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In today’s fast-changing world of work, everyone wants things to flow smoothly. But there’s this pesky thing called “work friction” that’s quietly causing trouble for organizations everywhere.

Join FOUNT co-founder and CEO, Christophe Martel, at the inaugural EP!C Conference in Las Vegas for a breakout session titled, How Friction is Making Work Dysfunctional. Christophe will share insights about how to deal with this persistent issue and make work better for employees and the business. Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 25th from 10:45-11:15am.

Companies are under increasing pressure to reduce waste and boost productivity. Despite increasing investment in HR tools and technology designed to enhance an employee’s motivation and skill set, quit rates have more than doubled in the last decade to over 30%, and productivity has stalled. These trends both pre-date and persist after the pandemic, which begs the question, “Why is work becoming more dysfunctional?” The critical disconnect is invisible and unmanaged work friction, negating efforts to improve people and business processes, especially in large organizations. The average Fortune 500 company is losing more than $750 million per year to work friction. Because it is so difficult to address, this often overlooked area is ripe for analysis that can result in positive change. This session will unveil research insights and practical strategies to enable a frictionless environment.

In this session, participants will learn:

1. Research-based insights about the value of identifying and resolving the things that frustrate and slow employees down, leading to wasted time at work, burnout and attrition.
2. Learn practical strategies and tips for removing work friction.
3. Gain a fresh perspective about a new kind of data that leads to action across HR, IT and the business.

This is your chance to hear about new ideas that can make work easier and better. Register here to attend the conference. To learn more about work friction, download the whitepaper.

If you’d like to meet us at the EP!C conference, please fill out our contact form.

Last year, FOUNT co-led a global study on the state of employee experience (EX) across large enterprises. One of our biggest findings: over 50 percent of organizations struggle to manage EX.

That figure should be alarming on its own. But there’s more trouble under the hood. The reality is that many organizations face a work friction crisis that’s keeping employees from doing their jobs.

That reality underpins six key findings in our State of EX report. Let’s take a closer look at each finding and what it says about work friction. But first, a bit of background about what work friction actually is.

Background: What is Work Friction?

Simply put, work friction is anything that makes employees hate doing their job. Picture day-to-day frustrations like…

• An always-broken headset.
• Slow-to-load software.
• A hard-to-reach supervisor.
• Missing data for a key report.

These problems often converge at specific moments throughout the workday, like a customer call. And like little pinpricks over time, they make work an absolute pain. In other words, they hurt the employee experience.

To more clearly understand how, though, let’s dive into the findings from our EX report.

#1: Work Friction Is Creating Pressure to Improve EX

The finding: Sixty-three percent of organizations state that EX improvements are a top leadership priority. That’s a six-percentage-point increase from 2022.

The context: This heightened focus on EX has a lot to do with the growing work friction problem at many organizations, particularly in the US. Just half of US workers are happy with their day-to-day tasks. Only 45 percent are satisfied with training opportunities. And when it comes to career growth, that figure drops to 33 percent.

All of this adds up to a frustrating work experience that’s tanking employee morale, productivity, and retention rates. And that means the question now isn’t whether to solve work friction, but how.

#2: Most Organizations Haven’t Defined a Strategy to Fight Work Friction

The finding: About half of organizations say they have an EX strategy right now. But just 19 percent have carved out a strategy that’s distinct from their overall HR approach. And that leaves most organizations without a way to fight work friction.

The context: When it comes to work friction, EX teams tend to be geared toward big-picture HR interventions (like fresh employee benefits) instead of solutions that ease workers’ daily frustrations. And the former approach almost always misses the mark.

But teams focused on fighting friction can help organizations reverse course. These teams should feel empowered to craft distinct, data-driven strategies for friction management. This way, they can tailor their interventions to employees’ most pressing problems.

#3: Employees Are Left Out of Experience Redesigns

The finding: Experience redesigns are the number one priority for organizations this year. But only 31 percent of companies make employees an active partner in that process – and workers are the last to get relevant data or progress updates.

The context: If you’re not collaborating with workers to improve their experience, there’s a good chance you’re not asking employees what frustrates them most. And in that case, you might as well be flying through fog.

Our recommendation? Before you embark on a costly redesign, talk to workers about their most serious work friction moments. Then, keep them in the loop at every stage of your work. This can give employees more agency to shape their experience – and drum up excitement for what’s to come.

