How to Treat Employees Like Customers
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Stephan Meier, Professor at Columbia Business School and author of The Employee Advantage, to explore how employee-centric strategies are reshaping the workplace.
Stephan shares how behavioral economics, employee experience, and business strategy intersect, and why treating employees like customers creates competitive advantage.
🎓 In this episode, Stephan discusses:
The myth of the purely rational worker
Why employees are the new customers
Why ping pong tables don’t fix toxic cultures
How personalization transforms engagement
Lessons from customer-centricity applied to employee experience
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Stephan Meier 0:00
Let's do it. Steph, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me. Chris, first New York, now, London. Yeah, exactly. So within a month, in a month or so,
exactly,
Chris Rainey 0:12
I'm losing track of time. Was it two weeks ago?
Stephan Meier 0:16
I don't know. It feels like three days a day,
actually, but like, yeah, it's great.
Chris Rainey 0:21
Let's not pretend that you're in London to see me. You're in London for the football
Stephan Meier 0:27
No, I'm actually here for you, but I happen to manage to tag a football game. Yeah, actually, too. That's right. That's right. Tell
Chris Rainey 0:37
everyone who you're supporting so they can get upset. Okay, so I'm
Stephan Meier 0:41
sorry, but I'm going to Anfield on Sunday, so I'm really supporting Liverpool. Yeah, and yesterday, I've been to an optional game. I see that our competition is not, is not winning, and they didn't. So, so good. So basically, you win in the league. I very much hope so. I mean, we will win the league. I hope so that we're gonna win it when I'm there and you get to see it, and I'm gonna see it now, you know, has it's true that, like last time they won in 2019 and 2020 I was also at a game, really, at Anfield at the beginning of so now I'm at a game as well. So my son and I think that maybe it's us, who
you is, like a causal we actually causally lead
a bull to win the league. So I hope they're gonna invite us back to make sure that that they win again. Yeah, when we're there physically,
Chris Rainey 1:35
we'll do a LinkedIn post about tag in Austin, or LinkedIn let them know that's incredible. How's it feel to have that experience of your
Stephan Meier 1:44
son? Oh, it's amazing. I mean, that's like, the most important part. We spend time with him. So we're spending, obviously, some time here in London. Then on Saturday, we go to Liverpool, spend a couple of days there. And we're doing that on a regular basis. So I'm often traveling with him. We do a lot of football tourism. It's a good excuse, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a, I'm a football fan. I'm not as obsessed, yeah, as he is, but, but seeing your kid, you know, happy. I mean, this is he actually got the game for Christmas as a gift, and already there. And since, as in, oh, as in, as a as a Christmas gift, the ticket. Okay, yeah. So I, I often give him an experience as a gift. So that's like one, but he had, like others, I think
Chris Rainey 2:38
it's so much more impactful, right? The experience and the memories that you build together, as opposed to a gift, I
Stephan Meier 2:48
completely agree. And you know, as, you know, as a dad yourself, you know, is, you know, it's just so valuable and priceless to, like, spend time with them, yeah, you know, they grow up. So the one thing we don't get back, yeah, he's, like, 15, you know, like, it feels like he was very, very little yesterday, yeah, and, and now he's a teenager, and, like, soon he's gonna be gone. I mean, he's not gonna be gone, but, you know, he's not this little guy. He's
Chris Rainey 3:14
not gonna want, how much longer Have you got where he wants to spend time with dad? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that leave me alone now, as long as
Stephan Meier 3:22
I pay for, like, football tickets, I think he's still gonna tag along.
Chris Rainey 3:27
He's gonna be around before we go any further. Tell everyone a little bit more about your background and sort of the journey to where we are now, yeah. So
Stephan Meier 3:34
I'm a I'm an economist by training, so I'm a behavioral economist, and after my PhD, I worked at the Federal Reserve Bank for a couple of years. They had a Center for Behavioral economics and decision making and and there I really got interested in, like, evidence based policy make. So how can we create evidence that support leaders, policy makers? And then I moved to Columbia Business School. Became professor there where I teach both strategy and an elective on the future of work. So I kind of now think about, I combining, kind of my strategy work with thinking about what motivates people, and now, more recently, about kind of how technology interacts with us. So like, wow, you know, strategy, behavioral, behavioral economics and the future of work kind of thing, all those three together, the
Chris Rainey 4:28
tripod, exactly, that's super interesting, because you're kind of looking here from different lenses, behavioral side, the
Stephan Meier 4:37
and I have to be honest, you know, for the longest time I will go into my classroom and teach strategy. And it was, and it was all about customers. You know how to position ourselves. You know how what should Walmart do? Should they go upscale or not? You know, should PepsiCo split up their snack business or or do snacks and beverages together? What should Disney do? Do, should they do streaming or not? And it was all about the customers. And then I wouldn't go back to my office. I think about, like, what motivates people? Like, how does work look like? And I keep them separate for the longest time, until I maybe, maybe way too late, kind of saw the connection between like, you know, we obviously know, like, people are important in the success of organization, and the people are not just customers, and these, they're actually the employees. And so that's how I made the connection. Then it's interesting,
Chris Rainey 5:30
