Team Effectiveness

Team Effectiveness

Team Effectiveness

Team Effectiveness

CXperts Episode #10: Diane Domeyer, SVP at Robert Half - Future-Proofing Your Workforce

CXperts Episode #10: Diane Domeyer, SVP at Robert Half - Future-Proofing Your Workforce

CXperts Episode #10: Diane Domeyer, SVP at Robert Half - Future-Proofing Your Workforce

CXperts Episode #10: Diane Domeyer, SVP at Robert Half - Future-Proofing Your Workforce

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Aug 17, 2022

Aug 17, 2022

Aug 17, 2022

Aug 17, 2022


This week’s episode:
Alexander Kvamme meets with Diane Domeyer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Managed Creative Solutions at Robert Half, to discuss how to create exceptional employee experiences to ensure great customer experiences. 


In the wake of the pandemic and changing economic conditions, Robert Half conducted research on the factors driving fundamental shifts in worker sentiment. Future-Proofing Your Workforce: An Employer’s Guide is designed to help company leaders craft a blueprint for adapting to current and future workplace shifts. Robert Half is a global leader in talent solutions and business consulting in a variety of disciplines, with strong experience in customer experience and technology initiatives, and was named one of FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies®”.


Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or Google Podcast.


Transcript:


Alexander Kvamme 00:27
Okay. Hello again, everyone. Welcome to the CXperts podcast, where we dive into hot topics and trends around customer experience with thought leaders and luminaries from the world's most recognizable and successful companies and brands. I'm your host again, Alex Kvamme, co-founder and CEO of Pathlight, which is a performance intelligence platform for managing customer-facing teams. We combine analytics, insights, performance management, employee engagement, quality, and so much more to help these teams increase their productivity in these uncertain times. Now I'm really excited about today's episode. Maybe we unofficially call this the employee experience episode of the EX episode. My guest today is an expert in that. Diane Domeyer who's the senior vice president and managing director at Robert Half and the Managed Creative Solutions team.


And so if you haven't heard of Robert Half it's a global leader in talent solutions in a variety of disciplines with strong experience and customer experience and technology. And also Robert Half has a global consulting firm called Protiviti, and Diane sits at the intersection of those two and through her work, she and her colleagues have worked with the majority of the Fortune 500, Robert Half is a $7 billion company. They are an expert, a trusted partner for a lot of the biggest companies around the world. Also, Robert Half was named one of Fortune's most admired companies and has 400 locations worldwide. Diane, thank you for joining, really excited to have you here today.


Diane Domeyer 01:55
Thank you so much. It's an honor. And I'm thrilled to talk about this topic, Alex.


Alexander Kvamme 02:01
Me too. So, let's get into it. So Diane, as you know, this is a podcast for operators by operators. We really want this to be tactical and so that our audience can take what they hear and see today straight into their LT meeting, their leadership meeting, their exec staff meeting, and really action the insights that they hear on this podcast. So before we jump into that, let's do a quick little background review. You've given me one of the easier jobs given how consistent you've been in your career. It's effectively Robert Half 30 years.


Diane Domeyer 02:38
That's right.


Alexander Kvamme 02:39
And I know that there were a couple things in between there, but you are one of the rare, rare, rare folks in this industry who have really stuck by and grown with a company. And so maybe given, I'm guessing you've worked on every team doing every single thing. Maybe give us a quick overview of your background and experience at Robert Half and what you are working on right now.


Diane Domeyer 03:09
Great. Thanks Alex. And again, like I said, it's such a pleasure to be a part of this, and I love the work that you're doing at Pathlight. So here's a little bit of an ironic take on me, Alex. I was definitely one early in my career that had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My background was marketing and IT from an academic perspective, as well as some hands-on experience, but I always had an affinity for people and someone at Robert Half, 30 years ago, pulled me in to say, I think you would be a great recruiter. So the irony is that 30 years ago, I had no idea what I wanted to be, 30 years later, people say that I'm a career expert. So there's some irony in that.


So I started as a recruiter with Robert Half 30 years ago, and I've been fortunate and blessed to grow with the company over the years, as we as well have changed and transformed, not only how we serve our customers, but the businesses and the services that we've provided. So I started in recruiting and I grew with the organization and as our business transformed, I was able to grow with the organization to different levels of responsibility and actually have a number of different career paths, both in leading our staffing operations, but also being a part of our corporate team to help transform the way we serve our customers, but also how we engage our employees.


And so through that time, it's very interesting because if you think of, for anyone here that thought about looking for a job 20 years ago, versus what it's like today, or even 25 years ago, you think about how when you'd look for a job, pre-internet, it was all in the newspaper and the internet, social media, the access to information and the tools that you use to both find a job or find talent have drastically changed. So I've been fortunate to be a part of transforming the way we do our business through that process. So that's a little bit about me and my background. I'm also really passionate about employee experience and have been an advocate for our employee resource groups for our global company, specifically I'm an executive sponsor for our global women's executive network and a member of Chief. And we as well as an organization, in addition to serving our customers, have had to look internally as a company as to how do we meet the needs of our employees so that we can ultimately meet the needs of our customers.


Alexander Kvamme 05:50
So, that's great because you are thinking about EX across every dimension, both internally at Robert Half, but also as you work with your various customers around the world. So let's dive into that. I think one thing that you're really fond of is, and something you've harped on for a while, is how EX influences CX. And I know that you recently, Robert Half recently came out with some new research called “Future Proofing Your Workforce and Employers Guide”, and I really encourage folks to review it. I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes. There's a brief summary. It's a 10 or 20 slides, it's easy to consume and we'll talk a little bit more about it here, but the first thing we should, maybe we should cover here, Diane, is that concept of EX driving CX and maybe the key takeaways that you saw in this last round of research. And then just as foreshadowing, I want to ask how that's changed in the last six months, but let's just start with the general thesis of your most recent research.


Diane Domeyer 06:59
Well, first of all, when you look at the importance of employee experience, both from the standpoint of attracting and retaining top talent, it has always been important, Alex, but I think never before has there been so much emphasis on how organizations are investing in their employee experience and how their workplace has had to change. So you mentioned some of our research. So in addition to providing talent operations, staffing, recruiting capabilities for our clients, we do a tremendous amount of research every year and throughout the year on workplace trends and career trends. And in the workplace in particular, and in our most recent white paper, which we called “Future Proofing Your Workplace”, the importance of how employees' mindset has changed, not just during the pandemic, but with this period that we are in right now, has basically accelerated. What was important to employees before the pandemic is even more important now.


So as an example, we all know certain employees are really placing a high value on hybrid and remote work. So pre-pandemic, one out of 67, one out of 67 employees either worked remote or a hybrid schedule, one out of 67. It's now one in seven. And when you're in an employment market where the number of job openings is more than twice the available talent looking for work, those companies that can provide that level of flexibility and will continue to provide that level of flexibility, even as the pandemic subsides, are basically, they have the upper hand in identifying talent in a really, really tight talent market. One of your trends.


Alexander Kvamme 09:08
You were touching on this, and let's dive a little bit deeper, which is, I think obviously post-pandemic, anything everyone was talking about was the great resignation. And, of course, there were more job openings than folks to fill them. And really that status quo was disrupted so quickly in so many different ways. And that was holding, and I think we assumed it was the ground truth up and through 2021, but then a lot has happened in the last six months. And so given that, and I think one thing for our audience to realize is Robert Half is at the front lines of the economy through staffing and through all the work that you guys are doing. And so I think maybe give our... A lot of the folks that I speak to are operating off of outdated research that maybe was collected last year, but not updated in the last six months. So, perhaps let's just quickly talk about how things have changed and stayed the same now speaking in July, summer of 2022.


Diane Domeyer 10:19
Yeah. So to your point, there's been so much discussion about the great resignation, some say the great reshuffle, that was the narrative. What I would say is that the job market in 2022 continues to be very robust. There are still 11.3 million openings, job openings in the market as of last month, 3.6% unemployment. And depending on the profession, still two times more jobs open per job seeker than job seekers, and in some professions it's four to five. Now with current economic circumstances, what we are definitely seeing is that professionals at every level are thinking more carefully before making the jump. And that's both on the hiring side, being thoughtful about if there is economic change, are we going to be as aggressive in our hiring? It's still very robust, but on the employer side, there's still a little bit more, it's a little more tempered.


On the job seeker side, where I think there were a lot of people that made really significant life changes, job changes. They're thinking more carefully as opposed to jumping primarily for that next opportunity, or the company that'll give them flexibility, or jumping for greater income. And they're thinking more carefully holistically about what they're looking for if they're going to make a change. We do see, Alex, that six out of 10 in 2022 are still rethinking their careers. And four out of 10 still plan to look for a new job. So employee experience and programs for retention are still very, very important.


Alexander Kvamme 12:11
In fact, it sounds like the stakes are even higher because the employee now has a higher bar. They are being more considered in the roles that they look for. Therefore, employee experience is even more important because that's going to be a key determination in their decision.


Diane Domeyer 12:30
And some of those factors are, number one, compensation is obviously always on the docket, but it's not always number one. In many cases we're seeing, does an organization provide hybrid and remote work, or flexible schedules as very, very high importance. Secondarily, do they have the ability to prioritize their personal life? And this is not just about how, when and where we work, but some out of necessity, women in particular that have had, in some cases born the brunt of supporting things on the family front, which is not always the case, but the ability, the reality of there's greater consideration for not just work life balance, but support for what's necessary in your life is more important than ever before.


And then I would say finally, and this is really important as it relates to the connection between CX and EX, is employees really care about whether A, they're doing meaningful work, but also that they're working for a purpose driven organization. And that purpose driven organization is one that gives back to their employees. It's one that gives back to society. It's one that supports them in their personal lives, as well as professional. And that connects that customer experience and that brand experience. There was a time where purpose was all about, in some organizations, the marketing function was talking about the purpose brand, but if employees don't feel that, that purpose-driven approach goes all the way up and down the organization, it will never come to fruition.


Alexander Kvamme 14:15
So we've established that one of the first things I wanted to establish is that EX still matters. And that even though things have changed, and we feel like the market has tightened a bit over the last six months, it is still in such a state, and the mindset of both hirers and in employees is in a state that EX is still incredibly important.


Diane Domeyer 14:39
And I guess I would add to underline that if you will, Alex, Forbes... No, I'm sorry, it wasn't Forbes. It was Aberdeen that recently did a study that companies that have a robust employee experience and engage their employees have a customer loyalty that is three times higher than those organizations that are not known for employee experience. So it's not just about making your employees happy, there's a business case associated with it. And Forbes recently listed the top 100 customer-centric companies of 2022 globally in every industry. And do you know what the three of the criteria were? Is number one, were they customer-centric? Number two, how did they rank an employee experience? And number three, were they known to be innovative? And so it's not just, again, it's not just about reducing turnover, it's not just about attracting top talent, it's the business case that connects revenue growth, customer loyalty, profitability, to really delivering outstanding customer experience.


Alexander Kvamme 15:58
So perfect segue, because we've established that EX still matters in 2022. And now let's talk about how EX influences CX. And you've already set this up very nicely, but we've been talking pretty high level for the last couple of minutes, let's get tactical. And so let's just first think about our CX leaders who listen and watch this podcast. What is something that they could take to their exec or staff meeting and ask the question, say, hey, how are we doing on EX? What's the diagnosis that they could do to see how they are doing? How would you walk through that framework, or that Maslow's pyramid of EX? It's like, what's most important? What are the one, two and three, so people can start grading themselves and then we'll talk about ways to improve?


