council, and Community Satisfaction.
• Belong Anywhere.
• [Company name] is committed to our customers and employees, and dedicated to delivering the highest levels of satisfaction in the implementation and ongoing support of our solutions.
• To be a leader in the distribution and merchandising of food, pharmacy, health and personal care items, seasonal merchandise, and related products and services.
• To refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness, and to create value and make a difference.
• To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.
• To offer the finest service that assures customer satisfaction with cost efficient structure and shortest delivery time.
• To be the leading supplier of semiconductor fabrication solutions worldwide—through innovation and enhancement of customer productivity with systems and service solutions.
• To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
• Use our pioneering spirit to responsibly deliver energy to the world

You can go through these and clearly tell the difference between organizations that are following the mission statement 101 guide and organizations that are creating a Reason for Being. Here's the list of companies mentioned above (in order).

• Ford
• Airbnb
• McKesson
• Kroger
• Coca‐Cola
• Starbucks
• EY
• Applied Materials
• Google
• ConocoPhillips

You can think of the Reason for Being as the umbrella that covers the three employee experience environments. Employee experience starts from there and affects the physical space, technology, and culture of the organization.

Salesforce.com does an excellent job of this. Its Reason for Being states:

Salesforce.org is based on a simple idea: leverage Salesforce's technology, people, and resources to help improve communities around the world. We call this integrated philanthropic approach the 1‐1‐1 model because it started with a commitment to leverage 1% of Salesforce's technology, people, and resources to improve communities around the world. By encouraging and enabling companies to adopt the 1‐1‐1 model, Salesforce.org is helping to spark a worldwide corporate giving revolution.

This statement clearly focuses on the impact on the world (improve communities around the world), is not centered on financial gain (in fact the only mention of anything around money deals with how much it gives, not how much it gets), is something unattainable (there are countless communities around the world), and definitely rallies employees who want to make a difference.

Very few organizations around the world incorporate their philanthropic efforts directly into the goal of the company and why it actually exists, especially if this isn't a part of their core business. Salesforce.com has become known around the world not just as a technology company but also as an organization that wants to improve the world. This belief and philosophy has been with the company since its creation decades ago and is one of the reasons why Saleforce was among the top scoring companies featured in this book.

From here we can start to look at an organization's Employee Experience Score (ExS), which is determined by looking at 17 variables inside of an organization. These are the 17 things that employees care about most when it comes to technology, physical workplace, and culture:

• Consumer grade technology
• Technology availability
• Technology focusing on employee needs
• Workplace options
• Values reflected in the physical space
• Being proud to bring in friends or visitors
• Workplace flexibility and autonomy
• A sense of purpose
• Fair treatment
• Feeling valued
• Managers acting like coaches and mentors
• Feeling like you're part of a team
• Ability to learn something new, advance, and get the resources to do both
• Referring others to work at your organization
• Diversity and inclusion
• Health and wellness
• Brand perception

You can see the actual questions used to evaluate the ExS in the Appendix, where you can see how your organization ranks. You can also check out https://TheFutureOrganization.com to see the full rankings and to take the assessment online. These 17 attributes are what the most forward‐thinking and progressive organizations around the world are investing in. As you read more about each one of these variables, you will also notice that they uncover more than what appears on the surface. For example, looking at things such as being proud to bring in friends or visitors or feeling a sense of purpose at the organization reveals things that are not directly asked in the survey, such as having a connection to the organization or feeling excitement about the brand. You will see many of these as you read more about the 17 variables.

Out of the 252 organizations that I ranked and evaluated for all of these variables, only 15 of them can be considered Experiential Organizations, that is, the very best at providing employee experiences. In order of rank these 15 organizations are:

1. Facebook
2. Apple
3. Google
4. LinkedIn
5. Ultimate Software
6. Airbnb
7. Microsoft
8. Riot Games
9. Accenture
10. Salesforce.com
11. Hyland Software
12. Cisco
13. Amazon
14. Adobe
15. World Wide Technology

These comprise just 6 percent of the organizations I analyzed, which shows that there is still a tremendous amount of growth and opportunity for organizations around the world to focus on employee experience. So what is it that these organizations are doing that others aren't, and perhaps more important, what's the value of investing in employee experience? Many of the examples in this book will be of these leading organizations that I analyzed. However, there will also be a few examples of organizations that I didn't analyze but whose executives I had the opportunity to get to know and speak with, which I believe are also doing unique things around employee experience.

In the next few chapters I'll explore what the 17 attributes actually mean, what they measure, and what organizations are doing related to these attributes. An entire book can easily be devoted to each one of the 17 attributes (and some have books about them). I want to stress that it is not my intention to provide a strategy for each one of these 17 variables. I simply want to convey why and how they are a part of the overall employee experience.

THE THREE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE ENVIRONMENTS

Although employee experience can appear to be a daunting and somewhat nebulous concept, you should take comfort in knowing that anything and everything your organization does now and in the future will fall into just three potential environments, which represent technology, the physical space, and your culture (see Figure 4.2). Let's look at each one these in more detail and look at the specific variables that make them up.