How Siemens is Shaping the ‘New Possible’ Through People Experience
In this episode, we are joined by Tobias Dennehy, Head of People Experience at Siemens.
Tobias underscores the criticality of paying attention to employee feedback and utilizing data to spot problem areas. He advocates for a proactive, tailored approach to addressing these issues, rather than fixing non-problematic aspects, which he sees as key to enhancing employee experience. Tobias also emphasizes the role of 'action squads' that are in charge of addressing identified issues and closing the feedback loop with employees, informing them about how their input has been instrumental in fostering improvements.
Episode Highlights:
The crucial role of employee experience in the modern work environment and the key factors that influence it.
The impact of leadership in shaping the employee experience
And the tactics to guarantee a positive experience in a remote environment?
Recommended Resources
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Learn more about Siemens
Learn how to cultivate more future-minded leadership across your entire organization in the full Winter Insights Report from BetterUp Labs.
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Chris Rainey 0:00
Why is employee experience so important, especially in today's working environment,
Tobias 0:03
I mean, I would say, has always been important that we were able to ignore it. You know, the market was different, the talent market was different. And also for a company like Siemens, when I started, it was like, you can be happy to join the company, put this on your CV, and you will put up with any, maybe not perfect experience in your onboarding, because you could have seen it. I don't know if it's like that, Google or Tesla, or Apple these days, but now, and now it's you turn around Ireland. So you need to, you need to make sure that people have a good experience before they join when they join. And then while they're while they're actually in the company. So I think that the pandemic led us to the necessity to listen, it's kind of if we don't listen, that people will leave. And it's also changing generation. I mean, I have kids that have different expectations to their workplace than I did when I was when I when I graduated from school and you know, really need to make sure not to lose those talents to another company, because it's just, you know, the, the ominous water talent is going on, it's always been going on, but it's raging even more. So I think it's it's kind of a necessity, but it can also turn your place into a better place to work for everybody.
Chris Rainey 1:28
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the HR leaders podcast, and today's episode, I'm joined by Tobias Dennehy, who's a singer, songwriter and head of people experience at Siemens. During episode Tobias talks about the crucial role of employee experience in the modern work environment, and the key factors that influence it. It talks about the impact of leadership in shaping employee experience, and the tactics that guarantee a positive experience in a remote work environment. Tobias, welcome to the show. How are you my friend?
Tobias 1:57
I'm fine. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Chris Rainey 1:59
How's the view from Harvey Spectres office?
Tobias 2:01
It's just great. As always, I'm just looking at Sam looking at all of my record collection. Colin Don owner in a second to bring
Chris Rainey 2:11
Yeah, for those that are listening on audio devices background is that the background of Harvey Spectres office from suits, which is always hilarious, I bet you positioned it perfectly where it's kind of looks a bit, it looks real, you're gonna die. Have to say that it's still the whole episode.
Tobias 2:32
backache after the podcast? Yeah.
Chris Rainey 2:35
Before we jump in and tell everyone a little bit more about you, personally, and your journey to where we are now, you didn't have the most traditional from what I saw. Looking at your background on LinkedIn.