Diane Domeyer 16:49
Yeah. So first of all, from an employee experience standpoint, at every level in an organization an employee needs to feel connected to what is the mission, the purpose of not only their company, but their role in that? So many organizations, again, regardless of size, put a lot of time and money into what is their mission, what are their values? And first and foremost, from an employee experience standpoint, every employee in the organization needs to feel that those values and that mission, not only do they have a role in it, but that it is the way they live and breathe. And so, first of all, for especially frontline leaders, if you feel that there's a disconnect between that, you need to ask your employees, you need to write what is important to them? Where do we break down in our mission, our vision, our values? And act on that feedback.


So it's not just employee surveys for the sake of an employee survey, it's an employee survey for the sake of acting upon it. And even if you don't do formal employee surveys, any frontline leader and any level of leader should make sure that there's communication about that. The second thing is, again, and I just said the word communication, if the pandemic taught us nothing, it's like when you think about the experience of everyone getting a window into the world of their employees, that maybe they didn't have before, it broke down hierarchies, but it also emphasized the importance and value of transparency and communication and authenticity. So you have to measure how well do we feel that people can feel that they can share their concerns, that we are authentic, that we're communicating frequently about changes, whether they're popular or not?


So those are, so mission, vision, values of authenticity, communication, transparency, but then there's a whole lot as it relates to just work environment and things that you can do specifically to help your employees. And your employees care about, we already said flexibility, appreciation for what's happening outside of their work, purpose-driven, but on top of that, they want to feel that they have opportunities to learn and up skill. So what are you providing in terms of either heat assignments for someone to take on more responsibility? What training or resources can you make available to your teams? So you want to make sure at the level of not just skills, but do we have the tools, the technology, the resources to do your job and the training to advance your career?


Alexander Kvamme 19:46
So this really maps well to actually what we do at Pathlight is actually the... It's a good second half of... So, when we talk to our leaders, just like you're saying, hey, everyone needs to be aligned on mission, vision, values. We also believe everyone needs to be aligned on expectation and performance. And so it's the same idea. And so if I were to actually talk to the CX leader and give them something to take back to the staff, the idea is that you should be able to walk the floor, or if you were to magically appear in the office, so the home office of any of your employees and you were to ask them, what is the mission of the company? What is the vision of the company, and what are our values? You want the percentage of people to get that answer right to be 90 plus percent.


And then the same thing with Pathlight. You want them to, even more simply, we want our end users to be able to answer the question, how am I doing? Because that's the second part of this. It's like, what is the mission, vision, values of this company and how am I doing to promote those things? And so, we call it transparency and alignment. And it's alignment, not only on the tactical goals that actually drive your business, it's alignment on the mission, vision, values is actually going to keep them, it's going to retain them and keep them fulfilled and help them stay there. And so if I were to reframe or make a little bit more actionable, that first point to the CX leader, let's do a survey of how many people actually... Well, first of all, do we have mission, vision, values? And have we stated them? That's one.

Two, what percentage of our team knows those mission, vision, values across our sites, across our teams, across our locations? That's the second funnel, stage in the funnel. And then third, what percentage of our teammates agree that we are aligned against those mission, vision, values? And that number is never going to be perfect, but hopefully it's above 50% and you know, and you can work towards improving it. Is that a fair way of making that actionable?


Diane Domeyer 22:11
100%. And I think in addition to, do we know, and do we understand mission, vision, values and how we're performing against them? It's what role does your team play? Because often times companies will have really broad-based mission statements, and then vision and values, but that broad-based mission for someone maybe in the CX organization, or even more challenging, maybe in some parts of an organization that are not as customer facing, it's like, what is my role in making that mission happen? And the organizations that do that really well with teams of five, teams of 25, versus the broad base, this is what the company stands for, are those that really see the greatest success. And to your point, Alex, it needs to be really tactical, like what can we do to support it? It's not just do we know it, can we articulate it, and do we believe in it? But what is my role in making that happen? And that's where a frontline leader, or even all levels of leaders, frankly, need to make sure that they're asking the questions, like what are we doing to make that happen?


Alexander Kvamme 23:30
It's super compelling because at Pathlight we are always talking about this key question, “how am I doing?” And I think what you're saying is let's look at the broadest possible definition of that question, which is how am I doing not only personally against my goals and my expectations, but how am I doing and why am I doing it in the context of the greater company? And just like you need every employee to know how they're doing on their day-to-day performance metrics, you need them also to know the why of all of that because the former will help you hit your goals that month, but the latter will help you hit your goals that year or, and succeed over a long term.


Diane Domeyer 24:21
And the other aspect, which I know is part of what, the services that you provide at Pathlight, but the other one is putting visibility and recognition in a bigger way to those that are doing it well, and that's what becomes contagious. I've seen so much over the years, especially in customer experience and sales, that the, how am I doing question tends to put a light on areas of opportunity, and you need to really shine the areas of strength, because that is the employee experience you're looking for, is if I'm recognized and I feel good about what's going well, then there's a psychological component, which not only gets me to do more of it, it gets others around me to do more of it. And that's a big part of the employee experience.

Alexander Kvamme 25:15
Yeah. Yeah. Recognition. And this actually leads us into a topic about the frontline manager, or the first line manager. One of the things that we always see is if the first line manager is stressed out or overwhelmed or not set up for success, all they're doing is firefighting. That's all they have time for. And so what's the thing that they don't have time for? Recognition, because the only thing that they have time for is coaching the biggest fires of the day or of the week. Maybe help elucidate a little bit more on how you help your customers think about these first line managers and their importance and what they can do to make them more effective, and how important they are in general?


Diane Domeyer 26:04
Well, first of all, if you think about the importance of first-line manager and the teams that they manage, frankly, is the face to the customer. So in many organizations, it is the most important role, but it is also one of the most challenging roles to your point, because of the demands of the customer, the problem resolution. They often tend to manage teams that are higher in turnover, and they're constantly in fire mode. So, first of all, I would say the way we help organizations to think about that, and I mentioned it previously, is the importance of upskilling. Almost 60% of employees that we surveyed said that they feel that they do not get the appropriate level of leadership development. So investment in programs to help leaders in their communication style, and in some cases, crisis management, in employee recognition and in employee engagement is time that is really, really well spent. If you think about the impact of turnover. The impact of turnover has your frontline leaders constantly paying catch up, playing catch up, constantly dealing with being maybe understaffed.


So a couple of things that you can do is A, consider bringing in contractors so that it doesn't affect your customer experience, but also really investing in that upskilling and leadership and upskilling of the front line to make sure... And the employee engagement programs so that you ultimately can deliver that outstanding customer experience. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think the investment in leadership development, now some organizations don't do a great job of that. And if you're a frontline leader that you feel that your organization does not provide that leadership development, how do you recognize your team? How do you engage your team? How do you manage a team? How do you manage the business and manage a team? There's lots of resources that you should take on your own that you can find externally, but also be the voice internally for you and your peers to basically ask for the programs that you need to develop to feel that you can be as effective a leader as possible. And employers are investing in that, they want that feedback.


Alexander Kvamme 28:40
And you had said earlier how important that is to just general employee experience. And it's something that we leaders hear all the time is how important a career growth path is to retention. And one thing I'd advise our audience is there are certainly lots of leading indicators and investments that Diane mentioned that you should be looking into. From a diagnosis perspective the first thing to look for, even beyond retention is just promotion rates and mobility rates, because if folks aren't getting promoted in your organization, then no one's going to believe you have a career growth track. And so you have to start with the actual ground truth, which is, do you actually have a career growth track in your organization? And for that new person, are they going to see over time, hey, those top performers, they do get rewarded. They do elevate. The time that they put in at that level was well spent and was recognized and rewarded.


And, of course, you've got the qualitative recognition, but at some point you need quantitative recognition as well, either through compensation or through increased responsibility, or promotion, or what have you. And so I would certainly ask our audience to go back and just look at promotion rates and make sure, because that is the necessary foundation upon which you build these leadership development programs and stuff like that. There needs to be an output or an outlet for all this. And so let's keep moving on, because I know we've got a lot to talk about. So one trend that's so common or so popular in the CX industry is a move towards automation, it's a move towards self-service, it's a move towards chatbots. And there's even some crazier ideas floating around about the future of CX. So I'd love your perspective on how that future maps to employee experience and just the current staffing model of CX organizations moving forward, as well as the skills required for both frontline managers and just organizations in general to succeed in the future.


Diane Domeyer 31:05
Well, first of all, regardless of what is happening from an automation standpoint, there is always, and I believe will continue to be eternally an importance on the human touch, but it is without a doubt the what technology is enabling is changing the expectations of how we deploy that human interaction. So first of all, I would say that aspects of... Well, first of all, in customer experience and aspects of automation, as you mentioned, like chatbots and how artificial intelligence is applied, et cetera, there are some who may think well, is that replacing the roles of certain customer service representatives, but for those that are in that space, in my opinion, it's actually, and in many of our clients' opinion, it is opening opportunities to take that customer service value and CX value in other directions.


So what I mean by that is when you think about over the last 20 years, how many organizations looked at what we say is CX, and we all know CX means a broad number of things. So CX from the standpoint of customer service, frontline, then CX customer experience from a marketing standpoint, customer experience in terms of how technology now enables customer experience. Over the course of the better part of the last 10 to 15 years, much of that was somewhat siloed. And now not only do most organizations look at CX across the entire customer journey, including back office operations, every touchpoint with the customer is equally valuable, as many world class organizations are bringing employee experience into that customer experience.


So when you think about, going back to your question about what does that mean as it relates to how automation use of technology may change careers, there are now career paths in CX that are far more defined and broad-based. And if you can demonstrate when you first start your career journey in maybe entry-level CX related roles, let's just say that's call center or something else, where even with automation, even if maybe an organization has different staffing levels for traditional bodies, they're dealing with more complex challenges, they're responsible for higher level of problem resolution, cross-functional collaboration. And if you can demonstrate success in that area, there's a lot of different directions you can go in CX.


Now back to your original question about innovation, automation. First of all, no matter what role you have in any organization, and especially in CX, the speed of technology change is not going to slow down, it's only going to accelerate, and the importance of digital literacy to embrace the tools that you have, but also to be an early adopter of how you can even be more productive, more effective with additional tools and resources is something that as a CX leader, you need to demonstrate by example, you need to show that you are embracing the technology. You are an early adopter. You are looking at innovative ways to use the technology to do your job better, or for your team to do their job better. So I see it riddled with opportunity. I'm an optimist by nature, but there are studies that prove out that it's expected that the roles in CX and EX and how that impacts an organization and what that means for career paths is only improving and increasing.


Alexander Kvamme 35:05
Maybe the unofficial title of this episode is why EX still matters and will matter, because I think what I'm touching on is there are so many trends that I think if you were to look at face value it's like, oh, EX isn't going to matter as much because it's going to be easier to hire, because the market's tightening, EX isn't going to matter as much because I'm going to have fewer head count on the agent side. And just on that second point, what you just said, which I think is very important, is actually EX is going to matter more in both those cases, but in the second case, EX is going to matter more because the agents who are still working on the human touch, they are going to need to be more skilled, more collaborative, better problem solvers, and therefore harder to... It's going to take more time and effort to retain those folks, to develop them. And so EX... And you will be the pain both financially and culturally, that you would experience by losing those folks who are going to be more significant.


So the underlying trend is regardless of macroeconomic trends, regardless of these trends towards automation, EX is still a critical part of your strategy.