Of course, you don’t have to shoot for the moon with your redesign. More often than not, that’s a recipe for disappointment all around. Instead, use the work friction data you’ve collected to narrow the scope of your efforts and prioritize achievable wins. With each incremental change, you’ll make steady progress toward a frictionless employee experience.

#4: Managers Manage Too Much Work Friction

The finding: From C-suite leaders and HR heads to frontline workers, everyone views managers as the number-one “influencers” of EX. But only 29 percent believe managers are actually responsible for improving it.

The context: Most managers didn’t choose to be EX “influencers,” especially when it comes to work friction. More often than not, teams simply go to their manager as soon as something goes wrong – and there’s nowhere else to go for immediate support.

But “friction fighter” isn’t likely in a manager’s job description (yet).

The real work of being a manager involves coaching, mentorship, and so on. They can certainly help contextualize the work friction they hear about during one-on-ones or full team meetings. But they aren’t responsible for solving employees’ daily problems. In fact, that burden can lead to burnout – and turn work friction from a frontline problem into a company-wide crisis.

The best way to avoid that outcome? Design an employee experience where employees can engage in frictionless work. This way, managers have more time to do their actual jobs.

#5: Friction Fighters Struggle to Work Fast Enough

The finding: Despite active efforts to improve EX, over 50 percent of organizations say they’re not moving quickly enough. The number one problem: moving from discussion to action.

The context: EX is cross-functional by nature. So is work friction. Any moment of friction can be owned by multiple parts of the business. Without the right data, it can take forever to pinpoint exactly where things start to break down – much less who’s should design and implement solutions.

Just consider one common high-friction moment: applying for a new internal role. Each part of the process (learning about an opportunity, visiting the job portal, going through interviews, waiting for a decision) involves multiple stakeholders, including everyone from HR to IT.

To reduce friction throughout the process, there needs to be clear data – straight from employees – that shows where friction exists and which business unit is responsible. Does the data mention a buggy application portal? Probably an IT problem. Or slow interview follow-ups? HR should take a look. 

The bottom line: work friction data provides the clarity to quickly solve workers’ biggest frustrations.

#6: There’s a Missing Link Between Action and Financial Impact 

The finding: Most organizations struggle to showcase the financial impact of each EX intervention. In fact, just 17 percent actually track that data. As a result, it’s often tough to prove the long-term value of each intervention and gain buy-in for new ones.

The context: It’s hard to measure the financial impact of “better benefits” or “more training.” But the impact of work friction interventions is easily quantifiable.

That’s because work friction hurts productivity. And lost productivity costs money – to the tune of $78 million a year for enterprise organizations.

To prove the value of your work, focus on interventions that solve the problems workers experience every day. Then, monitor the effect over time. Something as small as fewer approval workflows in your call center, for instance, could translate to shorter call queues, higher net promoter scores, and thousands of dollars saved on customer acquisition – all data points you can show leadership to gain support for future initiatives.

To Move the EX Needle, Start with Work Friction Data

There’s one more finding we haven’t mentioned: for EX teams this year, the number four priority is to “get more / better data.”

But “more” and “better” aren’t the same thing.

It’s like making the perfect cup of coffee: more grounds, more water, and more heat isn’t going to improve your brew. Instead, you want a precise amount of freshly ground beans, the right ratio of filtered water, and a specific brew temperature. In other words, you want to fine-tune each component to craft the smoothest cup.

It’s time to approach your data in the same way. Focus on gathering quality work friction data, and use software to drill down into employees’ highest-friction moments. This approach will give you the rich data you need to design solutions that move the needle on EX.

If you’re ready to refine your strategy, FOUNT can help. Reach out or book a demo – we’d love to start a conversation.

The SaaS provider more than doubled ARR and added 10 new enterprise customers in 2022. The additional funding will be used to launch new features targeting key talent segments and further advance the product and technology infrastructure.

WASHINGTON D.C. (PRNewswire) – March 8, 2023 – FOUNT Global, Inc. (https://fount-ex.com) announced it has secured $8M in funding to help organizations identify what’s at the root of employee dissatisfaction and productivity, and prioritize what to fix in their work environment. The Series A round was led by Lavrock Ventures with participation from existing investors Osage Venture Partners and Grotech Ventures. FOUNT has raised $10.75M in total funding since it spun out of the employee experience (EX) consultancy, TI People, in January 2022.

