Decoding the 5 Trends Reshaping the Employee Experience

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and hopefully not. Good night. Uh, my name is Matt Evans. It is a pleasure to speak with you today to discuss, uh, five trends, uh, that are reshaping the world of work. Uh, my name is Matt Evans. I lead the ex product science team here, uh, at Qualtrics. Uh, I am based out of the greatest city in the world, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Uh, and with me is my brilliant colleague, Marcus Wolff. Marcus, do you wanna say something about yourself? Yes. Uh, I sit in New York City. I've had the pleasure of working with Matt for a very long time, and I get to work directly with clients on implementing employee listening of all kinds. So I'm really excited to talk about some of the practical findings of decoding these trends. Thanks, Matt. Excellent. Before we dive into today's topic, I did wanna go over just a few housekeeping items. Uh, if you have any questions, feel free to submit them at any time. Uh, in the q and a window, we will be answering questions, uh, at the end of the presentation. Uh, if you experience any technical issues during the webinar, uh, post issues will be resolved just by refreshing your screen. Uh, if that does not solve the problem, select the icon with the question mark, and this will provide troubleshooting items that should resolve really most any issue unless your internet is crapping out on you at home, which is mine is currently doing. Uh, so I apologize in advance for any technical issues, but Marcus is way smarter than me anyway, so if I suddenly fade out, he will immediately take over and you'll probably have a better time of it. Having said all of that, I am very excited to just introduce this report to you. Um, the report, which is available to download, is based on 37,000 responses from 32 countries and 28 industries, and it covers really organizations of all shapes and sizes of more than 100 employees. Uh, the report itself covers really a number of a, a number of different elements. One, uh, experiences overall, uh, and gaps between specific employee segments, major swings and changes between years, and really everything in between as well as a dive into regional, uh, data. Now, we put a lot in there because candidly, there is just a ton going on, uh, in the world of work. So really, when we think of what's going on in the external world, uh, such as challenging economic conditions, societal issues around the world, and, and really, uh, sad to say, but some elements of the pandemic still lingering. Uh, we hear and we see, and we talk to leaders, uh, at organizations that are really rapidly reorganizing themselves and, and completing large scale transformations, really on many different levels. Um, it is pleasing to see some of the key results of, of engagement holding strong or improving really ever so slightly. Uh, despite all of this that is, uh, going on, really, the ex KPIs here, of which of which we show you, four of them are one of the first things that we look at when results come in. Uh, and our expectation was that actually engagement, uh, and other KPIs would have decreased, giving everything that's going on, but actually they were fairly stable, uh, which is great. On one hand, that's to be expected as they are scientific constructs, and we wouldn't expect them to fluctuate too much. Um, on the other hand, we're really in an unusual period at the moment, and, and we would've understood, uh, if they had actually changed. Now, what I'm excited about and what excites Marcus and I, is that what has changed is that all of the other parts of the employee experience, and what was really clear from our research was that even though some things on the surface seem sta seems stable, uh, under the surface, there are huge changes underway in terms of the way that people feel, uh, about their employers, the way that people feel about the work that they're doing day to day, and really the way that work is getting done. Uh, I recognize that this is largely a, a North American, uh, audience, and, and we did wanna sprinkle in some of this information for you, uh, as well. We've largely talking today, uh, about our global results. But, but given where we are here in a, here in North America, uh, we do see something that I think is really interesting. Um, we are more engaged here. Uh, in other words, we are more, uh, emotionally and intellectually invested in our work, but at the same time, we're actually less likely to stay. Uh, the other element of this that, that is really so interesting is that the drivers, the, and, and when I say drivers, what I'm talking about is the relationship, the statistical relationship between individual items or individual elements of the employee experience and someone stated intent to stay are significantly, significantly weaker, uh, than are the relationships between these items and engagement. So what's that mean? What does that mean for you all? You could be doing everything right, but some of your happiest, most energetic, uh, most engaged people, they're still going to leave. And, and indeed, only 73% of people who we would consider engaged in North America, those folks who say that they experience a feeling of personal accomplishment, those folks who say that their organization motivates them to go above and beyond to do their best work, those folks who would recommend their organization to a friend, uh, or a colleague, is a great place to work. You know, only 73% of those folks say that they wanna stick around beyond three years. So there is this transitory population of folks who, even though again, you may be doing everything right, um, still have their eyes open and, and, and may be interested in leaving, we'll actually talk about some of these new hires, uh, as we go forward, uh, in a bit of detail. Um, following that, I do wanna actually just jump right in and tell you what our five big trends are. I'll give you a little bit of a sneak preview. Uh, and then Marcus and I are going to turn over, uh, are going to dig into each of these trends, uh, as we go forward. Uh, first we asked this year for the first time, uh, a question about people's comfort level for AI and a variety of tasks. Have you heard about this thing called artificial intelligence? I, I think it's been making the rounds, uh, here and there, right? And we ask about tasks, uh, regarding AI from writing to being a personal assistant, and really all the way down to things like doing my performance evaluation or making a hiring decision about me. Now, it's probably not a shock, but it turns out for most people, uh, most people will say that I'll let AI work for