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4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience

It’s time to re-evaluate what works best–and what that means for recruitment, retention and profits.

Remote teams want a better employee experience. Where to start?

Getting work done remotely isn’t the issue. It’s getting it done well, in a way that’s best for the organization and most engaging for the virtual workforce.

Through our efforts in digital transformation, customer and employee experience and cultural change management, we’re discovering straightforward approaches that companies can implement quickly. And by focusing on increasing employee engagement and productivity, they are leading companies to more effective–and even transformational– solutions.

Learning the ropes of engaging a remote workforce

It goes without saying that the work-from-home trend was well underway before the pandemic began. Many companies have long allowed at least some employees to contribute remotely. These organizations are already enjoying long-term benefits. They recruit the best talent from all over the world, regardless of location. And they enjoy a higher retention rate, especially among Millennials and Gen Z workers, who crave a better work/life balance, shorter commutes and more affordable housing.

But with the global surge in home-based workers holding strong, it’s important for all companies to design the best remote employee experience. That means supporting the company’s purpose, culture and customers, as well as its people.

4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience

Step 1: Start by analyzing workflows

Smart companies are treating the evolved employee experience as an opportunity to accelerate digital transformation, digging into which internal workflows might remain virtual for the long-term, even as recommendations of social distancing begin to ease.

To continue to identify workflows that make the best fit, implement metrics for what’s working so far, measuring productivity and engagement in all departments.

Step 2: Create engagements that support the culture

Zapier, a global remote company that helps users integrate web applications, has been primarily remote since it started back in 2011. To increase the sense of collaboration, it hosts a weekly Design Club, a digital open house that allows anyone in the company to present work for feedback. Anything is fair game, including research plans, visual designs and new concepts from product teams.

Using a Design Club channel on Slack and a weekly Design Club video call, colleagues can sign up to receive asynchronous or real-time critiques from their peers and stakeholders. It fosters an inclusive culture of appreciating and leveraging diverse perspectives, giving people visibility into what others are working on. And best of all, it improves the quality of the work.

With a little effort, most companies could implement similar ideas in less than a week.

Step 3: Review tools and applications often

Workers have grown numb to the onerous burden of email. And while switching to remote work offers much more efficient options, like Slack, Teams and Zoom, they can be just as paralyzing if they’re poorly managed. Finding the right mix and balance of communications channels becomes even more critical for a remote workforce.

Pay close attention to what seems to be working, and what’s burying staff in pointless group alerts and notifications. In an interview, Matt Mullenwegg, founder of Automattic, which operates WordPress.com and a host of other properties, discussed the importance of trial-and-error in building a virtual company with 1,200 people around the world.

“Today we use an internal blogging system called P2 instead of email,” he tells Ben Thompson, author of the popular business strategy blog Stratechery. “We use Slack for real-time chats and things like Zoom for calls and meetings. But over the years, we’ve also developed just a lot of cultural things around how we use these tools.”

For example, with employees in multiple time zones, meetings in real-time become more difficult, so asynchronous options are essential.

Step 4: Keep weighing the long-term implications

What changes might remote work have on your business long term–in terms of recruitment, retention and profits?

Automaticc’s Mullenwegg often surprises people when he talks about the company’s considerable investment in employee travel. Because almost everyone is a remote worker, real-estate outlays are minimal. But it spends heavily on group meetings, bringing the entire company together at least once a year. And individual teams of up to 15 people meet more often. “There’s nothing, no technology, VR or otherwise, that has the same effect of breaking bread across the table or sharing a drink with someone, for building trust, for building communication, for getting to know someone,” he says.

“There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition.”

For many companies, building for the future means getting past the question of whether employees will like working remotely. Not all will, just like some people hate open-floor office plans. The point is to quickly pick up on employee concerns about efficiency, productivity and engagement.

Try fostering models for continuous exploration of better ways of working remotely. Those might include a group of colleagues who have this as a side project, internal and external surveys to see what different teams and companies are doing, or a Slack channel where people share ideas.

It’s important to keep looking at new tools that are worth testing. For example, new video-conferencing platforms, such as Around, offer features like AI-driven background noise cancellation and facial focus.

Shockingly, many companies have stopped probing employee sentiment at this critical time. And if they are, they are often asking about process and technology, instead of the key question: “How is this working for you personally, and how can we make it better?” Tools like Glint, an employee-engagement platform, make this kind of pulse-checking easy.

There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition. And as companies thread their way through the after current of the virus, , we don’t expect to see many overnight decisions. But we do believe this will be the most durable change wrought by the coronavirus and one that will benefit both employers and their employees.

The reality is that there are far more people who are underserved in their desire to work virtually than most employers realize. Many will fare better as remote team members. And as best practices continue to emerge both from digital pioneers and remote newbies, we see the best results for those who design the optimal remote employee experience. That means creating a continuous model for improvement, steadily looking for net new benefits and using the right tools for the right reasons.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Take command of the situation today, with these three simple steps:

  • Identify the workflows your teams indicate are best positioned for long-term success in a remote, virtual model
  • Provide the right digital tools to enable their work
  • Be flexible as needs change, requiring new tools and working methods

Continuously re-assess, finding new workflows to convert to remote teams or bring to more of a hybrid or dual model in the future. And don’t forget to consider implications for your broader employee value proposition.

Interested to learn more about how to improve the remote employee experience? Get in touch.

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Five Principles for Stronger Customer & Employee Engagement Events

Make sure every idea expresses the organization’s culture.

Strategic events are often one of a company’s largest, annual recurring investments as part of their broader engagement programs. And of course, the global pandemic has changed the stakes and expectations for such events as organizations pivot to engage employees, customers and partners in a virtual setting, using the opportunity to reinforce key brand messages, strategies and experiences.

But, what exactly do we mean by “strategic events?” Events can range from annual sales conferences to investor days to customer appreciation events to events with a shared goal of shifting the beliefs and behaviors of the attendees to the desired state of engagement and alignment.