you know, most people don't think about that way, because, like, without the people, there is no product, there is no customers, there is none of that, right? But we, but we not, but we don't look here
Stephan Meier 5:40
absolutely. And, you know, I would do, I would do with executives. When I teach strategy, I would like segmentation exercise, you know, think about your core customers, you know. How do we segment the customers? What do they care about? You know, what are the important attributes, how you compare to, compare to your competitors, and whatever. And and only recently. Then I said, like, well, we should do the same for our employees. And you know how to think about our segments? What's an employee? What's the employee segment? Yeah, what do they care about? From like, most to least important. How do we think about trade offs there? Because with customers, we do, you know, like, when you're Walmart, think like, world product offerings, rural, rural, convenience, whatever really important, value, ambiance, sales, not so important. You know, then those trade offs, like, well, we're, I mean, I said tell my students, you know, you have to be terrible at certain things to be great at others. So you have to be at Walmart, you have to be bad everything. And that's fine, because that allows you then to be good and focusing on more. And we're not doing that as much with with the employees. I think about what segments, what employees do we want? Like, what's the experience? Where do we make compromises on the experience, and where do we really want to excel? Yeah, and, and that's like most more recently, where I think about, you know, what we what can we learn from customer centricity, for employee centricity? What are the tools? How do we need to change? Yeah, how we manage people when we have this lens of like, think about as a product or as a customer, and then just exchange customer with employees. And
Chris Rainey 7:29
I think that's what most businesses and HR functions are on a similar journey, right? They're like, we've been doing this with our customers. Why have we not been doing this? We go, we go the extra mile right to have the data to create the customer experience. We've designed the tools to know, you know, like, if I look at my just my Amazon right to make recommendations, it knows my Amazon knows more about my buying than me, right and what I want, right? But we haven't done that internally. Yeah,
Stephan Meier 7:58
exactly. But it's the same people, you know, it's the same people who experience when they go to Amazon or Netflix, it's like, oh, it's personal. Yes, what I do, and then they go to the office, and it's kind of one size fits all. And not so surprisingly, we're a little, we're a little frustrated with that, because we experienced all those personalization and obviously, younger generations even more. So, you know, like, my kids do not know that there was a world where there was not one day shipping, you know, they're like,
Chris Rainey 8:29
that's so true, dude.
Stephan Meier 8:31
Like, it's used to wait like three days. Like it was like,
you know, there was a time where we waited, like, two weeks a month. It's perfectly normal. Not anymore. So I think that then changes, obviously, the preferences and the expectations of the workforce, because they're used to something very different when their customers and when they come into the workforce, they rightly so, you know, expect kind of the same personalization. It's
Chris Rainey 9:02
no longer a nice to have. You know, even I was speaking to a CH row recently who just joined, started in a new company, and she said to me, like, first day she needed some extra hardware and some stationary stuff, right? Spoke to the team. They're like, Oh, we're supposed to procurement. We'll have it in three weeks. So she's like, got up, I walked across the road, bought what I needed, fall back upstairs. And she's like, just think about that. How crazy is that as an experience, right? Absolutely. You're used to ordering an Amazon getting next day. But as a executive in a multi billion dollar company, I have to wait weeks because we have procurement that needs to sign it off. And then it's just, she's like, it's just, and obviously part of her role, CHRO is obviously looking at the employee experience. She's just like, what a terrible experience that was for me. Oh yeah. And also, like, then I spent another couple of hours trying to figure out how to get on the Wi
Stephan Meier 10:05
Fi. So all of these, exactly, all those frustrations were, like, those pain points on the customer side. You know, they worked so hard to make sure that those pain points are not there. Yeah, and, and we're not doing it as much for our employees. And I think that, yeah, I think that needs to change. Because, as you said, you know, it's not just a nice to have, you know, it's almost a must to have now, because everybody expects it, yeah,
Chris Rainey 10:29
was this the inspiration behind your book, the employee advantage. That was very much
Stephan Meier 10:36
the motivation for for the book, the employee advantage, which, like, already, you know, the name, actually, very few people get it. That's kind of two meaning. One is kind of the employee has more of an advantage, so they're getting more power. And the other is, like treating your employees nicely gives you a competitive advantage. But in order to do that, you need to think strategy, you know, you think, need to think trade offs, as we do when we think about the customer as well, so that, yeah, that, like, motivated me then to write it, and gave me also the passion to go through the long process of, like, you know, writing the book, and which is, so you
Chris Rainey 11:13
didn't have a ghost right? I was actually, I did
Stephan Meier 11:15
not have a ghost rider. Now, in retrospect, I maybe wish I had one, but, like, No, I actually wrote the book.
Chris Rainey 11:23
I only found out recently that like 90% of my guests who are authors didn't actually write their books. I'm like, it's almost becoming like the few so you did,
Stephan Meier 11:32
I actually did write the book. Now, in fairness, you know, part of my job is to write running. I'm not running multi billion dollar organization on the side like right as my main job is more the other way around.