Tobias 2:47
Yeah, I mean, depending on what traditional is, I mean, I think things are changing rapidly. Who into you know, what, what is the right way to go? And yeah, I mean, I my journey so far, I don't know if you'd call it a career. I think also the definition of careers changing everything. Used to be I don't know, you know, the old 80 song from Yazoo The only way is up? Yeah, that's kind of the traditional way, probably you were thinking of, you know, you start somewhere and you know, up in the bigger boxes, the more successful you are. So I was more like, after looking back, what I've been doing for many years, I borrowed the term crab walk from, from good Degrassi famous German, German, also from the tyndrum, you might know. And basically he, that's how he looked back on his life. And so in case it's not always one direction, but you go to the side, you learn something here where you didn't think you would see it, and then you go in that direction again. So it's kind of this walking route. And that's, that's basically where my path has been so far. So I started off as a journalist. That's what basically what I was at school. So working for a newspaper, traditionally writing stuff and taking pictures and then studied journalism and German literature. Way back in the days last millennium. And yeah, then basically made some steps from from the from journalists to the evil side of power to PR. Journalists and my fellow students considered it that way. And doing some PR worked in an agency on the.com, boom times online agency and giant Siemens, also a longtime in the, in the digital communications area of digital marketing and then moved a lot into into storytelling. Because that was kind of my passion always has been in the kind of connected after a couple of years. Hey, stuttering literature wasn't completely useless or just fun. It's actually there's some analogies to business life, you know, went into the business storytelling stuff was fun. Soon enough to, you know, spread this virus within within the company seems as well did some freelance stuff on the side consulting, whatever. And I've been always someone who wanted to change whatever they do every couple of years. So, yeah, and then suddenly, it was one of those points, which is coming next, what's coming next Yeah. And then it's either I'm going to leave the company, or I'm going to do some be self employed, or maybe there's a new opportunity within the company. And the last time that happened, and suddenly, I was government affairs representative for Siemens, for Asia Pacific. I had never, ever even heard of, let alone qualify. But that's a good thing about a company like Siemens, you can just try things and you know, get onto the job. And then suddenly, I was up in suit and tie and giving in, you know, business cards with two hands to Chinese ministers or not ministers, I'm not allowed to see them make use of whatever. And yeah, so that was an exciting couple of years spending in Asia and with with Asian colleagues here. Yeah, man, again, couple of years were over. And I thought, you know, what's, what's next. And then I thought about, you know, diving into the HR field, where again, then there was a job offering or a new job, which at least at that time for Siemens was new, it was new in the industry, which was called head of employee experience. How did
Chris Rainey 6:22
you find that? Was it like, within your internal marketplace that you could that came up to someone come to you directly? Just out of curiosity? I'm always interested to hear
Tobias 6:29
Yeah, it's, it's a combination of both. Most of the times the interesting stuff you definitely get pinged towards by somebody who knows, you said, You know what, I've seen this, this might be interesting for you. So I didn't have it on the radar at all to HR. But then I saw this and I thought, a it's interesting, because it's a new upcoming topic. And I've always been in favour of, you know, bringing new topics into the organisation, which people don't know yet. And try to, you know, it's hard because you have to, you know, educate them and say, You know what, this is not just another fad, it's, maybe it's really something good, let's do it. And it takes some time to build it up. But that's what I found really exciting about the topic. And then there was also for me, there's a lot of connection to storytelling. stuff. So the Everyday Stories our people are experiencing, that's basically what I'm trying to listen to every day, I applied, and I was lucky enough to get the job, and then two years, but
Chris Rainey 7:22
it's since the beginning, how do you describe like, for someone new to this space? How do you describe your job,
Tobias 7:28
I always say, try to explain the way my grandmother would understand it, but she's not around anymore. So I can't do that. I mean, my main ambition and job is to listen. And in order to be able to do this, and it's not that I'm talking to every of the 300,000 people think it's more, you know, use infrastructure like surveys and data and dashboards and stuff like that, in order to gather responses, and what people have to say about their everyday experiences. Basically, on a technical term, I make sure that we get the right answers from our people to understand what they expect from work every day, which means surveys. So we regularly you know, continuously survey, already a couple of very crucial experiences or moments that matter, as they say. But also look, you know, looking into not not too many of those, but you know, context sensitive, so they, the surveys are not just a nuisance, but maybe a little bit irrelevant into your context where you are right now, then basically make sure that the the data gets gathered in a dashboard, that people who are not that data savvy can also understand what it tells you and then ideally, identifying pain points and leading that to action and improving experiences for the future. That's kind of Yeah, and then I'll tell what, and when not when not by far have we covered the whole people journey yet.