Yet, far too often the desired outcome isn’t achieved by one, standalone event, which means the price tag of it usually outweighs the benefits. And measuring ROI? Don’t even think about it—especially when buy-in, attention and attendance are hindered in a virtual environment. A day out of the office at an offsite location? Why not. Step away from your job demands to be on Zoom for 8 hours straight? A harder sell.

5 Principles for Increased Success at Customer & Employee Engagement Events

But that doesn’t have to be the case. Companies that follow the five essential steps outlined below are much more likely to come out of a strategic event with more engaged employees, customers and partners. We’ve found that these five principles lead to the strongest levels of employee engagement and ROI at events:

1) Build a digital program, not a digital event

Events have a shelf life. They can generate short-term enthusiasm, but often not sustained engagement. To combat this, companies should design events that connect to a broader virtual engagement program. In shifting perceptions and behaviors, people evolve along a curve of hearing, understanding, believing and living. It is difficult, if not impossible, to go through each of these phases in a single event. Long-term programs, on the other hand, employ a steady drumbeat of communications and experiences that reinforce core messages and behaviors of the event over time.

2) Start with insights

Too often, we see organizations use events to communicate to an audience based on what they want to tell them. Just like customer research before launching a new product or service, it is vital to find out what’s on the mind of the target audience and shape the content and experience based on that insight. What is most important to them right now?  What questions and concerns do they have? What type of experience are they expecting? Go on a listening tour of your audience, and even take them through the early stages of the content and event plan to get their feedback.

3) Define the core idea and story arc

Most events are like an all-you-can-eat buffet of ideas and messages. Content, more so as we work remotely, gets developed in silos and, at best, may be connected together by talented speakers. But more often than not, the audience is left having to piece together the messages and determine the universal takeaway themselves. Instead, companies should start with a well-defined idea or belief and integrate it throughout the virtual event, from the messages of individual speakers to the event experiences. This core idea is more than a high-level event theme. It is a through thread that creates a compelling story arc and breaks down silos so everyone can hear, understand and apply the main point of the strategic event.

“Companies should start with a well-defined idea or belief and integrate it throughout the virtual event.”

4) Modulate the experience

Many events overly fixate on the “main stage” talks. These are great for inspiration but fall short on application. It has been proven that adults learn best when they are given multiple ways to access the content. The best-structured events do not rely on a single format like the main stage; they create experiences with multiple formats. This could be smaller “Zoom breakout” group labs or workshops, small group experiences, or an exposition where attendees can interact more intimately with experts or artifacts – like a live Q&A. The bottom line is, mix it up. Create a diverse experience that stimulates the audience in various ways and strengthens customer and employee engagement.

5) Put culture at the center

Employees, customers and other stakeholders are increasingly attracted to organizations with a clear purpose and strong culture. However, too many companies still treat strategic events strictly as a “business meeting.” At Prophet, we have found that core messages and desired behaviors are more easily retained when the company’s culture is reflected at events. This means keeping things light, having moments of fun, surprise and recognition and celebrating heritage. Just like the story arc, spend time crafting the emotional arc of a strategic event and figure out when, where, and how to infuse signature stories, recognition and fun into the agenda.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

These are the core principles we start with when working alongside clients to design strategic events in the post-COVID landscape. Put them to work at your upcoming sales conference or as part of your employee engagement program, and you’ll see more engagement and higher retention levels.

Interested in planning an event to drive growth within your organization? Reach out today.

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Three Ways Digital Transformation Can Close the Diversity Leadership Gap

Women of color are systematically squeezed out of advancement opportunities. We can fix that.

As a woman of color, I’m often asked how leaders and their organizations can address systemic inequities in our society. My response is to look in our own backyards, within our own organizations. You don’t have to look far to see inequities that we have chosen too long to ignore. 

Take for example the advancement of people from entry-level up through leadership into the C-suite. If our promotion criteria and processes were fair and based on a meritocracy, then you would expect that people would advance in the same proportion at which they entered the company. 

Yet that isn’t the case. The figure below shows data from the LeanIn.Org and McKinsey study “Women in the Workplace 2020”, where representation by corporate roles of four segments — white men, white women, men of color, and women of color — is indexed to the entry-level population of that group. For example, white women make up 29% of the entry level population and they make up 26% of managers which indexes at 0.90. 

At the very first level of promotion from entry-level to manager, there is a separation. The good news is that white women and men of color get promoted to manager at close to their representation. These two groups continue to maintain strong representation all the way into the C-suite — but it could be better. 

But look at the representation by women of color. At the very first level of promotion to manager, women of color drop off significantly in representation to 67% of their entry-level population compared to 126% of white men. This borders on becoming an adverse impact. 

By the time we get to the C-suite, representation by women of color is a minuscule 17% of their entry-level population. Intersectionality — which is the compounding of overlapping discrimination and disadvantage, in this case, gender and race — means that the glass ceiling is far lower for women of color than we realized. Looking at diversity through the lens of intersectionality means that we include the layering impact of multiple forms of discrimination, including age, disability, sexuality, class, and education.

Transforming Leadership in Our Organizations

Numbers matter because we manage what we can measure. We know from countless studies that diverse teams disrupt the status quo, driving exponential growth and profits over their less diverse counterparts. 

This isn’t a C-suite problem. It begins at the very beginning of the leadership journey which means that leaders at every level of the organization can be a part of the solution. When we can recognize discrimination in all of its forms, our leaders can identify and address systemic bias built into our organizations. 

I’m heartened by the increased awareness of unfairness in our organizations and society and the desire for leaders to take action. I’m also excited about the ways that digital transformation can play a role in these efforts. Here are three specific examples of how technology can make a difference in how we increase fairness in our own organizations.