“Post-pandemic shifts in employee expectations and CEOs prioritizing efficiency across their global organizations have put pressure on HR leaders looking for smarter ways to hang on to the people most important to their business and remove friction from their daily work. FOUNT has made significant traction in large enterprises by seizing on these trends and addressing a business issue that is both timely and timeless. We are thrilled to be partnered for the ride.”

Daniel Hanks, General Partner at Lavrock Ventures and member of the FOUNT Board of Directors

Unmanaged friction costs $764M per annum per Fortune 500 company, through attrition, burnout, and wasted productivity*. FOUNT’s origins in the EX space give the company a unique perspective into the complexity of measuring countless and cumulative points of friction that cause employees to disengage and leave. The company’s customer base represents some of the world’s leading organizations at the forefront of friction management including adidas, Siemens, Baloise, Northwell Health and TEKsystems.

“As one of the nation’s Best Places to Work, Northwell Health is committed to fostering a healthy workplace and improving individuals’ well-being. With FOUNT’s solution, we see an opportunity to dig deeper and expand our current listening methodology to build a consistent and sustainable experience for our team members. We’ve been very impressed with FOUNT’s capable and engaging Customer Success team and their commitment to further our goals.”

David Gill, VP, Team Member Culture and Experience at Northwell Health

FOUNT’s customers say the SaaS solution complements their employee survey tools such as Glint, Qualtrics and Medallia by identifying solvable points of friction that are most important to employees. The additional funding will be used to launch new features targeting key talent segments and further advance the product and technology infrastructure.

FOUNT CEO Christophe Martel commented, “Our solution addresses a challenge shared by both HR and Business leaders – to reduce the headwinds people encounter at work. FOUNT data provides a level of insight that empowers our customers to know where to take specific action and realize a quantifiable ROI. We are fortunate to have such a supportive group of investors who share our vision to make work less of a drag.”

To request a demo, fill out the form at the bottom of this page.

*F500 companies employ 29M people with an average salary of $57k; Cost of disengagement is 18% of salary (Gallup). Cost of turnover is 50% of annual salary (SHRM). Average voluntary attrition rate of F500 companies is 10.2% (LinkedIn).

About FOUNT Global, Inc.

FOUNT helps companies identify what’s at the root of employee dissatisfaction and prioritize what to fix in their work environment. The company offers software-as-a-software (SaaS) solutions that remove friction from work and help increase productivity. Founded in 2022 as a spinout of the employee experience consultancy, TI People, FOUNT has headquarters in Washington D.C., London and Hamburg.

About Lavrock Ventures Founded in 2016, Lavrock Ventures is a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in early-stage companies operating in the software, big data, deep tech, and national security sectors. Based in the greater Washington DC area, Lavrock partners with passionate entrepreneurs across North America and Europe who are working to solve some of the most critical problems facing major institutions in the private and public sectors.

About Osage Venture Partners

Osage Venture Partners (OVP) is a venture capital firm located just outside of Philadelphia, PA. It partners with exceptional entrepreneurs, building the next generation of leading B2B software and tech-enabled services companies. OVP has consistently focused on this strategy since its inception in 2005, making over sixty investments in early-stage B2B companies over that time.

About Grotech Ventures

Founded in 1984, Grotech is a leading venture capital firm focused on early-stage, high potential technology companies based outside of Silicon Valley. With more than $1.0 billion in committed capital, Grotech seeks innovative, early-stage investments across the software landscape and continues to invest and add value throughout the life cycle of each portfolio company.

If you’ve been following FOUNT, you already know our employees are full of moxie. Earlier this year, we were fortunate to be named a 2023 Moxie Award Finalist. We are listed alongside an impressive list of organizations including Clutch, Montgomery County Green Bank, AttainX, The Motley Fool Foundation, and many more.

The Moxie Award program celebrates boldness in business by honoring the accomplishments and achievements of growing businesses, nonprofits and associations in the DC metro community. Earlier this year, Co-founder and CEO, Christophe Martel, met with the finalist committee including TJ Wilkinson, Ian Joseph, and Ron Kosmahl. They summarized:

FOUNT is on a mission to tackle this challenge head-on. It offers innovative SaaS solutions that help companies identify and eliminate workplace friction, making work smoother and more enjoyable. Unmanaged friction costs companies millions annually through attrition, burnout, and wasted productivity.

