018 : Fostering a Sense of Belonging Among Employees with Mark Levy
Mark Levy is a pioneer in viewing HR through the lens of the employee experience. Having spent over two decades in the field, he has come to believe that companies need to rethink how they look at HR and how to shift their mindset from doing things to your employees, to doing things with and for your employees—what academics call “human-centered design”. Mobilizing a team is all about focusing on your mission and values. You can do this through employee events, recognition, celebration, internal communications, diversity, wellness, and social impact.
Airbnb, a design-centered company, saw belonging as a key factor to uniting employees with their companies, customers, and communities. The company understood that “it was less about the home and more about the host. And it was less about where they stayed and more about the experience they had with the host.” With this foundation in mind, Airbnb’s employee experience strategy was to create a company where people feel that they belong. They broke this strategy down into four components: 1) Creating connections between the employee and the company and vice versa; 2) Creating connections between the employees themselves; 3) Creating connections between employees and customers; 4) Creating connections between employees and the community.
Steve Chaparro and Mark discuss what it means to create belonging among your employees. They define what “employee experience” actually means and cover best practices for making the switch from traditional HR to human-centered design. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Mark’s story before Airbnb and the lessons he applied during his involvement with them
- Airbnb’s strengths as a design-centered company
- The four components to nurturing a sense of belonging in the employee experience
- How to enact company-wide change from a traditional HR methodology to one driven by employee experience
- Why you need to align your employer brand and employee experience
- Messages that CHROs send to employees depending on which C-suite executive they report to
- Defining the employee experience and why it is important for companies to consider the topic holistically
- How implementing design-centered thinking impacts the employee experience
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Mark Levy is a keynote speaker and employee experience advisor for several companies, including John Hardy, Boom Supersonic, Josh Bersin Academy, and Peloton Interactive. He is known for being a “pioneer of Airbnb’s Employee Experience function, which supports the entire employee journey from recruiting through alumni and everything in between.” His work created a ripple effect that has “created significant changes in the way organizations globally are looking at expanding the HR function to focus on the entire employee journey.”
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science/Economics at Colorado College, and holds degrees in higher education from the Boston College Law School and Carroll School of Management, and the University of Colorado.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by the Culture Design Studio, a consulting firm that helps people and cultural leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people through a series of facilitated workshops. They provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization.
Culture Design Studio has worked with organizations like Duarte Design, Design Thinkers Group, Red Bull, USAID, Bacardi, and the Office of Civic Innovation
If you’re looking for more than just a consultant and want someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, Culture Design Studio is the one for you.
Contact them today to learn more about what they can do for you and your company.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
Steve Chaparro, here. I am the host of the culture design show, a podcast where I feature leaders and thinkers at some of the top creative firms in the world, including architecture, design, technology, and marketing. What’s the one thing they all have in common, they all believe in the power of culture, and design.
This podcast is brought to you by culture design studio, we help people in culture leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people. Through a series of facilitated workshops, we provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization. We’ve worked with organizations like Duarte Design, DesignThinkers Group, Red Bull, US AID, Bacardi, and the Office of Civic Innovation. So if you’re looking for more than just a consultant, but someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, reach out to us at culturedesignstudio.com.
Today we have Mark Levy, who is a keynote speaker and employee experience advisor. He counsels many care HR pros and HR tech companies on their people and culture strategies. But most notably, Mark is known for his work at Airbnb, or he served as the Global Head of employee experience. He and his team pioneered the shift from HR to employee experience. More recently, he served as the head of employee experience at all birds. As a speaker he is invited to stages around the world to talk about the shift to x growth by design and belonging. Mark, welcome to the Culture Design Show.
Mark Levy
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Steve Chaparro
Well, as I mentioned, as we were getting ready for this call, this is an absolute honor for me. I’m all about the employee experience. And to be able to talk to a pioneer in this way of looking at HR and just taking care of people is just an honor for me.
Mark Levy
My pleasure.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I know that many people might know about your story at Airbnb, but I’d like to go even further back if we may, I’d love to understand and learn about your journey prior to Airbnb. And what made your journey so ripe and ready when the opportunity came to go to Airbnb.
Mark Levy
Sure. So I had a fairly lengthy career in human resources. And most of my time was spent in parallel retail. And I started in employee relations and then my made my way into a generalist role and then eventually evolved into a broader role leading talent. And, you know, I’d say What I learned really early on was that the way that HR was going to add value was by understanding the business deeply. And figuring out how to build strong relationships with the business. And then finding out the ways that then you can combine those things to add value, really how to you unleash the power of the people?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Mark Levy
And so I work for a lot of big hearted companies like Best Buy Levi’s gap. And what I realized was I wanted to be a global HR leader. And so I found my way to potential role in Paris actually. And so I called my family over there kicking and screaming because they didn’t want to leave. And then I hauled him back because they didn’t want to come back.
Steve Chaparro
That’s the way it is, isn’t it?