  • Create digital dashboards to provide visibility and enable early intervention. In most organizations, diversity numbers remain hidden in a vault to be pulled out for reporting purposes. Put that data to good use by providing real-time data on candidate pools at all levels of the organization, from hiring to promotions to ensure a slate of diverse candidates. For extra impact, focus on promotion paths for roles that develop profit and loss management skills as these lead more directly to C-suite positions.
  • Use artificial intelligence to identify and reduce bias in promotions. We can point AI at employment and promotion data to identify adverse impact in ways that we couldn’t detect. Services like Textio can help write more inclusive job descriptions. And technology like Text IQ, which identifies patterns in natural language, can be pointed at performance reviews to identify bias.
  • Create personalized development plans and training at scale. Front-line managers rarely receive substantive leadership development and training, perpetuating systemic issues. Platforms like AceUp identify skill gaps and create personalized leadership with a technology platform. AI can development plans can prompt leaders to develop under-represented groups to increase their skills in critical areas.

“When we can recognize discrimination in all of its forms, our leaders can identify and address systemic bias built into our organizations.”

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It may feel like a long path to close the leadership gap and we won’t get there by incrementally pushing things forward. Let’s use digital technologies to disrupt and transform our organizations to make them more fair and equitable for everyone.

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A ‘Human-First’ Approach Is Essential for Employee Communications and Engagement

Reimagining what it means to come to work requires an entirely new way of understanding people.

When COVID struck over a year ago, many organizations were already gearing up for a new future of work – they just thought they might get there through evolution, not necessarily by “forced” revolution. The pandemic triggered experimentation – as organizations found themselves leaning into ways to reassure, support and connect with their employees that they had not attempted before, learning “on the go” and demanding new efforts from leaders too as they played their part.

Now as we try and take the best from the COVID experience, many of those leading strategy developments for employee communications and engagement are reshaping their approaches. Yes, we are still not free from the pandemic, but there’s been a firm shift from reacting and maintaining to reimagining. In the midst of this, and as we yearn for interpersonal contact, one theme keeps bubbling to the top: that the human touch – virtually applied for many months – needs to be brought front and center as we go forward.

“Technologies will play an even more important role in personalizing communications and curating fit-for-purpose interactive experiences.”

Of course, for employee engagement exciting new technologies will play their part – they are already for many organizations. But even those declaring a “digital-first” future are realizing success remains “human-first” on that journey. In fact, technologies will play an even more important role in personalizing communications and curating fit-for-purpose interactive experiences.

Driving this are some clear employee expectations and needs around the content as well as the engagement experience. Employees expect employers to provide:

  • Increased transparency and accessibility – something that many organizations did more of in the face of COVID-19.
  • More flexibility and support – as the line between work and non-work lives continues to blur.
  • Commitment to shaping a better world – employees want to be confident that their employer is not just dealing with “the business,” but rather continuing to do what matters in the world – focusing on impact beyond outcomes.
  • Foresight around what lies ahead – employees want more insight and direction on the “future of work.” It’s not easy to look ahead but even without all the answers, employees want to understand the options which are under consideration and what they might mean for them.

How Should Employee Communication and Engagement Strategies Be Developed?

Already we have called out “humanity” – and this is at the center of Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™.

Using this model, we can see some areas of focus for business leaders when it comes to employee engagement and the need to interconnect these areas to take a truly holistic approach to the organizational ecosystem.

How To Use Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™ To Enhance Employee Engagement

  • DNA: Take care of the ‘whole’ person. Be aware of what people are going through – at work and at home – and find ways to engage beyond work topics. Design a holistic approach that truly enables employees to bring their best selves to work.
  • SOUL: Become the heartbeat of the organization. Inspire dialogue, demonstrate empathy and provide the channels and mechanisms to create a compelling rhythm of engagement as well as constant feedback loops. Build connections and create links between individual action and collective impact.
  • MIND: Get the organization fit for ongoing change. Guide the learning agenda, setting expectations and allowing for agility and curiosity. Lay the groundwork for continuous re-skilling and up-skilling, open sharing and rapid learning.
  • BODY: Be where your people are. Keep up with the latest needs, expectations and digital tools being used. Tailor what, how and when you communicate and engage to increase relevance and make it stick.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

The future of work is here – and “human-first” leads the way. If you have not started, this is the critical time to reset your employee engagement strategy as we slowly emerge into the next phase of the pandemic. Leaders need to be aligned, capable and equipped – as they are the ones that set and deliver on the expectations for the majority – and there is no escaping this core dynamic.

If you would like to learn more about how we approach employee communication and engagement as part of a holistic cultural system get in contact today.

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Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™

This short video explains how we developed our new roadmap for organizational change.

2 min

Summary

Organizational change is a crucial component of any digital transformation effort. Prophet’s organizational transformation model is designed to help businesses undergoing digital transformation align on a customer-centric roadmap.

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Turn Your Employee Experience Into Your Competitive Advantage

Start by fostering flexibility, connection and wellbeing–at every level in the organization.

COVID-19 forced every organization on the planet to prioritise employee experience (EX), whether they had ever considered it before or not. Empathetic leadership, flexible working conditions and emotional support all came into play, immediately and universally. The task of keeping employees safe, well and working, rocketed to the top of every employer’s agenda.

Progressive organizations lost a significant amount of their EX advantage overnight. In 2019, Glassdoor cited Worldpay, Telefonica and Thomson Reuters amongst others, as ‘amazingly flexible.’ Most of the accolades relate to working from home or flexible hours, neither of which would differentiate their EX today.

Whilst attrition rates are very low at the moment when the labour market stabilizes, EX will have a significant impact on talent retention and attraction. Those organizations that are proactive will be able to capitalize on the situation.

There is no silver bullet but at Prophet, we see a new employee experience equation emerging that can help organizations focus their efforts and regain their advantage going forward.

Flexibility is Here to Stay

The flexibility that COVID-19 has forced is irreversible. The pandemic segmented workforces according to parameters we hadn’t seriously considered. From ‘total isolationists’ to ‘contact cravers’ and everywhere in between, the enduring legacy will be flexibility and choice in how and where we work.