Chris Rainey 8:57
Again, you kind of also you came into this role, a very interesting time, where work, its work itself was fundamentally shifting, due to the pandemic, you know, like it was obviously this was an important topic beforehand, but it kind of it has been accelerated. Why is employee experience so important, especially in today's working environment,
Tobias 9:19
I mean, I would say, has always been important that we were able to ignore it. You know, the market was different, the talent market was different. And also for companies like Siemens, when I started it was like, you can be happy to join the company, put this on your CV, and you will put up with any, maybe not perfect experience in your onboarding because for Siemens, I don't know if it's like that. Google or Tesla, or Apple these days, but now, and now it's your turn around Ireland. So you need to you need to make sure that people have a good experience before they join when they join. And then while they're while they're actually in the company. So I think But the pandemic led us to the necessity to listen, it's kind of if we don't listen to people will leave. And it's also changing generation. I mean, I have kids that have different expectations to their workplace than I did when I was. So now when I graduated from school and you know, really need to make sure not to lose those talents to another company, because it's just, you know, the, the ominous war for talent is going on, it's always been going on, but it's raging even more. So I think it's kind of a necessity, but it can also turn your place into a better place to work for everybody. And it's not I mean, it's not necessarily that it's always a good thing to keep people, the whole company. And it's also that different countries, different mentalities and US people are much more into changing jobs regularly than in Germany. So, so it's also looking at it from a from from very regional cultural perspectives. And having not one fits all solution, but at least getting the basis for knowing what people expect. And I think that's why we chose not to have like, once a year, a big baseline survey around onboarding or whatever, but really have it into a continuous flow. So we can also build up some kind of a radar
Chris Rainey 11:17
data, how often you how often you're going out there,
Tobias 11:20
every time that it happens. So basically, the moments we survey, we have a trigger point in the system, and we know it's happened. First day is a good example. First day plus seven, every new hire around the world gets a short survey asking them you know, I was prepared to begin for your job, first day and all that. So it's kind of in the context or in the moment that people are in, that's when they get the survey. Yeah, so that's kind of and that's also the whole idea of, you know, predictive experience management if you want. So kind of over time, it's not only looking back, oh, shit, now we understand what went wrong. I think it's maybe also now we understand why they left or maybe if we change the experiences, we can prevent this happening,
Chris Rainey 12:04
or after two years, and of doing this, and many, many, I'm sure surveys and conversations along the way. You know, what would you say are some of the key factors that influence the employee experience,
Tobias 12:16
because I think the key moments are, in one way, clearly defined, also, you know, by the industry within recruiting, onboarding of places a couple of moments that are clearly moments that matter. And that's the ones you need to capture. But then talk to also people from other companies, quite a number, have employee experienced teams, some of them actually create experiences, or kind of create a great onboarding app. So everybody has a great experience, but without listening. So it's kind of this thing that we were also always good at being engineers building the best stuff out there. Yeah. And then being surprised where people don't like it. Because maybe if you listen, first, you know, what they want? And what they don't want the custom tailor a little. So I think the most important factor is actually to, to have listened and then seeing what are the expectations people are having and are happy about. Which not and then kind of build fill those gaps and not fix anything that's not broken? So there's often been initiatives, you know, we need a new
Chris Rainey 13:20
or whatever. Yeah, when
Tobias 13:22
do we. So it's, it's kind of putting, putting your efforts where it's actually needed. And that's kind of one of the, I think, most important factors before you even do anything. And then it's continuously listening. And I also think it's not, it's not good enough just to gather the data. Of course, a lot of my job is making things transparent, putting it in dashboards and explaining to people you know, what do they see? And what do they not see. And you know, but then the next step is the most important one, right, bringing it to action. And so I think an important factor is also to have kind of, if it's literal teams, or virtual teams, whoever does matter, action squads in place that actually then you know, take the old pain point XYZ. I'm going to work on this and make sure that it gets better, because maybe the third factor, and that's also something where we're not perfect at yet is to give a feedback channel to people wondering, you know, when they participate in surveys, and it's I mean, they get a number of surveys. Yeah. Also give them some feedback loop. So it kind of not only thank you for participating, but hey, so this is what one example. Yeah, this is what we're doing. We heard you were working on this, maybe then even you know, show some results a year later. So for me one binary example, at the beginning of COVID was when at least we started working with Microsoft Teams. And it wasn't the beginning was okayish. And then it got better and better. And they kind of recall them having, you know, like call outs on the top right saying, Hey, man, have you told us x y Zed? We've listened and now look up there is the button that you were asking for. It's kind of this job have kind of the idea of you know what we've been listening but working on it, and now we have it in there. Tell us if you'd like it. So it's kind of closing closing the loop. And sometimes the serving part is might feel like a one way street for people Yeah. Fitting in, and then nothing happens, at least nothing tangible.
