The Employee Experience: What Different Markets Have In Common and How We Can All Make the Employee Experience Better

By Kelly Fumiko Weiss

Over the course of my career I’ve had the privilege of working in multiple markets. 

Throughout high school and college I worked exclusively at nonprofit organizations, ranging from helping children with special needs to social service agencies to immigration advocacy organizations. I am currently on the Board of a local food pantry. 

After receiving my graduate degree in social service administration I worked in municipal government and later worked for many years in a large public sector school district.

Twice I have worked at religious organizations, including a Christian school in Hong Kong and an Archdiocese Pastoral Center. 

And I’ve also worked in the private sector. Most recently at two different large IT consulting firms. 

I’m not sure how many other people have crossed markets as much as I have, so I wanted to share some employee experience commonalities that I’ve seen. Spoiler alert: what these markets have in common FAR outweigh their differences. 

I know the urge to think the grass is greener can be strong. If you are feeling the constraints of the nonprofit market and think maybe the private sector would be better - I can tell you, there is NO market that has figured out how to prioritize their employees well. 

First, let’s talk about what drives these markets. These are oversimplifications, but they paint a broad picture and give us a starting point.

Core Motivations:

Nonprofit Organizations

• Fundraising
• Mission
• Awareness

Public Sector Organizations

• Compliance & Reporting
• Taxpayer accountability
• The press 

Religious Organizations

• What I call “butts in seats” - increasing participation (and therefore donations)
• Mission
• For larger religious organizations, the press can also be a huge motivator

Private Companies

• Revenue
• Image
• Client satisfaction
• Accolades

Notice something missing from all of these lists?

I do.

What’s missing is the employees. The people doing the work. Without fail, across markets, even at companies that really care about their employees, companies that are a true delight to work at, the employees will come second (or third, or last) to their larger drivers. 

Let’s talk about some other similarities in the employee experience across these four markets:

• Employees are the most expensive part of any organization. Therefore pay raises, bonuses, cost of living increases, etc. become harder to justify and expertise, longevity, and institutional knowledge become less attractive than “new” (aka less expensive) talent
• Because there’s never enough money for all the people an organization needs, people often wear multiple hats, doing two or three people’s jobs at once 
• Salary and benefits are often seen as perk enough and therefore all other employee considerations are either on the chopping block or have already been stripped away
• If employee considerations are in place, and money gets tight, those are the first things to go
• HR departments are there to protect the company and rarely have enough (if anything) in place to support employees
• Fear of what a business choice may look like to others, to the press, or to leadership will often trump doing what’s right AND often what’s best for employees, in favor of what will outwardly play better
• Learning management systems are rarely used, and if they are, training is poorly tracked. Training that is well tracked is training that is legally required
• Employees are not trained for management positions; most employees are promoted to management because they are good at their jobs, not because they will be good managers
• Employee professional development has to be done off-hours / on top of current work instead of being built in as a part of the 40 hour work week
• Paying for professional development opportunities often comes with strings attached - like agreeing to stay at the organization a certain amount of time afterwards and if you don’t, paying the money back
• Flexibility in work (reduced hours, schedule shifts, accommodations for disabilities, children, or sick family members) rarely comes with a reduced workload
• People that opt to go on FMLA are more likely to be on layoff lists once their FMLA is over
• Expenses relating to employees are seen as “off mission” and can and will be excoriated as wasteful spending 
• Leaders rarely take the time to talk to the “boots on the ground” workers
• Communication across departments is rare
• There can be a lot of “us vs them” mentalities within the organizations themselves and/or the organizations they support
• Performance review processes typically feel icky (yes, that’s my professional term for it) and are often unorganized and more often change from year to year
• Job descriptions are not updated
• Job expectations are unclear
• Company communications come in one modality - usually email

I’m guessing that regardless of what market you are currently working in, most if not all of these bullet points resonate with you. 

So, why is it that we don’t put our employees first?

Why is there cognitive dissonance around the idea that if employees are well taken care of, they will be able to better do the jobs they were hired to do?

When did we stop valuing expertise?

Why do we think we can get work for free?

Why isn’t a well taken care of workforce seen as the better business decision?

Let’s face it, we are all complicit in this because we all need our jobs. So none of us rock the boat too much. Being a disruptor can lead to being unemployed. 

And if we are in leadership, we are beholden to the constraints of how much money we have and therefore how much money we can spend. These things are real. 

It’s easy to say that the employee experience should be better when you’re in the vacuum of an aggrandizing blog post. It’s much harder to push back on the tide of poor employee experiences when you need to get your paycheck and your health insurance OR you are the one that needs to keep the company books balanced. 

So, what are we to do?

How do we make employees feel seen and respected at work in the face of immovable institutional barriers? 

Here are some suggestions that do not require institutional change, cost no money, AND if enough people do them, intrinsic change may follow. At Allize, we have about a million more of these suggestions, so look out for future blog posts where we will continue to talk about these and other topics.  