me, but I won't work for ai. But, and, and here's a teaser, um, with, with, with, with a really interesting finding coming soon, there is one population of folks that is far more willing than any others to actually give AI a chance when it comes to hiring and performance decisions that impact them. And Marcus is going to tell you about that in just a minute. Uh, next we dove into the front lines. And so when we say front lines, we're talking about people who are working directly with the public in roles like food service or call center reps, or patient care or education. Now, I don't know about you, but even though the billboard leaving my neighborhood in 2020 said, we le we love our frontline workers. Uh, I don't know if you saw one of those, uh, in 2020 and 2021, it seems that might not be the case anymore. So we'll dive into what, what, what, what are the experiences with those frontline workers? Then we'll talk about new employees. So I spent my career, uh, much of it in management consulting and doing culture and engagement research. I used to be able to count on new employees, uh, as being the most engaged, the most likely to stay. That's really gone away today. We can't even get these folks to turn off their open to hire button on LinkedIn. So we'll dive into what's going on with these new hires and what we might be able to do to better retain them. Uh, from there, we'll move into an area and, and this one's a little bit hard for me because much like my thinking around laser discs being the next big thing, or Google glass being something that everybody was going to be wearing, I, I was absolutely dead wrong on this one. I thought people were going to be completely and utterly freaked out by the idea of their company mining their workplace messages and, and emails to identify and close experience gaps. But it turns out that's not actually the case. So I'm excited about that one. And then finally, we looked at how people are working today and what that, uh, experience looks like based on work mode. You know, people have been asked about their preferences for the last three years, now that we've somewhat normalized, we actually wanted to take a look at who is thriving and who is struggling based on where they're working. Are they working from home? Are they working from an office? And to what extent? All right. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and give it up to Marcus, uh, to tell us all about perception of ai. Thanks, Matt. So as we unpack this first trend, uh, we're gonna get into a little bit of data. So employees with a higher level of engagement also report that they're more comfortable with ai. As Matt mentioned earlier, in Qualtrics research, when we use three items to define engagement, uh, one item that measures Trinsic motivation, another item that measures an employee's willingness to recommend their company to others. And the third item that measures a sense of accomplishment from work. So employees with high levels of engagement have that combination of achievement recommend and accomplish. I put forth a theory that some of the factors in why engaged employees report more comfort with ai, um, around something like curiosity, that kind of extra mile sense that they believe they can learn new things as part of their jobs, that that sort of coaching and growth mentality, regardless of level of engagement, there are some places where people tend to prefer AI tools, AI tools, doing things that do things for them versus to them, the embrace of AI is nuanced. It's not entirely universal at this stage. And em, employees demonstrate greater acceptance of types of ais that they can control and direct less acceptance when they are being evaluated or have that limited control. So more employees embrace AI for tasks related to productivity, but when it comes to things like career growth and development, or for instance, performance appraisals and job interviews, they really want a person to remain in the driver's seat. Ratings of comfort shift downward as AI turns to more decision oriented tasks. As our, our graph and data shows here, there's a dichotomy of this kind of convenience and support versus privacy. I might relate some of that to employee choice and voice in decision making and empathy. As we've discussed, uh, this really extensively on our research teams, we've hypothesized that human empathy and consideration of contextual factors may be the big distinction here. Those of you on this call may know that performance appraisals, subjectivity versus objectivity is a really delicate balance. And despite efforts to train and calibrate leaders, there's still a need for employee voice in the process so that they feel heard. This could be one explanation for differences in attitudes around the role of ai. We also believe that AI will be transforming the world work for a long time to come, and organizations will need to pay attention to where that machine feels like an overlord or a black box, and where it feels like an enrichment for the individual's experience or support for the individual experience. As some tasks move over to the AI driven side of the world, I imagine, uh, i, I really hope we probably all hope that we'll be able to further develop the compassion skill sets. Having another person who cares for you and can empathize becomes even more important in distinctive work experiences. We see how apparent this is with the results for growth coaching appraisals, medical advice and interviews in this chart. However, as Matt alluded to, there is a group with distinctly different experiences, employees with a physical or mental disability reported greater comfort eight points greater than the global average when it comes to being interviewed for a new job or being promoted by by ai. What are some potential explanations for this? We believe that people living with disabilities might face challenges in accessing traditional medical care due to physical limitations, transportation difficulties, or other barriers. They might value the privacy and autonomy that an AI interaction can provide. For instance, being able to seek medical advice without having to disclose their disability or medical history to a human, which can sometimes be uncomfortable or intrusive. AI might be perceived as offering a non-judgmental and unbiased interaction. Some individuals living with disabilities may have experienced negative attitude or biases from people in the past. And be hopeful that an AI interview can create a more inclusive and equitable opportunity with greater focus on sort of the bonafide skills and qualifications versus human perceptions of attributes. I'm not particularly an AI expert. I consider myself