The Employee Experience Manifesto: Unlocking the Talent inside Your Organization | Samantha Gadd
Nov 26, 2024
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Samantha Gadd, a seasoned business leader and founder of Humankind, discusses her journey from traditional HR to a focus on employee experience (EX). She shares insights on the importance of nurturing talent and redefining success metrics through the EX Manifesto. The conversation explores how effective leadership and a human-centered approach can transform workplace culture. Gadd emphasizes the need for organizations to adapt to the gig economy and prioritize employee well-being, ultimately unlocking potential for both personal and organizational growth.
Samantha Gadd's transition from HR to employee experience highlights the need for modern, human-centered approaches in organizational change.
The EX Manifesto emphasizes principles for enhancing employee engagement and culture, advocating for meaningful interactions within workplaces.
Investing in employee experience, despite initial challenges in measurement, ultimately leads to significant long-term business benefits and enhanced well-being.
Deep dives
The Importance of Employee Experience Design
Everyone possesses talent, and the key to fostering a successful workplace lies in recognizing and unlocking this potential rather than solely competing for a limited pool of top talent. Employee experience design focuses on cultivating an environment where all individuals can thrive and contribute meaningfully. Samantha Gad emphasizes that organizations should prioritize enhancing the experiences of their employees to drive engagement and productivity. This perspective challenges traditional HR practices that often overlook the inherent abilities within all team members.
The Journey from HR to Employee Experience
Samantha Gad transitioned from a human resources background to founding Humankind, a consultancy dedicated to human-centered workplaces. Frustrated by conventional HR approaches that often neglected employee perspectives, she embraced employee experience as a more effective means of creating organizational change. By drawing inspiration from customer experience design, she established frameworks to enhance employee engagement and well-being. This transition highlights the need for HR professionals to evolve and adapt to more modern, design-led methodologies to address the complexities of employee experience.
The Employee Experience Manifesto
The EX Manifesto is a collaborative document that outlines essential principles for redefining employee experience, aiming to create a global commitment to better engagement strategies. It articulates how employee experience shapes workplace culture, emphasizing that leaders must prioritize creating meaningful employee interactions. This manifesto has garnered support from leaders in over thirty countries, reflecting a growing recognition of the importance of putting employees at the center of organizational strategies. By focusing on these guiding principles, businesses can work toward enhancing overall workplace satisfaction and performance.
Investing in Employee Experience
Many organizations struggle to justify investments in employee experience due to the difficulty in demonstrating immediate business impact. Short-term profit-driven mindsets often overshadow the long-term benefits of fostering a supportive workplace. Despite these challenges, research reveals that investing in employee experience can result in significant returns over time, emphasizing the necessity of reshaping perceptions among leadership. To champion this change, employees tasked with leading these initiatives must strengthen their influencing skills and articulate the value of well-designed employee experiences.
Shifting Perspectives on Work
The idea that work can be enriching rather than merely extractive is fundamental to transforming organizational culture. Samantha advocates for a shift from competing for talent to unlocking the potential of existing employees, fostering an environment conducive to growth and creativity. Additionally, the perspective that employees should be prioritized over customers underscores the importance of addressing employee needs first to better serve customers and drive organizational success. By adopting this new mindset, organizations can experience more profound change and improve overall well-being within the workforce.
When Samantha Gadd began her career in HR, she quickly noticed traditional HR processes and practices often overlooked the people they were meant to serve. Struggling to find the “human” in human resources, Samantha took a leap of faith and founded Humankind, an organization dedicated to putting humanity at the center of work.
Today, Humankind is New Zealand’s leading HR and employee experience (EX) consultancy, partnering with over 1,200 organizations to create more human-centered workplaces that prioritize employee well-being and drive business success.
Samantha Gadd is a seasoned business leader and expert in employee experience (EX) with over a decade of industry expertise. She is the founder and CEO of Excellent and Founder and Director of Humankind.
In this episode, Dart and Samantha discuss: - Samantha’s journey from HR to EX - Who buys into EX in organizations - The origin and principles of the EX Manifesto - Links between workplace culture and employer brand - The EX Design School curriculum - Values of EX that reframe success metrics - The PREP model: purpose, relationship, enabling, and performance - Who is best suited for the EX curriculum - And other topics…
Samantha Gadd is a seasoned business leader and expert in employee experience (EX) with over a decade of industry expertise. She is the founder and CEO of Excellent, an organization dedicated to transforming how organizations approach EX. She is also the Founder and Director of Humankind, New Zealand’s leading HR and EX consultancy which has collaborated with over 1,000 organizations to design impactful employee experiences.
As an EX expert, Samantha has spent over a decade helping high-profile clients transform workplace environments to enhance employee engagement and well-being. In 2022, she also led a group of 34 contributors to co-author The EX Manifesto, which defines key principles of EX design. Signed by leaders in over 30 countries, this document represents a global commitment to reimagining employee engagement and well-being.
Work with Dart: Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.
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