Diane Domeyer 36:23
Absolutely. And we don't see that slowing down regardless of what happens in the employment market, if you will. And it's primarily based on the fact that you think through the world-class organizations who went through a period of time for the better part of more than a decade, which was those most innovative companies were those that could apply technology in innovative ways and were still on that journey for many large and small companies, and that's not stopping, but there's now the emphasis from the C-suite on the importance of what is now measurable as a result of technology, which is what is that customer experience? How do we measure our employee experience? And when you put the two of them together, what impact does that have to our business? So, let's just say we head into an economic downturn, I would argue that those organizations that really connect CX and EX are the best positioned to persevere regardless of economic conditions.


Alexander Kvamme 37:37
I'd like to end with one last question, I want to squeeze one last piece, a bit of tactical insight out of you before we end. So let's quickly talk about burnout. If we look in the last two and a half years, and we haven't had a chance really to catch our breath. It was pandemic and the roller coaster of that, the dip and then the rise. And if you think about this from a CX perspective, it's like the CX organizations feel pain, both in the highs of the economy and in the lows of the economy, just in different ways. And so we've had this roller coaster, and then all of a sudden starts to peter out, invasion of Ukraine, economic downturn and recession. So we just haven't had a chance to catch our breath.


And so people have been going at this for two or two and a half years full bore. And so I think burnout is a pretty popular topic. And there's no shortage of armchair experts giving recommendations on various ways to reduce burnout. Maybe, again, using this context of the hypothetical CX leader going to their LT meeting, what's the one thing that you've seen, and I'm sure there are a few, but what's one thing that everyone could go back into their team, roll out immediately, and it would make a market impact on this?


Diane Domeyer 39:02
In order to combat burnout, we all know we need a break. And so organizations have vested a tremendous amount of encouraging their teams to take time away. And what we have seen is it's not enough to encourage your staff to take a break. You have to have an environment that will allow them to take a break. You have people who are doing windowed working, working after hours, they're working in periods of time that work with their lifestyle. They're working maybe too many hours. And so, what we are seeing is organizations that not only promote the importance of time off, but they either allow for cross-training and job share. You need to make sure your team has somebody to cover them so they can take time off.


So either cross-training, job share, allowing for windowed working, but, or consider using contractors to cover while they're out, because a lot of time you think about these companies that have offered unlimited, whatever they call it, PTO, CTO, time off. Studies have shown that most people don't take that unlimited time. And it's typically because the culture doesn't either allow for it, or they don't have the resources to cover them for their time off. So I would say that is one of the most important things to do to address burnout. You got to be able to not only encourage your team to take the time, but that you've got the support and the resources for them to feel comfortable taking the time.


Alexander Kvamme 40:40
And that's easy to measure. You've got, putting my accounting hat on, it's like you've got PTO liability on your book. So you've got accrued PTO. Look at how much accrued PTO has been taken and do whatever you can. And your accountants will thank you too, because it's a liability you're removing from the books. Do whatever you can to reduce that and encourage folks to take time off. I think that's a great way to end, Diane. Thank you very much. For our audience, if you'd like to get in touch with me or Diane, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Robert Half, reach out to Diane as well. If you want to learn more about Pathlight or get a demo, visit pathlight.com or reach out to me. For Diane and myself, that's it today. We'll see you next time. Thanks everyone for listening and watching wherever you are.


Diane Domeyer 41:31
Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here.


This week’s episode:
Alexander Kvamme meets with Diane Domeyer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Managed Creative Solutions at Robert Half, to discuss how to create exceptional employee experiences to ensure great customer experiences. 


In the wake of the pandemic and changing economic conditions, Robert Half conducted research on the factors driving fundamental shifts in worker sentiment. Future-Proofing Your Workforce: An Employer’s Guide is designed to help company leaders craft a blueprint for adapting to current and future workplace shifts. Robert Half is a global leader in talent solutions and business consulting in a variety of disciplines, with strong experience in customer experience and technology initiatives, and was named one of FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies®”.


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Transcript:


Alexander Kvamme 00:27
Okay. Hello again, everyone. Welcome to the CXperts podcast, where we dive into hot topics and trends around customer experience with thought leaders and luminaries from the world's most recognizable and successful companies and brands. I'm your host again, Alex Kvamme, co-founder and CEO of Pathlight, which is a performance intelligence platform for managing customer-facing teams. We combine analytics, insights, performance management, employee engagement, quality, and so much more to help these teams increase their productivity in these uncertain times. Now I'm really excited about today's episode. Maybe we unofficially call this the employee experience episode of the EX episode. My guest today is an expert in that. Diane Domeyer who's the senior vice president and managing director at Robert Half and the Managed Creative Solutions team.


And so if you haven't heard of Robert Half it's a global leader in talent solutions in a variety of disciplines with strong experience and customer experience and technology. And also Robert Half has a global consulting firm called Protiviti, and Diane sits at the intersection of those two and through her work, she and her colleagues have worked with the majority of the Fortune 500, Robert Half is a $7 billion company. They are an expert, a trusted partner for a lot of the biggest companies around the world. Also, Robert Half was named one of Fortune's most admired companies and has 400 locations worldwide. Diane, thank you for joining, really excited to have you here today.


Diane Domeyer 01:55
Thank you so much. It's an honor. And I'm thrilled to talk about this topic, Alex.


Alexander Kvamme 02:01
Me too. So, let's get into it. So Diane, as you know, this is a podcast for operators by operators. We really want this to be tactical and so that our audience can take what they hear and see today straight into their LT meeting, their leadership meeting, their exec staff meeting, and really action the insights that they hear on this podcast. So before we jump into that, let's do a quick little background review. You've given me one of the easier jobs given how consistent you've been in your career. It's effectively Robert Half 30 years.


Diane Domeyer 02:38
That's right.


Alexander Kvamme 02:39
And I know that there were a couple things in between there, but you are one of the rare, rare, rare folks in this industry who have really stuck by and grown with a company. And so maybe given, I'm guessing you've worked on every team doing every single thing. Maybe give us a quick overview of your background and experience at Robert Half and what you are working on right now.


Diane Domeyer 03:09
Great. Thanks Alex. And again, like I said, it's such a pleasure to be a part of this, and I love the work that you're doing at Pathlight. So here's a little bit of an ironic take on me, Alex. I was definitely one early in my career that had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My background was marketing and IT from an academic perspective, as well as some hands-on experience, but I always had an affinity for people and someone at Robert Half, 30 years ago, pulled me in to say, I think you would be a great recruiter. So the irony is that 30 years ago, I had no idea what I wanted to be, 30 years later, people say that I'm a career expert. So there's some irony in that.


So I started as a recruiter with Robert Half 30 years ago, and I've been fortunate and blessed to grow with the company over the years, as we as well have changed and transformed, not only how we serve our customers, but the businesses and the services that we've provided. So I started in recruiting and I grew with the organization and as our business transformed, I was able to grow with the organization to different levels of responsibility and actually have a number of different career paths, both in leading our staffing operations, but also being a part of our corporate team to help transform the way we serve our customers, but also how we engage our employees.


And so through that time, it's very interesting because if you think of, for anyone here that thought about looking for a job 20 years ago, versus what it's like today, or even 25 years ago, you think about how when you'd look for a job, pre-internet, it was all in the newspaper and the internet, social media, the access to information and the tools that you use to both find a job or find talent have drastically changed. So I've been fortunate to be a part of transforming the way we do our business through that process. So that's a little bit about me and my background. I'm also really passionate about employee experience and have been an advocate for our employee resource groups for our global company, specifically I'm an executive sponsor for our global women's executive network and a member of Chief. And we as well as an organization, in addition to serving our customers, have had to look internally as a company as to how do we meet the needs of our employees so that we can ultimately meet the needs of our customers.


Alexander Kvamme 05:50
So, that's great because you are thinking about EX across every dimension, both internally at Robert Half, but also as you work with your various customers around the world. So let's dive into that. I think one thing that you're really fond of is, and something you've harped on for a while, is how EX influences CX. And I know that you recently, Robert Half recently came out with some new research called “Future Proofing Your Workforce and Employers Guide”, and I really encourage folks to review it. I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes. There's a brief summary. It's a 10 or 20 slides, it's easy to consume and we'll talk a little bit more about it here, but the first thing we should, maybe we should cover here, Diane, is that concept of EX driving CX and maybe the key takeaways that you saw in this last round of research. And then just as foreshadowing, I want to ask how that's changed in the last six months, but let's just start with the general thesis of your most recent research.


Diane Domeyer 06:59
Well, first of all, when you look at the importance of employee experience, both from the standpoint of attracting and retaining top talent, it has always been important, Alex, but I think never before has there been so much emphasis on how organizations are investing in their employee experience and how their workplace has had to change. So you mentioned some of our research. So in addition to providing talent operations, staffing, recruiting capabilities for our clients, we do a tremendous amount of research every year and throughout the year on workplace trends and career trends. And in the workplace in particular, and in our most recent white paper, which we called “Future Proofing Your Workplace”, the importance of how employees' mindset has changed, not just during the pandemic, but with this period that we are in right now, has basically accelerated. What was important to employees before the pandemic is even more important now.


So as an example, we all know certain employees are really placing a high value on hybrid and remote work. So pre-pandemic, one out of 67, one out of 67 employees either worked remote or a hybrid schedule, one out of 67. It's now one in seven. And when you're in an employment market where the number of job openings is more than twice the available talent looking for work, those companies that can provide that level of flexibility and will continue to provide that level of flexibility, even as the pandemic subsides, are basically, they have the upper hand in identifying talent in a really, really tight talent market. One of your trends.


Alexander Kvamme 09:08
You were touching on this, and let's dive a little bit deeper, which is, I think obviously post-pandemic, anything everyone was talking about was the great resignation. And, of course, there were more job openings than folks to fill them. And really that status quo was disrupted so quickly in so many different ways. And that was holding, and I think we assumed it was the ground truth up and through 2021, but then a lot has happened in the last six months. And so given that, and I think one thing for our audience to realize is Robert Half is at the front lines of the economy through staffing and through all the work that you guys are doing. And so I think maybe give our... A lot of the folks that I speak to are operating off of outdated research that maybe was collected last year, but not updated in the last six months. So, perhaps let's just quickly talk about how things have changed and stayed the same now speaking in July, summer of 2022.


Diane Domeyer 10:19
Yeah. So to your point, there's been so much discussion about the great resignation, some say the great reshuffle, that was the narrative. What I would say is that the job market in 2022 continues to be very robust. There are still 11.3 million openings, job openings in the market as of last month, 3.6% unemployment. And depending on the profession, still two times more jobs open per job seeker than job seekers, and in some professions it's four to five. Now with current economic circumstances, what we are definitely seeing is that professionals at every level are thinking more carefully before making the jump. And that's both on the hiring side, being thoughtful about if there is economic change, are we going to be as aggressive in our hiring? It's still very robust, but on the employer side, there's still a little bit more, it's a little more tempered.


On the job seeker side, where I think there were a lot of people that made really significant life changes, job changes. They're thinking more carefully as opposed to jumping primarily for that next opportunity, or the company that'll give them flexibility, or jumping for greater income. And they're thinking more carefully holistically about what they're looking for if they're going to make a change. We do see, Alex, that six out of 10 in 2022 are still rethinking their careers. And four out of 10 still plan to look for a new job. So employee experience and programs for retention are still very, very important.


Alexander Kvamme 12:11
In fact, it sounds like the stakes are even higher because the employee now has a higher bar. They are being more considered in the roles that they look for. Therefore, employee experience is even more important because that's going to be a key determination in their decision.


Diane Domeyer 12:30
And some of those factors are, number one, compensation is obviously always on the docket, but it's not always number one. In many cases we're seeing, does an organization provide hybrid and remote work, or flexible schedules as very, very high importance. Secondarily, do they have the ability to prioritize their personal life? And this is not just about how, when and where we work, but some out of necessity, women in particular that have had, in some cases born the brunt of supporting things on the family front, which is not always the case, but the ability, the reality of there's greater consideration for not just work life balance, but support for what's necessary in your life is more important than ever before.