Chris Rainey 11:50
I do love the the the how putting workers first help business thrive, like that. That that part really kind of brings to life what you just said, in terms of, like, it's not just a nice to have, it's actually great for business. Yeah, I think
Stephan Meier 12:07
that's the necessary part, you know, like, if it's, if it's just nice to have, or, like, it's the right thing to do, you know, it will never get the buy in and actually needs, but it, it is actually this the way to success, to really create a competitive advantage, by thinking very carefully about, like, what's the employee advantage? What's the employee experience? You know, having everything around that. And then you get, you know, higher productivity. You get much more innovation. You know, turnover goes down and and if the employees have contact to the customer, actually, the customer experience is also better. So there are a lot of benefit for the organization, even if you don't really care about your employees, you have to do it in order to be head of the game
Chris Rainey 12:59
when you were doing the research, what was the most sort of compelling data or case study that really brings that to life? I
Stephan Meier 13:06
mean, there is there. You know, it's empirically. Obviously, it's not so easy to do because, you know, the successful organizations are also most likely the ones who treat their employees better. You know, causality is a little unclear, and there's a kind of a chicken and the egg, but there are a lot of, like, greedy, good evidence that looks at, you know, some sort of well being or, like, engagement factors in the organization, and then correlated to hard facts, like, you know, profits, the return on asset and and there is a compelling evidence that, on average, That's just the right thing to do. Now, of course, you know, you have to do it right, like just treating your employees nice and having a terrible business model, you know that's not going to get you anywhere. Like, it has to be a good strategy, combined with you taking really care of your employees to get, like, engagement, productivity and innovation up.
Chris Rainey 13:59
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned well being, because that that was also, that's also something in the past, has been seen as sort of the nice, the nice well being, or well being, yeah? So I'm glad that you mentioned that, whereas now we're seeing a lot of data and research coming out, yeah, very exactly,
Stephan Meier 14:15
well being is important. Now what I some, what I call in the book ping pong table solutions,
Chris Rainey 14:21
not that type of well being, yeah,
Stephan Meier 14:23
well, because we think, like, you know, does a free yoga class, you know, or, like, a membership to a gym, does that help? I mean, I don't think it hurts, but, but that's, to me, more like a ping pong table solution, where, you know what really creates well being is like if you get rid of toxic behavior culture, you know, if you really make sure that there is work life balance and just putting a yoga class or a breathing room or a nap pot into your office, that's not going. Do it? Is
Chris Rainey 15:00
that good? Because you could have all of those things and still have a toxic, yeah,
Stephan Meier 15:03
exactly. I mean. And we know, you know, there's a combination of famous companies, you know, like those gaming companies spending millions, have, like, the most amazing offices and all those, no one's even there now perks, and it's still terrible to work. Yeah, very few people leave because there is no free yoga class, yeah, daily.
Chris Rainey 15:22
It's when you have both, when it gets really exciting, yeah? If you have that psychological safety, you feel like, you know, you're in a place where you can belong. And then you have all of those things, yeah, then and,
Stephan Meier 15:33
and, you know, what is also, I mean, that's now where strategy kicks in, you know, let's say the ping pong table solutions will be the kicker. You know, like would if you have, if you have a kombucha tap, everybody is happy. Now, of course, everybody then gets a kombucha tap. You know, there is no differentiation. Everybody, everybody has a ping pong. But obviously it's the combination, as you said, that that is hard to do, but hard is good. Heart is actually good in strategy, because now you can differentiate. If you do the hard work and you invest, you know, you can really beat the competition. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:07
and it's so funny, you mentioned the ping pong table for people that can't see behind the cameras, under our staircase, we have a ping pong table, and people always mention it. And I've had that p1 table even when I was in my previous company, and it was less around the pmone table that we worked in a very high stress sales environment. And when I could see the team getting a bit overwhelmed, I would say, Okay, everyone just stand up. Let's go for a walk around the block. Let's play some table tennis. Yeah. And it would just kind of like, kind of reset everyone so it was less around, like, the fact of having a table tennis table is more about like, building relationships with the team, getting them out of their head space, because it's a very stressful sales environment. And that was a like I can definitely see from a well being perspective, that that really helped, but it was because of the way we did it, yeah, and the way it was that just that I could, physically, as a manager, see the team being overwhelmed. And that was just one of the outlets that we used. Absolutely
Stephan Meier 17:05
I mean that I completely agree, Chris, you know, like, you know, we know from research that, like, you know, this relatedness, I actually call it, working together works, you know, this team spirit and having those interactions is super powerful. And if, if you create that by playing ping pong or doing walks or, like, having moments where people can really connect on a personal level, is obviously very powerful, but you need to do the hard work to create those moments just putting, just putting it in there and hoping that it's going to happen. No, is not going to work. Yeah. And often we kind of a lot of leaders think as like, you know, this check box is like, Oh, I have a ping pong table. I should be good, you know, and I have a kombucha tap. So I'm sure people have, like, amazing moments at that kombucha tap. And that's just not enough. You have to do what you said, you know, kind of doing the hard work to creating, being very intentional about this,
