Exploring moments that matter
Delos Consulting Director and HR specialist Kate Walker explores the role of employee experience and creating ‘moments that matter’ – a topical people strategy used to attract and retain talent, boost engagement and drive business performance.
Our family recently celebrated a significant milestone – our oldest daughter Millie turned five and started school. A new and unknown chapter!
Our apprehension was quickly abated during the school’s mihi whakatau, or Maori welcome ceremony. Older students performed a stirring kapa haka while all the new pupils and their families slowly made their way into the hall. The principal, teachers and students spoke, we all sang, and the intention was to participate in New Zealand’s national greeting – the hongi (but a revised approach was taken as a covid precaution).
Concluding the ceremony, the principal explained that we were no longer manuhiri (guests) but tangata whenua – part of the school family. It gave us a sense of belonging and left a lasting impression.
This is a poignant example of creating ‘moments that matter’ – a concept being used increasingly by leaders across the globe to help strengthen employee and business performance.
According to global research firm Gartner, 16 percent of HR functions are experimenting with a moments that matter approach, and 56 percent of HR leaders are interested in identifying moments that matter for their organisation.
While not new, it reinforces the importance of engaging with and listening to our people in new and meaningful ways.
What are moments that matter, and why do they matter?
To create an employee experience that brings out the best in people, we need to capitalise on the moments that matter most to our people.
The Employee Experience 2020 report by Employee Experience (EX) Leaders Network defines a ‘moment that matters’ as a “transformative point in time within a journey, where someone does something that changes and makes a lasting impression on how you feel about them and by extension, the organisation.”
Gartner’s Aaron McEwan takes a more practical approach, describing the concept as learning what’s important to employees, “rather than the moments that HR and leaders think matter”.
“More importantly, they enable action. When we identify the moments that matter to employees, we have clear next steps for HR to take action on to improve the employee experience.”
The first day at a new company could be considered one of the many moments that matter during an employee’s career. As they sit at their desk for the first time do they have everything they need, and are they welcomed by the wider team?
In this instance it’s important that personal connections are made, and the employee’s perspective and needs are considered – not simply assumed.
Changing roles within a company, leaving a company, the birth of a child and returning from maternity leave are further examples. Such occasions provide opportunities for organisations to provide personalised, authentic and lasting impressions - while improving employee commitment and performance.
The result? A more resilient and productive organisation, equipped with an internal army of ambassadors motivated to work hard and deliver.
Employee experience in action
Facebook’s Vice President Human Resources, Tudor Havriliuc, explains in the Employee Experience 2020 report that “you cannot pretend to be an expert about what your audience is going through or feels. We have to listen to them and engage with them in everything we are trying to build.”
Facebook implemented a new programme that focused on improving employee experience and organisational empathy. Creating moments that matter was a key part of this strategy that involved working with employees to identify their needs and concerns.
My favourite initiative that stemmed from Facebook’s employee experience programme was a Centre dedicated to helping employees take care of their personal errands.
Tudor stresses that the initiatives don’t need to be expensive.
“All the ping pong tables and free sushi in the world cannot substitute that feeling of genuinely being cared for and supported.
“If you don’t address the core parts of someone’s life, in moments that matter the most – in a way that they feel incredibly supported and cared for – none of the other perks matter.”
A shift in mindset – designing for people, not processes
Human-centred design and employee experience programmes are being adopted rapidly by companies all over the world.
As global management consulting firm McKinsey highlights, “How people show up and interact with companies will differ fundamentally because employers are recognising they must reimagine every aspect of work – from recruitment and job evaluations to collaboration, perks and the workplace itself. For them, the war for talent will be won or lost based on employee experience.”
McKinsey ranks employee experience among its top people initiatives, and is dedicating significant resources to it.
But what does it all mean in practical terms? Essentially, it requires a change in mindset – putting industry benchmarks or standards aside, and acquiring your own insights to determine what really matters to your people.
Amazon Web Services’ Vice President of Talent and Development, Michael Arena says it perfectly. “We need to shed this idea of ‘best practice’ and base what we do on evidence within our own organisations.”
Many companies are using employee journey maps and design thinking, which involves creating different personas based on real-life insights. Once the moments that matter have been identified, we can take action to improve those experiences for employees.
Take BP, for example, which shadowed hundreds of people as they worked and interviewed them about what matters. From that information, personas and 16 employee journeys were created to inform future HR initiatives.
A recent Deloitte report provides the example of a financial services company that also observed and interviewed employees to develop key personas. Journey maps were created to reveal the moments that mattered most to each of the individual personas, and the HR team set about defining a set of initiatives to improve the employee experience.
Why is this bottom-up approach important? Because employees’ voices carry weight – you’ll glean a much better understanding of their current experience, what’s most important to them and any pain points.
As the workplace continues to change and evolve, organisations can create a competitive advantage by capturing what matters to their people – resulting in an engaged workforce committed to the success of the business, and a workplace that brings out the best in it’s people.