In this CEO podcast episode, Scott De Long and Vince Moiso discuss the shift from employee engagement to the focus on employee experience. They emphasize that employee engagement is dependent on a positive employee experience, which involves performance, culture, and development.
Transcript | Season 1, Episode 12
Scott De Long
Back again to the CEO podcast. I’m Scott De Long. I’m here with Vince Moiso. Today, we’re going to talk about the difference between employee engagement, which is something that we’ve always talked about in leading businesses to the new term, and a new way of looking at the world. And that’s through the employee experience, which leads to employee engagement or better experience for them to get skinned into the game more. There are several things that I’ve been paying attention to. I’ve been in a lot of meetings with this and with people from SHRM, society, human resources, management, and all that. And there’s been a lot of study going on, and employees experience the way of looking at things now. It’s like in the technology world, user interface versus user experience, UI versus UX, they’re both important, but it’s the experience of the customer that’s going to keep coming back. One of the things that they talked about is the difference between as we measure employee engagement, you’re looking at output, he’s looking at output numbers. Are they getting the work done? Are they proactive with their teams? Are they doing that kind of stuff? That was what engagement looked like to us. And there’s more to it? From your point of view? How do you see engagement just staying there from employee engagement? How would you measure that in the old ways,
Vince Moiso
One could argue that employee engagement is dependent on employee experience, and performance is a key component of that. As you measure engagement it in terms when I even think about the subject, I think of it in terms of the culture of a business where people just show up, if you hear an if you hear an employee, a team member that’s saying this is just a paycheck, then I can tell you with 100% certainty that you aren’t getting full output from that. And you are only getting enough engagement that they get their paycheck, they go home, and they’re pretty shut off at that point. And that brings us up to 2021. I would make this argument with the next generation of employees that’s coming into the workforce. In fact, the employee experience is now what I get in interviews. They want to know what company they’re asking these questions. What’s the company culture Like? What are the benefits? What are the people like within your business? They want to know the average tenure of employees within the biz; these are the questions I’m getting in interviews.
Scott De Long
It’s interesting, though, because the millennial crowd has a shorter life expectancy for their job than people of my age group. There are no cradle-to-grave kind of jobs anymore. And they turn over every two and a half years. But they’re asking you about how long people are staying.
Vince Moiso
That must be an indicator, and I can only make some assumptions. I don’t have fully direct feedback from those people. They are equating especially with key positions. I’ve answered that question in this way, as I have several key positions that have been with the business for five or more years; I have a couple of other key positions where those individuals have been with the company for 10 or more years. And that talks to the stability of the business; I don’t think they’re thinking, coming into that position, that they’re only going to be there for two or three years or four years. The reality is the world we live in today was back when a pension was a thing, which it is for some but not so much for the normal for-profit business these days. But when a pension was a thing, it was great. I’m going to be here, I’m going to grow within that business, and I’m going to work there for 30 years and then walk off into the sunset. Today, if you want to grow your career, or if you have aggressive aspirations to grow your career, the likeliness of you doing that within a single, especially a small business, is very low. I mean, because the reality is, if you want that next position, it’s going to be with another company. It’s just a millennial thing. I do think it’s just the nature of the way business has adapted, shifted, and evolved, the person that has career aspirations, career growth, and things like that. They’re looking outward. Therefore, that makes the employee experience that much more important because if you want to retain key people, then the experience you provide to them is what’s going to keep them there longer than what they’d normally be
Scott De Long
Even know that they know, in the back of their mind, that they’re not going to be there for the rest of their career. They’re still interested in the pattern of growth. What are you doing for me? Two, personal and professional development kind of areas. Those are important to young people today. And that’s something that certainly belongs in the employee experience category.
Vince Moiso
You said the key word to me is development. One of the things that I shifted in, and really, I’d say, in the past five years, especially as I’ve learned more and more about HR, is that I’ve been more sensitive and attentive to learning more about HR. This is a new evolution of the way businesses go. Develop: the word development is critical because what it was before was just purely about training; I’m just going to train you for these tactics for the role and responsibility for your position. And now what I know as a business, what we’ve shifted to is, I’m just going to develop you as a human being, I’m going to do everything I can to develop you as a human being as a person. And I know that development is going to carry over into the role and responsibility.