Applicants were evaluated on innovation, growth, industry leadership, community service and local achievements in a multi-step process:

• Applications were reviewed by the finalist committee
• Finalists will be visited by members of the finalist committee for a 30-60 minute in-person interview.
• The official applications and feedback from the finalist committee interviews will be provided to the judges for evaluation.

FOUNT was named a Moxie Award finalist in the Technology (< 50 employees) category and we’re up against stiff competition! Other companies in our category include Business Engineering, Calypso AI, Enabled Intelligence, SC Solutions, Inc. dba “SpaceChain”, SHIFT, Summit Space Corporation, vTech Solution, Inc. and Walacor Corp.

Judges are part of the Washington, D.C. community and are selected for their business acumen and success in their respective industries. They are looking for companies that are bold, innovative and show Moxie! Obviously, we believe we ooze moxie. After all, what is bolder than trying to make work better for millions of people? Work friction is something every working person has experienced and we’re dedicated to reducing frustration, burnout and stalled productivity.

Winners will be revealed at the Awards Ceremony and Dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Tysons on October 25, 2023. FOUNT’s Chief Experience Officer, Anne Eidelman, and Solutions Analyst, Britnie Smith, are Puttin’ on the Ritz and representing FOUNT at this event. We’re beyond thrilled to be a finalist and a participant. We are also looking forward to meeting the other finalists, judges and sponsors. Please wish us luck! 🤞

Want to see our moxie in action? Book a demo of FOUNT!

Years after the pandemic, this war has officially gone cold, but every week it still seems to flare up on a front somewhere. In 2023, dozens of household names from Amazon to Zoom have made announcements requiring some or all of their workers to come back to the office. To enforce it, companies are tracking attendance, mapping the distance between employees’ homes and the office, throttling career progression, requiring resignations, issuing dismissal warnings, and even making vague, Mafia-esque threats. In response, employees have circulated petitions and open letters, walked out in protest, and of course, quit.

Speculation about the “real reasons” for the mandates runs wild behind the lines: It’s about real estate investments, managers’ inability to supervise remote workers, saving money on layoff severance packages, and even retaliation for unionization. All the while, surveys keep showing that the vast majority of employees want at least some flexibility in their work location, candidates disproportionately apply to remote job openings, and CEOs secretly know they’ll lose in the long run.

We’ve got another survey to tell you about—but we promise this one will shed a very different light on the RTO cold war.

Flowers and Their Environment

In August 2023, FOUNT asked 200 organizational leaders in HR, the business, and the C-suite what steps (if any) their organizations are taking to reduce work friction. It was an open-ended question. To analyze it, we coded the data into a two-tier, 16-category schema. Initially, the top tier captured a couple of opposing strategies we’ve talked about before: One tries to reduce work friction by changing employees, the other by changing employees’ environment.

We derived these opposing strategies from a flowery analogy one of our customers related to us years ago: She used to use training, motivational workshops, leadership events, and communication campaigns to try to “change the flowers”—until she realized that the flowers weren’t the problem. Their environment was the problem.

This analogy has stuck with us, because it perfectly encapsulates the essences of the two primary mindsets we see played out again and again in efforts to improve organizational effectiveness. Leaders who recognize that employees are merely one organism in a broader ecosystem often find that problems manifest through employees, but their roots actually lie elsewhere. After all, processes, policies, and tools can’t complain, but people can. Leaders who can’t see the bigger picture assume complaining employees are the problem, and try to change them.

Beneath each of these top-tier categories, we coded the strategies our 200 respondents said they’re using to reduce work friction. Environment-changers are working on things like process improvements, automation, workload reduction, digitization, equipment updates, and so on. People-changers are running trainings, team-building exercises, and fun events, as well as trying to improve things like performance management, career pathing, and total rewards.

This two-category top tier worked great to code the data, until…

Flexwork Blew Up Our Coding Schema

Remote work, hybrid work, flextime, flexwork—whatever you wanna call it—just kept coming up. And for awhile, we coded it as organizations trying to change the environment, because what is home vs office if not “environment”? But that nagged at us, because flexwork is also a policy, and policies are intended to guide people’s behavior, and all the other policies were getting coded “change people”. Then we realized many respondents are talking about flexwork in the context of employee wellness, and all of our other wellness-related offerings were sitting under “change people”, so at that point, we confidently recoded all of the flexwork responses from “environment” to “people”.