Chris Rainey 18:02
you just took the word out my mouth. It's very intentional about it. Even things like people listening on the show probably heard this a million times. But once a month, I would everyone in the team would bring in food that represents their heritage and their culture, and we'd have a big meal together. And every single month we did that, and it was such everyone was so excited. Yeah. And it was kind of, if you were new in the business, it was an amazing way for you to get to know everyone, yeah. And it's something so small, but it made such a massive difference, absolutely. And you
Stephan Meier 18:33
know, it's interesting, like during the pandemic, you know, suddenly on Zoom, and suddenly you saw, like, people's life in the background, and I was like, oh, Chris, you have a cat. I don't know whether you have a cat, but like, oh, there is a cat. Like, oh, you have a kid like, oh, that's an interesting piece of art. So why do you have that piece of art and and suddenly, part of the life. I mean, I don't think we need to bring, like, our whole life to work. I mean, it's also okay to have like, a life, yeah, outside of work. But there is a very important moment when you get to know people on a more personal level. I think that creates that, that social, that bond,
Chris Rainey 19:09
yeah, that you and it's interesting, right? Because there were people that you perhaps could have worked with for five years that you never knew, you never knew any of that about, right? Because everyone kept things separate, work, life and at home, that all of a sudden you had these things like that that you could relate to, that brought you closer together. Like, oh, I had no idea. Two kids, no idea. I've also, I love I love dogs. I've got, like, all the art thing, right? So, yeah, they're,
Stephan Meier 19:37
like, some of the you know, where you like, figure out, oh, they have, like, a hobby. They're like, amazing photographers, you know, who like, travel around the world and take, like, those amazing people, or, like, do art themselves, where you're like, Wow, that's a side of you. I've never thought, Yeah,
Chris Rainey 19:51
unfortunately, I, like many others, where I was in a workplace, where you were told, even as a director, actually by my. Us that you separate those things, yeah, and I used to get a lot of feedback from my boss saying, Chris, they're not your friends. You know, you shouldn't be spending time going to I used to work out with a few of my employees and train and like, do other things outside the office. And I'd get like, you know, pulled up on that, which is insane. Think about it, I'm spending most of my life with these individuals, and you're telling me not to build meaningful relationships with them. So it was, you know, that's the old way of working, right? I'm the boss. You're the employee, you know? And I was like, I can't do this, like it's and, yeah, I want to get to know people, yeah. And
Stephan Meier 20:39
I think it becomes, you know, and that's part of also what I mean with, like, you know, the employees become the new customers, and there was the way we work, and obviously changes, you know, it's much more less command and control and much more like teamwork. And it's possible that, like, 50 years ago, you know, if you're, I'm the boss. I tell you what to do, and that's the way that
Chris Rainey 21:02
was part of, like, the sort of industrial revolution where you needed to command and control. You go and do this, and that's kind of
Stephan Meier 21:08
how and maybe it worked there. Oh, it did, clearly, but it definitely doesn't work anymore, where, like, everything is teamwork, collaboration. And, you know, everybody should know, like, we just collaborate better, if we know each other, if we meet each other, you know, if we have those more personal connections, then just like, This is my task. This is you.
Chris Rainey 21:28
You'll go above and beyond for that person. And if you kind of know that's right, you have understanding of, okay, they may be at home right now because they've got a sick child, or, you know, there's some new people will step up, right? If they kind of, and also they will forgive if they can see, you know, Chris is having a bad day, he's not in a good mood, they'll kind of understand and have more empathy, yeah, if they know more about you. Yeah, as opposed to, Chris is just being a dick today, yeah?
Stephan Meier 21:58
And it's, I often also think about, you know, we talked about personalization before. And you know, part of it is like technology that helps personalizing. There is also an old school way of personalizing, which is like talking to somebody one on one, you know, figuring out, oh, what does Chris care about? You know, what is he as a person? And that allows me, then, as a team member or a leader you know, to personalize my experience or your experience. You know my approach to you, because I should talk to you very differently than than your team member, because they are different. And I think it's very important to have those interactions to personalize. Yeah, it doesn't
Chris Rainey 22:38
always have to be so complicated. And there's this, there's this sort of temptation that I see with companies and leaders and to sort of constantly try and reinvent the wheel, like you just don't, you don't always need to do that. Like, one of the simplest things I used to do when I when I was a leader in that sales organization, is, is when I first brought on employees understand, like, what their personal goals were in life, whether it's buying a house or it's saving up to get married or, you know, whatever it may be. And we took it to the extreme on my team, where we had the entire wall was every one of our employees vision boards. Oh, yeah. So not only did I know, but the whole entire team know that this person was working towards, and they had a photo of a house, right? Or this person had a photo of a really amazing holiday destination they've been saving up for. And we could all collectively see what everyone was working towards, and that alone, to your point, created conversations, connection points, and we all wanted to help each other win, because I knew that Aj is a few deal, a few deals away from being able to go to that holiday. So I want to help him win, right? Rather than creating that sales environment where we're all against each other as well. And that seems like a very small thing, but I can tell you, I could tell you every single employee exactly what motivates them and what they're excited about. That's right, and it makes your conversations a lot more exciting, rather than, hey, here's the next this is how many deals you gotta get, and this is how far away, like, it's like, actually, that's right, this is how far we are away from you buying a house. It's a lot more inspiring. I love