Chris Rainey 15:17
Otherwise, you know, the next time you send one free to that, well, what's the point of me doing this I'm not hearing or seeing
Tobias 15:25
always, rightfully, also, management here is very cautious about survey fatigue, or over surveying, which I totally get. But I have the hypothesis that people are not survey fatigue, that there may be not action fatigue, in a way that it's not I mean, if I, if I, if I participate in one survey per week, that's 50, or 52, I'm not working every week, but so many surveys. But if every single one of them fosters some change, or I get feedback, say, hey, my voice was heard, and it's worth it, I wouldn't have a problem doing that. It's, it's better than having to a year and nothing happened. So I think it's kind of this. Yeah, this feedback loop that also needs to be
Chris Rainey 16:06
you mentioned leadership, what's the role of leadership and employee experience,
Tobias 16:10
when we look at the employee experience, what people experience fear, we look at different kinds of touch points that we asked for us as a human touch points, the digital ones and the physical ones. I think when it comes to the more emotional experiences, like sense of belonging, inclusion, all of this, you know, being recognised and all of that stuff that probably will not be done by a tool or an app or a website. It's something where leadership plays a key role. But also, I think it's something where you cannot just say, Hey, dear leadership, team, community times are changing, make sure that people have good experiences, they maybe don't know what the hell you're talking about now. So also kind of having them look at their peoples. I'm in that team, from this moment that matters perspective and say, you know, what, this is what they're actually going through. And you are in the responsibility always to make sure you understand how they experienced it to give them a good experience, because then, of course, they probably will be better, perform better and be more efficient, whatever. So I think it's a, it's a, it's a key role they're playing in certain listening. So it's, it's a lot about communication and listening to your people specifically in, in these hybrid times, when somebody comes on board, whether it's a new hire from somewhere else from another team, or you, as a manager, you know, suddenly take over a new team. How do you make sure that turns into a team? I think it's a lot about, you know, listening and serious. So yeah, I think it's a key, a key element into those more emotional moments. So
Chris Rainey 17:53
if I can imagine why most people's employee experiences is massively impacted by their line manager, because you always hear you Oh, wait, what's that? What's this? What's that saying? We always hear like, people don't leave companies, they leave bad managers, something along those lines, right? Yeah. Do you do agree with that?
Tobias 18:09
Yeah, of course. Because I think setting the scene setting the tone, that's what a manager of a team does are basically, do we have a trustful working environment? Or is this he or she a control freak? Plus you whatever do they? Do they really seem to care about you know, when you when you say no, not feeling that good today? Is it? So it's a lot about how does the manager act or react to things to things that are happening? And maybe that's just from my personal experience, teams have become even, we've always been an international company. So there's always been team members, which are not in the same location? Yeah. We are in terms of you know, you used to be the office everyday with your whole team, but have become even more extreme than people are. Now. Also, they might not be that far away, but they work remote anyway. So my boss, for example, doesn't live in the same city. And so how do you think that that has also changed? I think the the influence of the manager on your everyday experience has changed, I wouldn't say decrease. But I mean, I remember I always open your office every day with the team and the boss. Yeah. But there was much more interaction and many things. Also smaller things he or she did had an effect on you. Now half of the time process don't seem but that could also mean make those fewer encounters that you have even more relevant, just as relevant as he used to be. But it's changed completely. For example, I mean, what I think is so important, even though it might only steal your time is that if you have a team's meeting for half an hour, why not spend the first five minutes on chatting? Yeah, never did I at least I noticed that 80% of the meetings there are on point and on topic, and let's you know, let's do it. only have 25 minutes. And that's something in the office you mostly never did you were there five minutes before maybe in front of the room getting a copy and chatting. And that's something I think awesome leader can deliberately inform you to, to change or with whatever second websites that can be a little tedious at times.
Chris Rainey 20:21
On that point, what are some of the strategies and things you and the team have done to improve the remote experience?
