In today’s competitive, transparent landscape, the blurring of boundaries between internal and external audiences means that a company can no longer view its products, services, or brand in isolation. Rather, leaders need to remember the company itself is the product and everyone is a potential customer, employee, investor, advocate, or critic.
Your organization's internal environment—processes, culture, and employee experience (EX)—directly impacts how your products, services, and brand are perceived in the market. For example, your company can't deliver a seamless and intuitive customer experience (CX) if its internal operations are hindered by bureaucracy and inefficiency. Similarly, when the employee experience lacks empathy, hospitality, and personalization, these qualities will be absent in customer interactions. For instance, despite Amazon's reputation for customer-centricity, the company has faced backlash for poor employee conditions, high turnover, and anti-union practices, costing it about $8 billion in 2021 alone. And that doesn’t account for the hit to its brand perception because of it. In response, Amazon is now attempting to redefine itself as the "best place to work on the planet."
Research by MIT and Josh Bersin shows that companies with strong EX have 3X the innovation, 5X the engagement, and twice the customer satisfaction and revenue, along with improved agility, retention, and belonging. A strong EX can also reduce reliance on large marketing and recruiting teams, as engaged employees naturally act as brand ambassadors. As Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth & Innovation at Salesforce asserts “The fastest way to get customers to love your brand is to get employees to love their job.” Here are some great ways to get started:
Be Deliberate in Designing the EX to Deliver the CX
Contrary to popular belief, EX isn't about superficial perks like foosball tables or Taco Tuesdays. While these may provide a short-term boost in engagement, true and lasting motivation, productivity, and discretionary effort stem from the daily, end-to-end experience of your organization. The EX encompasses the entire employee life cycle—from initial brand impressions and interviews to onboarding, development, offboarding, and beyond, including all the “moments that matter” in between. Similar to the CX, the EX is the sum of every interaction an employee has with your company and how it makes them feel. It’s about strategically designing each phase of the employee journey to create value, enabling employees to, in turn, create value for customers.
Leverage Design Principles: When designing your EX, apply principles such as radical empathy, user-centered design, co-creation, continuous feedback loops, and iterative improvement. Assess every program, process, technology, communication channel, and interaction through the lens of the employee—consider how it impacts them, how it makes them feel, and whether it fulfills or hinders their needs and expectations. You can start by understanding your employees as personas and identifying their needs, desires, pain points, values, and identities through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and employee analytics. Map their journey and touchpoints within your organization. Establish a robust listening and actioning strategy with feedback channels that allow you to address concerns and continuously refine these personas as circumstances evolve.
Nail the “Moments That Matter”: To enhance the EX, it’s critical to focus on key moments throughout the employee journey. When attracting talent, center the employee value proposition around the candidate, providing an authentic view of the work experience to prevent catfishing, misalignment, and high turnover. During hiring, integrate the culture and values into the process and gather feedback to improve the candidate experience. Effective onboarding should feature personalized touches—like swag, welcome messages, and interactive sessions—to help new hires feel connected and supported from day one. Recognize other pivotal moments in employees’ lives, such as milestones or personal challenges, to ensure they feel valued beyond their work roles. Offboarding should be intentional, incorporating exit interviews and alumni programs to maintain relationships, offer project opportunities, and boost engagement—practices exemplified by companies like McKinsey, PwC, and Booz Allen Hamilton.
Driving Change and Doing Layoffs Well: One of the most critical "Moments that Matter" is when a company undergoes significant changes. A common misconception is that people inherently resist change. In truth, people love embracing change when it is perceived as positive—like purchasing a new iPhone, starting a new relationship, or securing a new job. What people resist is poorly managed change, especially when it’s full of ambiguity, uncertainty, and a lack of control. This resistance intensifies when change is imposed without clear communication or a compelling rationale, thrusting individuals into the unknown and forcing them to act from a place of limited visibility. Take layoffs, for example. While they may be necessary for a company's survival, how they are handled can have far-reaching consequences beyond the immediate financial impact. Poorly managed layoffs erode trust, diminish productivity, and harm company culture—affecting not only those let go but also the remaining employees. This can lead to lower job satisfaction, reduced commitment, and poor performance, alongside reputational damage that can affect future talent acquisition and customer relationships. Handling layoffs and other difficult decisions with empathy, transparency, and respect is essential for maintaining and even building trust. A notable example is Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s approach to layoffs in May 2020. He took full responsibility, communicated the rationale clearly, and provided generous severance packages and support services. His empathetic and transparent leadership preserved the dignity of affected employees and demonstrated that thoughtful management of tough changes can strengthen trust, even in challenging times.
Move Them From Friction to Flow
Since your organization and its work environment serve as the interface employees use to deliver your brand to the market, the primary goal should be to minimize friction and create the best environment for employees to do their best work and deliver value to customers.
Friction—whether from outdated technology, excessive meetings, bureaucratic red tape, or emotional labor—functions as an invisible "second shift," sapping energy and time without any tangible benefit. This hidden drain costs organizations over $3 trillion annually. In a world where people increasingly expect seamless, friction-free experiences, today's workforce is especially intolerant of such inefficiencies. Reflect on the sources of friction within your organization and how they may be hindering your team's success.