Mark Levy
Yeah. And when I got back, my first global talent role was actually with a branding and design firm called land or says it’s part of WP P. And that was a great foray because they have 22 offices around the world. And so I got to use my little experience and I was still in a creative environment. But there was something missing. And even though was was historic company with a founder with a great story, it seemed like there was something missing to me. And I got a call from a headhunter, actually interesting enough for the head of HR job at Pinterest.
Steve Chaparro
Hmm.
Mark Levy
And so I got all excited, and I was ready for the discussion, even though I’d never been in tech before. And the day of the interview, I got a call and they said, apologies, but they fell in love with someone else. He came out of Silicon Valley, he knows tech.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Mark Levy
And, you know, maybe next time, and so it was less than and making sure you didn’t burn your bridges. And I was, you know, appreciative of the possibility and to call me if something else comes up and literally week later, they called me about the Airbnb job. And ironically, I’d spent most of my life when I was working in college and graduate school as a travel agent. And I’ve done a lot of travel and then my first job after I, I practiced law for 10 months, I got my JD MBA. And that was a horrid I, what I realized there was I’d rather keep people out of trouble than help them once they got in trouble. And I was also very relationship oriented. So my first job after that was actually with a hotel, small boutique hotel company.
So I’ve been in travel a lot. And this was just such a great opportunity to go to something where I really had a lot of passion. But I think what was most inspiring about the Airbnb job was that they were completely disrupting the industry.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Mark Levy
And the conversations that I had with Brian, Joe, Nate, people like chip Conley, and Belinda Johnson, are just so inspiring. And I could see they were authentic. And they were really looking to change the world in a way that I believe, has really made a huge difference. And so it was great opportunity.
Steve Chaparro
And the reason why I love asking about the professional journeys is because there’s so much that we learn in terms of skills, ways of things. Thinking, even learning about ourselves that we bring to every new job, I really think that our next journey in our careers are just the culmination of what we’ve learned in roles that we’ve had in the past. What are some of those lessons that you brought to the table? lessons from your journey that you took the Airbnb?
Mark Levy
Yeah. So I mean, I think the first lesson is, unfortunately, that from my perspective, there weren’t a lot of great HR leaders. So in many cases, I was learning what not to do rather than what to do. And so as I mentioned earlier, a lot of that was around really deeply understanding the business and HR not being about rules. And about knowing everything and about having the power was much more around, getting to know the people and understanding how they worked and how they worked across the organization. And like I said earlier, also helping them figure out how to unleash their talents.
So I think some of the earlier things I learned When I was at BestBuy, we did a lot of work with Gallup and Marcus Buckingham, we use the Q 12. And I followed him all the way through as he evolved to Strength Finders and his first book first break all the rules. And those were really ways in which I started to shape how I wanted to help managers think about how they showed up, and also have people thinking about what they do well, and what comes naturally and how they do it better. Rather than trying to change people into something that they’re not.
I’d say the other thing, certainly working at a creative organizations like Levi’s land, or was how much of what the business delivers and how much of the ideas and the success of the business comes from the hearts and minds of the employees. And how do you think about ways to unleash that and ways to give them a voice so they can really flourish and the closer they get connected to the customer, the better they’re going to be at their job. And then better we’re gonna deliver on business goals.
Steve Chaparro
I love that you’re affirming so much of what I have felt instinctively but haven’t always had the terminology and language for that. And I think some of the things that I’ve been thinking about as when you think of the employee experience is on one hand, how do you harness it’s almost like, it’s almost like a convergent type of activity, but then to your word, I love that word of unleashing harness and then unleash those things or incubate and release as another way of thinking about it.
So I love that and I want that’s part of my effort here with even this podcast has been able to bring more awareness about what does that look like? And what are the leadership mindsets that are required for them to shift from this way of saying do this to Let’s come together and let’s together figure out what’s the best way to move forward. So I love that. What was it about the Airbnb role? You mentioned it a little bit, but that was so attractive To you, and how did that roll evolve? Because I probably wasn’t you weren’t in I don’t know what you were initially hired for. But I’d love to hear about that.
Mark Levy
Sure. So there hadn’t been anyone in role for about six months. And they had a head of HR, who I believe was a lawyer, but by trade and had no employee experience or HR experience. So I think they were struggling with what they were looking for, as far as what was someone’s experience, but I think they knew exactly what they were looking for, as far as what was the focus. While I was interviewing Brian chesky, the CEO, had written a medium article, entitled don’t fuck up the culture. And essentially, in my interviews, a lot of the conversation was around how I could help them scale the company, while not fucking up the culture.
And so, you know, they were talking to people who are in marketing, they were talking to people who are in tech, and then I kind of showed up with kind of This background and experience was much more around the idea of how do you work with your employees in a way to help them become more of the process and it hadn’t really been formulated. But essentially what Brian said to me when I got hired was, I don’t know anything about HR and everything I’ve heard about it I don’t like. So let’s just forget about all that. And so he really gave me the permission and the freedom to rethink things, which I was super happy about.