We can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube – for many employees, it is now possible to work successfully from anywhere and shape whatever mix suits their preference. To compete for the best talent, you need to build flexibility into your operating model permanently and adapt your culture to support hybrid ways of working. From enabling sales teams to meet and sign contracts virtually to setting up a design club that creates forums to get peer feedback on work – the challenges and changes that flexibility drives are endless.

“To compete for the best talent, you need to build flexibility into your operating model permanently and adapt your culture to support hybrid ways of working.”

The good news is that flexibility increases your talent pool as recruits aren’t tied to geographical locations. However, the same is true for your talent competitors, increasing the importance of focusing on the employee experience you provide – ensuring that candidates contemplating joining your organization understand that well-being is a business and cultural priority.

Early movers in this space are Twitter and Spotify. Twitter enabled its employees to work from home ‘forever’ and Spotify is adopting a “Work from Anywhere” model, which will allow employees to choose to be in the office full time, be at home or a combination of the two. A word of caution when rolling out a hybrid model, businesses will be at risk of a two-tier workforce, with some colleagues having full flexibility while there will be certain roles that must remain ‘on-site’ – something that could lead to perceived inequalities.

Connection is Your Secret Sauce

Having lost our watercooler moments of social and work-related micro-interactions, the organizations that discover natural and sticky ways to create connections and build internal relationships will emerge stronger.

In the same vein as signature moments for CX, touchpoints for employee experience that connect your people to each other and to your purpose will serve to strengthen your culture, support motivation and keep productivity at a healthy level. Creating collaboration moments and finding new ways to have fun (beyond the Zoom quiz) will help organizations embrace agile working and break down silos. Taking a human-centered and strategic approach to ‘people technology’ is necessary to properly adapt the many tactical apps and solutions that came out of the pandemic.

Connection is not only important at a peer-to-peer level. Increased access to leadership has helped reduce hierarchical barriers. HP created a series of “Connect with Enrique,” talks with CEO Enrique Lores, which enabled connection with 85 percent of staff members in just a few months. “We have learned different ways to communicate to employees and collaborate,” says Tracy Keogh, Chief Human Resources Officer at HP. “I think those have been really positive.”

Wellbeing is Key to Employee Engagement

COVID-19 catapulted emotional and mental wellbeing to the same level of employer responsibility and duty of care as physical health and safety. The legal requirements haven’t caught up yet, but they will. Sustaining this level of care without reducing capacity in the workforce will be a critical balance for businesses to achieve. Flexibility and connection are as central to business growth as is a renewed focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

It will be critical to ensure fairness and equity for all employees to influence and improve the general measure of wellbeing. It’s not difficult to conceive that wellbeing will emerge as a key driver of employee engagement, becoming a leading indicator of growth, CX, revenue and profitability. Unilever, for instance, found that they get a $2.50 return for every $1.00 invested in employee wellbeing.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

The EX equation will not be solved in one move. This is a continuous journey and the trick is to run at two speeds – taking a proactive, long-term approach to EX whilst starting now with some symbolic, signature moves to signal your intent to your workforce. To cover both the near and far horizons, we recommend three simple things to get started:

  1. Get OD professionals, IT, creatives and service designers together to reimagine connectivity and create meaningful and sustainable connection moments.
  2. Prepare leadership for their role in the ‘new normal,’ agreeing that as EX continues to evolve, there will be more adjustments to the operating model and changes in responsibilities of the leadership team.
  3. Start a boardroom conversation that puts emotional and physical wellbeing as a key pillar of your people strategy, to be measured and improved as a key business indicator.

As Ben Whitter of the World Employee Experience Institute says, “We want people to be at their best and deliver their best work. Any option or choice that helps with that is in scope.”

Looking to reimagine your next employee experience moves? Our expert team can provide a rapid assessment of your EX equation and how to make it add up for the future. Get in touch today. 

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Do My Customers and Employees See the Same Brand?

Turns out the secrets to staying relevant with consumers also attract and retain the best workers.

You’ve invested untold fortunes to create a customer experience that cements loyalty in your brand. You’ve invested a similar fortune building an employee experience to attract the best and brightest and become an employer of choice. But are you telling a consistent story? Do your external and internal brands share the same DNA? Are your customers inspired in the same way as your employees? Or do you feel at risk when your employees talk to customers?

Prophet is in a unique position to answer these questions. Our Prophet Brand Relevance Index ® (BRI), a survey of over 13,000 consumers rating 228 brands across 25 industries, provides a proprietary view of the brands most relevant to consumers’ lives. And at the same time, we’ve leveraged open API data by Glassdoor, the independent authority on employer ratings, to track data for over 750 companies across 50+ industries. Plotted together, they tell a fascinating story.

The Customer – Employer Brand Connection

As you might expect, companies with strong customer brands tend to have strong employer brands. Think Apple and Google. And vice versa: weak customer brands tend to have weak employer brands. Think most convenience retail and quick-serve restaurant brands (although not all).

Arguably the key to Southwest’s success – and 40 straight years of profitability – is how tightly employee purpose is woven into the very fabric of the customer experience. In stark contrast, Uber’s journey in its early days is a cautionary tale: despite owning over 80 percent of the rideshare market, #deleteUBER was born when the company was perceived to be mishandling employee engagement.

We believe a major driver of this relationship is what business columnist David Mattin calls a glass box. Whether it’s by choice or brute force, customers have unprecedented access to a brand’s inner workings – its finances, its operations, its people. And now more than ever consumers are looking for and influenced by, their clear view. In Edelman’s 2020 Trust Barometer Study, 90 percent of customers agree brands must protect the well-being and financial security of their employees and their suppliers, even if it means suffering big financial losses until the pandemic ends.

“90 percent of customers agree brands must protect the well-being and financial security of their employees and their suppliers, even if it means suffering big financial losses until the pandemic ends”

Where Does Your Brand Sit?