Upgrade Clunky Tech, Consolidate Tools, and Leverage Data: Today’s workforce expects seamless, personalized technology like that of Amazon, Netflix, and Apple. Yet many organizations still use outdated, disparate tools, with half of employees willing to leave if the tech falls short. Evaluate your current systems for inefficiencies and consider solutions like single sign-on or APIs to streamline integration. Equip employees with advanced tools and leverage clean, integrated data to inform decisions, personalize the work experience, and boost productivity.
Automate the Mundane to Elevate the Strategic: Increase workplace speed and agility by automating redundant tasks, reducing clutter, and minimizing decision-making bottlenecks. Cut down on excessive hierarchies and approvals by implementing guardrails or guiding principles that empower employees to make decisions autonomously. This is particularly important for managers, who should focus on being strategic, empathetic, and connective, rather than bogged down by administrative duties.
Rethink Meetings: Are your meetings short, strategic, and limited, or are employees stuck in meetings all day, leading to after-hours work and burnout? Stop making meetings the default. Organizations spend about 15% of their time in meetings, with 71% deemed unproductive, costing $37 billion annually. Leaders spend upwards of 70% of their time in meetings. To determine if a meeting is necessary, the meeting leader can share a Google Doc with proposed attendees beforehand for input. This often reveals that a meeting isn’t needed, and if it is, it ensures a more focused, relevant attendee list, making the meeting more strategic and decision-oriented. Shopify took this a step further and eliminated recurring meetings, freeing up 76,500 hours annually, and introduced a calendar tool such as Fellow that calculates the cost of meetings based on average compensation, meeting length, and attendee count.
Reduce Emotional Friction: Emotional labor stemming from toxic cultures, bad managers, microaggressions, and code-switching drains cognitive resources, increases anxiety, diminishes productivity, and accelerates burnout. To address this, organizations should cultivate a supportive and inclusive culture grounded in clear communication, realistic expectations, minimized bias, and mutual respect. By encouraging authenticity and celebrating diversity, companies can leverage a range of perspectives, fostering an environment where employees feel valued and proud to represent the organization. This sense of belonging and connection increases the likelihood that employees will become enthusiastic ambassadors for your brand.
Differentiate Yourself by Meeting Their Human Needs
As humans, we all have deep-seated needs for meaning, purpose, esteem, connection, inclusion, and growth. However, many organizational practices unintentionally undermine employees’ needs for dignity, autonomy, growth, agency, and meaning, which diminishes well-being, engagement, and performance. Fortunately, organizations that not only acknowledge but actively meet these needs offer a transformative experience employees won’t find elsewhere. I go into a plethora of easy, low/no-cost ways you can do this in my newsletters and book but here are some quick ways to get started:
Avoid Treating Employees as Value to Be Extracted: Over time, organizations have increasingly tried to maximize productivity by treating employees transactionally, as “resources” which can foster resentment and lead to minimal effort. Treating people with generosity, on the other hand, invokes reciprocity and motivates employees to go above and beyond. This can be demonstrated through recognition, showing them they matter, fostering well-being, and building relationships with them as human beings.
Stop Treating Adults Like Children: Micromanagement, surveillance, and arbitrary office attendance undermine trust and stifle productivity. Even if unintentional, over-management breeds resentment, and burnout, and diminishes employees' sense of agency, purpose, growth, and accountability.
Make Work Engaging: For many, work lacks engagement and purpose because it has been stripped of autonomy, creativity, and individual ownership in favor of standardization and consistency. In the absence of these elements, people quickly lose interest and begin seeking opportunities elsewhere. There are many ways to make work more engaging including job crafting, giving them interesting problems to solve, and understanding what job they hired their job to do.
Foster Growth and Progression: One of our most primal needs is to feel we are growing, using our strengths, and making progress. Yet, only 5% of employees feel they are reaching their full potential at work. A Microsoft study found that 76% of employees would stay longer if offered more learning and growth opportunities, but 55% believe switching companies is the best way to develop skills. This represents a significant loss for organizations, as underutilized employees quickly become disengaged and eventually leave. Developing your people not only makes them more valuable to your organization today, but also increases their value in the market tomorrow. Check out my recent article on the Development Dividend for various ways to do this.
Make Work Meaningful for Your People: Another fundamental human need is to find meaning—a sense that we impact others and contribute to something greater than ourselves. Yet, in today’s fragmented and disconnected world, many struggle to find this coherence. Traditional sources of meaning, like religion, community, and familial rituals, are less prevalent or accessible, while much of today’s work is abstract, complex, and detached from its tangible effects. As a result, many employees feel disconnected and unfulfilled in their roles, leading to a sense of existential emptiness that seeps into their lives. But organizations don't need to be curing cancer or saving the planet for work to feel meaningful. Any job can be fulfilling when employees perceive their contributions as impactful and connected to a broader purpose. Here are several practical ways to make work more meaningful for your team.
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