a subject matter expert on employee experience measurements, but I think there's a real risk and reward potential here. If we can train AI models on unbiased, human reviewed and high quality interactions, we may be able to incorporate more inclusive and equitable coaching for human interviewers as we march along the AI maturity curve. These findings about AI have really helped me in conversations with organizations about how they help their people begin to adopt AI tools, which ones will be lower effort to adopt, and which scenarios may need more due diligence and change management around them. Another sort of niche population here, I don't know if it's niche, really, leaders are a segment of the population that has a particularly different level of comfort and interest in ai. When we see gaps like this between leaders and their managers, it's a great call to action. We don't want our leaders to be in an echo chamber and not hitting the right nuances as they help motivate the AI adoption in their companies. I want those c-suite leaders to know which messages are crossing the chasm and where there's a little bit more work to do, where they see potential and opportunity. Do their employees seem that same potential and opportunity, or do their employees have a little bit more risk averse mindset? Hopefully, our leaders, uh, are in these roles because they know how to connect with their people and to build that bridge to trust. I love citing a trust equation as credibility plus reliability plus intimacy over self-orientation equals trust. Generally, what I think the results here are conveying is that the more positive one feels about their organization, the more trust they have in it. The more senior you are in your role, the more trust may be more likely. You are to believe that the AI will be used for good, the mutual benefit of others, and the lower you go down the food chain, the less less you are to necessarily have that same kind of optimistic point of view. It's critical that leaders instill that empathy and build trust on employees terms. We're starting with some level of comfort with ai, but if we really want to explore those opportunities, we'll have to have a shared understanding of the benefits and risks. There's also a potential underlying belief that AI will make you more productive and efficient in your job amongst some leaders, but not necessarily for everyone. There's a real risk that employees feel like they're going to be left out in the cold and not get the right growth and development opportunities for this. We also see that around the world, this isn't the same general sentiment and the US and Canada, we have some of the lowest ratings followed by Europe, middle East, and Africa. There's a little bit more embrace and willingness within the Asia Pacific and Japan markets and the Latin America regions. As I wrap up this first trend, I'll hand it back over to Matt to talk about the frontline experience. Excellent. So about the frontline experience, really, first and foremost, organizations are not meeting the most basic needs of frontline employees, right? Pay, career development, uh, recognition, uh, all of these things are down. Uh, these are often challenging on your feed all day jobs, and yet we're seeing the biggest gaps here in recognition and satisfaction with financial rewards and growth and development opportunities offered by the organization. But frontline workers simply don't feel appreciated, uh, either with a bath pat on their back or, or with some jingle in their pocket. Um, you know, how many people actually want to stay in a frontline position for the entirety of their career? Tough question. How many are doing it for the love of dealing with customers? I'd love to say that this is a big percentage, but I'm really not going to pretend. So, when we see this gap and when we see external bodies like McKinsey pointing out that above all frontline workers want pay and growth, we're in a really difficult place where paying growth are two areas where we're falling short. The cost of job switching right now is so low in many geographies and with many frontline positions. And growth is a top driver of intent to stay in our research. And it's harder than ever, particularly for young people, uh, to afford to live, uh, put all of these things together, and it's really no wonder why companies, uh, are having a hard time keeping their frontline workers walking through the door, uh, every day. So as well as meeting basic needs, employees don't really feel have food allergies, nuts, dairy, sesame. Um, there is this incredible treatment called oral immunotherapy where they ingest a small amount of things that are allergic to, uh, every day for a couple of weeks. Then they go visit a doctor, take a little bit more of that thing that they are allergic to under supervision, and then repeat the process every two weeks. Um, we're a year and a half into this treatment, right? So by my count, that's 39 visits to a doctor who's an hour and a half away. Again, this is new. Not a ton of these allergists around. Um, last week, my wife, who is a saint, arrives at the doctor as a usual, but upon arrival is asked by a very, very stressed out intake nurse, um, to provide a complete medical history for our two kids. And my wife's just like, what? This is almost my 40th visit here, gang. What's going on? As it turns out, the medical network had acquired a new electronic healthcare record system, and the transition of records was incredibly clunky, the new system, awful. And a side note, you know, EHR, uh, system usability. Those of you who are in the medical field, uh, you might know that it's actually usability of these systems is highly predictive of clinical staff burnout. So this poor intake nurse is taking 30 minutes with every patient this, uh, in the morning, and the office is running hopelessly behind. She's frustrated. My wife's frustrated with a three hour visit as opposed to a 90 minute visit. My kids are going bananas because there's only so many bluey episodes that keep them from bouncing off the walls. You know, I tell this story because compared to others, frontline workers feel like they don't have good process and that they don't feel like they have good support around change, right? The most common gap we see in survey follow up on another area is not an inaction, but it's around lack of communication. And that theme really works its way through around change management as well. I think leaders really need to be intentional about communicating to frontline workers, uh, so that they know that their voices have been heard. If these issues go unchecked and you have no idea how long these issues are, be it around