And then I would say finally, and this is really important as it relates to the connection between CX and EX, is employees really care about whether A, they're doing meaningful work, but also that they're working for a purpose driven organization. And that purpose driven organization is one that gives back to their employees. It's one that gives back to society. It's one that supports them in their personal lives, as well as professional. And that connects that customer experience and that brand experience. There was a time where purpose was all about, in some organizations, the marketing function was talking about the purpose brand, but if employees don't feel that, that purpose-driven approach goes all the way up and down the organization, it will never come to fruition.


Alexander Kvamme 14:15
So we've established that one of the first things I wanted to establish is that EX still matters. And that even though things have changed, and we feel like the market has tightened a bit over the last six months, it is still in such a state, and the mindset of both hirers and in employees is in a state that EX is still incredibly important.


Diane Domeyer 14:39
And I guess I would add to underline that if you will, Alex, Forbes... No, I'm sorry, it wasn't Forbes. It was Aberdeen that recently did a study that companies that have a robust employee experience and engage their employees have a customer loyalty that is three times higher than those organizations that are not known for employee experience. So it's not just about making your employees happy, there's a business case associated with it. And Forbes recently listed the top 100 customer-centric companies of 2022 globally in every industry. And do you know what the three of the criteria were? Is number one, were they customer-centric? Number two, how did they rank an employee experience? And number three, were they known to be innovative? And so it's not just, again, it's not just about reducing turnover, it's not just about attracting top talent, it's the business case that connects revenue growth, customer loyalty, profitability, to really delivering outstanding customer experience.


Alexander Kvamme 15:58
So perfect segue, because we've established that EX still matters in 2022. And now let's talk about how EX influences CX. And you've already set this up very nicely, but we've been talking pretty high level for the last couple of minutes, let's get tactical. And so let's just first think about our CX leaders who listen and watch this podcast. What is something that they could take to their exec or staff meeting and ask the question, say, hey, how are we doing on EX? What's the diagnosis that they could do to see how they are doing? How would you walk through that framework, or that Maslow's pyramid of EX? It's like, what's most important? What are the one, two and three, so people can start grading themselves and then we'll talk about ways to improve?


Diane Domeyer 16:49
Yeah. So first of all, from an employee experience standpoint, at every level in an organization an employee needs to feel connected to what is the mission, the purpose of not only their company, but their role in that? So many organizations, again, regardless of size, put a lot of time and money into what is their mission, what are their values? And first and foremost, from an employee experience standpoint, every employee in the organization needs to feel that those values and that mission, not only do they have a role in it, but that it is the way they live and breathe. And so, first of all, for especially frontline leaders, if you feel that there's a disconnect between that, you need to ask your employees, you need to write what is important to them? Where do we break down in our mission, our vision, our values? And act on that feedback.


So it's not just employee surveys for the sake of an employee survey, it's an employee survey for the sake of acting upon it. And even if you don't do formal employee surveys, any frontline leader and any level of leader should make sure that there's communication about that. The second thing is, again, and I just said the word communication, if the pandemic taught us nothing, it's like when you think about the experience of everyone getting a window into the world of their employees, that maybe they didn't have before, it broke down hierarchies, but it also emphasized the importance and value of transparency and communication and authenticity. So you have to measure how well do we feel that people can feel that they can share their concerns, that we are authentic, that we're communicating frequently about changes, whether they're popular or not?


So those are, so mission, vision, values of authenticity, communication, transparency, but then there's a whole lot as it relates to just work environment and things that you can do specifically to help your employees. And your employees care about, we already said flexibility, appreciation for what's happening outside of their work, purpose-driven, but on top of that, they want to feel that they have opportunities to learn and up skill. So what are you providing in terms of either heat assignments for someone to take on more responsibility? What training or resources can you make available to your teams? So you want to make sure at the level of not just skills, but do we have the tools, the technology, the resources to do your job and the training to advance your career?


Alexander Kvamme 19:46
So this really maps well to actually what we do at Pathlight is actually the... It's a good second half of... So, when we talk to our leaders, just like you're saying, hey, everyone needs to be aligned on mission, vision, values. We also believe everyone needs to be aligned on expectation and performance. And so it's the same idea. And so if I were to actually talk to the CX leader and give them something to take back to the staff, the idea is that you should be able to walk the floor, or if you were to magically appear in the office, so the home office of any of your employees and you were to ask them, what is the mission of the company? What is the vision of the company, and what are our values? You want the percentage of people to get that answer right to be 90 plus percent.


And then the same thing with Pathlight. You want them to, even more simply, we want our end users to be able to answer the question, how am I doing? Because that's the second part of this. It's like, what is the mission, vision, values of this company and how am I doing to promote those things? And so, we call it transparency and alignment. And it's alignment, not only on the tactical goals that actually drive your business, it's alignment on the mission, vision, values is actually going to keep them, it's going to retain them and keep them fulfilled and help them stay there. And so if I were to reframe or make a little bit more actionable, that first point to the CX leader, let's do a survey of how many people actually... Well, first of all, do we have mission, vision, values? And have we stated them? That's one.

Two, what percentage of our team knows those mission, vision, values across our sites, across our teams, across our locations? That's the second funnel, stage in the funnel. And then third, what percentage of our teammates agree that we are aligned against those mission, vision, values? And that number is never going to be perfect, but hopefully it's above 50% and you know, and you can work towards improving it. Is that a fair way of making that actionable?


Diane Domeyer 22:11
100%. And I think in addition to, do we know, and do we understand mission, vision, values and how we're performing against them? It's what role does your team play? Because often times companies will have really broad-based mission statements, and then vision and values, but that broad-based mission for someone maybe in the CX organization, or even more challenging, maybe in some parts of an organization that are not as customer facing, it's like, what is my role in making that mission happen? And the organizations that do that really well with teams of five, teams of 25, versus the broad base, this is what the company stands for, are those that really see the greatest success. And to your point, Alex, it needs to be really tactical, like what can we do to support it? It's not just do we know it, can we articulate it, and do we believe in it? But what is my role in making that happen? And that's where a frontline leader, or even all levels of leaders, frankly, need to make sure that they're asking the questions, like what are we doing to make that happen?


Alexander Kvamme 23:30
It's super compelling because at Pathlight we are always talking about this key question, “how am I doing?” And I think what you're saying is let's look at the broadest possible definition of that question, which is how am I doing not only personally against my goals and my expectations, but how am I doing and why am I doing it in the context of the greater company? And just like you need every employee to know how they're doing on their day-to-day performance metrics, you need them also to know the why of all of that because the former will help you hit your goals that month, but the latter will help you hit your goals that year or, and succeed over a long term.


Diane Domeyer 24:21
And the other aspect, which I know is part of what, the services that you provide at Pathlight, but the other one is putting visibility and recognition in a bigger way to those that are doing it well, and that's what becomes contagious. I've seen so much over the years, especially in customer experience and sales, that the, how am I doing question tends to put a light on areas of opportunity, and you need to really shine the areas of strength, because that is the employee experience you're looking for, is if I'm recognized and I feel good about what's going well, then there's a psychological component, which not only gets me to do more of it, it gets others around me to do more of it. And that's a big part of the employee experience.

Alexander Kvamme 25:15
Yeah. Yeah. Recognition. And this actually leads us into a topic about the frontline manager, or the first line manager. One of the things that we always see is if the first line manager is stressed out or overwhelmed or not set up for success, all they're doing is firefighting. That's all they have time for. And so what's the thing that they don't have time for? Recognition, because the only thing that they have time for is coaching the biggest fires of the day or of the week. Maybe help elucidate a little bit more on how you help your customers think about these first line managers and their importance and what they can do to make them more effective, and how important they are in general?


Diane Domeyer 26:04
Well, first of all, if you think about the importance of first-line manager and the teams that they manage, frankly, is the face to the customer. So in many organizations, it is the most important role, but it is also one of the most challenging roles to your point, because of the demands of the customer, the problem resolution. They often tend to manage teams that are higher in turnover, and they're constantly in fire mode. So, first of all, I would say the way we help organizations to think about that, and I mentioned it previously, is the importance of upskilling. Almost 60% of employees that we surveyed said that they feel that they do not get the appropriate level of leadership development. So investment in programs to help leaders in their communication style, and in some cases, crisis management, in employee recognition and in employee engagement is time that is really, really well spent. If you think about the impact of turnover. The impact of turnover has your frontline leaders constantly paying catch up, playing catch up, constantly dealing with being maybe understaffed.


So a couple of things that you can do is A, consider bringing in contractors so that it doesn't affect your customer experience, but also really investing in that upskilling and leadership and upskilling of the front line to make sure... And the employee engagement programs so that you ultimately can deliver that outstanding customer experience. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think the investment in leadership development, now some organizations don't do a great job of that. And if you're a frontline leader that you feel that your organization does not provide that leadership development, how do you recognize your team? How do you engage your team? How do you manage a team? How do you manage the business and manage a team? There's lots of resources that you should take on your own that you can find externally, but also be the voice internally for you and your peers to basically ask for the programs that you need to develop to feel that you can be as effective a leader as possible. And employers are investing in that, they want that feedback.


Alexander Kvamme 28:40
And you had said earlier how important that is to just general employee experience. And it's something that we leaders hear all the time is how important a career growth path is to retention. And one thing I'd advise our audience is there are certainly lots of leading indicators and investments that Diane mentioned that you should be looking into. From a diagnosis perspective the first thing to look for, even beyond retention is just promotion rates and mobility rates, because if folks aren't getting promoted in your organization, then no one's going to believe you have a career growth track. And so you have to start with the actual ground truth, which is, do you actually have a career growth track in your organization? And for that new person, are they going to see over time, hey, those top performers, they do get rewarded. They do elevate. The time that they put in at that level was well spent and was recognized and rewarded.


And, of course, you've got the qualitative recognition, but at some point you need quantitative recognition as well, either through compensation or through increased responsibility, or promotion, or what have you. And so I would certainly ask our audience to go back and just look at promotion rates and make sure, because that is the necessary foundation upon which you build these leadership development programs and stuff like that. There needs to be an output or an outlet for all this. And so let's keep moving on, because I know we've got a lot to talk about. So one trend that's so common or so popular in the CX industry is a move towards automation, it's a move towards self-service, it's a move towards chatbots. And there's even some crazier ideas floating around about the future of CX. So I'd love your perspective on how that future maps to employee experience and just the current staffing model of CX organizations moving forward, as well as the skills required for both frontline managers and just organizations in general to succeed in the future.


Diane Domeyer 31:05
Well, first of all, regardless of what is happening from an automation standpoint, there is always, and I believe will continue to be eternally an importance on the human touch, but it is without a doubt the what technology is enabling is changing the expectations of how we deploy that human interaction. So first of all, I would say that aspects of... Well, first of all, in customer experience and aspects of automation, as you mentioned, like chatbots and how artificial intelligence is applied, et cetera, there are some who may think well, is that replacing the roles of certain customer service representatives, but for those that are in that space, in my opinion, it's actually, and in many of our clients' opinion, it is opening opportunities to take that customer service value and CX value in other directions.


So what I mean by that is when you think about over the last 20 years, how many organizations looked at what we say is CX, and we all know CX means a broad number of things. So CX from the standpoint of customer service, frontline, then CX customer experience from a marketing standpoint, customer experience in terms of how technology now enables customer experience. Over the course of the better part of the last 10 to 15 years, much of that was somewhat siloed. And now not only do most organizations look at CX across the entire customer journey, including back office operations, every touchpoint with the customer is equally valuable, as many world class organizations are bringing employee experience into that customer experience.