We have plotted customer brand strength, as measured by the 2021 Prophet BRI against employer brand strength, as measured by Glassdoor’s overall company rating to produce the chart below.

The model produces four scenarios worth exploring to understand what it might mean if your brand sits in one of these quadrants:

Virtuous Cycle (top right)

These brands have it down. They inspire and deliver. They disrupt, with purpose. Visionaries who never lose sight of what matters. With a focus on delighting customers and employees, from the inside out, it’s no surprise that brands like Apple, Google, Southwest and Lemonade have hit the bullseye of relevance.  

Relevance Challenged (bottom left)  

In the other corner, brands like Dollar General, Walgreens, Popeyes and Burger King are struggling to get points on the board. If there is one thing that healthcare, retail and quick-service restaurant brands have in common, it’s that they seem to be in a constant state of disruption – kicking up a cloud of confusion on all sides. Customers like navigating new user experiences and revolving doors of discounts as much as employees like enforcing them.    

Danger Zone (top left)

While happy customers are the key to a brand’s growth, unsatisfied employees can be its undoing. For companies in this quadrant, there is a fundamental disconnect: what should be a point of pride around customer excitement is not translating into employee excitement. Many of the brands in the danger zone are renowned for innovation, taking risks to accelerate value in the customer experience. But the employee experience has not kept pace, creating extreme risks for brands with high-touch customer interactions.

The Untold Story (bottom right)

Given the recent scrutiny of social media brands, it may seem surprising to see Twitter and Facebook stay strong in the hearts of employees. But despite intense external pressure, employees remain committed to the company’s purpose. We see an opportunity: to uncover what is driving employees; frame that passion for customers and help them see the brand in a new light. When the brand’s story is aligned with a passion in the culture, both employees and customers become brand advocates and vested in the success of the business.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Brands need to have a true purpose that shines through, inspiring customers and employees alike. When employees believe in a company, it translates to trust and relevance for all external stakeholders.

Are you interested in aligning your customer and employer brands and getting the most out of each of them? Our Brand and Culture experts can help, reach out today and hear how we are helping clients just like you.

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Head of Digital at MB Bank Discusses Fueling Growth Through Digital Transformation

Becoming a truly digital-first organization requires a fundamental change in how companies do business.

In today’s corporate world, is there a more highly sought-after term than “digital transformation”? Probably not. COVID-19 is acting as a catalyst in accelerating many organizations’ digital transformation agendas. New technologies and business models are putting many existing players at risk with disruptive forces. Becoming a truly digital-first organization requires a fundamental change in how business is done. Corporate leaders understand the criticality of digital transformation, however, many are struggling with how to advance it.

We had the pleasure to interview Mr. Vu Thanh Trung, Head of Digital Banking at MB Bank. MB Bank (Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank) is one of the largest financial services groups in Vietnam. Over the past few years, MB Bank initiated a multi-year transformation program to become a digital-first bank. As part of the transformation, Prophet worked with MB Bank on customer expansion strategies and helped to pave the way to a more modern, digital and customer-centric bank. In this interview, Mr. Trung provides valuable insights on how to transform and what it takes to be a digital organization today.

What drove MB Bank to embark on a digital transformation agenda?

The banking industry in Vietnam is a nascent market with considerable room for growth. With a wide penetration of the Internet and smartphones and a growing digital-savvy population, Vietnamese consumers are rapidly shifting towards digital and mobile banking. They desire more seamless digital banking services with a more personalized customer experience. To meet the increasingly demanding expectations of customers in the region, MB Bank needed to fully embrace digital transformation to capitalize on the boom of digital adoption.

What has MB Bank done so far to digitally transform?

We started the digital transformation from scratch almost four years ago. A new digital bank was set up as an independent business unit at the end of 2017 with our own balance sheet, separate from the legacy bank. Our digital transformation efforts focus on two fronts: externally, we want to better understand the marketplace and the customer needs; internally, we want to introduce collaborative and nimble ways of working across divisions.

Prophet has been our indispensable partner on this multi-year strategic growth and digital transformation journey to become more customer-centric and more innovative. We started with an in-depth segmentation of our customer needs, behaviors and attitudes. Then we mapped out a roadmap with clear growth moves focused on innovating and transforming our digital offers. An important part of our digital transformation is to instill more agility and cross-organization collaboration. Prophet showed us how to innovate faster, pilot and launch quicker. We were able to revamp the digital banking app within three months, which normally would take 12-18 months.

Lastly, I want to talk about the achievement we have made on the people front so far. We started with a team 100 percent from the legacy bank and then recruited external technical expertise to fill the functional gaps. We now have a well-balanced commercial and technical team (some 400 in-house engineers) and work more cohesively in a start-up-like environment to drive towards our digital transformation ambitions.

What are the priorities for your digital transformation?

Among all things, we focus on our PEOPLE first. Digital transformation is not about technologies, but rather about changing the mindset of our people – our organizational culture and processes. Hence, we think people should be the ones to drive the technology and not the other way around.

As I mentioned, we started off with a team 100 percent from the legacy bank. We want to create a more entrepreneurial environment where people are empowered to make a difference to MB Bank in a more cohesive and dynamic way. This is rather different from the culture of our legacy bank. So, we need to train our people with new skills and more importantly, shift their mindset towards a digital culture while building up our technological capabilities.

“Digital transformation is not about technologies, but rather about changing the mindset of our people – our organizational culture and processes”

Prophet helped us to implement a nimbler way of working to get closer to the customers and shorten the time to market. We set a shared purpose and vision to help our people to be more personally and emotionally invested. We broke down the silo way of working and replaced it with a collaborative approach. With this new way of working, we managed to revamp the digital banking app at least four times faster.

The results so far have exceeded our expectations. In the midst of the pandemic last year, we launched our new digital banking app, which became the No. 1 app in Vietnam surpassing even Facebook and TikTok. Within nine months of the launch of the new app, we had 1.8 million new customers. A feat we are very proud of given the harsh pandemic landscape and lockdowns.

