Deep down we hear an echo of who we really are. It’s not the one we’ve been pretending to be and its not the one we’re afraid we are. Until we start the journey back to who we really are we will continue to suffer.
Remember who you are
CPD
Mapping the Employee Experience : #EX at #LearnConnectDo
I’m delighted to host this post from Lara Plaxton who’s co-facilitating the next Learn > Connect > Do on 14th June with Garry Turner.
Employee Experience is a new concept in the world of work so if you want to be ahead of the game and learn more: read on and book on!
Over to Lara…
In preparation for this month’s Learn > Connect > Do session, it came to light that whilst there’s lots of information out there on Employee Experience, it’s often quite theoretical and not practical. In our session, we will run an interactive workshop where we’ll consider the employee experience, map out journeys, create personas and run a design-thinking exercise to find solutions to some of the pain points in your workplaces. So ahead of this, we thought we’d share some thoughts on how to understand employee experience better through mapping journeys.
Firstly, before we approach employee experience its important to point out that this should not be viewed in isolation. Systems thinking is an approach to ‘seeing’ things in a holistic way to understand how everything is connected and interdependent on each other within a system. If we view an organisation as a system, then we start to become interested in the various components that make up that system – the stakeholders, processes, technology etc. It makes us think differently. A useful model in this respect is the Service Profit Chain Model:
https://hbr.org/2008/07/putting-the-service-profit-chain-to-work
This annotated version of the chain highlights both employee and customer satisfaction as the focus areas of both Employee and Customer Experience because these are the points where an emotional response is experienced and so these are critical components in the chain. Their connection and interdependency with each other means they mustn’t be designed in isolation or without consideration of how they impact each other.
If you fundamentally believe in this chain as a route to success then you’re off to a strong start when it comes to Employee Experience.
Employee Experience is often confused with employee engagement or as an extension of the employee lifecycle but Employee Experience has User Experience at its core and, with the influence of Customer Experience which established itself first, we can define Employee Experience as the emotional connection between employees and the organisation from the first touchpoint with an organisation – before even thinking of applying for a role – through to the post-employment relationship. Employee Engagement on the other hand is a symptom of what your Employee Experience is like.
So, how do you go about understanding the Employee Experience in your organisation? There are various methods ranging from mapping journeys to developing personas through to analysing the emotional connection at every interaction. This includes human, digital, environmental, cultural and structural interactions where ‘moments of truth’ may occur or ‘pain points’ are highlighted that allow for deeper understanding of how someone feels at that point given their critical nature.
Here is an example of a Customer Experience journey which represents a useful way of documenting the various touchpoints, how the user thinks and feels at that point through to ideas for improvement.
https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/customer-experience/what-is-customer-journey-mapping/
This example is useful because it doesn’t just map out the touchpoints, it also includes how people think and feel which can be understood through feedback surveys but also through behavioural analytics. This insight then then forms the basis for idea generation – best done through collaboration from various departments and stakeholders to create potential solutions.
It can be helpful to map out the full employee journey at a high-level and it is also important to break this down into specific activities / transactions such as recruitment, onboarding, training etc so you can analyse the emotional responses of users as they go through these experiences. That specific activity must then be viewed within the context of the whole experience – and then within the wider system so you can consider how it might impact the Customer Experience. Constantly diving down into the detail and coming back up to the macro view to test the interdependencies and connections.
Developing personas (creating a fictional character of a ‘type’ of user) is a valuable tool in appreciating the various perspectives of an experience and to differentiate or personalise the experience for different users.
With the theory and context from this post as a backdrop, we’re looking forward to getting into the practical realities of the Employee Experiences of the Learn > Connect > Do delegates’ workplaces, using these mapping exercises and running a mini-hack to create innovative solutions. we can’t wait!
If you’ve not already, book here! And we look forward to seeing you there!!.
Self Care for People Professionals @ Learn > Connect > Do
Today’s post is brought to you by Janice Keyes. Janice is a wonderful, dedicated HR professional and coach who’s bringing her self care expertise (learned through her own challenges with 
bringing balance to life!) to Learn > Connect > Do next Thursday (15th March). All profits from these events go to Twenty:Twenty and when you join us you
bringing balance to life!) to Learn > Connect > Do next Thursday (15th March). All profits from these events go to Twenty:Twenty and when you join us you
LEARN new things,
CONNECT with like minded people,
and then go DO something different to make work better!