So when you think about, going back to your question about what does that mean as it relates to how automation use of technology may change careers, there are now career paths in CX that are far more defined and broad-based. And if you can demonstrate when you first start your career journey in maybe entry-level CX related roles, let's just say that's call center or something else, where even with automation, even if maybe an organization has different staffing levels for traditional bodies, they're dealing with more complex challenges, they're responsible for higher level of problem resolution, cross-functional collaboration. And if you can demonstrate success in that area, there's a lot of different directions you can go in CX.


Now back to your original question about innovation, automation. First of all, no matter what role you have in any organization, and especially in CX, the speed of technology change is not going to slow down, it's only going to accelerate, and the importance of digital literacy to embrace the tools that you have, but also to be an early adopter of how you can even be more productive, more effective with additional tools and resources is something that as a CX leader, you need to demonstrate by example, you need to show that you are embracing the technology. You are an early adopter. You are looking at innovative ways to use the technology to do your job better, or for your team to do their job better. So I see it riddled with opportunity. I'm an optimist by nature, but there are studies that prove out that it's expected that the roles in CX and EX and how that impacts an organization and what that means for career paths is only improving and increasing.


Alexander Kvamme 35:05
Maybe the unofficial title of this episode is why EX still matters and will matter, because I think what I'm touching on is there are so many trends that I think if you were to look at face value it's like, oh, EX isn't going to matter as much because it's going to be easier to hire, because the market's tightening, EX isn't going to matter as much because I'm going to have fewer head count on the agent side. And just on that second point, what you just said, which I think is very important, is actually EX is going to matter more in both those cases, but in the second case, EX is going to matter more because the agents who are still working on the human touch, they are going to need to be more skilled, more collaborative, better problem solvers, and therefore harder to... It's going to take more time and effort to retain those folks, to develop them. And so EX... And you will be the pain both financially and culturally, that you would experience by losing those folks who are going to be more significant.


So the underlying trend is regardless of macroeconomic trends, regardless of these trends towards automation, EX is still a critical part of your strategy.


Diane Domeyer 36:23
Absolutely. And we don't see that slowing down regardless of what happens in the employment market, if you will. And it's primarily based on the fact that you think through the world-class organizations who went through a period of time for the better part of more than a decade, which was those most innovative companies were those that could apply technology in innovative ways and were still on that journey for many large and small companies, and that's not stopping, but there's now the emphasis from the C-suite on the importance of what is now measurable as a result of technology, which is what is that customer experience? How do we measure our employee experience? And when you put the two of them together, what impact does that have to our business? So, let's just say we head into an economic downturn, I would argue that those organizations that really connect CX and EX are the best positioned to persevere regardless of economic conditions.


Alexander Kvamme 37:37
I'd like to end with one last question, I want to squeeze one last piece, a bit of tactical insight out of you before we end. So let's quickly talk about burnout. If we look in the last two and a half years, and we haven't had a chance really to catch our breath. It was pandemic and the roller coaster of that, the dip and then the rise. And if you think about this from a CX perspective, it's like the CX organizations feel pain, both in the highs of the economy and in the lows of the economy, just in different ways. And so we've had this roller coaster, and then all of a sudden starts to peter out, invasion of Ukraine, economic downturn and recession. So we just haven't had a chance to catch our breath.


And so people have been going at this for two or two and a half years full bore. And so I think burnout is a pretty popular topic. And there's no shortage of armchair experts giving recommendations on various ways to reduce burnout. Maybe, again, using this context of the hypothetical CX leader going to their LT meeting, what's the one thing that you've seen, and I'm sure there are a few, but what's one thing that everyone could go back into their team, roll out immediately, and it would make a market impact on this?


Diane Domeyer 39:02
In order to combat burnout, we all know we need a break. And so organizations have vested a tremendous amount of encouraging their teams to take time away. And what we have seen is it's not enough to encourage your staff to take a break. You have to have an environment that will allow them to take a break. You have people who are doing windowed working, working after hours, they're working in periods of time that work with their lifestyle. They're working maybe too many hours. And so, what we are seeing is organizations that not only promote the importance of time off, but they either allow for cross-training and job share. You need to make sure your team has somebody to cover them so they can take time off.


So either cross-training, job share, allowing for windowed working, but, or consider using contractors to cover while they're out, because a lot of time you think about these companies that have offered unlimited, whatever they call it, PTO, CTO, time off. Studies have shown that most people don't take that unlimited time. And it's typically because the culture doesn't either allow for it, or they don't have the resources to cover them for their time off. So I would say that is one of the most important things to do to address burnout. You got to be able to not only encourage your team to take the time, but that you've got the support and the resources for them to feel comfortable taking the time.


Alexander Kvamme 40:40
And that's easy to measure. You've got, putting my accounting hat on, it's like you've got PTO liability on your book. So you've got accrued PTO. Look at how much accrued PTO has been taken and do whatever you can. And your accountants will thank you too, because it's a liability you're removing from the books. Do whatever you can to reduce that and encourage folks to take time off. I think that's a great way to end, Diane. Thank you very much. For our audience, if you'd like to get in touch with me or Diane, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Robert Half, reach out to Diane as well. If you want to learn more about Pathlight or get a demo, visit pathlight.com or reach out to me. For Diane and myself, that's it today. We'll see you next time. Thanks everyone for listening and watching wherever you are.


Diane Domeyer 41:31
Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here.


This week’s episode:
Alexander Kvamme meets with Diane Domeyer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Managed Creative Solutions at Robert Half, to discuss how to create exceptional employee experiences to ensure great customer experiences. 


In the wake of the pandemic and changing economic conditions, Robert Half conducted research on the factors driving fundamental shifts in worker sentiment. Future-Proofing Your Workforce: An Employer’s Guide is designed to help company leaders craft a blueprint for adapting to current and future workplace shifts. Robert Half is a global leader in talent solutions and business consulting in a variety of disciplines, with strong experience in customer experience and technology initiatives, and was named one of FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies®”.


Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or Google Podcast.


Transcript:


Alexander Kvamme 00:27
Okay. Hello again, everyone. Welcome to the CXperts podcast, where we dive into hot topics and trends around customer experience with thought leaders and luminaries from the world's most recognizable and successful companies and brands. I'm your host again, Alex Kvamme, co-founder and CEO of Pathlight, which is a performance intelligence platform for managing customer-facing teams. We combine analytics, insights, performance management, employee engagement, quality, and so much more to help these teams increase their productivity in these uncertain times. Now I'm really excited about today's episode. Maybe we unofficially call this the employee experience episode of the EX episode. My guest today is an expert in that. Diane Domeyer who's the senior vice president and managing director at Robert Half and the Managed Creative Solutions team.


And so if you haven't heard of Robert Half it's a global leader in talent solutions in a variety of disciplines with strong experience and customer experience and technology. And also Robert Half has a global consulting firm called Protiviti, and Diane sits at the intersection of those two and through her work, she and her colleagues have worked with the majority of the Fortune 500, Robert Half is a $7 billion company. They are an expert, a trusted partner for a lot of the biggest companies around the world. Also, Robert Half was named one of Fortune's most admired companies and has 400 locations worldwide. Diane, thank you for joining, really excited to have you here today.


Diane Domeyer 01:55
Thank you so much. It's an honor. And I'm thrilled to talk about this topic, Alex.


Alexander Kvamme 02:01
Me too. So, let's get into it. So Diane, as you know, this is a podcast for operators by operators. We really want this to be tactical and so that our audience can take what they hear and see today straight into their LT meeting, their leadership meeting, their exec staff meeting, and really action the insights that they hear on this podcast. So before we jump into that, let's do a quick little background review. You've given me one of the easier jobs given how consistent you've been in your career. It's effectively Robert Half 30 years.


Diane Domeyer 02:38
That's right.


Alexander Kvamme 02:39
And I know that there were a couple things in between there, but you are one of the rare, rare, rare folks in this industry who have really stuck by and grown with a company. And so maybe given, I'm guessing you've worked on every team doing every single thing. Maybe give us a quick overview of your background and experience at Robert Half and what you are working on right now.


Diane Domeyer 03:09
Great. Thanks Alex. And again, like I said, it's such a pleasure to be a part of this, and I love the work that you're doing at Pathlight. So here's a little bit of an ironic take on me, Alex. I was definitely one early in my career that had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My background was marketing and IT from an academic perspective, as well as some hands-on experience, but I always had an affinity for people and someone at Robert Half, 30 years ago, pulled me in to say, I think you would be a great recruiter. So the irony is that 30 years ago, I had no idea what I wanted to be, 30 years later, people say that I'm a career expert. So there's some irony in that.


So I started as a recruiter with Robert Half 30 years ago, and I've been fortunate and blessed to grow with the company over the years, as we as well have changed and transformed, not only how we serve our customers, but the businesses and the services that we've provided. So I started in recruiting and I grew with the organization and as our business transformed, I was able to grow with the organization to different levels of responsibility and actually have a number of different career paths, both in leading our staffing operations, but also being a part of our corporate team to help transform the way we serve our customers, but also how we engage our employees.


And so through that time, it's very interesting because if you think of, for anyone here that thought about looking for a job 20 years ago, versus what it's like today, or even 25 years ago, you think about how when you'd look for a job, pre-internet, it was all in the newspaper and the internet, social media, the access to information and the tools that you use to both find a job or find talent have drastically changed. So I've been fortunate to be a part of transforming the way we do our business through that process. So that's a little bit about me and my background. I'm also really passionate about employee experience and have been an advocate for our employee resource groups for our global company, specifically I'm an executive sponsor for our global women's executive network and a member of Chief. And we as well as an organization, in addition to serving our customers, have had to look internally as a company as to how do we meet the needs of our employees so that we can ultimately meet the needs of our customers.


Alexander Kvamme 05:50
So, that's great because you are thinking about EX across every dimension, both internally at Robert Half, but also as you work with your various customers around the world. So let's dive into that. I think one thing that you're really fond of is, and something you've harped on for a while, is how EX influences CX. And I know that you recently, Robert Half recently came out with some new research called “Future Proofing Your Workforce and Employers Guide”, and I really encourage folks to review it. I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes. There's a brief summary. It's a 10 or 20 slides, it's easy to consume and we'll talk a little bit more about it here, but the first thing we should, maybe we should cover here, Diane, is that concept of EX driving CX and maybe the key takeaways that you saw in this last round of research. And then just as foreshadowing, I want to ask how that's changed in the last six months, but let's just start with the general thesis of your most recent research.


Diane Domeyer 06:59
Well, first of all, when you look at the importance of employee experience, both from the standpoint of attracting and retaining top talent, it has always been important, Alex, but I think never before has there been so much emphasis on how organizations are investing in their employee experience and how their workplace has had to change. So you mentioned some of our research. So in addition to providing talent operations, staffing, recruiting capabilities for our clients, we do a tremendous amount of research every year and throughout the year on workplace trends and career trends. And in the workplace in particular, and in our most recent white paper, which we called “Future Proofing Your Workplace”, the importance of how employees' mindset has changed, not just during the pandemic, but with this period that we are in right now, has basically accelerated. What was important to employees before the pandemic is even more important now.


So as an example, we all know certain employees are really placing a high value on hybrid and remote work. So pre-pandemic, one out of 67, one out of 67 employees either worked remote or a hybrid schedule, one out of 67. It's now one in seven. And when you're in an employment market where the number of job openings is more than twice the available talent looking for work, those companies that can provide that level of flexibility and will continue to provide that level of flexibility, even as the pandemic subsides, are basically, they have the upper hand in identifying talent in a really, really tight talent market. One of your trends.