Because, as I mentioned earlier, I feel like HR has really struggled to find the right way of thinking and acting. And there was people who were involved in thinking differently, but for the most part, it was still seen as the people you wanted to avoid or the people who you go with when you got in trouble. And that’s not how I kind of looked at the roles that I had, and that’s not what I wanted to bring. So Brian said, Okay, well, what are we going to call it? And I said, well, and he said, there’s a lot of people doing things. I’m not really sure what They’re doing. But let’s bring them all together and figure out how you make one good thing out of it. And so I kind of said, well, you have a customer experience team, who very closely understands and has iterative and two way dialogue with the customer. In our case, in the double sided marketplace, it was more of the hosts and the guests, but certainly understanding both sides of that. And I said, Well, why don’t we call it employee experience, and we’ll have our will treat our employees the way we want them to treat our customer.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Mark Levy
And so that that’s really kind of how it started. And I also said, you know, as I look across the organization and see who’s doing what and who’s involved in this, it’s much broader than the traditional role. And so, I brought together those people who were doing recruiting and those people who are in talent, but I also brought together people who were doing real estate and facilities, and that included food facilities, safeties, insecurity and environments.
And then this amazing group that Airbnb called Ground Control, which I call the secret sauce. And I’ll tell you what they are still there. Jenna Kushner, who leads the group and many of the people on our team have been there for seven, eight years. And they are keeping that place going. And they’re keeping the culture alive. And they’re helping people through this adversity, the pandemic and everything else. And they basically self organized and there are people who were in operational roles, who realized that the best way to get those roles to be successful and to move the people and the culture and scale the organization was by focusing on the mission and values. And so so they are the curators of the mission and values. They focus on employee events, recognition, celebration, and internal communications.
And so we brought all those groups together and then slowly added in things like diversity and wellness and social impact. And so that’s kind of where it started, and it just really became this amazing opportunity to rethink how companies look at HR and, and how you really shift the mindset from doing things to your employees, which I think is what a lot of HR people do. And now doing things with and for your employees and creating that two way dialogue and and what we called co creation, I think what academics would call Human Centered Design.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, you can’t see it because I’m wearing a sweatshirt, but I’ve got goosebumps, like I’m so nerding out with this coming from a human centered background and mixing the employee experience with culture I’ve got everything is firing off in my head and like, I could go in a million directions. What I love about the Airbnb story is that it is known for definitely being I mean, I would say I would call it an experienced company, because it’s not just about the hosts and the guests delivering that great customer experience, but it is also about that employee experience. So what I also love about the store is that the founders were designers.
Mark Levy
Yeah,
Steve Chaparro
And, I kind of like that. You know, I do subscribe to the idea that if you are a design lead company, you may not be a design company, right. But in this particular case, you’re taking design principles that you those human centered principles, whether it’s your customer, your guests, or your employees, and you’re involving them into the process, whether from a co creative or human centered away, and you’re harnessing because I have always believed that the Gone are the days when the executives and the companies are the smartest people in the company, those are gone because of the vuca world that we live in. It’s way too volatile. It’s way too uncertain, is way too complex and ambiguous for our experiences at the executive level to be sufficient for the way forward. I also think that it is not going to be the third party consultants that are going to come with the best ideas, but rather, it’s those employees that will be the true culture experts of that company and come with the better and best ideas and that’s not always an easy lesson for executives to learn, is it?
Mark Levy
No. I mean, it’s interesting as you talk, I think back to how I arrived and what I was thinking and, you know, having spent time in creative organizations, and in the travel business, and then getting to the organization, and seeing Brian, Joe and Nate and particularly, as you mentioned, Brian and Joe being designers, it was so exhilarating to see a different way of leading and a different way of thinking and the attention to detail. There was early core value called every frame matters. And it was because Brian and Joe had been so consumed by the Disney animation and every frame and how when you flip through that every frame has a subtle but different drawing and together it creates this beautiful picture.
So we had a we had a journey of the host journey and then again Yes, journey. Yeah. And every frame was how that was going to show up. And so, you know, I think their leadership in their mindset was so exhilarating. And it was so new. And it was such a beginner’s mindset, that it really motivated everyone to kind of think differently. And no one had ever done this before. And now it’s kind of fun because my son Sam is first year at Rhode Island School of Design. And so I’ve been to the school for orientation. I’ve been there for parents weekend, and listening to to Roseanne, the President and others talk about how they work with their artists and designers, they don’t even call them the students and seeing how the campus is setting up. I can see so much of the inspiration and the way in which those two were taught to think this way and the way it showed up at the company. It gave me goosebumps when I went back.