But we still didn’t have inner peace (which, in case you’re not aware, is one of the top signs you’ve got a good coding schema), because caving to employees’ flexwork demands is the exact opposite of the spirit behind “changing the flowers”, and of everything else that sat under our “change people” code.

So we had a dilemma: Dump this coding schema? Restart with totally open coding, allowing categories to emerge organically from the data? Classify flexwork as “Other”? Put it back in “change environment”?

As we talked out why this was happening and what to do about it, we gained deeper insight into the fight over flexwork than we’d ever had before.

Flexwork Is Really Just One Battle in a Much Larger War

The flower–environment analogy seems employee-empowering on its surface, but it really takes a top-down, leader-centric view. Leaders make the choice to change people or environment (or both), and leaders take the action. Employees are just flowers—inanimate objects. They have no view. They have no agency. They’re acted upon, rather than acting themselves.

In pulling back to objectively examine this favorite analogy (and the coding schema we’d based on it), this inherent bias shone through to us for the first time. And that shed new light on flexwork, work environments, and behavior change:

Flexwork is a case of employers and employees fighting over a change of work environment. Employees want the change. Employers don’t, so they’re trying to make the people change.

That explains why flexwork seems to fit under both “change people” and “change environment”.

It also explains why flexwork is such a contentious issue: This war is actually just one battle in a much larger conflict between the “change people” and “change environment” mindsets. Traditionally, leaders have held the former, because they view people as more malleable and easier to change than fixed infrastructure and equipment costs and byzantine labyrinths of policy and process. “We need to become more agile!”, “Let’s all embrace this change!”, said every company townhall ever.

But change is precisely what employees embraced when they went to work at home during the pandemic. And then the Great Resignation, and the tight labor market still riding in its wake, gave them negotiating power unprecedented in our lifetimes. If they’re still flowers at all, they’re more like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors than anything else.

So now when employers try to solve an environmental problem by changing their employees, they’re firing a shot that’s heard—and returned—around the world.

Peace Out

In case you need to know for your own inner peace: We kept our “change people” and “change environment” codes and simply gave “flexwork” its own category. Of those respondents who are doing anything at all to reduce work friction, 62% are traditionalists who’re trying to reduce work friction by changing their people. Fewer than 30% are treating their organizations like the ecosystems they are and trying to change employees’ environments. 8% are considering raising a white flexwork flag—whether they ultimately do or not… will surely be in the news.

Keep up with FOUNT research by subscribing to our mailing list.

David Green’s interview of Jennifer Sigler originally appeared on myHRfuture, an Insight222 brand and learning experience platform for HR professionals looking to invest in their careers. Read the article on myHRfuture.com

In a recent report by TI People and FOUNT Global, Inc, “The Big, Bad State of EX”, 70% of the respondents reported that their organisation’s Employee Experience (EX) data is inadequate for their needs. Another finding was that HR professionals take too much responsibility for EX, with 76% of EX professionals responding to the survey saying they are primarily accountable for the quality of EX at their organisations, while business leaders and managers are the #1 influencers of EX in their company. 

I was delighted to sit down recently with Jennifer Sigler, FOUNT’s Head of Research and the author of The Big, Bad State of EX report, for a discussion on the issues identified in the study in relation to people data for this executive article.

Jennifer explains that the inadequate data problem is rooted in a love of “big stuff”, including enterprise-wide surveys on broad topics, infrastructure-building within HR, and giant strategies that take forever to finalise, and that people analytics and HR professionals need to take a smaller, more agile approach to EX improvement to make more progress, faster. 

People analytics teams have tons of people data, but the problem is that it is not always useful data. I discuss the topic in more detail with Jennifer below, enjoy!

Jennifer, you published the provocatively titled “Big, Bad State of EX” report back in November, replete with adorable social tiles of Little Red Riding Hood. What’s so big and bad about the state of employee experience?

Two things mainly: HR is using data that isn’t really suited to improving EX, and they’re taking too much responsibility for EX.

So, for example, 70% of respondents reported that their organisation’s EX data is inadequate for their needs. And that wasn’t just HR or EX professionals saying that. That 70% includes respondents from outside of HR, like line of business leaders and executives.