technology changes, uh, be it around difficult processes, be it around lack of autonomy when it comes to meeting the needs of customers, um, this is gonna turn into a burnout problem. It's going to turn into a turnover problem and ultimately a customer experience problem. And then finally, um, what we see with our frontline workers is that they don't trust their leaders and they don't feel they have the power to speak up. And this is really a call to action for leaders to work out what their frontline employees actually need and to follow through on, uh, what they ask for. Now, your employees know what they need to serve your customers. Um, ask them what their barriers are. Uh, likewise zoom in on customer pain points to understand, uh, what's happening with employees. Uh, some of the most important drivers of ex for frontline workers, such as having the tools and resources to do the job and not feeling psychologically safe. Now, those things might seem small, but oftentimes it's some of those non-obvious aspects that really drive customer experience metrics. Now, in my experience, personal and working with folks, people just want to help people, and they want to get their job done. It's not a, uh, it's not a difficult ask. Uh, one of my favorite books from the last 20 years is called The Progress Principle by Theresa Malay and Steven Kramer. What these folks found a broad study of workers who were keeping a daily diary is that the number one driver of whether someone had a good day was if they made progress in their work. The number one driver of a bad day was if they experienced, uh, a setback. You know, personally, starting out my career as a cook at a busy restaurant, all I wanted to do was clear the line of tickets and not get yelled at by servers and, and, and have to recoup things. Um, as a consultant, all I wanted to do in my work was move a project for beginning to end and deliver impact to my clients. And now, as a product leader at Qualtrics, I wanna see great new features and functionality, um, rolled out without having things get, uh, in my way to keep me from making progress. So just really to sum it all up, when it comes to frontline workers, they're having a tough time. They don't feel like their basic needs are getting bet, and their job just seems so hard today. There is a real opportunity here to understand from frontline workers what it is that's keeping them from making their progress and keeping them from living the life that they wanna live and do things to address it. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it back, uh, to Marcus to talk about another body of, uh, employees who's having a different kind of a tough time. Uh, and that would be really our new hires. Thank you, Matt. So, the time has come to talk about the honeymoon being over and across the last decade or more of research, uh, that I've been a party to. And even further back, I think we've come to expect this tenure hammock idea where after an initial, you know, six months to a year, maybe up to two years, we see engagement and other KPIs, uh, start to taper off and, uh, two to three year range, then start to recover again. That kind of hammock effect swoosh sometimes we've called it. Uh, we've explained that pattern as the time it previously took to become fully aware of organizational roadblocks, politics policies, and potentially be upper career advancements. You can see in the intent to say KPI, that while traditionally most organizations haven't worried about new hires, quitting that era may be coming to a close. Employees with less than six months of tenure have the lowest intent to stay at their organizations. From this research in the past, employees would remain an elevated level of engagement for at least a year, if not, you know, the two years I mentioned earlier. So what's ruining the honeymoon phase of the romance? Well, for one thing, there are a lot of other priorities that may be contributing to that not feeling the love feeling. In a separate Qualtrics study, the 2023 state of HR report, CHROs weren't as focused on the onboarding process as they were on attraction. And both of those onboarding and candidate moments were at or below 50%. An effective onboarding program ensures that new employees are set up for success to deliver value to the organization when things aren't as much of a priority for leadership. Previously, effective processes may start to idle and decay. I'd wager that fragmented onboarding processes, austerity measures within organizations that may reduce the resources for training leave coworkers responsible for on-The-job training, I'm sure we've never experienced that individually. Um, maybe a little overtaxed employees a little burned out, um, with their current job, giving some of that to their newly hired peers that often can reenergize a team. And lately they're not seeing that same boost. It seems a lesson for many in the pandemic was, this is all just a temporary state. Things may change quickly and completely. Like Matt mentioned earlier, we still have that hire me on LinkedIn flag even when we just joined a new organization within your own organization. Consider how you capture feedback from these early tenured employees. I know in many implementations I've seen with employees that have less than six months of tenure, they're excluded entirely from regular engagement and pulse surveys. They're either caught with standalone candidate and onboarding feedback, or they're rolled into results after they hit that six month mark. It may no longer be an option to not tap into feedback for these early tenure employees and start fixing these processes. As we go forward. Organizations need to be highly intentional about helping new employees build connections with others, as well as providing clear pathways for growth and development. Getting the new employee experience right is key to organizational employee success into the future. Thoughtfully redesigning onboarding processes could very well be a powerful strategic lever that delivers sustained competitive advantage. Much like when we design physical places with accessibility in mind, when we improve the experience for new hires, we often improve the experience for everyone. Considering the onboarding journey can help us do other process improvements, can help pay it forward and make it better for everyone. You know, you may notice that many of the items in the lowest rank columns would be highly influenced by a team, kind of that culture, the company culture that you're coming into as a new hire, psychological safety, safety perception of pain and benefits. That belief in survey followup, you're probably getting a little bit through