Steve Chaparro
I mean that has been my passion is to bring together those two disciplines of what was formerly known as HR but also the employee experience and design and I feel In many cases, in some circles, that pairing is not well understood, or there’s not a lot of awareness about it. And I think part of my passion for this podcast is to just even share, you know, people like, you know, the story of people like you who have actually practiced this and have seen where that intersection happens. And, and so I love seeing that. I mean, there’s so many, so many questions I would love to get into. But I think what we wanted to get into today, was this topic of belonging and the idea of how can we make connections between employees, and their companies, customers and communities. So share with me a little bit about what belonging means to you, and why it’s so important in the context of all three of those stakeholders.
Mark Levy
Sure, if you don’t mind, let me start with how how it showed up, because it is it’s very close to the comments he made around experiences. So when I got to the company The mission was around having people feel like they were home, anywhere. And the more research we did, the closer we got to the hosts and guests, the more we understood that it was less about the home and more about the host. And it was less about where they stayed and more about the experience that they had without host. And so we worked with on the executive team, a really great guy named Doug Atkins, who is part of many organizations including p&g, and had done a lot of work around cultures and cults and he really helped us think through this idea of belonging. So the mission became the idea of how to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. So there’s a lot around inclusivity and trust and global. And so that’s where the idea of belonging started.
And so, I worked very closely with Jonathan Mildenhall, who is our cmo to figure out how we created intersection and integration between our internal and our external messaging. Denise Lee Yohn wrote a great book called fusion. It’s right here on my desk. And she has a chapter on the work that we did and the importance of having authenticity and having a seamless way in which you talk about what you’re doing with your customers and how that translates to what you’re doing with your employees. And so if we’re going to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, then our employee experience strategy was how do we create a company where people feel like they belong here? And so then we had to figure out okay, if that’s the case, what does belonging mean? And what does that mean in the sense of, of the employee journey or the employee experience? And so we broke that down into kind of four components.
One was, how do you create connections between the employee and the company and the company and employee? And by that, I guess I would say it was a about transparency, it was a lot about creating trust, it was a lot about the idea of CO creation, and how do we involve our employees and what’s going on. And so we really wanted every one of our employees to be a brand ambassador.
And, you know, our mission was super clear as were the values we spent time turning the values into behaviors. Before I even got there, Brian, Joe and Nate interviewed every single employee or candidate I should say, and it wasn’t for their technical functional skills, it was whether or not they would they were coming for the right reason. They would, they believed in the mission, and whether they further the values and we turn that into something much more kind of structured that I believe still goes on today where the hiring manager and their team interview for technical functional skills and then the final candidate goes through two core values, interviews. They’re done by people outside of the function, right? Those individuals don’t have the person’s CV or resume. And they’re only asking questions around whether or not they believe in the mission. And we had great questions asked about that. And then whether they would further the four values, which were championing the mission via host, brace the adventure and be a serial entrepreneur. And so that mission values was really what drove the filter and the ways in which we created the relationship with our employees. And by democratizing the mission and values. We really had a situation where everyone was curating the culture, but they were also protecting the brand.
And so I can think of a few times when decisions were made. There was a question whether it was right relative to the brand pillars and the mission and values and we got the company together and we talked about it and we kind of unpacked what was going on. We did No after action and, and so everyone was really deeply involved in how that came together. So things we did were, you know, at the beginning there was right a meeting. Every week in San Francisco, there was a global meeting every month. One thing that we did was at the end of the staff meetings, I would take the notes from the staff, and I would make sure there was nothing private, confidential or inappropriate to share more broadly. But I would send high level information to everyone about what we talked about and what decisions were made and why they were made. And I’ll tell you, if I didn’t get that thing out. By Friday, I had people asking me where it was, yeah, because they felt like they were part of this and they wanted to know what’s going on. So those were some of the ways that we created connections between the company and the employees and to to a dialogue, including engagement surveys and pulse surveys.
The second was around creating connections between the employees. And so naturally happened between employees that were on the same team or employees that worked cross functionally and we actually are We sat by outcomes. So we didn’t sit by function. So everyone that was working on homes or room was working on experiences were sitting together. So it was cross functional the way that worked. But we also wanted to find ways that people felt like they were part of something bigger. So the first and the first four years I was there three times, we brought all of our employees together to a meetup in San Francisco was called one Airbnb. And it was amazing opportunity to get to know each other and to reinforce the mission and values and to talk about the next year strategies. But we also did things where we kind of gave people the opportunity to learn from each other.