We’re excited that PKF Cooper Parry are hosting the event at their amazing East Mids offices (check out the image at the end!) and we’d love to see you there. Click here if you already know you want to book. And read on if you’d like to know more…..
P.S. Please make sure you check out the great boat metaphor for self care at the end!
Now, over to Janice…..
I have a little self-care graphic that I keep visible by my desk. It’s a simple hand-drawn graphic that serves as a reminder on those busy days of the things that keep me healthy. It prompts a bit of structure around my self-care and reminds me to keep it high on my agenda. And as you’d expect, the more I engage with activities that nourish my soul, the more rewards I reap. Not only in that short-term joyous time of connection with whatever it is I’m doing but for the long-term too as I continually reinforce those behaviours. Reminding my brain and body what it feels like to be nourished with those feel-good vibes on a regular basis.
And why am I telling you this?
Because hands up! I haven’t always been great at self-care. I know that self-care can be difficult. And so if, by any chance, I can enable your journey to greater self-care to be a little less time-consuming than my own then I’m happy to share my ideas.
So what makes self-care so difficult in the first place?
We live in a forever changing world, where we’re moving at a pace we, perhaps as humans, have never moved at before, constantly driving forward to keep up, take new stuff in and change. Our minds are constantly stimulated. Our mental health continually pushed to its limit whilst we strive to live our lives to their fullest. And with that we are continually challenged to keep everything in check (work and life) AND to deal with whatever has cropped up.
So its no wonder when we live in the world we do that life or work can sometimes ‘get in the way’ and can knock your self-care routine off-balance.
But here’s the thing…
There is ALWAYS going to be something that will get in the way. The experience of life is not one that is always in balance as much as we’d like it to be.
And these days we perhaps find that it’s unusual to get a ‘steady’ moment in work or in life… That is, unless we create one ourselves!
And so to create one we will….
On Thursday 16th March, I’ll be facilitating a session on self-care at the quarterly LearnConnectDo gathering. Learn > Connect > Do was founded by Helen Amery who is passionate about making work better. So if you care about making work better too by being better connected to your own self-care and if you have ‘people’ as the core focus of your work : HR, L&D, OD, coaching, leadership and management, then we’d love to have you along.
I appreciate that it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which meeting, activity or event is the most important for you to attend in any day. It seems we’re forever prioritising. But let’s not forget that “Learning self-care is like building your own lifeboat, plank by plank. Once you’ve got your boat, you’ll still be rocked by the waves of life, but you’ll have a feeling of safety, and a stability that means you can pick other people up on your way.” (Nadia Narain & Katia Narain Philllips)
So if you are ready to build the next plank in your own lifeboat to get to that feeling of safety and stability, book on here…
We look forward to seeing you!
PKF Cooper Parry Offices, East Mids – this is where we’ll be on the 15th!
Diversity and Inclusion comes to Learn > Connect > Do
It’s going to be big!! On 30th November Learn > Connect > Do is back with something a bit different. It’s our Christmas event – nice and early to avoid bumping into the partying and quality time with friends and family – and we’re bringing you four – yes four!! – experts to join our learning conversation about Diversity and Inclusion. If you already know you need this learning jump straight to the booking page on Eventbrite!
(Thanks to Gabriella Driver for sharing this great image from the recent CRF Conference.)
On the back of National Inclusion Week (#NIW2017) last week, and research conducted by PM Insight, this is an essential topic for organisations to engage with. Whether you believe we live in a VUCA world or not, creativity and innovation are essential in work and those qualities will only come through bringing and genuinely including different perspectives and approaches into the workplace’s thinking.
LEARN
So in November we’re inviting four experts to come and share their knowledge and experience on some of the hot topics in the world of Diversity:
> Disadvantaged young people
> LGBT
> Menopause
> Mental Health
Make sure you read about Joanna, Sean, Deborah and Karen at the end of the post.