Stephan Meier 24:13
that idea and but it also requires kind of that people take time to understand, you know, if you're a leader, you know, to talk to people you know, to have those one on one, yeah, and really try to understand, you know, and customer sent really customer centric organizations, you know, also try to systemize that, you know, we're like executives. I have to talk to customers, you know, once whatever, once a month, you know, and, the same has to be true when we talk about the experience within teams and organizations. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 24:45
in the book you mentioned, you talk about the myth of the rational worker. Could you explain that? Well,
Stephan Meier 24:51
so, you know, I'm an economist by training, so economic theory, like a human being in an economic model. Who is is only interested in money would never work if they're not compensated on controlled and is perfectly rational and and I think that kind of shapes a little bit how we think about what motivates people. You know that, you know people are only motivated because of a paycheck. Money, obviously, is important, but the economic model just has that. And if I don't control you, or you're going to shirk you're never going to do your work. And I think that's the myth that we have to think about people are motivated by other I mean, income is important, and like, you know, we have to make sure that people are accountable for what they're doing, obviously, but they're motivated by many more things than those, more monetary aspects of work, and that's the shift we have to go through. And for a lot of HR leaders, that might be second nature, you know? They might be aware of that already, but many leaders are not, and you see it in like, discussions on, you know, remote work, or I talk to executives all the time when I want to teach about the future of work. And you often hear, Well, you know, if they're at home, they're shirk they don't do, they don't do anything
Chris Rainey 26:20
they have to after all, we've gone through this still. They still have that money, still.
Stephan Meier 26:26
And, you know, and then there is funny interactions where, like, one like, so one executive I talked to said, like, you know, when they're at home, they go shopping. And so then I asked him, so what do you think they do when they're in the office? They also go shopping. There's no online shopping. That's what it's called. Or they're checked out. Yeah, you know, I sometimes say, like, you know the like, quiet quitting, the old school quiet quitting is Microsoft Solitaire.
Chris Rainey 26:59
Oh, we're just sitting there.
Stephan Meier 27:01
You know, they just phoning
it in in just because you're physically there, doesn't make you engage.
Chris Rainey 27:08
But that's a good point. Like, if they're checking if they're checked out at home, you can 100% guarantee they're checked out in the office, they're going to be less likely to be checked out at home, because at least they have some type of balance, maybe, yeah, to be able to do that. So the idea that you think that because they're in the office, they're going to be locked in absolutely
Stephan Meier 27:24
crazy, you know, the myth is still there. So that's at least what I gather in all those conversations I have
Chris Rainey 27:30
with especially that's just sort of just back to the command and control. Yes, exactly.
Stephan Meier 27:33
Then they think, like, you have to control. You ask them, so what motivates your employees? And they'll say, like, you know, they jump ship for like, another $10,000 and an income is important. But people rarely, like, really just switch from there's been
Chris Rainey 27:49
a lot of research recently. Well, first of all, most everyone I've ever in the last maybe year or two, anyone that I've interviewed here at HR, leaders and friends, colleagues and other founders, compensation, has maybe been third on the list, you know, is around the flexibility. Number one, Is there flexibility? They're asking me, Is it hybrids? Two days in your office, three and that's like the first thing. So it's not conversation anymore. Secondly, is around, actually, around, well, being right, which, again, was just something that never came up when I was a leader or a manager back in the day. It wasn't even a conversation, you know, and then thirdly, it's conversation. That's kind of what I'm seeing. And there's been a lot of research recently where they interviewed, I can't remember who it was, but it was a couple of 1000 executives, and around would you leave for the same amount of money to go to another company that does prioritize your well being. And it was like, 80 something percent, yeah, so the exact same amount of money, like, No, you know exactly. And that that was really, I mean, I'm happy to see that. But most people, if you probably said that a few years ago, they would be like, No way, yeah, and it has
Stephan Meier 29:01
to sink in and like, so, so that's also what I tried to do in the book. Like, again, the parallel with customers. You know, if you ask customers what they care about, you know, price is obviously high up on that list somehow, but, but customer centricity is not lowering the price. No, it's like having the experience, and people in the customer space are now actually willing to accept that, you know, we can if, if I have an amazing, if I give you an amazing experience, I can actually increase the price. I can charge a premium. And the flip side, when we think about the employees as well, you know, income might be there, but being employee centric is improving the experience, and then you actually get more out of that. So actually, the cost per unit might go down because they're more productive, they're less likely to leave. They're more innovative, as I mentioned before. And so I think that's the way we have to think about differently and sometimes. Thinking about the customer, where we went to customer eccentricity, and how that now with that, yes, how we think about employee sitters, I think is really important to also get buy in from leaders who might not be there yet.