So for example, we had something called first Thursday’s, where the first Thursday of every month at four o’clock, people could sign up to share something that they were interested in teaching and then others could sign up to go to that class. And it was everything from Margarita making and bike maintenance, to coding to foreign languages. And it was bringing together People together through communities of interest, and letting people learn and teach in kind of the pure way of learning, I think is really helpful and healthy. Another thing we did was we had a lot of employee resource groups. And we had, you know, Latin x went to us and we had pride and we had blackout and we had tried, which was a Jewish one. interesting ones we had early on, which were quite small. We had two parents, parents at Airbnb, which was maybe 10 people at the beginning. And then there was also one called wisdom at which was for people over 40 which was also quite a small group. Yeah, and ironically, it is part of what inspired chip Conley was part of that was inspired him to write his book wisdom at work the modern elder so lots of ways we tried to help connect people across the organization one day when people were feeling anxious that they didn’t know everybody we had a Hello my name is de or those, you know, funny stickers where you just wrote your name on them, because we weren’t a bad thing. kind of company, everyone pointing, you know, Hello, my name is in their name. And it was amazing how many how it opened up for people to like have conversations with people they’d seen, but they really hadn’t talked to. So that’s company and the rest of the associates and then with the customer.
Again, like I said this belonging was an inside out strategy. And so we did a lot to try and help our employees get to know the hosts and guests. One way was one of our values was to be a host. So Ryan was very insistent about as many of us hosting in our homes as possible, realizing that some of us were in studios or had landlord issues or whatever. But if that was impossible, we created ways for people to host at the office, whether it was leading tours or being part of onboarding or what we also gave everyone quarterly travel coupon. And the expectation there was that when you had vacation, I mean, obviously in addition to when you were traveling on work, you would stay at Airbnb, and we wanted to encourage people to do that by giving them coupon. And what we did was we created Thank you gifts so that when you were traveling, you could offer up to the host the opportunity to sit down in their, in their kitchen or their living room and talk to them about what it’s like to be a host and share with them whatever questions they had around being a host on Airbnb.
And the other thing we did was, we also volunteered with our posts whenever we could, which takes you to the fourth one. One other interesting thing about the customer Connections is so I told you we did the one Airbnb for our employees. Well, that inspired chip to think about how we had Airbnb open for our hosts. And so after our first one, Airbnb, we had an Airbnb open. And at that event, we had as many as 500 of our employees there because we felt like how do we learn together? And how do we have our employees host our hosts that we had employees take the host out to dinner or to their homes. When we hosted in San Francisco, so lots of ways we were putting that together. And then the fourth one apologize, it’s kind of long answer, right? Or part was the community and so very early on Joe Bryan, and they were very big hearted. It’s still our as you see some of what they’re doing now. I introduced the idea of paid volunteer time off. And so our employees had four hours of volunteer time, a month, and we incorporated volunteerism into our onboarding program. So at the end of the week, the cohort that started would go to the San Francisco Food Bank, and volunteer together. We had community ambassadors in every one of our offices around the world, to help encourage and engage our employees to use their four hours of volunteer time, as well as to figure out how they might volunteer with our hosts around what’s important to our hosts. We ended up not doing holiday parties anymore. We ended up turning those into times when the employees went out and in teams would do things to volunteer and in neighborhoods with Or they were less fortunate or do adoptive family or those kind of things.
So there’s lots of ways we got involved in giving back to our communities and, and now right now you can see that open homes, which became part of their social impact strategy, which is part of human provided ways to have our hosts open their homes for those who are suffering from anything from a hurricane, to thunderstorm to tsunami, and now their hosts are opening their homes to first responders and I believe, Last I heard there was over 100,000 hosts that open their homes that way. So that was our strategy of four part strategy, how to create belonging, you know, with a company with each other with the customer and then with the community.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love that. And and I just wonder if you know, there’s a CEO or chro, CEO of a company who is hearing this and saying, you know, maybe they’re coming from a mature company who is somewhat entrenched in the old way of doing things and they may say, Well, if I tried to do that, Those four different areas that’s a luxury that I don’t have. It’s time that I don’t have. It’s, it’s probably easier for a startup to do that. If he got that response from that CFO or CEO, what would you say? And how can they combat that?
Mark Levy
Yeah, it’s funny you say that. So when I left about two and a half years ago, I didn’t hang a shingle up or put a website up, I had a lot of people coming after me to figure out what it was that I was doing, and how they could think about doing that. And it was everything from kailani, who is starting her own company to KPMG. I left those were my first two clients. And the larger companies, more traditional companies, they were saying, I’m losing employees, to startups and more entrepreneurial, more forward thinking companies, what can I do? Or companies are saying I don’t have a lot of money, so I can’t really invest in this.
And you know, what I said to all of them was the first thing that you need to do is to shift your mindset, shift your mindset. To the fact that human resources or whatever you want to call it needs to think about, that you don’t create the priorities and the strategies and develop the programs and shove them into the organization. All you have to do is ask your employees, what is it that you need to either feel more connected to the company, more connected to the customer, or more connected to the community, and they will help you do a better job. And they can then help you to define what it is you should be working on and what’s going to be valued the most. And what’s going to help them both be engaged and productive. And so one of the push backs I got a lot was I’m not going to ask because then I’m just going to have all these entitled employees and things wherever they want, I’m going to do for them.
Steve Chaparro
Right.