osmosis of what other people are telling you about the organization. So again, restocking not just new hire resources, but resources for everyone. During the initial stages of the pandemic, I saw new themes emerge in what was driving employee engagement and other KPIs, things like ESG and CSR, the belief that leaders were doing the right thing for the business and for the planet. Feeling that leadership genuinely cared about the inclusion efforts and the wellbeing efforts that were happening at the time. Our last several waves of trend research cycles haven't seen a strong of a focus on this growth and development, but that is the challenge that's returning. It's an old trend to solve versus other challenge. When people see a future with your organization, when they see how they can grow, they, they start to get, uh, into that engagement mindset. This wave of research, we really see that returning for new hires in a way that we didn't see before when we had that traditional tenure hammock to, to sort of lay around in. This can be a win-win for organizations that figure out how to support these employees with formal and informal development opportunities. Those informal development opportunities can also re-energize existing employees despite some of the hesitancy we saw from our trends around ai. I don't think any of us expect that organizations are going to slow down AI adoption or those kinds of AI re-skilling efforts. For me, a great outcome from practical research is that we know which conversation is the right one to have next, and we know how to give it some of that nuance. I think we can really see some things that can be enhanced in the employee experience, uh, by, by some of these AI initiatives, by some of these reinvestment efforts. And, uh, it will continue to pay it forward for what's on people's minds. I'll pass it back to Matt for our fourth trend. Yeah, excellent. Thanks Marcus. So before I move on, let me just start here by reminding you that this is the trend where I was dead wrong. I spent so much of last year talking with leaders and managers about what we call passive listening. In other words, the idea of analyzing the unsolicited texts that employees write, be it an instant messages, emails or on social media, uh, to identify and close experience gaps. I thought based on these conversations that employees were incredibly nervous and that people would be most scared of letting things like one-on-one conversations with colleagues, uh, be opened up for this kind of analysis. Um, but what we actually found was that, first of all, most importantly, and I say this because there are family members within, uh, listening distances, I was dead wrong. See, I can't say it. Um, first I thought that all of these bars would be significantly further to the left. Um, I didn't think that people would be anywhere near the point where they're at today. I spent so much time last year thinking through how to engender trust within these programs. Certainly not a bad thing. Um, but it was based on the assumption that people would be highly, highly resistant. And it turns out that people are actually incredibly willing to let their companies use this information so long as it is used to make their work life better. And this is even more amplified when we're just looking at employees who are engaged now. So let's put aside for a moment, people who aren't thrilled with their company, okay? We've got 72% of engaged employees who are ready for their instant messages to be reviewed, 80% ready for email. It seems that if people sign enough forums indicating that everything they produce on a work computer is the property of their company, that they have finally registered this and are ready for these things to be used, uh, for their, uh, really for their benefit. Um, and if we go on to the next one, um, let's zoom in to the bottom of the chart. What do we see here? Um, we see that social media though, unlike things that are produced within the virtual four walls of the organization, social media, and not just name the social media, but anonymous. Um, what's this mean? What's this mean? The fact that these things have shown up at the bottom that what's this mean? That people are less comfortable with their companies scouring things like Glassdoor or Blind or LinkedIn. It means that I as an employee, am far more willing to let my company see what Matt Evans is saying to Marcus Wolf about our CEO than I am for my company to know what, like Party Hardy 1980, not that that's my Reddit handle or anything of rights about my company online. Um, there is this psychological line that folks make, uh, between what it is that they are writing and saying within the bounds of their work life and what it is that they are saying outside of their work life. So again, just to reiterate, I am surprised, but in a very positive manner that so much of this rich, so much of this honest, so much of this candorous data is people are willing to tell their companies, use this, but use it to make my life better. And we also looked at this across regions, right? Because the way that, um, we may think about data privacy here may differ from the ways that people think about it, uh, across the world. We see that in, uh, regulations and guidance, but honestly, we don't see it too much here, right? So yeah, certainly we see that fortunately for this population, we see North America, Latin America near the top here in terms of acceptance. But even amea, um, uh, EMEA and, uh, a PJ also, uh, really quite willing to open up what it is that they're saying and, and demonstrating this openness to passive listening. Um, this is great news because as companies supplement their employee listening programs with passive listening, they can really use this to develop what I would say as a more holistic view of every experience that an employee encounters and capture much needed context that really fills out those. So that solicited feedback that you're already gathering through, uh, engagement surveys or onboarding surveys or exit surveys, uh, passive data is an incredibly rich source of context and an incredibly rich source of root cause, uh, data that again, can do an incredible job of supplementing that, which you are already asking. And with that, I'll go ahead and turn it back to Marcus, where he's going to cover how people are feeling, who are working in different work modes. Thank you, Matt. I really like the point you made about, as employees sign some of these actual physical agreements for their work. They're also getting it through their psychological contract. Sometimes I think of psychological contract at work, like the iTunes agreements. Did I actually know what I was