Customer experience and employee experience are different sides of the same coin. Both involve experience, the way someone feels when purchasing a good or how an employee feels about their company. Understanding the “experience” someone is having is crucial to the success of a company. If a customer has a great experience, she will not only return but refer a friend. If an employee has great work experience, then she will be more productive.
Both productivity and repeat customers drive an organization’s bottom line. But how far does employee experience go?
Fifteen years ago, we had an old Johnnie’s Foodmaster in our neighborhood. While my husband and I never bought groceries there, it was a great place to go for a bottle of wine and Carvel ice cream cake. About three years after we moved in, Foodmaster closed and was converted into Wholefoods (my heart and liver, thank you). The conversation took a few years, and while Wholefoods promised to hire the old Foodmater employees, only one returned, Alex.
When I saw Alex’s familiar face at checkout, I asked him, “why did you return? So many years passed between Foodmaster and Wholefoods, I thought you’d find another job.” He replied, “I’m a grocer; providing people with food to prepare and gather around makes me happy.”
Years ago, I managed a women’s clothing store. I looked forward to helping women find the right outfit for a first date, final interview, or party. I trained the associates to find out why she was shopping, what was the experience she would have in the new outfit? It was important to know the client’s experience in the outfit – that way, when our associates talked about the clothing; they could describe the dinner or interview, or whatever the experience would be while wearing the new outfit.
I thought we were offering a great client experience – which we were. Our numbers of repeat clients showed that, but I didn’t understand how important it is for employees to feel like they’re contributing to an experience rather than selling a pair of jeans. It turns out that according to Bastos, W., and Barsade, S.G. (2020), “people who experience their jobs as primarily providing experiences (vs. material objects) gain more happiness from those jobs” (p. 176). In other words, when we were working with the women to give them a great experience when the grocer works with people to help them cook a great meal – experiences are being sold, not just a head of lettuce or a pair of shoes.
“People who eperience their jobs primarily providing experiences (vs. material objects) gain more hapiness from those jobs”
Bastos and Barsade p. 176
Bastos, W., and Barsade, S.G. performed several experiments and ran many surveys to determine what makes an employee happy. They took the information gathered around customer experience, applied it to employee experience, and discovered that co-creating an experience leads to greater happiness, retention, increased sales, lower attrition, etc.
Not only did Basto and Barsade find that by creating meaningful experiences, greater happiness is achieved, but they also discovered that the organization and managers could “influence how employes mentally frame the goods they provide and, in turn, increase the happiness those employees gain from their job” (p. 185). In other words, the way the job is described and the expectations set during the hiring and onboarding process lays the groundwork for how the employee will perform her job by creating meaningful experiences. “Something is meaningful to the extent that it resonates with the self internally and influences one’s perceived relations with others” (Basto and Barsade, p. 177).
“Managers can can influence how employees mentally frame the goods they provide leading to an increase in happiness those employees gain from their job”
Basto and Barsade
The good news is that it is possible to shift someone’s mindset from selling or providing an object to creating an experience. Just as Alex, the grocer, sells food because eating fosters a community, a software salesperson can sell the product with the thought of the experience it will create for the end-user. As managers, you can improve the way your employees work by shifting their view of what they provide by helping them think of the experience they’re creating for their colleagues and clients.
Reference
Bastos, W. and Barsade, S. G. (2020). A new look at employee happiness: How employees perceive a job as offering an experience versus objects to customers influences job-related happiness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, volume 161 p. 176 – 187. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597820303654
Image: “The Grocer” by Liam_Ross is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0