Scott De Long
That leads to the next two portions of that. Training is so important. They need to know how to do that job and even the next job. But it’s training, coaching, and mentoring. There’s a combination of those three things. If you want to keep people engaged, you need to participate in training, coaching, and mentoring. What is mentoring? You’ve got a young person who’s working for you, and you don’t have to be the mentor all the time. But now, somebody who has some experience, somebody with a little break here, someone’s been around a little bit, needs to show that person the ropes, Teach them the unwritten rules of the workplace. Yeah. Now, the older person is learning the new unwritten rules of the workplace by hanging out with them. It’s not a one-way situation. From what I’ve seen, older people are trying to get a better handle on what millennials are. Gen X is us anymore. You’re an x, I am an x, we’re next year. But then millennials and Gen Z are teaching us as much as we think we’re teaching. And how to relate to the new workplace. When we talk about employee experience, absolutely employee, I’m going to go back to engagement; what we used to think was that you pay people well and treat them with dignity and respect. And you give him two weeks’ vacation, and you’re going to get great engagement. It used to be the pension if you wanted to stay there for a long time. That’s the way it used to be. And things have changed right now. There’s more to it, especially in the new workplace. Technology is going to be a big part of this; what tech are we giving these folks and making available to them as well? In the hybrid, or the work-from-home concept,
Vince Moiso
Which is new which we cover in another podcast, and I got to tell you, like you must add that I’m glad you brought that up because you must add that into the mix of this employee experience. Because now all of a sudden, what we’re faced with, and I just had this conversation with, with somebody, yesterday they did in the financial world, and they are moving to another company, because the company that she’s currently with, is going to require her to be back full time in the office, and she doesn’t want to go back. She wants that flexibility now; she’s choosing experience over the comfort of sticking with the thing she knows.
Scott De Long
When we talk about technology getting better, cheaper and all that stuff. However, you still need to provide people with good tools now. I know when the pandemic started, companies scrambled for webcams because some people took their towers and took them home. They needed this webcam they could get on their Zoom calls and Teams and all the rest of that. And the sound is crappy the video quality is crappy. Investing in tech is an extra 100 bucks for an employee. Let’s call it that for them to feel like they matter. Your willingness to give me this crappy stuff. When we talk about technology getting better, cheaper and all that stuff. Now, we had to scramble. We had to get it done and get that, but if you want to keep them engaged and upgrading, get the technology that they’re looking for. And it’s not just technology and audio video, but it’s all communications. Whether we’re going to go to Slack or teams or any of those other kinds of things that people are getting used to right now, you’re going to have to be able to provide that it’s just part of the expected experience. What I want to get to, though, is an unexpected experience, not unexpected, but an experience that is not demanded. But what else we can do for folks, the kinds of things that you can take care of, and one of the most overlooked tools that I’ve seen, in almost every company I’ve worked for, is mid-level management, and the experience that the employee has with them, it’s really important for the executives to live the values, set the vision, start working on that culture, but that frontline employees dealing with their manager much more than they’re dealing with you. And we’re not equipping these folks well enough yet. We have not taken the time, the effort, and the money. We’re not middle management people who are required to handle the new workplace. I’ve had courses where I got when it comes to leadership for frontline managers, where I put some what I thought were normal kinds of procedures in place and let people know about them. And I thought it was a boring presentation. And some of these folks have, Wow, that’s impressive. I know it’s normal. The one-on-one meetings go with that. Instead of the annual and quarterly reviews, the one-on-one meeting with your manager. Why is that important? Because when people quit, they quit because of bad management. And they’re not talking about the executives; they’re talking about their manager and the relationship they have with their manager; the fastest way to solve that, in my mind, is having an effective one-on-one. Frequently, not. Some folks can handle once a month, in Summer, or every other week. But I’m going to suggest, especially for the newer employees, having that one-on-one conversation every week and reverse in the classroom. The one-on-one conversation is not about what the company needs from you. During the first portion of the meeting, I asked you if I was having a one-on-one with you, and it works for me; how about one-on-one for you? I want to hear about what I can do for you. First, go back to John Kennedy; what can you do for them? Kind of concept. And that is the fastest way to start building relationships with the people that are working for the direct frontline managers,