What advice would you give to leaders looking to drive transformation and ensure the organization has what it needs to succeed?

Leadership is an absolute requirement for any successful digital transformation. It’s not only about setting the vision, defining the strategies and building C-suite commitment. Leaders must “walk the talk” to establish a digital culture so that everyone is on board.

The success of digital transformation must be paired with a comprehensive talent strategy that sets your people up for success.  In order to do so, we aligned incentives with staff performance to drive target reaching, providing tools and opportunities for upskilling and collaboration to help employees reach their goals.

Why do you think cultivating an innovative culture is important in a digital transformation program?

To me, digital transformation marks a reimagination of how an organization uses its technology, people and process to fundamentally change how we run the business. Digital transformation doesn’t come in a box. It provides the guidelines to steer people’s behaviors that advance our company’s goals.

A lot of organizations fail in digital transformation by ignoring the importance of culture. For MB Bank, we instilled an innovative culture through new ways of working. The agile way of working spurs our innovation process through cross-functional collaboration—allowing our people to take risks, fail fast and learn.

What are the challenges you have faced in your digital transformation journey?

We are still at the early stage of our journey. We need to continuously work on integrating technology seamlessly into every aspect of our organization to unlock the full potential of digital transformation. We need to reboot the parts of our operating model that pose hurdles for more cross-functional collaboration and operational efficiency. Then there is the holy grail of data — we are reorganizing our customer data as it is currently scattered across different legacy systems. We are in the process of integrating and synthesizing this data more effectively so that they can provide more meaningful, actionable insights for business units.

So, what are your next steps?

We are rebooting our operating model into a more unified structure and working to enhance collaboration across all business units. We need to further instill the innovative culture to fully tap into every individual’s potential and reap the benefits of agile methodology. And finally cracking the data issue across different systems so we can design more products and services to better serve our customers. We are really glad to have Prophet be our partner on this journey, helping us transform and steering us to become the leading digital bank of the future.

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Read our case study to learn how we helped MB Bank refresh their brand platform to embark on a digital transformation journey.

If you’d like to discuss your organization’s digital transformation agenda and journey, reach out to our team. We’d be excited to partner with you.

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The Only Safe Assumption in 2021: We Need Compassionate Leadership

From work-life balance to developing capabilities, the best leaders are defining kindness differently.

Goodbye 2020. The year that tested humanity like no other this century. The year that took experiences away from us and gave us others we might never have imagined, some of which we undoubtedly would like to “return to sender.” At Prophet, like everyone, our working world was transformed in a matter of weeks. Then the weeks turned to months and, still incredibly busy with client work, we crawled to the end of the year wanting to put 2020 firmly behind us.

And so, it’s hello 2021 … when our true hope is that the discovery and roll-out of vaccines around the world will make this year a better one and that many of the things we crave – like social interaction with colleagues and working with our clients in person – will return.

While we can be optimistic, the watershed moment has not yet arrived. The new variant of COVID-19 is threatening the stability of many health systems around the world and countries are pressing the “lockdown” button once again.

“In an era where change is constant, there is one truth that is unchanging – this moment calls for “intentional caring” or what we might simply call compassion.”

Heading into the new year, you’re likely to have plans you’re ready to execute or develop. These are formed by a set of assumptions – goals you are trying to achieve and an understanding of your organization. But in an era where change is constant, there is one truth that is unchanging – this moment calls for “intentional caring” or what we might simply call compassion.

The response of leadership has been a key source – or otherwise – of resilience for any organization navigating through the last 12 months. Our global research in 2020, which was in the field as parts of the world started to battle the pandemic, revealed the key attributes for transformational leadership: inviting many voices, combining agility with curiosity, empathy for the employee, bringing others along the journey, staying the course with a growth mindset and prioritizing substance over “spin.” These attributes are foundational to developing into a compassionate leader and leading with empathy and compassion will not only help you strengthen your assumptions, but also ensure that whatever action you take supports your people who need it now more than ever.

Triggered by the global pandemic and social justice movements, we published our view on a set of change accelerations – “slingshot effects” – that organizations need to recognize and work with going forward to build resilience and that leaders should embrace to cultivate compassion.

As we reflect on the ongoing uncertainty at the start of 2021, we see a subset of these shifts as particularly compassionate – and they, in turn, elevate the need for a particular leadership response:

1. Work/Life Balance > Making Life Work

Companies need to move deliberately beyond questions of where people work to be more intentional about how people work to ensure their lives work. As lockdowns continue, learnings from 2020 have to be grasped, but also sustained into a recognition of the whole lives of every employee.

2. Command & Control > Empower the Edge

Achieving organizational resiliency requires changing the way we think about governance, roles and decision rights. We had to respond at speed when the pandemic struck in 2020 – and many organizations have hardwired the changes made then into their operating models. Many others have not, however, and will continue to be challenged in 2021 if this is not addressed.

3. Development by Default > Development by Design

The last year has revealed significant capability gaps in most organizations, such as capabilities required for rapid cross-functional and agile work; customer-centric product, service and experience management; and data-driven decision making. Companies will need to be deliberate in identifying their biggest gaps to be filled and building robust learning programs now to develop capabilities starting with critical functions.

4. Physical Serendipity > Virtual Serendipity

After months of distancing and restrictions to our day to day lives, employees are finding themselves bereft of personal interaction and a source of inspiration. They desperately need ways to create virtual “water cooler” moments both large and small — ways of forging chance connections amongst individuals as well as across teams and business lines.

5. Change as a Journey > Change as a Flow

Embracing change as a flow starts at the top — resetting the purpose to be that of an enduring journey and embracing change as a core competency of your organization and leadership.

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When leaders lead with compassion, they are alive to the needs of others – they recognize and feel individual context – and remain non-judgmental through their efforts to understand and take action to make a difference. Every one of the identified traits from our research drives to this outcome and focusing on these shifts can show your organization and employees that you are ready to tackle whatever is to come with them, not forcing change upon them. 2020 made it clear that compassionate leadership needs to be brought explicitly to the forefront of the leadership agenda in order to successfully navigate 2021 and shape a better future.