Chris Rainey 30:14
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that Amazon did. Has done incredibly well, like I always say to Shane, like the fact that I had a very expensive graphics card we bought for our edit, one of our editors, it was like 4000 pounds, right? And we got scammed. It was like a fake Amazon account on Amazon, right? So I call the customers success, and it's not sold by Amazon, so it's actually not their responsibility in terms of refund. But they were like, yeah, it's our fault. We're gonna take responsibility for it. Sent me to refund immediately. And I've had that many times like with them, in different scenarios where, like, pair of headphones are broken, etc, and like, the level of customer success, the customer service is unreal, yeah, and the fact that you can request a call, and within seconds, you get a phone call from someone Amazon with literally within seconds, and they're like, how can we help you? Yeah, that is unreal. Very few companies can say, yeah. Have some
Stephan Meier 31:13
now, we just have to apply that to internal Yeah. You know what? Yeah, so And what, what? I so a quote that are like, off of Bezos that I have in the book is like, where, oh, you have a quote from basis in a book. Yeah, I have a bunch of quotes, but I mentioned based, you know, Amazon is not that particularly good when it comes to employees, but they're obviously very good when it comes to customers. And so one, I mean, he has many of those famous quotes, but one quote that I really like is, like, when he got to ask about the customer. He said, like, you know what is amazing about my customer was really cool. They're always dissatisfied. They're always unhappy with something. And what he meant with that, I can always learn to do better. You know? I can always constantly improve. Now, there's very few leaders who would say, You know what is so great about my employees? He's always dissatisfied. He's
Chris Rainey 32:05
still seeing that for a positive lens. Yeah, just reframed it. You
Stephan Meier 32:09
have to think about like, if you want to innovate, if you actually want to excel at the employee experience, you need to be, first of all, as obsessed as Amazon is with the customers, and have mechanisms in place to actually deliver on that experience. And Amazon has that, you know, they're dissatisfied, we're going to fix it. So there is this famous so Bezos has those question mark emails. I don't know. What do you know? So, so he would read customer complaints personally, and then when one complaint comes in, when he thought like, well, that's raises above the bar, that we have to do something, he just forwarded the email to one of his executives with a question mark, with nothing else, nothing else, not like, deal with
it, or this is a problem, just and
then that executives knew, like, oh, like all hands on desk, we have to fix this right away. Love that. That then leads to exactly what he said, you know, to the experience and figuring out what are the pain points of the customers and this, and dealing with that, and if we apply now the logic to the employees, it's the same, you know, you mentioned before that executive who had, you know, couldn't order x, y and z, or couldn't get had to wait too long. I mean, that's obviously, that's not a good experience. Somebody has to be there and, like, let's fix this. That can't be true. That would not be true in Amazon when you think about customers? Yeah, and that's kind of the parallel I want to draw between kind of how to think about the customer centricity and the employee Centricity as a
Chris Rainey 33:49
result. Who owns this in the company?
Stephan Meier 33:53
That's a really good question. And I think we have to also learn kind of what the customer you know when you think about who owns the customer experience. It's not just one function. It's many things. You know, you have, obviously the marketing department and the tech, the ops, everything has to work together. And I think if we think about how to improve the employee experience, we have to change it's not just an HR thing. Everybody has to be involved. Because, back to your example, about, like, you know, you want to order something. Then it goes to procurement, and then it goes, like, whatever. Then somebody has to give green light. And then there's the technology aspect to it, and then the tech comes, in. I mean, everybody has to be aligned in really delivering that experience, as we do with the customers. One
Chris Rainey 34:47
of the things that came up few few months, quite a while back, we had a session where we had about 20 like VBS directors of employee experience, and there's very new role. Oh, right. No, right only maybe in the last five years. And when I looked at the individuals and companies that were having a lot of success, one of the correlations that I found is those leaders that who led employee experience, who had oversight of various functions worth more successful than others. So what I mean by that is there was one of the leaders who owned employee experience and had it operations, finance, HR. So employee, employee experience was all of those domains, because you're right. You could have, you could do it in operations. Could be great, but then now you have a technology you don't, you'd have no interaction with a technology team. And that's, of course, the technology we use is going to impact our experience, right? So he said to me, when I took the job, I took it and said, I'm not taking this job unless I can oversee that across all of the, yeah, core functions. Because, if I because traditionally, HR is trying to control it within a silo, and then they have no they can't do anything about the technology experience. They can't do anything about the workplace experience. And it just becomes like the procurement experience as well. So it's like, that's kind of, that was one of the key things I saw. Like, what those that are really having meaningful change kind of looked at it across the board? Yeah, yeah. That makes
Stephan Meier 36:27
total sense. I mean, you have to, if you think about the experiences you just explained, you know, it's all those functions have to work together, otherwise you can't actually fix it. HR, no, it's not, it's not. HR, yeah.