Vince Moiso
I noticed it doesn’t happen often; I am going to disagree with you. I have a different perspective on management; it goes to two things. And the first is what we talked about earlier, which is development. Here’s what companies have not gone on board, or they’re leaving often, I find. And what I have experienced is that Small Business leaves middle management to their own accord, just like sink or swim; I’m going to throw you in with the disagreement. Oftentimes, it’s you they take the high performer, whether that’s in sales, or whatever, and they go, you’re going to make a great manager, and they put him in management, but they don’t develop them as a manager then you’re scratching your head like, why are all these other employees leaving right now? Because you don’t have good management. And because you didn’t develop your manager, and that’s on you, not on end, you did that you did a total disservice, like a lot of companies do a total disservice to these high performers, by putting them in a management position because they completely fail. And the fail rate is very high, by the way, very high. And it’s a direct result of development. I don’t disagree that one-on-one meetings are important. I don’t think it’s the only thing that either develops or turns that around. Companies need to get on board to develop managers to be readers because what you’re asking them to do is manage people. Whether I’m a high performer in sales or otherwise, I’m used to performing; no one ever taught me to manage people. Now you want me to manage people because I’m going to be good at that automatically, you’re assuming. I’ve got a good story about you; you’re assuming that I’m just going to be able to do that without developing myself as a person. Let me get to my second thing before I get out, and I want to hear this story. My second thing is while I think the one-on-one is good, and it’s important, I don’t think that’s the thing that connects a manager with, say, customer service or admin or Whatever that is. To me, it’s the daily huddle. And I know that from very direct,
Scott De Long
it’s more frequent than what I’ve asked.
Vince Moiso
It’s not that we’re not talking about daily huddle, which can be a long, say, six people, seven, eight people. It’s a 15 to 20-minute call; everybody has one to two minutes to talk about the priority that they have for the day, where they’re going to be, and what they’re working on. And everybody has a shot at, like, okay, do I need this from you? Only what’s important, what’s important in the now and in the present, and you do that every day. I can tell you the feedback that I get from my employees, as they never felt more connected. And when we don’t have that daily huddle, they feel disconnected. I’ve never felt more connected.
Scott De Long
Does your huddle, then? Deal with just what’s important from the business point of view. Are you dealing with people’s lives too? Did you get into the absolute today, or is it a problem?
Vince Moiso
When we want, and we have created this flexibility, life happens. And here’s what we want. Here’s to me in our business: if somebody just calls in and says I’m not going to be there today, click, now we’re scrambling and inside, okay, we got to fill the hole. If somebody comes on that huddle and says, unfortunately, I’m not feeling well today, I don’t know how productive I’m going to be. I’m going to take the day off. And then it’s like, cool. What did you have going on? That was a priority, and this is great. Okay, Joe, can you take care of that for today? Can you cover for this person then immediately in that daily huddle? We’ve shifted, and we know what the priorities are. And now we’re going to make sure that nothing gets lost. And that person feels great because there’s nothing worse than missing a couple of days. Because you let our culture down and make everybody feel accountable, they come back to work and let the team down. And they’re not feeling great about themselves, and they were just getting over being sick. That doesn’t happen in our culture; it doesn’t happen because I call it setting the table. Because our people set the table before they leave. And guess what? You’re entitled to that vacation; go take the vacation; we want you to take the vacation. You need that day off to go move your kid into college or school, and if you want to take that day, it’s okay; take the day. Just set the table before you know you’re going to take that day; the daily huddle accounts for that.