Tobias 20:28
So we actually we were having a, the bigger department we're having actually workshop of those people, at least who were in the vicinity of the headquarter here and just thinking about how are we going to move forward? How are we going to, we're going to go to the office every one one day, per week? How are we going to? Are we going to do it flexibly, whatever. And then in the end, from a department perspective, it was pretty clear that it needs to be individual. So every team within the department say no one will, we work differently, whatever, there's not a one fits all. So that's when you drill down to our team. And since the team was within Germany, but it's you know, not not in the same place, so we wouldn't get the chance to have a team day. So that was that was the question. You wouldn't travel just five kilometres just for one day. Yeah. So it's more like having the regular digital touchpoints those people in Munich where I am, we tried to, you know, meet on the same day just to meet up and you know, catch up for lunch or whatever. And then it's basically that my boss, for example, every second week, he spends a couple of days here deliberately, we are here. So we meet once a quarter we meet for longer workshops, okay, this is, you know, let's just, it's not only work, but it's also some casual stuff, going to dinner, going to bowling or whatever, just to have some fun in the afternoon. But maybe in the morning, just say that refining your strategy, and what are we working on. So we don't need to talk about what you're working on every day. But it's more like, let's let's have a perspective for the next next year or whatever. So it's kind of a mixture of having a more or less casual, kind of the thing that at least for our team and works very well, because nobody feels like, you know, restrained or, you know, forced to do anything that doesn't really also fit into the submitted changed, work. prior work. Not work life integration, it's more than work life balance. Yeah. It's kind of integrating the two of them, or them blending into one. And
Chris Rainey 22:21
so you basically, team by team, so you've kind of let every individual team decide how they work. At least that's how we
Tobias 22:29
in the department here within? Yeah, too big a department chose to do it. Of course, that's up to every different business at Siemens to decide for them. So there's not not one
Chris Rainey 22:42
policy? Do you have a policy specific? Or do you have what is the work in a remote work policies?
Tobias 22:47
I mean, the guidance that was given out, I think there was just one or two months after COVID started, which was pretty distant was noticed, and pressor was pretty courageous at the time. So okay, as of now, two to three days home office is fine. It's not not a rule. But basically, of course, you can come
Chris Rainey 23:06
to the office again, it's not a policy, is it?
Tobias 23:09
Yeah, exactly. But that's also and that's also something that, you know, my reality might change this situation all the time. But at least it was the notion that very, very shortly after the pandemic started, things will never go back to the way they were before. So we're in this notion, kind of giving this framework of flexibility, that you were actually allowed to do it. Because in former days, the different jobs that I had, it was always dependent on the manager, you, yes, he or she trusts you that you were not just laying on the couch at home and movies, but actually working. And if they had that trust, it's fine to work from home tomorrow. And if they didn't, then you were not allowed to. This is kind of a guiding framework where also leaders cannot say any more, you have to come five days a week, because it's just, it needs to be possible to do it. Of course, you just can't do whatever you want. It needs to work with the job you need to do with the team, you're in whatever, you're
Chris Rainey 24:08
trusting people to make that decision. That's the culture as well.
Tobias 24:13
Exactly. Yeah. And I'm not as much as I'm not too big a fan of bullshit bingo, and you know, whatever high level messaging or company sometimes has, we do have some interesting focus topics that the company gave itself. strategic priorities when the current CEO took over, almost two years ago. And two of them are pretty obvious. The one is the customer impact. Of course, that's one you need to do if you work for a company like Siemens and the other one is technology technology with a purpose. It's also a development from just you know, doing the best possible than having a purpose for society, whatever, but the other two to have or are people topics? Yeah. And the one of them is growth mindset. So to really know enable the organisation through learning and development, I think, rather than also be talking about this is kind of one of the, as to how do we develop a growth mindset in the organisation. The other one is empowered people. And of course, it sounds like Yeah, everybody consent and everybody can put it on their on their PowerPoints. But I think that's what he was just meant to have example,
Chris Rainey 25:27
let people make this. Yeah, trust them. It's
Tobias 25:30
part of this. Yeah. How do how do I want to work? I mean, I'm, I'm a grown up. Yeah, so I, what my job is, and I actually get paid a salary and I'm prepared to work for it. So first people that they do it, and also trust them how they do it, and only if things go in a direction where they might be problematic or whatever, then, yeah, interfere, maybe with some guidance as a leader. I think disempowerment is a lot about, yeah, I trust you to make the right decision going.