Alexander Kvamme 09:08
You were touching on this, and let's dive a little bit deeper, which is, I think obviously post-pandemic, anything everyone was talking about was the great resignation. And, of course, there were more job openings than folks to fill them. And really that status quo was disrupted so quickly in so many different ways. And that was holding, and I think we assumed it was the ground truth up and through 2021, but then a lot has happened in the last six months. And so given that, and I think one thing for our audience to realize is Robert Half is at the front lines of the economy through staffing and through all the work that you guys are doing. And so I think maybe give our... A lot of the folks that I speak to are operating off of outdated research that maybe was collected last year, but not updated in the last six months. So, perhaps let's just quickly talk about how things have changed and stayed the same now speaking in July, summer of 2022.


Diane Domeyer 10:19
Yeah. So to your point, there's been so much discussion about the great resignation, some say the great reshuffle, that was the narrative. What I would say is that the job market in 2022 continues to be very robust. There are still 11.3 million openings, job openings in the market as of last month, 3.6% unemployment. And depending on the profession, still two times more jobs open per job seeker than job seekers, and in some professions it's four to five. Now with current economic circumstances, what we are definitely seeing is that professionals at every level are thinking more carefully before making the jump. And that's both on the hiring side, being thoughtful about if there is economic change, are we going to be as aggressive in our hiring? It's still very robust, but on the employer side, there's still a little bit more, it's a little more tempered.


On the job seeker side, where I think there were a lot of people that made really significant life changes, job changes. They're thinking more carefully as opposed to jumping primarily for that next opportunity, or the company that'll give them flexibility, or jumping for greater income. And they're thinking more carefully holistically about what they're looking for if they're going to make a change. We do see, Alex, that six out of 10 in 2022 are still rethinking their careers. And four out of 10 still plan to look for a new job. So employee experience and programs for retention are still very, very important.


Alexander Kvamme 12:11
In fact, it sounds like the stakes are even higher because the employee now has a higher bar. They are being more considered in the roles that they look for. Therefore, employee experience is even more important because that's going to be a key determination in their decision.


Diane Domeyer 12:30
And some of those factors are, number one, compensation is obviously always on the docket, but it's not always number one. In many cases we're seeing, does an organization provide hybrid and remote work, or flexible schedules as very, very high importance. Secondarily, do they have the ability to prioritize their personal life? And this is not just about how, when and where we work, but some out of necessity, women in particular that have had, in some cases born the brunt of supporting things on the family front, which is not always the case, but the ability, the reality of there's greater consideration for not just work life balance, but support for what's necessary in your life is more important than ever before.


And then I would say finally, and this is really important as it relates to the connection between CX and EX, is employees really care about whether A, they're doing meaningful work, but also that they're working for a purpose driven organization. And that purpose driven organization is one that gives back to their employees. It's one that gives back to society. It's one that supports them in their personal lives, as well as professional. And that connects that customer experience and that brand experience. There was a time where purpose was all about, in some organizations, the marketing function was talking about the purpose brand, but if employees don't feel that, that purpose-driven approach goes all the way up and down the organization, it will never come to fruition.


Alexander Kvamme 14:15
So we've established that one of the first things I wanted to establish is that EX still matters. And that even though things have changed, and we feel like the market has tightened a bit over the last six months, it is still in such a state, and the mindset of both hirers and in employees is in a state that EX is still incredibly important.


Diane Domeyer 14:39
And I guess I would add to underline that if you will, Alex, Forbes... No, I'm sorry, it wasn't Forbes. It was Aberdeen that recently did a study that companies that have a robust employee experience and engage their employees have a customer loyalty that is three times higher than those organizations that are not known for employee experience. So it's not just about making your employees happy, there's a business case associated with it. And Forbes recently listed the top 100 customer-centric companies of 2022 globally in every industry. And do you know what the three of the criteria were? Is number one, were they customer-centric? Number two, how did they rank an employee experience? And number three, were they known to be innovative? And so it's not just, again, it's not just about reducing turnover, it's not just about attracting top talent, it's the business case that connects revenue growth, customer loyalty, profitability, to really delivering outstanding customer experience.


Alexander Kvamme 15:58
So perfect segue, because we've established that EX still matters in 2022. And now let's talk about how EX influences CX. And you've already set this up very nicely, but we've been talking pretty high level for the last couple of minutes, let's get tactical. And so let's just first think about our CX leaders who listen and watch this podcast. What is something that they could take to their exec or staff meeting and ask the question, say, hey, how are we doing on EX? What's the diagnosis that they could do to see how they are doing? How would you walk through that framework, or that Maslow's pyramid of EX? It's like, what's most important? What are the one, two and three, so people can start grading themselves and then we'll talk about ways to improve?


Diane Domeyer 16:49
Yeah. So first of all, from an employee experience standpoint, at every level in an organization an employee needs to feel connected to what is the mission, the purpose of not only their company, but their role in that? So many organizations, again, regardless of size, put a lot of time and money into what is their mission, what are their values? And first and foremost, from an employee experience standpoint, every employee in the organization needs to feel that those values and that mission, not only do they have a role in it, but that it is the way they live and breathe. And so, first of all, for especially frontline leaders, if you feel that there's a disconnect between that, you need to ask your employees, you need to write what is important to them? Where do we break down in our mission, our vision, our values? And act on that feedback.


So it's not just employee surveys for the sake of an employee survey, it's an employee survey for the sake of acting upon it. And even if you don't do formal employee surveys, any frontline leader and any level of leader should make sure that there's communication about that. The second thing is, again, and I just said the word communication, if the pandemic taught us nothing, it's like when you think about the experience of everyone getting a window into the world of their employees, that maybe they didn't have before, it broke down hierarchies, but it also emphasized the importance and value of transparency and communication and authenticity. So you have to measure how well do we feel that people can feel that they can share their concerns, that we are authentic, that we're communicating frequently about changes, whether they're popular or not?


So those are, so mission, vision, values of authenticity, communication, transparency, but then there's a whole lot as it relates to just work environment and things that you can do specifically to help your employees. And your employees care about, we already said flexibility, appreciation for what's happening outside of their work, purpose-driven, but on top of that, they want to feel that they have opportunities to learn and up skill. So what are you providing in terms of either heat assignments for someone to take on more responsibility? What training or resources can you make available to your teams? So you want to make sure at the level of not just skills, but do we have the tools, the technology, the resources to do your job and the training to advance your career?


Alexander Kvamme 19:46
So this really maps well to actually what we do at Pathlight is actually the... It's a good second half of... So, when we talk to our leaders, just like you're saying, hey, everyone needs to be aligned on mission, vision, values. We also believe everyone needs to be aligned on expectation and performance. And so it's the same idea. And so if I were to actually talk to the CX leader and give them something to take back to the staff, the idea is that you should be able to walk the floor, or if you were to magically appear in the office, so the home office of any of your employees and you were to ask them, what is the mission of the company? What is the vision of the company, and what are our values? You want the percentage of people to get that answer right to be 90 plus percent.


And then the same thing with Pathlight. You want them to, even more simply, we want our end users to be able to answer the question, how am I doing? Because that's the second part of this. It's like, what is the mission, vision, values of this company and how am I doing to promote those things? And so, we call it transparency and alignment. And it's alignment, not only on the tactical goals that actually drive your business, it's alignment on the mission, vision, values is actually going to keep them, it's going to retain them and keep them fulfilled and help them stay there. And so if I were to reframe or make a little bit more actionable, that first point to the CX leader, let's do a survey of how many people actually... Well, first of all, do we have mission, vision, values? And have we stated them? That's one.

Two, what percentage of our team knows those mission, vision, values across our sites, across our teams, across our locations? That's the second funnel, stage in the funnel. And then third, what percentage of our teammates agree that we are aligned against those mission, vision, values? And that number is never going to be perfect, but hopefully it's above 50% and you know, and you can work towards improving it. Is that a fair way of making that actionable?


Diane Domeyer 22:11
100%. And I think in addition to, do we know, and do we understand mission, vision, values and how we're performing against them? It's what role does your team play? Because often times companies will have really broad-based mission statements, and then vision and values, but that broad-based mission for someone maybe in the CX organization, or even more challenging, maybe in some parts of an organization that are not as customer facing, it's like, what is my role in making that mission happen? And the organizations that do that really well with teams of five, teams of 25, versus the broad base, this is what the company stands for, are those that really see the greatest success. And to your point, Alex, it needs to be really tactical, like what can we do to support it? It's not just do we know it, can we articulate it, and do we believe in it? But what is my role in making that happen? And that's where a frontline leader, or even all levels of leaders, frankly, need to make sure that they're asking the questions, like what are we doing to make that happen?


Alexander Kvamme 23:30
It's super compelling because at Pathlight we are always talking about this key question, “how am I doing?” And I think what you're saying is let's look at the broadest possible definition of that question, which is how am I doing not only personally against my goals and my expectations, but how am I doing and why am I doing it in the context of the greater company? And just like you need every employee to know how they're doing on their day-to-day performance metrics, you need them also to know the why of all of that because the former will help you hit your goals that month, but the latter will help you hit your goals that year or, and succeed over a long term.


Diane Domeyer 24:21
And the other aspect, which I know is part of what, the services that you provide at Pathlight, but the other one is putting visibility and recognition in a bigger way to those that are doing it well, and that's what becomes contagious. I've seen so much over the years, especially in customer experience and sales, that the, how am I doing question tends to put a light on areas of opportunity, and you need to really shine the areas of strength, because that is the employee experience you're looking for, is if I'm recognized and I feel good about what's going well, then there's a psychological component, which not only gets me to do more of it, it gets others around me to do more of it. And that's a big part of the employee experience.

Alexander Kvamme 25:15
Yeah. Yeah. Recognition. And this actually leads us into a topic about the frontline manager, or the first line manager. One of the things that we always see is if the first line manager is stressed out or overwhelmed or not set up for success, all they're doing is firefighting. That's all they have time for. And so what's the thing that they don't have time for? Recognition, because the only thing that they have time for is coaching the biggest fires of the day or of the week. Maybe help elucidate a little bit more on how you help your customers think about these first line managers and their importance and what they can do to make them more effective, and how important they are in general?


Diane Domeyer 26:04
Well, first of all, if you think about the importance of first-line manager and the teams that they manage, frankly, is the face to the customer. So in many organizations, it is the most important role, but it is also one of the most challenging roles to your point, because of the demands of the customer, the problem resolution. They often tend to manage teams that are higher in turnover, and they're constantly in fire mode. So, first of all, I would say the way we help organizations to think about that, and I mentioned it previously, is the importance of upskilling. Almost 60% of employees that we surveyed said that they feel that they do not get the appropriate level of leadership development. So investment in programs to help leaders in their communication style, and in some cases, crisis management, in employee recognition and in employee engagement is time that is really, really well spent. If you think about the impact of turnover. The impact of turnover has your frontline leaders constantly paying catch up, playing catch up, constantly dealing with being maybe understaffed.


So a couple of things that you can do is A, consider bringing in contractors so that it doesn't affect your customer experience, but also really investing in that upskilling and leadership and upskilling of the front line to make sure... And the employee engagement programs so that you ultimately can deliver that outstanding customer experience. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think the investment in leadership development, now some organizations don't do a great job of that. And if you're a frontline leader that you feel that your organization does not provide that leadership development, how do you recognize your team? How do you engage your team? How do you manage a team? How do you manage the business and manage a team? There's lots of resources that you should take on your own that you can find externally, but also be the voice internally for you and your peers to basically ask for the programs that you need to develop to feel that you can be as effective a leader as possible. And employers are investing in that, they want that feedback.