Chris Rainey 36:41
What are the metrics we should be looking at in terms of, like, what does success look like? What are the things that we should be measuring? Yeah,
Stephan Meier 36:47
I mean, it's obviously metrics are, is really important. You need to measure it, but, but it's hard. I mean, it's, again, it's not, if you think about customers saying it's also hard, you know, like to measure, you know, how does the experience and there we have, like, you know, net promoter scores and stuff like that, and and I think the same has to be true with the employees, you know, that we look at engagement levels, you know, net promoter scores, but maybe on the employee side, and then at the end, you know, we want to obviously care about productivity, retention and those, those measures. And so I think I see that now in in companies who come from a very, very different approach. So, so KKR, like the private equity firm who they Pete Pete Stavros is like one of the partners there, he has a he cares about owner. So he came from a from a monetary aspect. So he thought like, if we give ownership to the employees, if we give them stock options and so forth, the experience and productivity is is increasing now one so they may mainly mention engagement level and quit rates. Now, what is interesting there is, and that's very aligned with what I say in the book, is like, you know, money gives only brings you to a certain way. They then have, you know, they literally invest, like, in 3050, companies, put their money down to improve kind of engagement level and quit rates and gave them stock options. Now, only in half of them it works, and half it didn't. So they went further, and they're like, why? I mean, our theory was like, if I give you, if I make you an owner, you know, then you work like an owner. But that's not the whole story. So at the moment, they're there, they're thinking about, they call it leadership, empathy. So there needs to be something else, yeah, and I mean, that's exactly what I talk about, and what we just talked about there is money, and maybe that's number. What do you say? Three or four, or whatever it is. But there is other aspects that actually make us engaged and motivated. And now we just have to make sure that on those dimensions we do it, and then the metrics follow where we like see engagement level go up, quit rates go down, and dimension the productivity going up, innovation metrics and so on, the
Chris Rainey 39:19
stock options, in my experience from, like, it's been, like, artificial retention. So, like, I've got a friend right now who works, actually, I probably shouldn't say the name, but of the company, but he, he's, like, I've got, you know, three months to go until these, these stock options vest, and I'm out. Yeah, so he's not staying there because he's excited. He doesn't enjoy his job. He's actually and yet to stay for like, four years in order to get the X amount of stock options vested. Yeah? And the same thing with another friend. So it's like, in some cases, yes, it's, you know, whereas others, it's like, almost like another form of golden handcuffs, yeah.
Stephan Meier 39:58
And that's exactly. What the experience they have is like, you know, you see, immediately quit rates go down, but engagement levels don't go up, because exactly what you said, it's not official. And that then goes back to your question about the metrics, you know, what do we want to measure? If it's just like, you stay, I mean, that's one, but it's obviously not the whole story. We want, really, engagement, motivation, go up and measure that, that part and, and I think that's the same with sometimes
Chris Rainey 40:30
that could be, surely, so sorry, surely. Sometimes that could be in the detriment of the business that that person
Stephan Meier 40:36
stays. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Some people, you actually want them to leave, yeah, and they don't
Chris Rainey 40:40
want they're not going to leave because they're like, I'm going to stay another year. Another year to get so, yeah,
Stephan Meier 40:44
probably, yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of what, where my behavioral economics and motivation piece comes in, where I think about, like, you know, money is just a small part there. There are other ways that people are motivated, and we need, really need to double down on those that those also make the big difference, you know, like, if it's just money, first of all, that comes right out of the bottom line, you know, eats into the margin, and it's also relatively easy to copy. It leads to this race to the bottom or top, or, yeah, whatever direction, like, oh, you can you pay 5000 more. I pay 5000 more. But, but if it's about the experience that is hard to do, where you actually figured it out how to create an amazing, engaging experience, and did the hard work, then you get this competitive world, or what I then call like the employee advantage, you actually get the advantage. Yeah, in the marketplace,
Chris Rainey 41:37
it's it's interesting, because I was in that company for 10 years, and every year I'd get phone calls from the same competitors trying to get me to leave, and it would be 5k more, 10k more, sometimes even, you know, 20k more. And it was always for me, the like it wasn't. I've built such strong relationships with in that workplace, and obviously invested so much into it that the idea of, like, I'm gonna start from scratch for an extra 510, k like, this is earlier in my career. No, this didn't make sense, right to do to do that. And when I did leave later in my career, you know, it was significantly more I went to that company within the first few days, I was like, oh my god, what have I done? Like this, that this amount of money has made no material impact to my life, but now I have all of those friends that I've built, the relationships, the work that I had done. I was like, What have I done? Like, why did I do this? Yeah, and then after that, I started this company as well. So it's not all the grass is definitely not always greener, and it's not always greener, and it's not always worth it on the other side, and that's why I stayed at that company. Wasn't good enough money. I could have went somewhere else and made a way more money to do that. But do you think did I don't know if you did any research about this. I haven't seen much data. Does it also depend on what stage of your career that you're in. So if you're earlier later in your career, you could argue money is less important, because you may be, you know, paid off the mortgage kids have left the house as well. Whereas earlier in your career, when you've just come out University, money maybe the more
Stephan Meier 43:20
Absolutely. So we do. I actually did a lot of research on kind of how we trade off. I mean, income versus, I call it meaning just as a bucket, kind of for, for the other parts, and you're absolutely right, there is this life cycle, you know, like when you're at the beginning and you need to take care of, you know, you want to build a family, or, like, build a house, like money slash career opportunity. You know, it's not just money, you know, like people choose early on, like they want to have a certain career path, and I want to learn something new that they can that helps them later, but later in life. And I don't think I really real much about my age, but in my when I'm when I'm when you're a little older, and you look like this, like, you know, money is like, yeah, we now care about the I mean, I chose to be in academia, so money was never that important to me. But, um, but yeah, other aspects become much more important. And you saw that also, you know, during the pandemic where, like, people later in life, like, wow, it
Chris Rainey 44:29
was an aha moment for so many people this, because people actually was interested about that, like, because it was the first time that people had time to think and reflect. So one of the advantages was that you're at home, you wasn't surrounded by the noise at the workplace and everything going on, that you actually had time to sit down and just reflect on life and be like, Is this really what I want to do? And because we were so busy before in the hustle and bustle of life and work, you just never had time to even. Yeah, reflect on that. And I had that same moment and spoke to Shane and the team and said, You know, I don't want to travel as much as I used to, because, yeah, this has made me realize that I want to spend more time with Robin. Yeah, I want to be present as a dad, and now I make sure that I'm at tennis practice, I'm at jiu jitsu practice, and I wasn't, I wasn't doing that before, yeah, but it gave me the opportunity to reflect and do that. And
Stephan Meier 45:21
I think that's a really important part. Now there while there is this life cycle, you know, like older or care a little bit about more and younger. But that was also also always true, what I what I also sometimes find a little frustrating when I hear a phrase, kind of kids these days, oh, first kind of, you know, kids these days are like they they don't work as hard.