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Make Purpose Work Harder: Lessons from Business Leaders

Our research finds that companies struggle to carve out a purpose that’s both authentic and actionable.

Businesses have been using purpose-driven strategies for years, but recent events are testing those missions like never before. Between the pandemic, political polarization and all-new virtual connections, organizations see that just having a purpose is not enough. They need one that is durable, flexible and completely human. And they realize that leading with purpose, an all-important North Star, is their best chance to stay relevant to customers and employees.

Prophet’s Purpose Diagnostic enables companies to assess the strength of their purpose in four critical dimensions, measuring whether it is…

  • Authentic (how does it tie to what you do?)
  • Inspiring (how does it connect with employees and customers emotionally?)
  • Shared (how does it create connection and build community?)
  • Actionable (how do you live your purpose every day?)

We analyzed the diagnostic results, which now include responses from over 150 leaders in more than 20 countries, and discovered common pain points where companies are falling behind. These insights also highlight the best ways to close gaps, so companies can focus on strengthening purpose in ways that engage stakeholders, build relevance and unlock uncommon growth.

The Biggest Challenge? Putting Purpose to Work

The toughest element to get right is making purpose actionable–bringing it to life in steady, meaningful ways. Overall, 28 percent of leaders reported this as the most problematic. But authenticity and the ability to share purpose are close behind.

Action is critical. If organizations can’t deliver on purpose, it doesn’t matter how inspiring, authentic or shared it is. It just becomes another empty promise. When companies fail to act, organizations lose the trust of customers and employees looking to brands to play a critical role in addressing social challenges. Purpose must be integrated into all aspects of how companies do business. It’s the way they show up in the world. This was especially true at the director, vice president and managerial level, and lower rungs in the organization. That makes sense: Those with the most accountability for how well their purpose is put into action, within a specific business area, are most likely to acknowledge weaknesses.

“If organizations can’t deliver on purpose, it doesn’t matter how inspiring, authentic or shared it is. It just becomes another empty promise.”

But developing an authentic purpose, one that feels uniquely it’s own rather than generic, is also daunting. That is particularly true in the C-suite. These executives are most likely to say their purpose lacks authenticity. They believe purpose feels less connected to their business and isn’t specific enough to their company.

And those in manager-level positions and below are most likely to say their purpose isn’t shared, likely because they have the closest understanding of how the broader organization experiences the purpose. To them, this inability to communicate purpose is as problematic as making it actionable.

C-Suite execs worry most about authenticity

Directors and VPs struggle to put purpose in action

For the rank-and-file, it’s hardest to share purpose, and put it into action

Overcoming Stumbling Blocks

There are no short cuts to strengthen and deepen an enterprise’s purpose. To function as a true North Star, a beacon that rallies all stakeholders and sparks exceptional growth, companies must continually nurture and manage their purpose. But our findings do point to specific steps to bolster each dimension.

If a company’s purpose needs to be more…

Actionable

Companies must act on purpose and measure the impact of those actions. The biggest failing among our respondents is the lack of metrics. They say they don’t have direct, or even indirect, ways to measure whether they deliver. Without such a measurement, it’s difficult to assess progress.

  • To improve:
    • Develop performance metrics aligned to the purpose to hold leaders accountable
    • Lead by example, using purpose to guide decision-making and taking action in the market
    • Tie purpose to employee behaviors and competencies, and make sure they are visible to all

Authentic

When purpose lacks authenticity, the biggest challenge leaders face is differentiating themselves from competitors. “Our purpose is unique to our company” received the lowest score of all authenticity measures. Leaders need to drive greater relevance with their customers and employees: What does this brand do that others don’t? How does it add value to peoples’ lives? The more specific the purpose, the more relevant and authentic it is to the company.

  • To improve:
    • Determine what sets the company apart and creates a unique value. Make sure those differences anchor the purpose
    • Make the company’s purpose reflect cultural strengths

Shared

When a purpose is genuinely shared, it’s easier to build bridges and start conversations. Whether it’s with shareholders, employees or customers, the right purpose forges a common bond. It fosters connection and demonstrates a clear understanding of what employees and customers need. Our research uncovered two fundamental weaknesses in this domain, with “Employees at all levels are familiar with the purpose” and “Our purpose cultivates a community and creates a dialogue” earning the lowest scores.

  • To improve:
    • Listen to what customers are saying and deliver value in ways that align
    • Weave purpose into rituals and communications with employees
    • Link it to employee’s day-to-day experiences
    • Make sure messages to shareholders and community partners reflect purpose-related efforts

Inspiring

Purpose-led businesses aim to make a difference in the world.  And they need to elevate the stories that demonstrate how they help society. Without consistent reinforcements of a company’s impact, employees and customers can forget what it stands for and why it matters. While just 20% of respondents said this was the most problematic area, all brands need to question whether their purpose is bold enough. Otherwise, it can’t inspire the storytelling required to spread the word. In our research, the ability to mobilize stories to demonstrate a lived purpose was identified as a key challenge.

  • To improve:
    • Tell signature stories that bring purpose to life, and share them regularly with employees and customers
    • Link environmental, social, and corporate efforts directly to purpose

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How strong is your purpose? Take the diagnostic today to understand where your organization may be faltering. The right purpose, used in the most effective ways, can increase loyalty and drive revenue gains. But most importantly, it leads to the future. Purpose doesn’t just help businesses decide what to do. It guides them in the best ways to do it.

Interested in strengthening your purpose and overall brand strategy? Let’s connect to see how you can unlock growth.

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Vanishing Hierarchy: The Unspoken Upside to Zoom

Remote work lets more voices be heard and more ideas to surface, increasing organizational health.

Flatter, less top-down and more innovative. How working virtually might increase your organizational health in important ways and the actions to take to preserve it.