At Learn > Connect > Do we believe in an adult approach to learning and we like to do things informally so, for this event, the experts will be available around the room much like a conference exhibition hall – but without any hard sell! So you’ll get to choose which experts you spend your time with – whether that’s 1, 2, 3 or all 4 of them. It’ll be about relaxed conversations – learning, asking and exchanging ideas.
CONNECT
But this event isn’t just about gaining knowledge. We’re also going to explore the barriers to diversity – what stops us when it comes to 
Inclusion. As a species, we’ve been scared of difference in others for many years – just check out this video if you need evidence for that (thanks to Janice Keyes for the vid). And recent events prove this fear is still prevalent all around us. So we’ll be talking about this barrier and any others you encounter, understanding them and sharing ideas together for how to overcome them.
DO
If we keep doing the same things we’ll keep getting the same results. This is a chance for you to choose to do things differently, to make work better.
It’s going to be a bumper event with mince pies and, of course, chocoloate included! And as usual, all profits will be going to TwentyTwenty so they can continue to do their great work. All this for less than £27!
We’d love to see you there!
Book here now!
Email me to go on the mailing list for this and future events.
For now, here’s an introduction to our experts…..
Disadvantaged Young People – Joanna Burrows from TwentyTwenty
To represent the perspective of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, Joanna Burrows from TwentyTwenty (Learn > Connect > Do’s charity partner) will be joining us. TwentyTwenty is an award-winning employment support charity specialising in supporting and empowering disadvantaged 11-24 year olds who are disengaged from education or not in education, employment or training (NEET). We break cycles of hopelessness, worklessness and dependency in the most deprived areas of the East Midlands, operating through Lifeskills Centres in Loughborough, Leicester and Derby.
We aim to consistently put the right people, places and opportunities around each young person, to counterbalance some of their persistently difficult home, educational and social experiences. We support young people to develop self-belief and motivation, achieve in education, learn work-ready skills and attitudes and find and keep a good job.
LGBT – Sean Russell from Get Out Stay Out
Sean Russell is passionate about LGBT and enabling employment. He’s the founder of the website:
www.getoutstayout.org.uk
Why don’t they take responsibility??
A couple of weeks ago it was CIPD NAP – an amazing event on the CIPD calendar! All organised from start to finish by volunteers, all of whom have a huge passion for making work better, and created for a community of generous, friendly, positive and helpfully curious delegates. But no event is perfect. Nothing in life is. And something which wasn’t so perfect on the Friday night prompted a connection for me back into work and a challenge I often hear from leaders…….
Why don’t they take responsibility??
At the gala dinner on Friday night there was some serious squealy feedback from one of the mics. And it went on for quite some time. It was really unpleasant!
In response to that, the majority of the room sat with hands over ears, screwing up their faces, giggling at the ongoing discomfort.
One person (thank you David D’Souza) got up and helped to solve the problem and make it stop (i.e. turn off the mic!).
So why didn’t anybody else do this? Why did we all just sit there in discomfort?
One part of it might have been connected to this fable…..
A man walking down the street encountered folks sitting on their porch and a dog lying on the porch whining and groaning.
He asked the folks why the dog was acting that way . . .
“Because he’s lying on a nail” they replied.
“Why doesn’t he get up?” the man asked.
“Because it’s not hurting bad enough” they replied. . . . .
Creating Coaching Cultures : #LearnConnectDo June 17
After a slight delay because of the fabulous #CIPDNAP17 last Friday and Saturday, here’s a peak at what we did at Learn > Connect > Do on Thursday 8th June.
We had a small and perfectly formed group on the day – a great mix of in-house and freelance people, and it was fantastic to have Olivia from Twenty:Twenty there – her first event since we began our partnership this year, and which resulted in some opportunities for Twenty:Twenty to get involved with delegates’ businesses, supporting disadvantaged young people into work 🙂 – hooray!
So our topic for June was creating coaching cultures and, after everything that’s been going on recently, our food theme was hearts.