Scott De Long
one thing I’m going to say on top of that is, yes, the manager in the daily huddle is redirecting traffic, playing point guard, and getting things to where they need to be and all that. But I think the most powerful statement they can say at the beginning of that is when you’re telling me you’re having a bad time, whatever the struggle is going to be. First thing I look at you and say, how can I help?
Vince Moiso
How can I help? That’s exactly how we started this. That’s how we start our huddles. If I’m in that huddle, and I’m leading that huddle, everybody says their priority, and then I immediately do the same; by the way, I’m not exempt from telling people where I’m at and what my priorities are for that day, and how they can get a hold of me. And I start off always by saying, how can I help? And what is best created is in the huddle, every person says that every person says, how can I? They want to pick up as they say; here’s my priority: I do have some capacity today; how can I help? And you get to this culture created about it, then the manager matters less, when you’ve got the support mechanism created out of that, many people are willing to help each other.
Scott De Long
there’s so much I can unpack on that,
Vince Moiso
I’m going to get it because, honestly, go ahead and unpack it. And I want to hear you didn’t get a chance to tell our story. I want you to tell me your story. And I want to unpack that. That was a very intentional point that I made.
Scott De Long
Let’s go back to the story first, and then we can start and see where that goes. It was a flaw in me and something I did poorly. We’ve mentioned earlier that I played baseball and did well in my baseball career. And I went back as soon as I got done, had a job. That was a quick job. I got done by noon, and I went back to the old college where I played. And I coached in the afternoons. We’ve mentioned earlier that I played baseball and did well. And its good coaches, but I was just the new guy, and I was going to handle the outfielder side and teach them everything there is to know about our snow because I was so good at it. Like, did you mount a bond? I might hear like a pizza like all this crap; the fact of the matter was I sucked at coaching. And here’s the thing. I was an all-American, and I expected these freshmen and sophomores to be as good as I just was a year ago without the extra experience, the extra training, and the extra coaching. They’re the junior car I was at a four-year school. I’ve learned stuff. And I expected them to know already, thinking they’d be able to do it already. That’s the problem with the high performer, individual contributor turning into a manager without any development on how to manage people. These freshmen and sophomores could not do what I could have done as a senior
Vince Moiso
Or one year out of playing great anecdote
Scott De Long
And I didn’t realize it until I saw some looks on some of these kids’ faces. Instead of saying things like, the guy made a great catch Going out, went out of his way, and made a great catch. And he comes back in; he’s all excited. And I said, if you were to notice where the pitches go, you could have got a better jump on the ball. You wouldn’t have to make a great catch.
Vince Moiso
Sorry, that’s bad.
Scott De Long
That was bad. Anyway, that’s my adult eyes; individual contributors do not become great managers without development in management. Leadership.
Vince Moiso
Without question. They don’t. It’s the company’s responsibility to provide that. No doubt.
Scott De Long
And if you don’t, they’ll go somewhere else faster than they would otherwise. There’s an old saying that says the CFO talks to the CEO. And the CFO says, what if we pour all this money into these people, and they leave for the next job? And the CEO looks at him and says, what if we don’t pour the money into him? And they stay?
Vince Moiso
Which works its way up the ladder? It is much worse; unpack what I said. To repeat, what I said is that when you suddenly create this culture of accountability within your team, and suddenly, you’ve got your team offering help Every single day. And when you have that daily huddle, it relieves the manager quite a bit; It makes that managerless relevant. unpack that.
Scott De Long
going back to the sports analogy again. And when you have an all-star team, people that just came together for the first time, you need a good manager to make that teamwork. When you have a championship-level team with people working together, the manager is almost insignificant. All he does is say when the pitcher comes in and when we replace the quarterback. All they do at that point is because it’s the players that are interdependent on the players, each knowing what they need to do to support the other, that our team does better. You’re right about the manager becoming less important. It doesn’t mean being insignificant, and it doesn’t mean, hey, being a great manager. We don’t care about you anymore. Be a great manager. We can, you can become a great executive, keep going up the ladder.