Mark Levy
So we were very clear from the start to say, we’re going to ask what you think, but there’s no way we’re gonna be able to do everything you wanted it right. So it’s either going to have to be brick in brick out, or know that we have limited resources headcount budgets, And we’re going to have to figure out how we manage within that budget. And so I think, for the most part, people would prefer to be heard than just be told what’s going to happen. And so I’d say that’s kind of the first thing to think about. And then the second thing to think about is, is how does that translate across the organization? So this is not an HR initiative. This has to be a company wide initiative. And it can start from the it should start from the top, but it also can start from the bottom because you’re asking the questions, and it’s all coming in the middle.
But adjacent functions like I mentioned, marketing, and how Jonathan, I work closely to figure out the seamless way in which we’re going to talk about external and internal and connection. It also has to work with it is a great example. So at Airbnb, we hired a new head of it, Mike Jennings who is amazing. And he and I worked together to think about how do you deploy employee experience through your it organism Well, it starts with thinking about the employees as their customer. And he ended up setting up what are like Apple genius bars in each of our locations. And there was people who were there working a lot of them from the Genius Bar, who were there to help you, whether it was software or hardware. And if you needed something, they had a closet behind them full of adapters, or iPads or whatever you needed. And it was really no questions asked and don’t make anyone feel stupid, because they understood that getting in the way of you doing your job with this technology challenge. And so you didn’t have to sign it out or get your manager approval or ask for account codes. And it was a great example of how it turned into a very customer centric employee experience cog in the wheel. And then similarly, finance when it comes to, for example, travel or accounts payable, how you got paid back on things and so I would say those are the ways in which, you know, this kind of came to life.
And it can be done in any organization, there’s so many opportunities to just, you can have a hackathon. And you can invite your employees to say, what’s getting in the way of your productivity, what is it that’s driving you crazy about this company? And what we’re asking of you? Or are the things that you need to make your job easier? And they’ll tell you, and then you figure out, well, how much is that going to cost? And do we have the resources to it? What can we stop doing? And so those are my thoughts and suggestions. Yeah,
Steve Chaparro
I love that. Because I know that for me, when I’m in my work when I’m employing principles and methodologies of Human Centered Design or co creation, and working with companies to harness and leash that employee, sort of collective genius. There are a lot of leaders that are really worried about what the outcomes will be, in terms of all these ideas, like as you said, all of these ideas that we aren’t going to necessarily be able to move forward on. But I agree and I try to tell leaders That the greatest outcome of these processes is yes, I think it’s even though it’s a primary purpose for the endeavor, the outcomes are secondary to what really goes on during some of these things. And that is that people do feel heard, they do feel seen, and they do have some ownership because you know, with all of the stats that are out there about employee disengagement, the fact that they’re being brought in and heard is probably the most profound outcome of some of these approaches than the actual ideas themselves. What are your thoughts about that?
Mark Levy
Yeah, I completely agree with you. And when I arrived at Airbnb, the engagement score was about 69. And within one year, it was in the high 80s. And the same thing happened at all birds. We really in less than nine months. When I left there, it was the engagement scores in the 90s. And I think deploying this idea of This is your company, and we’re all in it together. And what do you need to know? And what’s the best way for us to communicate with you? And how can you get involved in the things that are interesting to you?
And example, Albert’s was we were, we were taking a bit more space. And so I wanted to give the employees an opportunity to say what’s working, what’s not about the current space, and how do they want to work, which was a nod to the work we’ve done at Airbnb and actually had one a can design award. Aaron Harvey, who’s the architect over there, as part of our lead our environments team did an amazing job of both workshopping and passing through surveys and then working with employees to develop a whole new system. But so we had a workshop and I basically sent a note out to everyone and said, anyone’s interested in figuring out how we rethink the way we work and our workspace, feel free to come to this workshop. If you can’t come jump into this Google Sheet because we’ll put all the items in there, and then from what you share with us, we’ll figure out a new way of designing not just the new space, but across the workspace. And interestingly enough, going back to design, we not only use the values there, but we also use the brand pillars which were around sustainability, comfort and design, which so well translate to when you’re trying to develop a workplace.
So I think that asking them using filters, making sure they understand that it doesn’t mean they’re going to do you’re going to do everything they ask and creating two way dialogue or all the ways in which you can engage your employees in a way that gets them to feel like they’re part of something bigger and that they have a say in their destiny.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, so appreciate your connection between the brand or marketing brand values and how those in those pillars and how they are really, absolutely should be the same as the employer brand when you are trying to attract talent to your company. You know, we say this is who we are, this is what we do. But also that connection or alignment rather, of the brand promise, whether it’s employee or customer, how that aligns with the actual experience. What is your, your thoughts about how aligned the employer brand and the employee experience need to be aligned?