The pandemic sent most workers into the world of working from home in mid-March of 2020. Within weeks, countless articles had already been written about the shift to working life “on camera” and about managing “Zoom fatigue”. We quickly learned that countless neuropsychological issues, including the inability to look at someone’s eyes and listen, to create physical synchrony and the mirror image presented of ourselves all contribute to this phenomenon. Seen through a different lens, however, it’s also possible that working through the medium of video conferencing might have an unexpected and positive outcome on some aspects of organizational culture.

An Unexpected Insight From Our Fall Executive Roundtable

In October, Helen Rosethorn, my Organization & Culture practice co-lead, and I convened an Executive Roundtable to review an early draft of The Slingshot Effect, our point of view on how leaders might use the concurrent crises of social justice and pandemic to accelerate necessary change in their organizations.

We brought together senior leaders from across industries, including entertainment, financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail, technology, transportation and manufacturing, and from roles spanning R&D, commercialization, product, operations, information technology and human resources. Our conversation was full of heartfelt sharing of insights where we found many commonalities across industries, geographies and organizational functions.

One executive observed something that we had not considered before. That in this moment where knowledge workers are uniformly working from home, they were observing a radical reduction in hierarchical behaviors and ways of working.

Flatter Structures Create Space For More Voices and New Ideas

In a physical office, we have many ways of signaling hierarchy, for instance, whether one is afforded an office. And, if one does have an office, its location and furniture typically provide further clues about organizational hierarchy. In our current situation, however, things are starkly different. Because even if someone is clearly working from a nicely furnished home office in a swanky suburb, the size of their box in a Zoom or Teams screen is the same as everyone else. There’s also no such thing as privileged seating in video conferencing. It’s a constant game of virtual musical chairs. When you arrive determines screen placement and each person’s view of participant sequence is individualized based on arrival time. Moreover, the host does not have the opportunity to display privilege by inviting you into an elite space like a private conference room or executive dining room. Your CEO’s Zoom meeting is the exact same Zoom experience as that of your summer intern.

“Your CEO’s Zoom meeting is the exact same Zoom experience as that of your summer intern.”

Furthermore, video conferencing tends to highlight, and possibly deter, certain behaviors of the organizationally privileged. For instance, it’s hard to take control of a conversation on Zoom without it being glaringly obvious. In person, people may be more likely to let behaviors such as talking over someone or cutting them off pass without comment. Speaking over or cutting someone off is highly magnified on Zoom and more people seem to feel obliged to stop and apologize. This can create more room for contribution from anyone who might have felt it too hard or dangerous to contribute, e.g., because of their rank, neurotype, gender or race.

Additionally, an oft-quoted study suggests that hierarchical structures are useful for decision making but quell idea generation. And indeed, a number of our roundtable attendees reported that they observed great creativity emerge from their organizations during the crises of 2020, not least because working virtually tends to thwart the efforts of those who might prefer to micromanage their direct reports.

Finally, for many senior clients, we interact with there is a fresh enthusiasm to use these technologies to be more available to their teams. The challenge of being “seen” as a senior executive, apart from once a year at a sales conference, for example, has quickly been surpassed by all being present to address questions on Zoom in a far more regular and, in the best cases, more authentic fashion.

Taking Action to Preserve the Gains

Of course, in the immediate face of the pandemic back at the start of the year, many organizations unleashed a sense of empowerment and pushed decision-making rights downward to manage how they adapted and survived. That too created a belief for many that hierarchy was being dismantled. But was it?

The natural question for firms that are now finding themselves less hierarchical thanks to the pandemic, is how might they preserve whatever advantages that they may be discovering right now? At Prophet, we use our Human-Centered Transformation Model as a tool for diagnosing and resolving organizational issues holistically. In this instance, what is being observed is a change primarily in the Soul – the ways of working within the company. In other words, remote work is changing the behaviors and mindsets of employees. And hopefully, at least this one aspect of our current situation is impacting employee engagement in a positive way.

In the transition out of 100 percent remote work, leaders should examine what might need to change to maintain any positive gains. Obviously, many will focus on being more digital-first in their workplace. But what else might you wish to consider? Here are four key questions to ask yourself, using our framework:

  1. Body: Are there elements of your operating model or the organizational design itself which bear reconsideration? Might an organizational flattening effort be overdue?
  2. Mind: Thinking about the skills and competencies of your staff – what might need to change to ensure success in a flatter organization? Do your managers need different skills, for instance, to enable them to push decision rights downwards and coach more effectively?
  3. Soul: What methods might you use to create belief in your organization that your ways of working are consciously changing as it relates to hierarchy and inclusion? What new rituals or symbols would best reinforce those signals?
  4. DNA: Finally, is it possible that there’s something in your organizational DNA, perhaps your organizational Values, that has unintentionally reinforced unnecessary elements of hierarchy? Is there something about your employee value proposition that might be improved by explicitly removing it

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Asking these simple questions will point towards immediate opportunities to lock in the cultural gains you have made over the course of 2020. And, if you’re looking for even more opportunities to increase organizational health based on your experiences this year, we’ve identified 12 specific shifts to make with immediate and specific actions in The Slingshot Effect report.

If you’d like to discuss your organizational structure and transformation planning, then our expert team can help. Contact us today. 

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The Path to Transformational Leadership in 2021

It takes a human-centered approach, tailored to your organization and culture, to lead effectively in this era.

59 min

Leaders are leading in a very different world, one for which they were not typically prepared. Watch this webinar replay to discover the moves to make now to lead and deliver lasting transformational change.

Our speakers outline how to lead effectively in this new era, taking a human-centered approach to make transformation happen and how to tailor a leadership system for your organization and culture.

Slides from the webinar are available here. The research report – “Catalysts in Action: Applying the Cultural Levers of Transformation” – that informed this webinar session can be downloaded here.

If you’d like to learn more about how leaders can chart a clear way forward in uncertain times then get in touch with us today.

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