There are two learning parts to the LEARN of Learn > Connect > Do : the topic and the facilitation approach. For facilitation this time we worked as a group round some flipcharts – each flipchart had its own question, a different colour pen and a different location in the room to help with recall of the content afterwards. We had a focused and rich conversation, keeping ourselves to 10 minutes per question so that we could cover all the priority aspects, and which allowed time in pairs at the end for more personalised coaching / mentoring / planning.
Which meetings where you work could benefit from this kind of approach? Sometimes discussion around a meeting table isn’t what we need.
And so to the topic : creating coaching cultures.
Why would we want a coaching culture? : We created a sense of the kind of organisation that can be created through coaching cultures. A few of the aspects that seemed critical to this discussion were that
#cipdnap17 : It’s all about community
The CIPD Northern Area Partnership Event is back on 9th and 10th June with a focus this year on Enhancing the Employee Experience. The thing I love most about NAP is the sense of community it creates, and so the purpose of this post is, yes, to tell you about what I’m up to at NAP this year, and it’s also to tell you about all the many, many ways you can connect with the fantastic HR and L&D community both online and in real life to extend your learning.
So first, what I’m doing at NAP this year……I’m running a reflection session during the lunchtime fringe on both days – this is to provide time for delegates to pause, process and reflect together on what’s been heard.
Conferences are a great way to learn because you get so much content in such a short space of time. And conferences are a dreadful way to learn, because you get so much content in such a short space of time!
And so the point of these sessions is to prevent you leaving with a head full of stuff and no idea what to do with any of it. Which can often result in nothing being done at all.
The sessions will be informal and interactive with delegates listening, asking and sharing in small groups for as long as is useful to them. Pressure well and truly off!
If you’re joining on either or both days I really look forward to seeing you there!
Now to the wider community which, if you’re not tapping into, please please do! There are so many great, and many free, chances to connect with others in the HR and L&D space to take time to reflect more often. If we don’t stop to get perspective and think then we’ll keep doing the same stuff and expecting different results.
So, places you can go for more….. (and please tell me what I’ve missed and I’ll get it added on).
On Twitter
#LDNights – Tuesdays at 8pm (from @LnDConnect)
#HRHour – Thursdays at 8pm (from @HR_Hour)
#LDInsight – Fridays at 8am (from @LnDConnect)
Regular-ish Meet-ups
Connecting HR (@ConnectingHR on Twitter) – usually drinks and chats in nice bars with fellow professionals – now established in Manchester, York, Leeds, Bradford and the North East
LnD CoWork (#LnDcowork) – for anyone around the L&D space that feels they’d benefit from working in a different environment, with different people – either just to work knowing people are on hand if you want advice, or to get input and ideas, or generally catch up – now established in Manchester and London, Leeds recently launched and Birmingham is on it’s way! Website here.
Regular Learning Events
Learn > Connect > Do – my event! For people pros who care about making work better to share and learn in a fun & informal way with profits going to charity. It runs quarterly near Leicester. Next one is 8th June about coaching cultures. Follow me @wildfigsolns or #LearnConnectDo or go to the website here.
Facilitation Shindig – “A gathering space for change practitioners who facilitate team and group conversations to share ideas, experiences and learning.” Next one is 6th July with the theme of “Outside”. @Shindiggery1 #facilitationShindig and website here.
CIPD Annual Conference – check out the fab free fringe sessions Doug Shaw and Meg Peppin run (similar to what I’m doing for NAP)
Less Regular Learning Events
LnD Connect Unconferences – where the delegates decide the agenda – no speakers on stage, no sales pitches, just professionals learning together to explore shared challenges. These mostly run in Manchester and London but sometimes in the Midlands and the York/Leeds area. Follow @LnDConnect for latest news.
Street Wisdom – using the streets as a source of inspiration – check out @Street_Wisdom or sign up on their website for when the next ones are running.
Art of Innovation – run by Doug Shaw with more info here
Meg Peppin is also cooking up something else! She says to follow her to be the first to hear more…..!
Calendar of L&D Events
Check out this great resource from Fiona McBride: an L&D Calendar of events for conferences and things.
And there are lots of general chats and questions asked on Twitter from the broad and varied community on there.
So much to choose from – why not experiment and give something a try!