Mark Levy
Yeah, I mean, I think they need to be part and parcel, I think it’s, it’s a thread. And it doesn’t matter whether you start at the customer, you start at the employee, but it has to be connected, because no matter what you do, I have an example of a company that was really struggling and they said, you know, our, our promise to our customer is fast, healthy, magical moments. And I said, that’s beautiful and easy to translate back into your employee value proposition and your employee promise. And she said, Yeah, the only problem is that I can’t get the leaders to feel like we should spend the money or the time to to focus on magical moments for our employees, and I thought that seems so ridiculous how do you expect them to deliver those to the customer if you’re not willing to deliver those to the employees? And it doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be you know, mean you buy a whole new system or you spend a lot of time on it. People are creative. I mean, a lot of I set up both at Airbnb and and all birds was a DIY celebration center. And you know, whether it was an employee or the manager, you know, they could easily figure out how to create something that was going to make people feel special. And the more personal it is, the more interesting it is. And so, yeah,
Steve Chaparro
yeah, I’ve seen also a one of the things that I’ve seen, I’d love to get your thoughts on is I definitely have seen this shift in many of the title changes for the lead, HR executive at a firm and I’ve seen them go from being called Chief Human Resources officers to Chief people officer What do you think is compelling that shift?
Mark Levy
Well, I mean, I think a lot of it goes back to what Brian said, which is, I’m not sure that HR has a great reputation. It’s kind of like it went from personnel to HR. And then people realize that some were doing in one way, and some were doing another. So they felt like they needed a new name. And it kind of went to people went to people and culture. I’ve heard people in places, you know, we called it employee experience, because that was what we were defining as the new broader way in which the employee experience function was going to be relative to more pieces and parts than just traditional HR. And also that we were focused on the employee experience, which is broader than the function
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Mark Levy
And yeah, I mean, I’ve seen on LinkedIn the number of people with with employee experience titles has ballooned over time. And some companies it is a function within human resources and another company it’s the way the whole function has evolved. Think it’s less about the title and more about the behavior. Yeah. And the mindset. But you know, I think it’s a great evolution. And I’m happy to see books being written. And, you know, I’ve had calls from a consulting firms around starting practices in that area. And I was hoping we could get through the whole hour without talking about what’s going on in the world right now. But it’d be kind of interesting not to, but I mean, now more than ever, when nobody is working in an office except for the central businesses, and everyone’s out there.
The importance of employee experience, the importance of one on ones and team meetings and internal communications has never been more critical, right, and listening and a knowing and understanding and having deeper empathy. The only way you’re going to get your business going, Josh person did an interesting article on the reset. and in it he he basically said, no matter whether your business is taking off like an instacart or a peloton, or it’s, you know, heading into the dirt You know, like some of the airlines are, you still have to think about your people first, because they’re the only ones who are going to help drive your business, whether it’s to get it out of where it is, or to keep up with what’s coming at you.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I was playing around with this idea of writing a blog post years ago, and I just never did. And it was just the idea of putting your customers first by putting them third. And I only meant that by saying, put your employees first and then your partners who are ever, you know, whoever is, is part of that supply chain or experience delivery chain, to actually delivering that experience to the customers, which are your partners, if those two groups of people are experiencing and delivering an experience that is powerful, then your customer by default, but also by intention, are going to experience something that is more powerful than they’ve ever experienced before. What are your thoughts?
Mark Levy
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you definitely hear question of phrases employees is the customers. And I would say, instead of thinking about which comes first, I’d say put them together, you know, create that connection, create that seamless interface, and then you don’t have to have some priority. And you don’t have to have one feeling more important. The other The only way it’s going to work successfully is when they’re connected.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. And I think, to that point, I’ve heard some people say that they’re focusing on people experience, which is inclusive of the customer experience and the employee experience. So it’s a much more holistic approach as opposed to like what you’re saying, keeping them separate and possible tension between the two.
Mark Levy
Mm hmm, exactly.
Steve Chaparro
One thought that I wanted to ask is, one question is how important or what does it say about who that chief whether we call them HR, employee experience, people, whatever that function, that executive is, what does it say about who That person reports to the like, you know, do they report if they report to the CEO? Or do they report to the CEO, or the CFO? All of those, in my opinion, say different things about how they approach the employee experience? What are your thoughts?
Mark Levy
So yes, I would agree, it sends a very clear message. And, you know, I think some of it depends too on the CEO and their mindset, but I would say, people in customer are both critical, and that both of those areas should report into the CEO. I think the CFO and chro have a very important relationship, and sometimes it needs to be a check in balance. And so I don’t think that’s the best reporting relationship for a chro because there are times when the wrong decisions might be made because you’re trying to save money, but it’s a penny wise and pound foolish. Seo. I guess it depends on what all the responses abilities are. But I think the right message to send to your organization is that my strong partnership, and the things that I think are most important, are the people that are going to drive our business goals and are going to create the right customer experience. And that’s where I think that the best scenario would lie.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s so good. I think it’s been interesting to hear different folks his perspectives on that. I want to go back to specifically to the employee experiences as we begin to close, what is the importance and how would you define the employee experience? And why is it important for companies to think about that holistically?