Chris Rainey 26:00
And that must that massively shapes the employee experience, when you have sort
Tobias 26:04
of, so that's also when when you then look at the maybe the one or the other experience that I might be having every day is not perfect. If the rest of the general feeling that you have is good, then you basically, you ignore the fact that you know, reimbursing the travel expenses is not effortless? It's a lot of effort and really doesn't make you happy, but then you say no, whatever.
Chris Rainey 26:27
Yeah. And that's the thing, nothing's ever going to be completely perfect. And then and people have done no,
Tobias 26:32
because I mean, and that's also something I think we are learning and larger organisations are learning specifically, German engineer driven companies alone, you don't need to produce the perfect solution, before you actually put into the market. If it's an internal or external market doesn't matter. Yeah, but you're actually willing to, you know, put out an MVP, and listen to rate as you scale things, maybe do it, do it, do it run quickly, or whatever, just see now how does it because once you build the perfect solution, the world has already changed. And it's not perfect. It was perfect for yesterday. So it's kind of this being much more flexible. I mean, I don't like the word agile, because it's just so much used to us. But it's,
Chris Rainey 27:12
that's also something that hrs had an issue with in the past, for a lot for the longest time, they would never put anything out on this, it was perfect. And you they will take two to three years to build something. And to your point, by the time they have released it, it's already out of date. Whereas, you know, the pandemic proved that we could innovate and pivot quickly, we had you know, it, and even now, we're still learning and discussions constantly, we're going to evolve and adapt to individual people's needs, and organisational needs and societal needs, as well. So I've seen HR become a lot more bold, a lot more brief. And understand that we're gonna put, we're gonna put some, but we're gonna put it out, we're gonna listen, we're gonna learn, we're gonna take feedback, and then we're going to work that way.
Tobias 27:58
And I'm also I've always been a great fan. Also, when I was working in marketing, our storytelling, co create stuff. Yeah, sometimes we use tried to do that with stories of the time, videos, or whatever that was small stuff, but also in, in the HR people or organisation environment to co create future experiences together with the people not just say, Hey, we've listened, now we'll create the perfect thing, throw it out there, and then hope it's great, but maybe, you know, take them along the way to actually co create
Chris Rainey 28:28
them. You mentioned the storytelling piece, like, give us some practical ways that you've been telling stories. And and that's such an important part of this of this piece.
Tobias 28:39
One of the key aspects for telling a good story, at least in the business environment is to know your target group, tell tell stories differently for the Tick Tock generation, or use the Facebook generation, let alone for people like me. So it's not that's just that's just one example. Where you really that's, again, about listening. So I mean, if, if it's about transformation, certain business or digital transformation, it's not just like telling you, the world is changing, and whatever. And if you don't change along, then you won't be around anymore tomorrow. So let's change together. It's more like trying to understand the different worlds and lives, environments that people are in. And I'm not too much a fan of the idea of personas, because it's also kind of just a crutch to try and understand people but sometimes it's helpful to say, you know, this type of workers within Siemens, this is the experience they are having. And if you come with this communication, they will either not understand it at all, or they will just be like, they're telling me I'm going to be irrelevant tomorrow. What so it's kind of the how of the same story can definitely differ and to actually draw the parallels between the experiences people are making. That's why we think that was a just semantic move, but I think it was the right move. Not to talk about employee experience anymore. But people experience because we're not employees, I mean employees, just the technical term for because you have a contract with the company, but we're all people are humans. I mean, if those people are not human resources, but you can only do this, if you try to understand who they are, I mean, you don't need to understand every single person with an individual story. That's a little bit too much. But I think the parallel between, you know, telling a story that resonates in mobile communication and marketing, it's just the same. So half of the, I think, would even say, more than half of the time I communicate in my job, I don't build surveys, I talk to people. And what we're doing, why we're doing why is why I mean, you can also what we also did for the intranet kind of you can produce a short video showing different but that's again, stories. So we took a video produced, like an animated video, three situations, somebody's working at the company. And you know, two bad experiences two good ones. So you really get get the feeling of, oh, this is what they mean. So something like he comes to the office and your first day, your boss isn't there. Nobody knows you're coming against you. It's kind of this thing. Yeah, we've
Chris Rainey 31:13
made it very easy to consume understandable. Yeah. So I think that's that's how you
Tobias 31:17
explained the general idea. And then for the more interested expert, target group, you can then go into into other details, but it's again, it's about taking people seriously and listening.