For employers:

• Have language at the ready that backs up your decisions. Worried about how investments in your employees will play out in the press? Curate an answer that supports your employees and justifies investing in them when you are calm and collected. Have it at the ready if/when you get pushback. Don’t leave it to the moment when you may be emotionally triggered to try and craft your response. And make sure it demonstrates how much you value the people that work for you (and therefore the people they are serving.) 
• Even out what you do. Take a look at who is busy and who isn’t. Who is doing two or three jobs at once? Who has less to do that can help someone with more to do? What work isn’t getting done because you don’t have people to do it? People and jobs are NOT interchangeable. But with some attention and training, the workload can be more evenly distributed. 
• Scale down what you do. If everyone is overloaded and there’s no money to hire more people, it’s time to scale down what you do. It’s classic project management. Triple constraint of scope, time, cost. If you cannot increase cost, you have to reduce scope. This will carry pains in and of itself, but doing less can often be the better choice. Take the extraneous work off of people’s plates so they aren’t overloaded and can focus on your core services.
• Communicate to employees in multiple formats. If you have something important to say, don’t just email it out. To start, email is fine, but make sure to email it out multiple times. Then also post it to shared spaces. Then tell department heads and managers they need to share the message in team meetings and 1:1s. Record a quick video of leadership’s message and post it to the company. Make sure your message is heard. All you need is a smartphone! 
• Make management training mandatory for anyone who is a manager. I know your first thought is, how do I do this with no cost? There are a lot of ways to do this internally. You can have an experienced manager within your company lead a workshop. You can leverage free resources online. You can curate a list of books that can be checked out from the library. You can curate a list of podcasts to listen to. Create the to do’s your managers must do and then make sure there’s space for them to discuss what they learned AND how they are going to incorporate what they learned into their jobs. The important part is to demonstrate that being a manager is a unique skill that must be learned, supported, and nurtured. 
• Make sure your employees are part of client project user personas. When working on projects for clients, we often create user personas, creating different buckets for the employees and stakeholders of our clients. BUT when was the last time you saw a user story for your own employees? The people working on the projects are affected by the work too! How does this project impact the team working on it? This is particularly important for long term projects. I know it can seem counterintuitive. And it feels like breaking the proverbial 4th wall to introduce yourself into the equation. BUT there are a million ways you want the client to interact with you. You have needs that need to be met. The project will impact how much time you have to work on other things. The stakeholders will impact the efficiency of your work. Don’t forget about yourself and your team!
• Create change management plans for your teams that are just as robust as they would be for your clients. We all know from working with clients, that even the smallest process change will be addressed and incorporated into our change plans. Why not do the same for our employees?
• Praise and celebrate. We are too quick at work to breeze past the wins. Milestones hit. Difficult tasks completed. Bids won. We often only celebrate on holidays or at the end of big projects. But there are tiny victories each and every day. We should acknowledge, celebrate and share. Celebrations don’t have to come at a cost. They can be a potluck. They can be a praise post in a shared space. They can be a group walk to a local park. Enjoy the creativity of creating ways to celebrate your people. 

For employees:

• Document your own job. Keep a running list of the things that you do for your company. Every few months, compare that to your job description. If you see the scope start to drift, bring this to the attention of your boss. Ask for clarification. BUT you must have specifics. It can’t just be a feeling. Use your documentation to make expectations clear. 
• Be kind. This may seem trite, but it could not be a bigger deal. If you are kind to everyone in your interactions, not only will you feel better but they will feel better too. Being kind does not mean being a pushover. Kind does not equal weak. But showing genuine care, taking a moment to acknowledge we are all human, smiling, paying attention to your tone… it will all go a long way. If everyone is kind, the workplace automatically feels better. 
• Be communicative. What are your needs? Does your boss know them? What have you learned this week? Have you shared that with anyone? What are the expectations for the project you're working on? Are they clear to everyone? All the questions you have, other people probably have them too. Be proactive and answer them for yourself and others. The key to this is picking the right time and place. Constantly bombarding collaborative spaces with questions will burn people out. Start with 1:1s with your boss. Bundle some thoughts together into one post instead of several. Put the thoughts in the correct channel/shared space. Be communicative, but also thoughtful. 
• Present problems WITH solutions. If you have a problem at work, don’t just complain about it. Take time to collect your thoughts. What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What is the impact of the problem? What are specific examples of the problem? AND most importantly, what are potential solutions. Leadership may not take your specific solutions up, but it will get their wheels turning on what solutions can be AND it will show them you are a team player, looking to make things better, and not someone who has the potential to lower team morale.  
• Praise and celebrate. (Yes, this is so important, I’m putting it in twice) Don’t just leave it up to leadership to create praise and to celebrate work. Lead by example and celebrate the moments you see and praise the coworkers that are doing well. Build a positive culture from the ground up. 

Like I said, this list doesn’t solve the institutional problems. And there are a million more ideas we could share. But if you enacted even half of this list, what a difference it could make.  

We’d like to hear from you on ways you’ve discovered to improve the employee experience at little or no cost. It doesn’t matter what market you are in. The problems are often the same. Please share your ideas in the comments below. We can’t wait to hear from you! 

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