Vince Moiso
I’ll tell you about the move that I made within my business. With my inside sales team, I removed the middle manager. And they all report to me.
Scott De Long
I have a little problem with that.
Vince Moiso
let me just tell you who they report to each other. And what I’ve created is an environment in which they partner with their regional account manager. The inside salesperson is tied to the outside salesperson, and they’re accountable to each other. The inside sales team members are then accountable to each other within their group. And then the same goes for the regional account managers. Here are just a couple of examples: When each of them puts out their weekly report, everybody puts a report out on Monday, and it’s just focused on priorities. There’s a short report, just an email report, along with the sales, the actual sales reports that we get; they all get that on Monday, but it goes to everybody and the entire team. It’s not just going to a manager’s reusability, total transparency, and visibility. And you can’t hide. I can just tell you that what we’ve needed,
Scott De Long
they get very high for us for a period, but it’s going to come out in the wash.
Vince Moiso
I don’t think what I just did. I want to preface this with some context. I don’t think it’s long-term play. It’s not, but what I will tell you is the way it was structured previously wasn’t working, and having that middle management wasn’t working. What I recognized is I had to change the strategy. I had to change the structure of the org structure accordingly. Do it exactly as I just described it. And then and then, I wanted to step in directly to create a scenario where there was a culture of accountability within the team. Then, at some point, the right person will be a great fit to step in.
Scott De Long
And my long-term concern with that is the development piece; you don’t have time to develop 12 people. You can handle six. Yeah. Can’t handle 12. And this is what the back-to-the-office conversation is about, and I think it is important. Is that a change that could energize people? The problem with it is that they’re going to get this energized at some point because they’re not going to have that connection.
Vince Moiso
I agree with you. And that’s why I gave you that context, which was a short-term solution to the problem, not a long-term solution for sure. And what I will tell you is that it works. And it has worked, and it continues to work. But I am reaching that point; I think by year-end, it’ll be time for somebody. What I’d love is for that to happen internally, one of the team members, I would love for that to happen internally and then move to develop that person appropriately. If not, we’ll look we’ll look to hire outside.
Scott De Long
Let’s go back to the employee experience; this has been a good conversation. But I believe that the employee’s experience starts way before the people even start working. In the interviewing process. The class, the dignity that your company shows, what people want to see is that the company is being represented by whoever’s interviewing them, whether it’s the CEO, another C-level person, a manager, an HR person, that is a representation of the company. It starts there. It goes into onboarding and how we onboard people. And now, how we board people in this remote environment is completely different than how we used to do it; when people come into an office, there are some things that we need to consider in the onboarding process and make sure people feel engaged. I have some tools and techniques that I think work. And I’d love to talk to you about them. In fact, we’ll make that as a future podcast. But onboarding becomes the next thing training. After that. The coaching comes after that. The mentoring comes after that. We’re talking about employee experience; I’m not talking about parties, ice cream, socials, or even virtual happy hours now. Nothing wrong with those things. They’re fine. It’s a great way to get people connected in a different way. But I’m talking about other things like living the culture, the culture being mission, vision, and values. What is the vision of the organization? What is it that you’ve set? What is the vision and the values of the organization? What are the people that are looking at living those?
Vince Moiso
You better live it; that’s the important thing; you just said it, you better live it. And I’ve been to many organizations. The mission statement and the values are bullshit; they’re just statements, and it’s not like some of the companies live in it. And some of the companies don’t work either. Like if, as an executive team, the owner, the CEO, I’ve instilled all these values in the rest of the team, but I don’t really know what they must live in. I know that doesn’t work either. You must be 100% committed to your mission statement and to your brand purpose, the brand promise, whatever that promise is, and you must live the values. And they’re going to sniff it out right away. You talked about the onboarding process. And people will understand quickly whether you have a culture that lives the values and the mission or not; it’s black and white. And if you live in that culture, and you live those values, and those values align with the person that you’re hiring, their experience is going to go through the roof, which directly impacts performance and engagement. And that’s where you get high employee retention.