Mark Levy
So I would say a while ago, people talked about, so now we’re talking about the kind of the journey rather than the function.
Steve Chaparro
Right, right.
Mark Levy
And so we used to talk about the employee journey. And now I think what we’ve realized is it is a journey, but it’s about all the exciting variances and touchpoints along the way. And so as I think about the employee experience, it’s really from applicant to alumni, and every step in between, and it’s around how you come across as an employer and how you treat that individual. From the moment they submit their resume or CV, to well beyond their time with the organization. And in fact, I’m working right now with Airbnb on the alumni. Because with all this going on, it’s really important. And there’s so many of us out here that are cheering them on and excited about what the future holds once we can leave our homes to get back and travel.
But I would say you know, the employee experience is from applicant to alumni. And it’s being thoughtful like deploying what I talked about earlier, that idea of every frame matters and thinking through how you create a seamless journey throughout an employee’s experience at the company, and how it’s guided by the mission and values and how it’s influenced by the industry or sector that you’re in, and how it’s in service to the customer, whether that’s B to B or b2c, and the service or offering that you have. And all of that comes together in a way that then sets that employee up for success throughout their career. And how does it also come together beyond, as I mentioned earlier, just the HR employee experience function, but how across the organization do different parts of the function, create that seamless employee experience, like marketing like it like finance, and I think really kind of curating it.
And it’s one of the things I’ve seen is that it becomes very episodic and it’s like, okay, we need a new onboarding plan. So you spend all this time and you roll something out, and then you forget about it for three or four years, and then you’re like, Oh, shit, now it’s out of date. So I think one of the things and this goes back to this idea of CO creation and Human Centered Design, Design is, we should be thinking more about our employee programs like iPhones. And you can continually have updates v1 and v2. Rather than feeling like you throw it out, you start over every five years, because the company’s evolving, the world is evolving. We see that right now. And so thinking about those employee experiences, and kind of paying attention to whether that’s through engagement surveys, or pulse surveys, or you know, office hours or workshops, but just constantly getting feedback and figuring out ways you keep tweaking it, so it’s better and better. And so that employee experience is an evolution rather than all of a sudden realizing you’re out of whack and you have this revolution,
Steve Chaparro
How have design principles and methodologies of say design thinking, Human Centered Design, co creation, how critical have those been as approaches because I fully agree that those are just tools? It’s not the intent of this whole thing is just to talk about design or Human Centered Design. It’s a tool but how have you seen The value of that took for the employee experience?
Mark Levy
Yeah. So I gave you an example of the reinvention of the workspace. Another example when I like to share is that we were thinking about it at Airbnb that it was time for us to figure out how to set clear goals and how to hold people accountable, and how to basically manage performance. And we thought, as we grew that it would be important to partner with vendor partner to figure out how we could use technology to do that, you know, ever maybe we had talked about how we use technology to create connections to create human connections. So what might be the way we do that at Airbnb?
And so typically, when I was co creating, I was trying to figure out who were advocates and who are people who really excited about something and have them be part of it. In this case, since everyone hates performance reviews and the performance management process. It was hard to find anyone who loved it and wanted to be part of it. So I thought I’m gonna find my biggest skeptic. And so my team and I work closely with my Curtis who was our head of engineering for two reasons. One is if we could please his team, we could please anyone. And two, because a lot of what our amazing engineering team wanted to do was create everything in house. And so by bringing Mike along and to interviewing some of our vendor partners, he saw firsthand what others who are focused on something so deeply. We’re doing both from a technology and a process standpoint. And so he helped us to select reflective, which is a company out of San Francisco that we chose. And we work closely with them then on how we could take their technology and Airbnb, they were pretty early stage then. And Mike’s engineering leaders could help us to craft a performance management process using this technology that was going to help steer us in the right direction.
And it was amazing because we did it with a pilot, and we started at mid year and it was only Mike’s team, the engineering or the tech teams that were using this methodology and they I really liked that the adoption rate was super high. And everyone else was really jealous because they got to do this other way of working performance management, and they were hearing about it. So at the end of the year, when we roll it all out, we’ve done it in an iterative way. We’ve done it through co creation, and everyone was excited about it. And there was high adoption, and it turned out to be really well. So that’s a good example of how we use Human Centered Design to really rethink a whole process and technology usage.
Steve Chaparro
Love that, folks, we’ve been talking to Mark Levy, the preeminent advisor on the employee experience, Mark, if people want to learn more about what you’re doing today, where can they find you?
Mark Levy
Probably the best bet is find me on LinkedIn,
Steve Chaparro
LinkedIn. All right.
Mark Levy
Yeah.
Steve Chaparro
Thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate this has been such a pleasure for me. I thank you. And I hope that everybody found tremendous value in this. Thank you very much.
Mark Levy
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Announcer
Thank you for listening to the Culture Design Show. We’ll see you again next time. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. While you’re at it, feel free to leave a review of the podcast.