On the responsibility front, 76% of EX professionals responding to the survey said they’re primarily accountable for the quality of EX at their companies. Yet when we asked all respondents who the #1 influencer of EX is organisation-wide, everybody agreed it’s business leaders and managers—including the business leaders and managers themselves. So, it’s a bit of a problem those groups don’t bear much responsibility for the quality of EX, don’t you think?

The title’s really a play on words, though, because when you dig down into these two issues, what you find is that they’re both rooted in a love of big stuff: enterprise-wide surveys on very broad topics like engagement and wellness, infrastructure-building within huge silos (especially HR), giant strategies and plans and alignment documents that take forever to finalise, prioritisation of only those projects that’ll impact every employee, and so on. And that’s bad, because at FOUNT, we’ve found that people who take a smaller, more agile approach to EX improvement actually make more progress, faster.

Can we zoom in on the people data for a moment. Why do 70% of respondents feel it’s inadequate?

Well, it’s not just people data, first of all. The #1 challenge reported across respondents (so again, EX leaders, HR leaders, and business leaders) was measuring the business/financial impact of EX improvements. So yes, people data is a problem, but arguably, an even bigger problem is that people data hasn’t been linked up with business/financial data in a way that allows HR teams to track the impact of their improvement initiatives beyond individual employees to the business. Fully 85% of respondents said their organisations struggle with this.

And if you bear with me just a moment longer—I swear I’ll get to people data in just a sec—I want to point out a possible idea for connecting the people and business/financial dots. When we asked EX professionals who their most important, most helpful, and most frequent partners in the business were, guess who came in last on all three of those measures?

I presume it wasn’t business leaders?

No, they came in most important, fourth most helpful, and fourth most frequent. There’s a whole different story just in that finding. I suppose the question is a little unfair, because you have to know who was on our list to guess who came in last. If I told you the list, you’d surely guess it.

Anyway, it was Finance—you know, the people in the organisation who know how to track money better than anybody. We don’t partner with them. We don’t even consider them important. Is it any wonder, then, that we struggle to connect people data to business/financial data?

Good point. In Excellence in People Analytics, Jonathan and I describe how important it is for people analytics teams to work closely with their Finance counterparts, but in our experience this is still the exception not the norm. So, 70% of survey respondents feel their EX data is inadequate because they don’t have enough data.

Not quite. When it comes to business/financial data, they don’t have enough. At least in the sense that they don’t use what the organisation has available to measure the impact of people initiatives. They don’t connect those dots.

But when it comes to people data, they have TONS of it. 92% of HR leaders said they run employee surveys, and nearly all of those run them at least once a year: 17% run them twice a year, 6% once per quarter, and 14% more often than that. And 71% of respondents also use employee interviews and focus groups. 53% enable employee-initiated feedback via email, chat, phone, and so on. And 45% have on-demand feedback forms built into product/service interfaces.

So, the problem is most definitely NOT that they have insufficient people data. I know HR and other shared services functions frequently complain that they can’t run more surveys because they need more input, but all the employees have survey fatigue (the clear solution to that is random sampling—it’s magical, folks). The truth, though, is that most HR teams are wallowing in data. It’s just not useful data.

We’re back to why data is inadequate for their needs…

Right. You see, the type of data makes a difference. With business/financial data, they need to go get it in the first place and figure out how to connect it to people data. But with people data itself, they need to “zoom in”, as we say.

Think about it: When you run a standard engagement survey, what are you asking people? Hold on, let me open a file here and I’ll read you some actual questions from widely used engagement surveys… Ok: “I feel a sense of accomplishment at work.” “I would recommend my employer to friends and family.” “I know what’s expected of me at work.” “I see myself still working at [company] in two years’ time.” And so on.

What do you get out of those questions? Usually, People Analytics gives you a percentage of employees who responded above/below some agreed-upon threshold. Maybe they even run some correlational analyses to figure out which employee segments score higher/lower. So, we get a sense of how people feel about accomplishment, recommending, expectations, and leaving—but we still have no idea why some employees feel a sense of accomplishment and others don’t, why they’d recommend their employer or not, why they do or don’t know what’s expected of them, or why they’re thinking of staying or leaving. And if we don’t know why, what exactly can we do about it?