Scott De Long
If you’ve heard of the Net Promoter Score, something Beynon company said that I set up, and they said, go to your customers and ask this question. And the question is, would you be a reference for or promote this company’s products and services? In that, they scored nine and 10. They are their promoter. If they scored eight and nine, they’re neutral. 789. They’re neutral. Six and under. They are detractors. The Net Promoter Score says, take your nines and 10s. Add those up, subtracting from your zeros to sixes, and you get this net promoter score. And if you’re not at least an eight and a half, you’re in trouble. There’s such a thing as an employee Net Promoter Score; do the same thing. Would you recommend this company? Your friend is coming to work here. What a great question. It’s very simplistic, but it’s a very good question to ask your employees: would they recommend to a friend that they come and work here? And if you’re not at least eight and a half, and I wouldn’t suggest nine and a half, you got some work to do on this employee engagement stuff.
Vince Moiso
let’s hand out some nuggets. Top three things that a company could do today to start improving the employee experience. It doesn’t have to be three; it could be one or two. But at the most, these are the top three things a company could do today to improve upon employee experience.
Scott De Long
Number one, without a doubt, we agree on this. And we might disagree on how we accomplish this. And that is to develop your mid-level managers because that’s who your people are reporting to and, talking to, and seeing every single day. The development of the mid-level managers is the number one thing you could do. The second thing that I think you can do is communicate the processes throughout the organization, from the culture, from the executives, all the way down through the management, the communication on not only what we do, but why we do it. And make and then make sure that you know what your part of this is that each employee understands how they relate to the overall not just success of the company financially, but the success of the company on something like a net promoter score; and then the third thing I think you can do is develop the rest of the people. People want to see growth, even if they’re going to leave in a few years. My responsibility is to help young people grow. If I did those three things, I think the employee experience would be better. Notice I didn’t say pay is important. Don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t in my top three.
Vince Moiso
I agree. One in three, for me, what you chose was just development. I don’t think singling out one specific weather management, whatever that is, is the development of all your people. That’s critical. And to me, it’s just if you can do one thing: it’s changed your mindset from training to development; training is still relevant. You still must train in some tactics and some specific things. I totally get that. I’m not saying you dismiss training but shift the mindset to developing people to develop them as better human beings. And the amount of return you’ll get from that is exponential. Shift that mindset. Secondarily, for me, it’s communication. If you don’t focus on communication, forget about it; you’re never going to have the culture you think you’re going to have. And you’re never going to improve your employee experience. When the employee knows what’s going on with the company and feels communicated too, they’re clear on their role and responsibility, which is all driven by communication; the employee’s experience just goes through the roof communication; that’s number two. And number three for me is to go back and recheck your values, recheck your mission statement and your brand promise; you should be looking into that at least annually; you should be doing a check on one: are these the right values? Or is this the right mission? And are we living up to it? Are we living in it? And you got to double-check on that. And then you must ask yourself the question if you’re living it, and if you’re not, then it is time to redo and collaborate on those values and that mission and commit to living in it.
Scott De Long
We’re going to end here. This is a great conversation. We can keep going long. What we’re drinking today,
Vince Moiso
went down way too easy, by the way
Scott De Long
Left Coast Brewery, San Clemente local. We had a double IPA today called The Big Office 8% Alcohol. I haven’t felt that yet, but it will be made by the next podcast, but I might. Smooth and good. I was really impressed with this.
Vince Moiso
I said that went down way too easy. That’s one where if we were there tonight, I’d have two of those. And before I knew it, I’m like, wow, that just went down too easy. Uber. You didn’t talk so much. There’s like Tuesday, this is good.
Scott De Long
Let’s go; the thesis Left Coach Brewery in San Clemente. This one was called Big Office, that double IPA. It’s worthwhile.
Vince Moiso
Check us out at the CEO podcast.net appreciate you listening and again, feedback questions, any of those types of things, please reach out and we want it. Until next time.