Shifting ideas of leadership
Last week at the CIPD L&D Show I – not surprisingly – was drawn to a number of sessions that were talking about coaching cultures and developing leaders as coaches. After day 1 Simon Heath posted his reflections from what he’d heard – and then drawn – and which I shared with this thought…..
=&0=&
Carnival Time!! How do we make every day a learning day?
In a couple of months, on 10th and 11th May, the Olympia in London will become home to the CIPD Learning & Development Show.
Use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or share it internally in your organisation
It’s a fantastic learning event – whether you go to the Conference sessions, spend your time on the Exhibition floor and in the taster sessions, or talking to fellow delegates – there’s something for everyone!
This year, there’s a theme about embedding learning into everyday activities: Make every day a learning day! And this post is an invitation to you.
As part of the blog squad I’m running a blog carnival – an opportunity for anybody to blog around the theme of how we make every day a learning day which I’ll curate at the beginning of May. The point of this is to get everyone’s thinking juices flowing, to get 
people thinking and working out loud, and help you shape your purpose for going to the event or following #cipdldshow.
When you go to a conference or exhibition, it’s easy to go, fill your head with a bunch of stuff, fill your bag with a bunch of swag, and leave wondering what you went there for in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to be gained from the world of serendipity, where you allow things to appear and where you follow your nose in the direction your energy takes you. However there is also much to be gained from having a purpose. Having a reason for going. The ideal is to get a balance between both of these two. Be clear on your purpose and let yourself be led by your energy.
So, this blog carnival is to help you shape what that purpose is for you. Whether you go to the exhibition, the conference or just follow the backchannel (#cipdldshow) having a purpose will help guide your attention to the areas of greatest benefit to you.
So, what do you need to do?
🙂 Write a blog post by the end of April:
Either – Publish it on your own blog site and tell me it’s there – tag me into a tweet or LinkedIn post
Or – put your post in a word doc and email it to me, then I’ll host you on my blog page
🙂 Get sharing:
Share what you’re reading from others so more people can access all the thinking that’s going on
Learn > Connect > Do : Wellbeing and the Thinking Environment
A week ago on 9th March was the latest Learn > Connect > Do : an event held quarterly in Leicester which is for people professionals who care about making work better through doing great people stuff. These are also people who care about giving back while they learn and I’m delighted that we raised a fantastic £130 for Twenty:Twenty through ticket sales. This will enable a young person to get support with transport costs to get to their local centre to learn, or to go for a day out to celebrate their learning successes! And even more than that, with the professional backgrounds we have there are so many other ways delegates can get involved and support these young people into jobs they might never have considered an option before.
Each time we meet we have a topic to discuss and learn about, and a facilitation approach for people to experience so that, if they think it could be useful to them or their organisation, they can go away and explore more for themselves. This time we talked about Wellbeing – what are we doing about it at work? – facilitated using Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment approach. The event was sensational! One delegate said she didn’t know what to expect of it “but that it over-delivered by far!”. Makes it all worthwhile 🙂
Having chatted, got to know each other and captured the questions all the delegates brought, I started things off with an intro to the Thinking Environment and how we’d use it as a group. It’s a very different way of behaving together and so it needs careful set up to agree with the group how it’s going to work and why. I highlighted how the Thinking Environment really connects to what we know, and are continuing to learn, about how our brains respond to threats, and also it has a strong connection to the theory of Human Givens which is about the conditions needed to help people thrive.
Andrew Harris then shared 8 (plus a bonus 9th!) top tips about how not to be effective with wellbeing. You can read more about these in a great blog Garry Turner wrote after the event. It gave a great, concise injection of information and advice to feed the later conversation.
Janice Keyes then took the reigns to help the group choose the top question they wanted to focus on – the choice was broad with aspects like influencing top leaders, showing ROI, engaging managers and employees, developing managers to have conversations about wellbeing, communicating what’s happening and what’s working, developing a strategy…..From all those options the group chose this question: “If wellbeing means something different to each individual, how can an organisation develop a strategy with the flexibility to meet those needs?” Great question!