We can go dig further, interview some employees or run another more-focused survey on a specific topic or with a specific employee segment and find out. But that’s a lot more work so it’s not normally what happens. Normally HR just assumes it knows what the problem is, or it asks managers what the problem is, and then it develops some kind of improvement top-down and inflicts it on employees. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t. We won’t know until the next round of survey data comes in—and even then, because of the lack of specificity in the survey questions, we won’t be able to say with certitude that it’s the change we made that made a difference.

That’s why, even though the #1 challenge our respondents faced was measuring the business/financial impact of EX improvements, they didn’t exactly find measuring the impact of any improvements that were implemented for employees easy either. That was their #4 challenge, after cross-silo coordination stuff. In other words, 65% of respondents said they can’t even usefully measure the stuff it is People Analytics’ job to measure.

And that’s because of the altitude of people data. It needs to zoom in.

That makes a lot of sense. When it comes to business/financial data, we don’t have enough and we don’t connect it to our people data. But when it comes to people data, we actually need a different kind of data, data that gets at the why of the other questions. And I think what you’re saying is, if we can get those two things sorted, we’ll be able to improve EX much more effectively and efficiently. Yes?

Well… Maybe. [laughs] Remember that HR, EX, and business leaders all agree that the #1 influencer of EX is not HR. It’s business leaders and managers. That belief tallies with our experience at FOUNT. I mean, we have about 3.6 million employee datapoints at that zoomed-in level in our platform right now, so I can tell you: a lot of the problems aren’t owned by HR. But remember also how often EX professionals said they collaborate with business leaders: fourth most often, after three other HR functions. Given everyone acknowledges business leaders are their most important partner, that’s indicative of an HR silo.

You have to ask yourself, though, why are business leaders first in importance but fourth in partnership frequency and helpfulness? Other questions we asked suggest a possible answer. For example, it was business leader respondents to our survey who were least satisfied with people data, so that zoomed-out thing—and the lack of a tie to business/financial metrics—appears to bother them more than it does HR or EX teams. Business leaders also showed signs of preferring different ways of working than HR or EX: They were more likely to want smaller, focused, local improvements, not the enterprise-wide stuff HR usually prioritises.

But we think there’s a two-pronged problem here: On one hand, yes, HR is typically collecting data and otherwise working in ways that don’t meet the needs of the people who have the most impact on EX, so naturally those people are hesitant to collaborate closely. On the other hand, though, we also saw indications that business leaders may view EX as “HR’s job”, not as their job. Like that point about 76% of respondent organisations placing primary responsibility for EX on the EX or HR team, not on business leaders. Or the fact that fully 90% of EX professionals told us their EX improvement projects are most often initiated by the EX/HR team, not the business. Or that 72% said that on EX improvements, the EX/HR team usually owns or leads, rather than supports or enables business leaders.

I could go on, but the point is: If business leaders have the most impact on EX, then business leaders need to step up to own EX—and HR needs to facilitate that, both with better data and with more agile, problem/solution-focused ways of working. And probably the first step to getting business leader buy-in to do that is to get them better people data that can show them exactly what their specific teams’ problems are (meaning, the why), and also data that clearly shows them the business/financial impact those problems are having on their bottom lines.

All of that is People Analytics’ job.

Those are some pretty demanding, long-term challenges for any HR or People Analytics team. I mean, to make them responsible for business leader buy-in… that’s not typically done.

Indeed. And to be fair, they wouldn’t be solely responsible for that buy-in. Relationship-building also matters of course, and that’s the job of HRBPs. But HRBPs and others throughout HR need better data to make the case to business leaders to get onboard with owning EX. And that data’s going to come from People Analytics.

Think about it: What drives change in business today? What is every business decision (at least purportedly) based on? Data. So… Data people carry a lot of responsibility. Including in HR.

I see your point. But before people analytics teams run off and rethink their whole data strategy, do you have any evidence that getting zoomed-in people data, tying it to business/financial data, and collaborating closely with business leaders is a more successful way to approach EX improvement?

Of course. [laughs] But not from the survey. I mean, in the survey, we did have people tell us about what we see in lots of organisations, like that when the Great Recession hit, they saw leading indicators of it well in advance, but they were too slow to respond because of buy-in issues, and so they suffered a huge hit that cost them a fortune and took forever to recover from. Of course, as we know, some organisations’ data is so poor they didn’t even see it coming. They’ll be even worse off. 