clicking as I clicked through it to accept these terms. Psychological contract comes up a lot as we round the corner into our fifth trend here. That's about how much where we get our work done impacts our employee experiences. I'm sure for a lot of the audience members on the call today, return to office is a topic that we're all familiar with, whether we're experiencing that or we're actually having to help set policies and measurement strategies around that. I'd also guessed for some of you that this topic, being in the rear view mirror is something you look forward to eagerly. But let me explain this slide a little before I go too far off track. We've plotted the KPIs for engagement, intent to stay and inclusion here, uh, as well as wellbeing across three groups. Basically, we bucketed people based on how much they're working from home or in the office. Uh, zero days in the office is the dark blue with our fully remote folks. Three days in the office right there in the middle, uh, are are the shown next with slightly lighter and then fully onsite folks are those who are onsite five days a week in the office five days a week, and they are having the worst time of all. This is one of the most consistent findings as I was doing some of the data mining and spelunking that I enjoy doing. Uh, I couldn't find anything more consistent than this, really for employees that work with global teams, global customers and vendors, there's really not going to be a one size fits all approach to remote work and flexibility policies, but let's call it these rigid five day a week in the office isn't really meeting employees where they are or where they want to be. It's true that there are some job families that may not really have a remote work option unless we start getting really, really creative. But if you told me maybe just a few years ago that AI would be doing some of the things in the workplace that it's doing today, I might have thought you were describing science fiction. The opportunity to be creative with flexibility in the workplace where you get your work done, uh, is probably going to continue to evolve, hopefully way past the pandemic times. But as we focus in a little bit more, uh, the group with the lowest results are the fully onsite folks. As our Qualtrics trends think Tank Group was discussing these findings, there were a lot of great points about how flexible and remote working policies can increase accessibility and inclusion, as well as things like engagement and intent to stay, uh, since the pandemic allowed a lot of us to see how these work in real life to experience some of that flexibility despite other, other hardships and setbacks. There are some interesting counterpoints. People aren't really always able to predict with the greatest accuracy what they want before they're getting it. So sometimes in employee feedback, we see that people say they want a fully remote experience all the time a hundred percent of the time. But it's interesting to me that that's not the group with the highest results. It's those with a blend of experiences, at least a couple of days in the office, at least a couple of days remote, at least one day remote, uh, are reporting the highest level of the KPIs here. It could be for a number of reasons. You know, being able to socialize and collaborate in person, um, having better pronounced boundaries between work and, uh, your actual personal life for some of that, uh, work life integration or just simple variety, uh, you know, having a purpose, getting up, getting dressed, going out of your house and, and seeing people in the sunshine, hopefully. But if you're in an organization that's gone full five day return to office, hopefully these trend findings can hint at a few good ways to enable some greater flexibility for greater inclusion, greater equity, and some higher levels of engagement and intent to stay. Just providing a hybrid schedule is not enough. We actually have to turn some of that policy into psychological contracts and norms. If it's not one size fits all. We need guidelines for leaders and for managers to work within to meet people where they are and keep the focus on that equitable application of rules and policies. Having a policy that speaks to flexibility doesn't have the same impact if your leaders and managers aren't bringing it to life, if they're not modeling and encouraging those employees to take advantage of the flexibility, how they can bring it to life for themselves. Trusting employees to use these policies respectfully also goes a long way towards building loyalty and mutual trust. And we do see a lot of trust erosion across different markets and regions in our data. Making your policies encourage curiosity and self-reflection on both sides of the equation. What did I think before this and what do I think now that I've been practicing it? These are very growth mindset oriented behaviors and norms. Uh, social norms like these sometimes happen organically by people experimenting and other people sharing what worked for them. Sometimes they happen inorganically through formal policies. Uh, have ways in your organization to recognize and reward both kinds of norm forming and these flexibility behaviors. And hopefully you'll, you'll see some improvement in whatever kind of results or whatever kind of flexibility you have today. Uh, we're not quite ready to go home yet, even though we've just been talking about remote work. So we have some lessons learned and some practical tips that Matt's gonna take us home with. Excellent. Marcus, I love that idea that you just shared around, uh, sharing what is working for individual organizations. You know, I know that many of the folks on this call are, uh, HR leaders, and in some cases, we, uh, may not have all of the authority and the budget and the, uh, and the autonomy that we want, uh, in order to drive the employee experiences that we know are so important to people. That idea of facilitating conversation across the organization, uh, to help folks learn from each other is certainly something that's, uh, that, that, that all of us could do, and all of us should challenge ourselves to. Um, and look, we know also that, uh, it, that creating outstanding employee experiences is not something that's done in a bubble. It, it, it really does take a village. So we did wanna leave you a few thoughts on how you can support your organizations. Like ex expectations have increased for employees, but I would say employee experience investments are coming under more and more scrutiny. So how can you partner with leaders in your organization to make the case for ex improvements, uh, and to support leaders, um, when it comes to the CEOs