We then got into the Thinking Environment group activity. The evolution of everyone’s thinking was fantastic – there was great diversity and appreciation of each other for new ideas that were introduced. And laughs, especially when Rhodri highlighted the (unfortunately too often) sad truth that we only need the term “work-life balance” to demonstrate the fact that when we come into work at 9am we die, and only come back alive when we finish for the day. Like David D’Souza’s Reverse Superman Effect.
Something that struck me was that the same goals we have of empowering people to take responsibility in work, to have clarity of the end game and everyone’s roles in that, and to help people more often choose what they do and when they do it are the same for the topic of wellbeing. Therefore if you have a great, empowering, coaching-centred and human organisational culture, wellbeing is naturally part of that and doesn’t even need a separate strategy. Wellbeing is the vehicle, not the destination” as Mark Gilroy so beautifully said. The addition an organisation might bring is around education about physical and mental health, nutrition, sleep and exercise…. For continued pondering…..
The discussion was so rich and diverse I didn’t feel I could do it justice on my own (these photos show a snapshot of the brilliant thinking that was going on) and so I asked the delegates to send me their thoughts on it. Here’s what they’ve had to say…..
Jo Lee wrote a whole post about it.
“I read Nancy Kline’s book “Time to Think” a while ago and I’ve heard it talked about a lot but I hadn’t experienced the thinking environment in action. The thinking environment that Helen created last week gave me the space to think, to go with whatever came to mind, to let my thoughts evolve, without feeling I had to compete. I felt very calm. My takeaway was how powerful something so simple could be – just being able to speak and listen without interruption. Who’d have thought of that?
My individual takeaway about wellbeing was less about the organisations and strategies that the question we talked about posed. More about personal responsibility. How we all have a responsibility to recognise and say how we are feeling – like a wellbeing contract with ourselves. How what we mean by wellbeing can change, for us as individuals, as a society and how we live our lives. I am also mindful how important people managers are in the whole wellbeing agenda but how they may not feel equipped or mandated by an organisation to promote wellbeing or respond in an individual way to the people they work with.”
“The Thinking environment process is powerful, moving, insightful and challenging. Powerful and moving in terms of the depth of listening and understanding that one draws from the process. Insightful as one hears and learns on a completely different plane/level. Challenging as, I at least, am used to competing to be heard (in relative terms), so the serenity and calmness of the process is genuinely mind-blowing. This is a process that I have already promoted to some colleagues internally and I will practice it in my own time also.
The Fit for Work presentation from Andrew was excellent, very insightful and engaging. I learned a lot about the aims and process of this organisation, but I also took away the consistency of challenge, like so many other people interventions, that exist around introducing effective wellbeing into organisations i.e. leadership buy in, effective line management training etc
All in all genuinely my best CPD experience of my career to date.”
“The session was a perfect fusion of process (thinking environment) and content (wellbeing) with each being integral and complementary to the other. To have the opportunity to talk and listen in such an uninterrupted, focused and purposeful way was illuminating and made for one of those ‘moment in time’ sessions we all hope for as facilitators. What was most striking for me was the synergy between the process and the content – our own wellbeing (many of us reported feeling calmer and clearer) was being enhanced as were discussing the topic. I am already thinking of how I can use this approach for teams in crisis and for leaders who are under significant pressure”
“So many gems. I appreciated hearing from others about how to promote wellbeing as a strategic consideration for any organisation. Helen’s facilitation of Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment was positioned expertly, and a timely refresher of a highly valuable facilitation tool, one which enriched the quality of the conversations throughout the session. All this, topped off by the knowledge that a portion of the cost is being donated to a worthwhile local charity. It’s easy to cover a lot of content in a short amount of time…but to also have time built in for reflection, networking and practical takeaways, that’s something special. Time well spent.”
So thank you to all the delegates for their energy and wonderful thinking on the day. Thank you to Janice and Andrew for facilitating the session with me. Thank you to Mark for taking fab photos. And thank you to Bianca for supporting me with the very important and hidden administration to make the event happen.
If you’re interested in joining a future event, the next one’s 8th of June 3-6pm at The Observatory in Leicester. If you’d like to go on the mailing list, email me. Or keep an eye 
on the website, or on Twitter (#LearnConnectDo) or on my LinkedIn.
It would be great to welcome you to this growing community!