Contrast that with a case study I’m writing now about a distribution warehouse that used what we call “interaction data” (which is basically “zoomed-in” people data) to identify sources of friction in their warehouse workers’ jobs. In one year, they lowered attrition 35%, solving a headcount problem that had been costing them upwards of $1 million/year. 

Now, in distribution warehouses, they are super productivity oriented, so using their zoomed-in people data, they were able to track the EX changes they made not just to people outcomes, but to a whole host of business and financial outcomes they track daily, like late truck departures, damaged orders, overtime paid, and so on. They know exactly how much that stuff costs them, so with their people and business/financial dots connected, they can tell you exactly how much difference each EX improvement makes, in cold hard cash.

And you know who led that project? It wasn’t HR. It was the warehouse general manager, with HR supporting him. He sought out the better people data, he tied the people data to the business and financial metrics he was already responsible for, and he led the change initiative. That’s the power of getting this data—and EX ownership—into business leaders’ hands.

Thank you, Jennifer for sharing your insights. Your discussion on how people analytics and HR professionals can make more progress faster was enlightening and insightful. If you’d like to discover more about FOUNT’s research please click the link here.

Various factors have put the spotlight on employee experience (EX) today. But what is the state of EX? Where do companies stand in their efforts to improve EX, and what challenges do they face? FOUNT and TI People recently conducted a study to gain some answers.

Karthik Kashyap, an assistant editor at Spiceworks, covers a broad range of topics across HR Tech and Martech, from talent acquisition to workforce management.

His latest article, Silos and Bad Data: Top Barriers to Employee Experience Improvement This Year, summarizes the findings from the Big, Bad State of EX.

Spiceworks is the marketplace that connects the IT industry to help technology buyers and sellers get their jobs done, every day, The company helps people in the world’s businesses to find, adopt, and manage the latest technologies while also helping IT brands build, market, and support better products and services.

The employee experience (EX), it’s a hot topic in today’s business world, but what exactly is it? And how do companies go about improving it?

On this episode of Paychex PULSE, an HR Podcast, CEO and Founder of FOUNT, Christophe Martel, talks about just that. Hear what he told host Rob Parsons about the definition of employee experience vs. employee experiences, how to take a more personalized approach, designing work for the needs of your staff, and much, much more.

Topics

00:19 – Introduction to Christophe Martel

00:48 – What does employee experiences (EX) mean?

04:01 – The Big, Bad State of EX research report

07:05 – How to get a more personalized approach

07:59 – Humancentricity capability

09:42 – The importance of dispersal

12:39 – The ability to measure experiences

14:10 – Designing work for the needs of the employee

16:24 – Experience as a philosophy

18:39 – Transparency of opportunity

19:48 – Upping your game to fit your employees

20:54 – Diversity and inclusion is in the eyes of employees

22:31 – Wrap up

Listen to the podcast.

The FOUNT team is heading to Las Vegas February 5th – 7th for the Medallia Experience conference, and we’d love for you to join us! Experience is the only conference that delivers inspiration, hands-on problem solving, and mentoring with some of the world’s most admired brands. Learn game-changing experience management strategies and best practices from the best of the best.

Please join FOUNT CEO, Christophe Martel, on Wednesday February 7th from 7-8:15 am for a breakfast roundtable discussion titled, Cutting-Edge Employee Experience Begins with Work Friction Management.

Leading companies have cracked the code for tackling the pervasive and historically unmeasurable issue of work friction. Learn how to evolve your employee listening program to identify what slows people down and what fixes will have the biggest impact in your work environment and ultimately, the customer experience. This session will feature primary research and innovative examples of how to improve productivity and prevent employee frustration caused by wasted work.

The opportunity to attend this event together would set us up for success in 2024 and give us the chance to spend some much-needed time together. Medallia Experience will deliver:

Information, Transformation and Networking

• Industry trends, best practices, and case studies from experts around the world
• Exclusive access to Medallia + FOUNT experts
• Revolutionary Medallia product updates that will reshape the industry.
• Groundbreaking new AI driven technology from Medallia that will help you deliver personal experiences to every customer and employee across every touchpoint.
• Build relationships with industry leaders, Medallia experts, and your peers.
• Spend time with the FOUNT team.

As a sponsor at the event, we want to offer you a special discount of $200 off your ticket. Register here using our discount code “PNTEXP24LOVE” to reserve your spot.

If you’d like to meet us at the show, please fill out our contact form.