Beyond KPIs: What’s The Value Of Treating Your Workforce Like Valued Customers?

• It is important that future work leaders consider tailoring employee experiences not only through skills and accreditation but also deeper into what the employee will value based on their job function.
• Employees who receive valuable training and growth opportunities are likely to maintain appreciation for their employer and speak positively about their time spent at their previous job, contributing to the company’s reputation even after they are no longer on payroll.
• The future of work necessitates that employers consider the duration of their soon-to-be employees’ engagement with the company long before they start looking for a candidate.

There is no question that employees are valuable assets to employers. Large employers use a variety of human capital, employee driven metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the healthiness of their workforce. 

Employee experience, engagement, and satisfaction have always been a priority for corporate leaders. It is generally agreed that a healthy and happy workforce leads to a higher performing business, directly leading to better financial performance. However, in the digital age and in the financial industry, more can be gained by taking the next step and thinking beyond the typical KPIs and metrics presented by business literature. 

A research study conducted by Harvard Business School analyzed 12,000 daily work diaries and identified that the main reason behind employees feeling worse about their jobs is that managers do not know how to show them that they are valued. Based on this, business owners and human capital executives should think of employees as customers of the work experience.

What does it mean to treat employees like customers?

To break down this idea, one must first consider that the primary motivation why employees go to work revolves around financial stability, independence, personal growth opportunities, and building relationships. If we are to agree that employees are customers of the work experience, and if we are to agree that the customer is generally always right, this necessitates an alignment between the employee’s perception or gain of these factors as provided by the employer. Another very important element of the employee experience which relates to the future of work is how employees engage in a digital way as working from home becomes more prevalent.

In developing an understanding and framework of how employees can be customers of the work experience, we need to consider industries (whether related to finance or not) such as manufacturing, e-commerce, technology, and media, as well as how employee experiences based on these business models of each industry will necessarily change and therefore, change the objectives of the employer and how they provide the employee the ultimate and most competitive experience.

In the future of work, a company should consider tailoring the work experience for its employees just as a business would consider tailored products for its customers. Employers wishing to exemplify best practices for the future of work should consider how employees would communicate the value of the experiences they have received to other potential employees —  similar to a net promoter score and how companies measure their customers’ communication of value to other potential customers. 

The second consideration is important because it forces the employer to think about the employee experience lifecycle. This includes the recruitment and onboarding process, the ongoing training and support during employment, and even post-employment engagement. This expanded timeline of cognition for the employee’s experience, beyond simply when they clock in and out or when they are hired and when they are off boarded, creates an important set of factors that are relevant in the future of work.

First, a tailored employee experience ties back to the industries and the business models that necessitate how a business makes money. It is important that future work leaders consider tailoring employee experiences not only through skills and accreditation but also deeper into what the employee will value based on their job function. 

Employees in service jobs for labor-driven economies will value safety in working conditions more than an employee with a desk job who’s not exposed to UV rays all day. One of the Rockefellers’ foundations reported that the increasing intensity of heat waves is resulting in substantial productivity and economic losses for the U.S. 

Service laborers that are exposed to heat waves all day will value a company picnic outside differently and perhaps less than the employee who spends their day in front of a computer. This very simple anecdotal example shows how a tailored employee experience for outside workers should be more safety driven whereas inside workers might appreciate an adventurous experience.

Timeline plays a crucial aspect concerning employees as customers of the work experience. Investing in employee training can create a lasting positive impression. Employees who receive valuable training and growth opportunities are likely to maintain appreciation for their employer and speak positively about their time spent at their previous job, contributing to the company’s reputation even after they are no longer on payroll. Targeting potential employees based on their needs would require a different analytical approach allowing employers to market and convey their value proposition.

Just as in the customer example, if your company sells rain boots, you should be able to communicate your value to your customers when they are thinking about needing rain boots and you are going to want to market to people who live in rainy climates.

Creating customers of the finance work experience

Thinking of highly specialized roles such as algorithmic trading and quantitative finance positions (commonly found on Wall Street or in any global hedge fund), the potential customers of the employee experience are aggregated in unique communities across the world, which might include PhD programs, alumni programs, established quantitative hedge funds, and even existing or unique social media accounts. 

Currently, the predominant approach to target these technical roles is to take advantage of career fairs, post about job opportunities online, and conduct occasional webinars or informational sessions aimed at the specialized technical audience. However, this strategy is always based on a very specific hiring need and hiring cycle. 

The future of work necessitates that employers consider the duration of their soon-to-be employees’ engagement with the company long before they start looking for a candidate. This approach allows employers to provide the most competitive experience possible and nostalgic value-added information to the employees after they leave the job so that they continue to remark on their positive experience. 

It is worth noting that large companies are very good at maintaining this positive experience narrative even after employees leave the job, especially on social media and other online platforms. This strategy is the same for a customer — you want the customer to be positively engaging with your content even if they are not actively buying your product.

Employers need to consider how employees can be customers of the work experience in both the digital and offline categories tailored experiences based on specific job roles whether they be in finance or in labor economies as well as finding ways to communicate with employees or potential employees well before they are entering the hiring cycle is an essential step.