Chris Rainey 31:28
Yeah, where do you see like the future of the people experience function and a role being?
Tobias 31:34
Again, as always, as no one one fits all? I mean, I think it needs to, at some point evolve into, at least in bigger organisations, it needs to become more part of the actual organisation as well, kind of. So I'm dreaming and dreaming of kind of network of people experience experts in different businesses in different countries that actually available. So I think one thing that, again, I'm talking about larger organisations, I would probably not recommend building up a big mobile headquarter team of 20, employee experience, people driving this from there, because it's actually that's not where the experiences happen. They happen at places out there. So it's more like,
Chris Rainey 32:20
having people on the ground who understand yeah,
Tobias 32:22
having having been out for me would be, I think, from a headquarter perspective is fine, if it's just me, currently is just me, I think that's still fine. But building a network of like minded mandated people in the most important countries, the most important business, so then work with the data and bringing it to action and to life. And so I think people experience probably in terms of future, it's probably more than it is now. So currently, when we think of employee experiences, this flushing moments that matter touchpoints, measuring so it's Yeah, but maybe actually, employee people experience is, is the overall listening. So maybe, because also, an engagement survey, gives you some indications about how people are feeling and maybe about their experiences in the end. So I think it's maybe more about the people experience being what listening is also looking at. I mean, if you look at passive data out there, it's also an indication for people who need to be to see or they don't, it's also kind of an indication you correlate this with surveys you have. So I think it's more this holistic way of looking at people data, which I would at some point, say this is people experience, whereas at the moment, it's a little bit more narrow.
Chris Rainey 33:37
It's an exciting journey ahead. Like you said, at the beginning of the conversation, we're really just at the beginning of the tsunami. Now, we haven't even we haven't even spoke about the environment, how that infects the employee experience. Oh, absolutely. Keep the communities that you sit within, right. The country, you know, the customers like everything we said, Yeah. And
Tobias 33:57
the challenge the challenge is, so on the one hand, we're just the beginning of the journey. And it's almost two and a half years for us now, we're still at the beginning. So we need to be in it for the long haul. We'll also be pacing things until we have enough data to read something until we change it, whatever, until it becomes bigger and bigger, or at least you know, things happen. On the other hand, we're in such fast paced times with people and also management is actually to see results much earlier. And that's kind of an area where we don't see results after a month just starting a survey. Yeah, you could you could give a dashboard to people but then they would see 10 people answering maybe they would conclude but you don't because it's not represented. So you need to wait. And so it's getting things off the ground as quickly as possible to win time. And so you can actually really show so I think that's kind of a little bit. The paradox situation, you're building something up, which really will take some time.
Chris Rainey 34:58
Yeah, so I'll just find to ask you what would be your parting piece of advice that was already a good piece of advice, but you know, what advice after doing for two years now, what advice would you give to leaders that are perhaps starting the journey? In this, you know, in terms of what you've learned, or what you've been through? What advice would you give?
Tobias 35:14
Yeah, so I think it's starting small while you're in the background, build up some infrastructure to be able to scale it. And then it's a lot about communication, talking to your peers, but also, you know, spreading the message top down also also helps. Yeah, so I think not not not reinventing the wheel or not starting to think that this is something completely new and you will basically no organisation needs to do a u turn. But try to add it on to what you have. Most companies already have engagement surveys and see how this can hold on to this and be be integrated. And the BBB patient and your people just to do it and try and see what happens. I
Chris Rainey 35:59
love it. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on and joining us. Where's where's the where's the best place for people to connect with you? If they want to reach out and say Hi, what's LinkedIn? Yeah, probably
Tobias 36:10
probably LinkedIn is the the easiest space and I'm not there. 24/7 But then the next steps can be can be taken from their
Chris Rainey 36:21
worries. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on. And I wish you all the best until next year.
Tobias 36:26
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Chris Rainey 36:27
Thank you
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Tony Buffum, VP of HR Client Strategy at Upwork.