Chris Rainey 45:47
Did we always have that? Though? Did ever? Does every generation say that? I i Sometimes
Stephan Meier 45:51
show in my classes a quote, which the quote something says like, you know, kids these days, they don't respect whatever authorities and whatever. It's a quote from the Greek philosopher
Chris Rainey 46:05
Socrates. Well, that's been going on since these days
Stephan Meier 46:09
is as old as their kids. So what is, what is true is, today, there are different opportunities. You know, you can actually switch jobs. You know, careers. Look there. It's easier to do that 100% back in the days, you know, they were like, there was clear career path. You, you entered, you know, whatever, UBS, the bank, just you then grew in within that organization.
Chris Rainey 46:32
You don't see that anymore. You don't see this to a 20 year employee, that the, what do they call it? The job for life, yeah,
Stephan Meier 46:39
exactly those 100 year life and 60 year careers, yeah, where people zigzag around. And it's not, it's not a book. You know, back in the days where you had to fiddle around the your resume that it looks linear.
Chris Rainey 46:54
Oh, yeah, remember those days where you had to say, it has to look like this, otherwise people are oh, why do you have this? Yeah, exactly.
Stephan Meier 47:00
You don't have to do that anyway. In fact, it's a feature. Like, oh, you had, like, this amazing experience somewhere else, which does not look like linear at all. Turns out, that's now a feature, and that now we're going back to our expectations question we had at the beginning. You know how preference has changed, that's now changed. What do we expect? Because, like, oh, I want to learn something new. I'm not gonna especially
Chris Rainey 47:21
when people working on, like in the gig gig economy, and working on like project space stuff, it could be three months here, two months there, six months here. That's now seen as an advantage, absolutely
Stephan Meier 47:33
and so and leaders now have to adapt to that. And that phrase, which I often hear from executive kids these days, feels a little bit it's their fault and like, No, it's not the world we operate like. The world is like that, and you have to adapt to make sure
Chris Rainey 47:47
the new world of work and the ways of working, yes, yeah. I just, I could talk to you forever before you go. What advice would you have for all of the HR leaders that are listening?
Stephan Meier 47:58
Yeah. I mean, I'm at the moment as as we could have figured out, really obsessed about this, you know, employees or the new customers. What can we learn from customer centricity? You know, how to think about customer slash employee journeys, how to listen, how to take advice in, how to change functions as well, to make sure that we really improve that experience, and then having that conversations with leaders about, you know, I often hear from CHRO, so how do I come I'm on board? How do I convince the CEO, the CFO about this? And I tried to tell them, just tell them. It's like, this is next. It was custom, you know, it was product centric. Then it was customer centric. That's that was a shift. And not everybody is the Amazon everybody obviously says they care about customers. Not everybody is as customer centric as Amazon is. And now we have to do the switch for the employees, and that requires hard work and changes within the organization, giving up power, you know, to a certain degree, also giving up power for HR, which you know, changing kind of what you're responsible, who shares the responsibility to really excel in, in in, in delivering that employee experience
Chris Rainey 49:19
amazing. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on the show and for where can people reach you if they want to reach out and say hi and also grab a copy of the book? Yeah?
Stephan Meier 49:26
Well, either on LinkedIn or then my web page Stephen meyer.com where there's a lot of resources. I also have a monthly newsletter about, like, human centric future of work. Yeah. I would love to hear from your listeners about like, what they do to actually improve the employee experience so that we can collectively learn to make the future of work better, amazing, centric
Chris Rainey 49:50
and for everyone listening or wherever you're watching, all of those links will be in the description. There'll also be a link to grab a copy of your book the employee advantage. So make sure you do that. You. Hope you win the next football game. Good to see you. Thanks.
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Stephan Meier, Professor at Columbia Business School and author of The Employee Advantage.