Alexander Kvamme 28:40
And you had said earlier how important that is to just general employee experience. And it's something that we leaders hear all the time is how important a career growth path is to retention. And one thing I'd advise our audience is there are certainly lots of leading indicators and investments that Diane mentioned that you should be looking into. From a diagnosis perspective the first thing to look for, even beyond retention is just promotion rates and mobility rates, because if folks aren't getting promoted in your organization, then no one's going to believe you have a career growth track. And so you have to start with the actual ground truth, which is, do you actually have a career growth track in your organization? And for that new person, are they going to see over time, hey, those top performers, they do get rewarded. They do elevate. The time that they put in at that level was well spent and was recognized and rewarded.


And, of course, you've got the qualitative recognition, but at some point you need quantitative recognition as well, either through compensation or through increased responsibility, or promotion, or what have you. And so I would certainly ask our audience to go back and just look at promotion rates and make sure, because that is the necessary foundation upon which you build these leadership development programs and stuff like that. There needs to be an output or an outlet for all this. And so let's keep moving on, because I know we've got a lot to talk about. So one trend that's so common or so popular in the CX industry is a move towards automation, it's a move towards self-service, it's a move towards chatbots. And there's even some crazier ideas floating around about the future of CX. So I'd love your perspective on how that future maps to employee experience and just the current staffing model of CX organizations moving forward, as well as the skills required for both frontline managers and just organizations in general to succeed in the future.


Diane Domeyer 31:05
Well, first of all, regardless of what is happening from an automation standpoint, there is always, and I believe will continue to be eternally an importance on the human touch, but it is without a doubt the what technology is enabling is changing the expectations of how we deploy that human interaction. So first of all, I would say that aspects of... Well, first of all, in customer experience and aspects of automation, as you mentioned, like chatbots and how artificial intelligence is applied, et cetera, there are some who may think well, is that replacing the roles of certain customer service representatives, but for those that are in that space, in my opinion, it's actually, and in many of our clients' opinion, it is opening opportunities to take that customer service value and CX value in other directions.


So what I mean by that is when you think about over the last 20 years, how many organizations looked at what we say is CX, and we all know CX means a broad number of things. So CX from the standpoint of customer service, frontline, then CX customer experience from a marketing standpoint, customer experience in terms of how technology now enables customer experience. Over the course of the better part of the last 10 to 15 years, much of that was somewhat siloed. And now not only do most organizations look at CX across the entire customer journey, including back office operations, every touchpoint with the customer is equally valuable, as many world class organizations are bringing employee experience into that customer experience.


So when you think about, going back to your question about what does that mean as it relates to how automation use of technology may change careers, there are now career paths in CX that are far more defined and broad-based. And if you can demonstrate when you first start your career journey in maybe entry-level CX related roles, let's just say that's call center or something else, where even with automation, even if maybe an organization has different staffing levels for traditional bodies, they're dealing with more complex challenges, they're responsible for higher level of problem resolution, cross-functional collaboration. And if you can demonstrate success in that area, there's a lot of different directions you can go in CX.


Now back to your original question about innovation, automation. First of all, no matter what role you have in any organization, and especially in CX, the speed of technology change is not going to slow down, it's only going to accelerate, and the importance of digital literacy to embrace the tools that you have, but also to be an early adopter of how you can even be more productive, more effective with additional tools and resources is something that as a CX leader, you need to demonstrate by example, you need to show that you are embracing the technology. You are an early adopter. You are looking at innovative ways to use the technology to do your job better, or for your team to do their job better. So I see it riddled with opportunity. I'm an optimist by nature, but there are studies that prove out that it's expected that the roles in CX and EX and how that impacts an organization and what that means for career paths is only improving and increasing.


Alexander Kvamme 35:05
Maybe the unofficial title of this episode is why EX still matters and will matter, because I think what I'm touching on is there are so many trends that I think if you were to look at face value it's like, oh, EX isn't going to matter as much because it's going to be easier to hire, because the market's tightening, EX isn't going to matter as much because I'm going to have fewer head count on the agent side. And just on that second point, what you just said, which I think is very important, is actually EX is going to matter more in both those cases, but in the second case, EX is going to matter more because the agents who are still working on the human touch, they are going to need to be more skilled, more collaborative, better problem solvers, and therefore harder to... It's going to take more time and effort to retain those folks, to develop them. And so EX... And you will be the pain both financially and culturally, that you would experience by losing those folks who are going to be more significant.


So the underlying trend is regardless of macroeconomic trends, regardless of these trends towards automation, EX is still a critical part of your strategy.


Diane Domeyer 36:23
Absolutely. And we don't see that slowing down regardless of what happens in the employment market, if you will. And it's primarily based on the fact that you think through the world-class organizations who went through a period of time for the better part of more than a decade, which was those most innovative companies were those that could apply technology in innovative ways and were still on that journey for many large and small companies, and that's not stopping, but there's now the emphasis from the C-suite on the importance of what is now measurable as a result of technology, which is what is that customer experience? How do we measure our employee experience? And when you put the two of them together, what impact does that have to our business? So, let's just say we head into an economic downturn, I would argue that those organizations that really connect CX and EX are the best positioned to persevere regardless of economic conditions.


Alexander Kvamme 37:37
I'd like to end with one last question, I want to squeeze one last piece, a bit of tactical insight out of you before we end. So let's quickly talk about burnout. If we look in the last two and a half years, and we haven't had a chance really to catch our breath. It was pandemic and the roller coaster of that, the dip and then the rise. And if you think about this from a CX perspective, it's like the CX organizations feel pain, both in the highs of the economy and in the lows of the economy, just in different ways. And so we've had this roller coaster, and then all of a sudden starts to peter out, invasion of Ukraine, economic downturn and recession. So we just haven't had a chance to catch our breath.


And so people have been going at this for two or two and a half years full bore. And so I think burnout is a pretty popular topic. And there's no shortage of armchair experts giving recommendations on various ways to reduce burnout. Maybe, again, using this context of the hypothetical CX leader going to their LT meeting, what's the one thing that you've seen, and I'm sure there are a few, but what's one thing that everyone could go back into their team, roll out immediately, and it would make a market impact on this?


Diane Domeyer 39:02
In order to combat burnout, we all know we need a break. And so organizations have vested a tremendous amount of encouraging their teams to take time away. And what we have seen is it's not enough to encourage your staff to take a break. You have to have an environment that will allow them to take a break. You have people who are doing windowed working, working after hours, they're working in periods of time that work with their lifestyle. They're working maybe too many hours. And so, what we are seeing is organizations that not only promote the importance of time off, but they either allow for cross-training and job share. You need to make sure your team has somebody to cover them so they can take time off.


So either cross-training, job share, allowing for windowed working, but, or consider using contractors to cover while they're out, because a lot of time you think about these companies that have offered unlimited, whatever they call it, PTO, CTO, time off. Studies have shown that most people don't take that unlimited time. And it's typically because the culture doesn't either allow for it, or they don't have the resources to cover them for their time off. So I would say that is one of the most important things to do to address burnout. You got to be able to not only encourage your team to take the time, but that you've got the support and the resources for them to feel comfortable taking the time.


Alexander Kvamme 40:40
And that's easy to measure. You've got, putting my accounting hat on, it's like you've got PTO liability on your book. So you've got accrued PTO. Look at how much accrued PTO has been taken and do whatever you can. And your accountants will thank you too, because it's a liability you're removing from the books. Do whatever you can to reduce that and encourage folks to take time off. I think that's a great way to end, Diane. Thank you very much. For our audience, if you'd like to get in touch with me or Diane, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Robert Half, reach out to Diane as well. If you want to learn more about Pathlight or get a demo, visit pathlight.com or reach out to me. For Diane and myself, that's it today. We'll see you next time. Thanks everyone for listening and watching wherever you are.


Diane Domeyer 41:31
Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here.


This week’s episode:
Alexander Kvamme meets with Diane Domeyer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Managed Creative Solutions at Robert Half, to discuss how to create exceptional employee experiences to ensure great customer experiences. 


In the wake of the pandemic and changing economic conditions, Robert Half conducted research on the factors driving fundamental shifts in worker sentiment. Future-Proofing Your Workforce: An Employer’s Guide is designed to help company leaders craft a blueprint for adapting to current and future workplace shifts. Robert Half is a global leader in talent solutions and business consulting in a variety of disciplines, with strong experience in customer experience and technology initiatives, and was named one of FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies®”.


Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or Google Podcast.


Transcript:


Alexander Kvamme 00:27
Okay. Hello again, everyone. Welcome to the CXperts podcast, where we dive into hot topics and trends around customer experience with thought leaders and luminaries from the world's most recognizable and successful companies and brands. I'm your host again, Alex Kvamme, co-founder and CEO of Pathlight, which is a performance intelligence platform for managing customer-facing teams. We combine analytics, insights, performance management, employee engagement, quality, and so much more to help these teams increase their productivity in these uncertain times. Now I'm really excited about today's episode. Maybe we unofficially call this the employee experience episode of the EX episode. My guest today is an expert in that. Diane Domeyer who's the senior vice president and managing director at Robert Half and the Managed Creative Solutions team.


And so if you haven't heard of Robert Half it's a global leader in talent solutions in a variety of disciplines with strong experience and customer experience and technology. And also Robert Half has a global consulting firm called Protiviti, and Diane sits at the intersection of those two and through her work, she and her colleagues have worked with the majority of the Fortune 500, Robert Half is a $7 billion company. They are an expert, a trusted partner for a lot of the biggest companies around the world. Also, Robert Half was named one of Fortune's most admired companies and has 400 locations worldwide. Diane, thank you for joining, really excited to have you here today.


Diane Domeyer 01:55
Thank you so much. It's an honor. And I'm thrilled to talk about this topic, Alex.


Alexander Kvamme 02:01
Me too. So, let's get into it. So Diane, as you know, this is a podcast for operators by operators. We really want this to be tactical and so that our audience can take what they hear and see today straight into their LT meeting, their leadership meeting, their exec staff meeting, and really action the insights that they hear on this podcast. So before we jump into that, let's do a quick little background review. You've given me one of the easier jobs given how consistent you've been in your career. It's effectively Robert Half 30 years.


Diane Domeyer 02:38
That's right.


Alexander Kvamme 02:39
And I know that there were a couple things in between there, but you are one of the rare, rare, rare folks in this industry who have really stuck by and grown with a company. And so maybe given, I'm guessing you've worked on every team doing every single thing. Maybe give us a quick overview of your background and experience at Robert Half and what you are working on right now.


Diane Domeyer 03:09
Great. Thanks Alex. And again, like I said, it's such a pleasure to be a part of this, and I love the work that you're doing at Pathlight. So here's a little bit of an ironic take on me, Alex. I was definitely one early in my career that had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My background was marketing and IT from an academic perspective, as well as some hands-on experience, but I always had an affinity for people and someone at Robert Half, 30 years ago, pulled me in to say, I think you would be a great recruiter. So the irony is that 30 years ago, I had no idea what I wanted to be, 30 years later, people say that I'm a career expert. So there's some irony in that.


So I started as a recruiter with Robert Half 30 years ago, and I've been fortunate and blessed to grow with the company over the years, as we as well have changed and transformed, not only how we serve our customers, but the businesses and the services that we've provided. So I started in recruiting and I grew with the organization and as our business transformed, I was able to grow with the organization to different levels of responsibility and actually have a number of different career paths, both in leading our staffing operations, but also being a part of our corporate team to help transform the way we serve our customers, but also how we engage our employees.