and business leaders, um, help those folks emulate behaviors that you want the organization to embody. Now, we talked quite a bit about, uh, AI tools. We talked quite a bit around, uh, office policy. You know, whether it's using those tools, whether it's showing up to the office, whether it's broadcasting, the actions that are being taken, uh, in response to a survey. Leadership behaviors drive culture, helping leaders understand this and supporting them, uh, as they enact behavioral change across the organization is absolutely something that we can do next. I would say that CHROs, uh, in 2023 and going into 2024 are under, uh, constant pressure to really help demonstrate the business impact of, of employee experience investments. And whether these are impacts related to financial metrics. Uh, customer metrics like customer experience and csap, uh, reduced attrition, uh, voluntary turnover of high performing staff. Uh, better customer experiences provide these folks with the justification they need, uh, for their ex investments. So when it comes to requesting budget and when it comes to getting executive support around the things that HR leaders want to do, uh, as a department, you have the support of the business to make that happen. Uh, and then lastly, I'll talk about managers. You know, you know, as a manager, uh, I'm faced with a constant battle between trying to generate results, uh, and also trying to deliver the best possible experiences with, with my global team. You know, what is helpful to me and what is helpful to managers is to really provide them with the insights and support they need to do what they wanna do, which is really to quickly understand the experiences of their employees and providing them with the support and the tools that they need to act. Uh, one of the things that we identify, and one of the things that we have learned in years of experience researching the needs of managers when it comes to employee experiences, is that the more that we can place things and the more that we can provide, uh, the more that we can provide support and tools and processes that fit in with what managers are already doing, uh, that is going to be most impactful and most adopted by them. I've never once, uh, in my entire career of working with companies heard from a manager that they don't care about the experience that they are delivering to their employees. Not at all. What they do want is that, uh, what they do want is to know that the efforts that they are taking, one, don't take away from driving business results. Two, are going to actually do something to make the lives of their employees better. And then three, aren't taking away from their time focused on other efforts. So that manager population is so important in driving employee experience, which is why harp on it so much here. And with that, uh, I believe we have had some questions, uh, come through. Thanks very much for all of your, uh, attention through that conversation. We love talking about this. Uh, we really, uh, and thank you very much for sticking around with us. All right, welcome back everyone. Thank you for listening in and also dealing with the blurriness. If it was coming through on your end as, uh, not able to read it, we have the report shared. We'll share it again in the chat here as well. And then I can also pull it up if you do have any questions that you would like us to kind of dig into a little bit more, you know, specific slides or stats, let us know in the chat right now 'cause we have Matt here with us and we're gonna dig into these things. One last item here before we start to kind of, uh, share some of the questions that came through in the chat on our end that we're gonna dig into. I did share the report link again in the chat. You can also see the code for Sherman H-R-C-H-R-C-I there as well. And then also, uh, Matt and Marcus's LinkedIns to connect with them afterwards to kind of continue pestering them with more questions directly online on LinkedIn. So, all right. Well, Matt, thank you so much for leading that conversation and really sharing some of these insights from the report. Um, really appreciate you also being here to kind of dig into some of these things. And one of the questions that, you know, came through from the audience that I would love to get your perspective on, just because AI is obviously at the forefront of trends and things that have become mainstream, and there's so many, many different ways that organizations are trying to figure out how to incorporate this into their operations or employee experience. And you talked a lot about trust as well in, in the report on that being kind of like a foundational element to, uh, organizations being able to embrace ai. So can you maybe talk a little bit about that a little bit more? Like how big of a factor is trust when it comes to things like AI tools or some of the passive listening kind of strategies that you shared? Yeah, I think that that's a really good question. And, and I would say in a word, massive. And it's really that case with any type of new technology or new process that a business attempts to get its employees to, uh, adopt. Like if I trust my leadership and I trust my organization, I will view things coming my way through a positive paradigm if I view my organization and my leadership negatively. If I don't trust them, if I don't think that they have my best interests in mind, and you send me a tool, whether it's an AI tool, uh, or rather, rather it's any type of work tool, I'm, I'm going to view that, uh, at best, uh, with a, nah, this is just another thing from the organization. Uh, it'll, this too shall pass. Or at worst, particularly when we're talking about ai, I, I'm going to immediately go to a place where I become concerned with my own data privacy. I'm going to become concerned with monitoring, and I will flat out reject that thing that is coming my way. And I will speak about it in a way, uh, to those who are around me in a, in a, in a way that makes them not want to adopt either. This is one of the reasons why I think employee experience is so critical when it comes to, uh, when it comes to the future success of business. I, I wholeheartedly believe that organizations that are able to make effective use of AI tools are going to be those that are going to win, uh, in the coming years. If I'm not providing my employees with an experience that makes them trust me, uh, and that makes them trust that the organization is putting things in front of them, that areena going to enable them and the organization to be successful, they're not going to adopt. And those organizations are unfortunately going to be left behind. Yeah, yeah. There's