Podcast ¦ Punk CX: Employee understanding and cracking the code of a better employee experience – Interview with Annette Franz

Key Take Aways

1. Building a strong organisational culture is foundational for delivering superior employee and customer experiences, directly impacting business outcomes.

2. Leadership commitment and alignment are critical; culture must be driven from the top to embed genuine behaviours aligned with organisational values.

3. The relationship between employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) is inseparable; a great EX invariably enhances CX and business performance.

4. Organisations need to focus on ‘employee understanding’ through listening and learning — gathering insights via surveys, analytics, and developing employee personas.

5. Empathy development within leadership is essential, requiring deliberate effort akin to muscle training, to truly understand and serve employees.

6. Culture audits, including interviews with leadership, employees, and customers, can reveal dissonance between espoused values and actual behaviours.

7. Effective culture management involves defining core values and associated behaviours, ensuring they are reflected in daily organisational practices.

8. Leveraging AI thoughtfully can alleviate routine tasks, reduce burnout and facilitate more meaningful employee roles, thereby improving engagement.

9. A common organisational mistake is adopting pseudoscientific or superficial approaches to culture without substantive evaluation and action.

10. Sustained organisational change requires not only gathering data and insights but actively utilizing them to implement continuous improvements.

11. If organisations do not execute on their stated priorities, the resulting dissonance can demotivate staff and undermine initiatives.

12. Companies with a tangible, lived culture, like Zappos, exemplify a punk approach to CX by prioritising authentic employee engagement and experience.

Key Statistics

• The podcast host’s podcast has been running since January 2011, with over 500 episodes produced.

• Annette Franz has authored three books, with her latest focusing on employee understanding through a three-pillar framework.

• The concept of the “service profit chain” was originally developed around 1996 and remains relevant today.

• The history of HR and customer research at JD Power linked well-established data with insights on satisfaction’s impact on loyalty and defect rates.

Key Discussion Points

• The importance of organisational culture as a precursor to both employee and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to business success.

• The distinction between employee engagement (an outcome) and employee experience (the totality of interactions and perceptions).

• The three pillars of employee understanding: culture, insight, and empathy, and their role in designing effective employee experiences.

• How organisations often mistreat or overlook the critical influence of culture, which in turn affects employee behaviour and engagement.

• The value of conducting culture audits to gain honest insight into organisational realities versus perceived culture statements.

• The practical steps in cultivating culture, including linking core values to observable behaviours.

• The role AI can play in reducing repetitive tasks, alleviating burnout, and enabling employees to focus on value-adding activities.

• The importance of building empathy deliberately, through exercises similar to physical muscle training, rather than relying solely on training courses.

• The challenge of bridging the gap between espoused organisational values and actual behaviours in the workplace.

• The necessity of follow-through; organisations tend to gather insights but often fail to translate them into ongoing action.

• The fundamental principle that nothing changes unless deliberate effort and consistent work are committed.

• Examples of organisations, notably Zappos, that successfully adopt a punk approach by prioritising authentic cultural and employee experience.

Podcast Description

This podcast explores the intersection of organisational culture, employee experience, and customer satisfaction within the service and experience sectors. Hosted by Adrian Swisco, the discussion features insights from industry experts, focusing on practical frameworks, innovative approaches, and the critical importance of authentic leadership in creating better outcomes for businesses, their employees, and their customers. Emphasising strategic cultural development, listener engagement, and continuous improvement, the series offers guidance on fostering organisational transformation rooted in real human understanding.