kind of that element of do I trust that organizations investing in these tools to enable me to thrive here versus replace me or manage me, or kind of have some more of that negative paradigm that you talk about. So it is interesting to think about, right? Like if you are having challenges having these conversations internally at your organization, or you're getting resistance on some of these technologies or tools, it might come from a lack of that foundation of trust at, at its essence that you may need to work on before you can start to transform and build your business further. Okay? Absolutely. We have another co, uh, question here. Um, and we see some more coming in this, in the chat, so this is great. We'll get in those, but I wanna ask this next one around the honeymoon phase that was talked about and kind of some of those elements related to onboarding. Uh, it's such an interesting kind of reality of, of and challenge, especially as new hires make decisions within the first 1, 3, 6 months of starting at a company, they might already be searching for a new position and role, right? So how can we bring back maybe some of that honeymoon phase and, uh, what used to cause that, or what does this tell us about onboarding today? Yeah, I wish I could say that this was going to be a definitive yes that we could bring back what I would say are the good old days of, of 5, 10, 20 years ago when somebody fresh faced coming in the office doors for the first time was like, yes, this is the best experience of my life. I love this place and I love everyone, uh, around me. I'm going to be here forever and ever and ever. Uh, unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be quite that easy. So some, a number of things have changed and, and here a few of them that, that I see. One is that, first I think the stigma of job hopping has diminished, uh, to an extent. Um, you know, I took a few years off in my career, uh, in between consulting and, and coming to work at Qualtrics where I worked as a career advisor in a top MBA program, helping folks pursue careers in consulting, strategy and tech. And one of the things that I used to really worry about when looking at resumes or when counseling folks on what they were going to do for their next job was, uh, to figure out how to address some of these positions where they may have been at for just a year or 18 months, or if they were taking a new position, uh, and they weren't really in love with it. And, and we're thinking about moving on to the next thing quickly, that that wasn't a good thing. I think in the last, just five years since I've been doing that, where that that has really diminished. I, I see it when even at Qualtrics, we're bringing in folks and that's becoming less of an issue. I, I see it when I speak with HR leaders and I talk to them about what is it that makes candidates more attractive, uh, than others. You know, having a somewhat of a scattered job history has become more accepted and I think more, uh, accepted from the lens that this is now how people largely advance their, their careers, particularly in project or innovation forward industries like technology and things of, uh, uh, of that nature. Uh, the second thing that I would say is that the cost of job switching in many functions, and in many industries right now are very low, uh, with an unemployment rate in the United States that is still hovering right around 3.7% or 3.8%. Uh, it's not all that hard to find a new job. Uh, as, as I'm sure many of you know, particularly those of you who may have large populations working in, uh, front lines or in, uh, the trades or in, uh, clinical healthcare positions. Uh, these are jobs that are quite difficult to fill. And so those folks who are in these positions may not have a very difficult time moving. And then the third I think I would say is that, uh, look, when I looked at my, when I look at my LinkedIn feed, nobody's talking, I shouldn't say nobody. Most people aren't talking about how they dislike their current company or they dislike their job. They're putting their external, uh, broadcasting, uh, view on their job for the world. And that as you scroll and you read and you read about how everybody, uh, in the known, in the known universe is having a great time at work, it makes me think, huh, if I'm having a few bad days in a row, there's other things that are out there for me. And so what can be done, uh, uh, I ask myself when I talk to folks about this, you know, I think the first thing is that rethinking the onboarding experience, not just from day zero or from day one, but like from day negative 21 from the second that offer is accepted. What can we do to create specific moments that make people feel like they work in a special organization? What are those points even in remote or hybrid, uh, environments where we can create points of connection with the organization, its purpose, uh, and those folks who are, uh, around new hires that are going to make that organization want us want to stick and get them to turn off that darned, uh, open to work button on LinkedIn. Well, there's your playbook. I mean, uh, there you go. Those are all very actionable strategies that I think all of you should definitely consider. And, um, even to what Jacqueline's, uh, comment here on like, yeah, exactly what you said, that social media's influence LinkedIn's, um, you know, the posting, everyone's celebrating and, and companies are getting much better at leveraging internal brand ambassadors to really promote the brand and the culture and the company. It's, it can be really appealing that like, oh, the grass is always greener somewhere else. Like there might be always something better that I can get than I'm, than I have right now. So how do you flip that paradigm and, and make people excited about the current state that they're in and the, the organization that they're with. So, um, we are at the hour though, so as much as I would love to continue having this conversation with Matthew and all of you joining us today, we are gonna cut it out at this point. Thank you so much for joining us for today's program. I'm gonna reshare the report in the chat here. Again, make sure you download that has all the insights and statistics that we reviewed today. So you can continue to revisit that, share that with your leadership teams internally, claim your credits, and then also connect with Matt and Marcus as well. Um, if you have more questions, I'm sure they'd be happy to chat, uh, online with you. So thank you so much everyone. Have a great rest of your evening and we hope to see you again at our next program. Thank you so much.

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