And so through that time, it's very interesting because if you think of, for anyone here that thought about looking for a job 20 years ago, versus what it's like today, or even 25 years ago, you think about how when you'd look for a job, pre-internet, it was all in the newspaper and the internet, social media, the access to information and the tools that you use to both find a job or find talent have drastically changed. So I've been fortunate to be a part of transforming the way we do our business through that process. So that's a little bit about me and my background. I'm also really passionate about employee experience and have been an advocate for our employee resource groups for our global company, specifically I'm an executive sponsor for our global women's executive network and a member of Chief. And we as well as an organization, in addition to serving our customers, have had to look internally as a company as to how do we meet the needs of our employees so that we can ultimately meet the needs of our customers.


Alexander Kvamme 05:50
So, that's great because you are thinking about EX across every dimension, both internally at Robert Half, but also as you work with your various customers around the world. So let's dive into that. I think one thing that you're really fond of is, and something you've harped on for a while, is how EX influences CX. And I know that you recently, Robert Half recently came out with some new research called “Future Proofing Your Workforce and Employers Guide”, and I really encourage folks to review it. I'm sure we'll link to it in the show notes. There's a brief summary. It's a 10 or 20 slides, it's easy to consume and we'll talk a little bit more about it here, but the first thing we should, maybe we should cover here, Diane, is that concept of EX driving CX and maybe the key takeaways that you saw in this last round of research. And then just as foreshadowing, I want to ask how that's changed in the last six months, but let's just start with the general thesis of your most recent research.


Diane Domeyer 06:59
Well, first of all, when you look at the importance of employee experience, both from the standpoint of attracting and retaining top talent, it has always been important, Alex, but I think never before has there been so much emphasis on how organizations are investing in their employee experience and how their workplace has had to change. So you mentioned some of our research. So in addition to providing talent operations, staffing, recruiting capabilities for our clients, we do a tremendous amount of research every year and throughout the year on workplace trends and career trends. And in the workplace in particular, and in our most recent white paper, which we called “Future Proofing Your Workplace”, the importance of how employees' mindset has changed, not just during the pandemic, but with this period that we are in right now, has basically accelerated. What was important to employees before the pandemic is even more important now.


So as an example, we all know certain employees are really placing a high value on hybrid and remote work. So pre-pandemic, one out of 67, one out of 67 employees either worked remote or a hybrid schedule, one out of 67. It's now one in seven. And when you're in an employment market where the number of job openings is more than twice the available talent looking for work, those companies that can provide that level of flexibility and will continue to provide that level of flexibility, even as the pandemic subsides, are basically, they have the upper hand in identifying talent in a really, really tight talent market. One of your trends.


Alexander Kvamme 09:08
You were touching on this, and let's dive a little bit deeper, which is, I think obviously post-pandemic, anything everyone was talking about was the great resignation. And, of course, there were more job openings than folks to fill them. And really that status quo was disrupted so quickly in so many different ways. And that was holding, and I think we assumed it was the ground truth up and through 2021, but then a lot has happened in the last six months. And so given that, and I think one thing for our audience to realize is Robert Half is at the front lines of the economy through staffing and through all the work that you guys are doing. And so I think maybe give our... A lot of the folks that I speak to are operating off of outdated research that maybe was collected last year, but not updated in the last six months. So, perhaps let's just quickly talk about how things have changed and stayed the same now speaking in July, summer of 2022.


Diane Domeyer 10:19
Yeah. So to your point, there's been so much discussion about the great resignation, some say the great reshuffle, that was the narrative. What I would say is that the job market in 2022 continues to be very robust. There are still 11.3 million openings, job openings in the market as of last month, 3.6% unemployment. And depending on the profession, still two times more jobs open per job seeker than job seekers, and in some professions it's four to five. Now with current economic circumstances, what we are definitely seeing is that professionals at every level are thinking more carefully before making the jump. And that's both on the hiring side, being thoughtful about if there is economic change, are we going to be as aggressive in our hiring? It's still very robust, but on the employer side, there's still a little bit more, it's a little more tempered.


On the job seeker side, where I think there were a lot of people that made really significant life changes, job changes. They're thinking more carefully as opposed to jumping primarily for that next opportunity, or the company that'll give them flexibility, or jumping for greater income. And they're thinking more carefully holistically about what they're looking for if they're going to make a change. We do see, Alex, that six out of 10 in 2022 are still rethinking their careers. And four out of 10 still plan to look for a new job. So employee experience and programs for retention are still very, very important.


Alexander Kvamme 12:11
In fact, it sounds like the stakes are even higher because the employee now has a higher bar. They are being more considered in the roles that they look for. Therefore, employee experience is even more important because that's going to be a key determination in their decision.


Diane Domeyer 12:30
And some of those factors are, number one, compensation is obviously always on the docket, but it's not always number one. In many cases we're seeing, does an organization provide hybrid and remote work, or flexible schedules as very, very high importance. Secondarily, do they have the ability to prioritize their personal life? And this is not just about how, when and where we work, but some out of necessity, women in particular that have had, in some cases born the brunt of supporting things on the family front, which is not always the case, but the ability, the reality of there's greater consideration for not just work life balance, but support for what's necessary in your life is more important than ever before.


And then I would say finally, and this is really important as it relates to the connection between CX and EX, is employees really care about whether A, they're doing meaningful work, but also that they're working for a purpose driven organization. And that purpose driven organization is one that gives back to their employees. It's one that gives back to society. It's one that supports them in their personal lives, as well as professional. And that connects that customer experience and that brand experience. There was a time where purpose was all about, in some organizations, the marketing function was talking about the purpose brand, but if employees don't feel that, that purpose-driven approach goes all the way up and down the organization, it will never come to fruition.


Alexander Kvamme 14:15
So we've established that one of the first things I wanted to establish is that EX still matters. And that even though things have changed, and we feel like the market has tightened a bit over the last six months, it is still in such a state, and the mindset of both hirers and in employees is in a state that EX is still incredibly important.


Diane Domeyer 14:39
And I guess I would add to underline that if you will, Alex, Forbes... No, I'm sorry, it wasn't Forbes. It was Aberdeen that recently did a study that companies that have a robust employee experience and engage their employees have a customer loyalty that is three times higher than those organizations that are not known for employee experience. So it's not just about making your employees happy, there's a business case associated with it. And Forbes recently listed the top 100 customer-centric companies of 2022 globally in every industry. And do you know what the three of the criteria were? Is number one, were they customer-centric? Number two, how did they rank an employee experience? And number three, were they known to be innovative? And so it's not just, again, it's not just about reducing turnover, it's not just about attracting top talent, it's the business case that connects revenue growth, customer loyalty, profitability, to really delivering outstanding customer experience.


Alexander Kvamme 15:58
So perfect segue, because we've established that EX still matters in 2022. And now let's talk about how EX influences CX. And you've already set this up very nicely, but we've been talking pretty high level for the last couple of minutes, let's get tactical. And so let's just first think about our CX leaders who listen and watch this podcast. What is something that they could take to their exec or staff meeting and ask the question, say, hey, how are we doing on EX? What's the diagnosis that they could do to see how they are doing? How would you walk through that framework, or that Maslow's pyramid of EX? It's like, what's most important? What are the one, two and three, so people can start grading themselves and then we'll talk about ways to improve?


Diane Domeyer 16:49
Yeah. So first of all, from an employee experience standpoint, at every level in an organization an employee needs to feel connected to what is the mission, the purpose of not only their company, but their role in that? So many organizations, again, regardless of size, put a lot of time and money into what is their mission, what are their values? And first and foremost, from an employee experience standpoint, every employee in the organization needs to feel that those values and that mission, not only do they have a role in it, but that it is the way they live and breathe. And so, first of all, for especially frontline leaders, if you feel that there's a disconnect between that, you need to ask your employees, you need to write what is important to them? Where do we break down in our mission, our vision, our values? And act on that feedback.


So it's not just employee surveys for the sake of an employee survey, it's an employee survey for the sake of acting upon it. And even if you don't do formal employee surveys, any frontline leader and any level of leader should make sure that there's communication about that. The second thing is, again, and I just said the word communication, if the pandemic taught us nothing, it's like when you think about the experience of everyone getting a window into the world of their employees, that maybe they didn't have before, it broke down hierarchies, but it also emphasized the importance and value of transparency and communication and authenticity. So you have to measure how well do we feel that people can feel that they can share their concerns, that we are authentic, that we're communicating frequently about changes, whether they're popular or not?


So those are, so mission, vision, values of authenticity, communication, transparency, but then there's a whole lot as it relates to just work environment and things that you can do specifically to help your employees. And your employees care about, we already said flexibility, appreciation for what's happening outside of their work, purpose-driven, but on top of that, they want to feel that they have opportunities to learn and up skill. So what are you providing in terms of either heat assignments for someone to take on more responsibility? What training or resources can you make available to your teams? So you want to make sure at the level of not just skills, but do we have the tools, the technology, the resources to do your job and the training to advance your career?


Alexander Kvamme 19:46
So this really maps well to actually what we do at Pathlight is actually the... It's a good second half of... So, when we talk to our leaders, just like you're saying, hey, everyone needs to be aligned on mission, vision, values. We also believe everyone needs to be aligned on expectation and performance. And so it's the same idea. And so if I were to actually talk to the CX leader and give them something to take back to the staff, the idea is that you should be able to walk the floor, or if you were to magically appear in the office, so the home office of any of your employees and you were to ask them, what is the mission of the company? What is the vision of the company, and what are our values? You want the percentage of people to get that answer right to be 90 plus percent.


And then the same thing with Pathlight. You want them to, even more simply, we want our end users to be able to answer the question, how am I doing? Because that's the second part of this. It's like, what is the mission, vision, values of this company and how am I doing to promote those things? And so, we call it transparency and alignment. And it's alignment, not only on the tactical goals that actually drive your business, it's alignment on the mission, vision, values is actually going to keep them, it's going to retain them and keep them fulfilled and help them stay there. And so if I were to reframe or make a little bit more actionable, that first point to the CX leader, let's do a survey of how many people actually... Well, first of all, do we have mission, vision, values? And have we stated them? That's one.

Two, what percentage of our team knows those mission, vision, values across our sites, across our teams, across our locations? That's the second funnel, stage in the funnel. And then third, what percentage of our teammates agree that we are aligned against those mission, vision, values? And that number is never going to be perfect, but hopefully it's above 50% and you know, and you can work towards improving it. Is that a fair way of making that actionable?


Diane Domeyer 22:11
100%. And I think in addition to, do we know, and do we understand mission, vision, values and how we're performing against them? It's what role does your team play? Because often times companies will have really broad-based mission statements, and then vision and values, but that broad-based mission for someone maybe in the CX organization, or even more challenging, maybe in some parts of an organization that are not as customer facing, it's like, what is my role in making that mission happen? And the organizations that do that really well with teams of five, teams of 25, versus the broad base, this is what the company stands for, are those that really see the greatest success. And to your point, Alex, it needs to be really tactical, like what can we do to support it? It's not just do we know it, can we articulate it, and do we believe in it? But what is my role in making that happen? And that's where a frontline leader, or even all levels of leaders, frankly, need to make sure that they're asking the questions, like what are we doing to make that happen?


Alexander Kvamme 23:30
It's super compelling because at Pathlight we are always talking about this key question, “how am I doing?” And I think what you're saying is let's look at the broadest possible definition of that question, which is how am I doing not only personally against my goals and my expectations, but how am I doing and why am I doing it in the context of the greater company? And just like you need every employee to know how they're doing on their day-to-day performance metrics, you need them also to know the why of all of that because the former will help you hit your goals that month, but the latter will help you hit your goals that year or, and succeed over a long term.


Diane Domeyer 24:21
And the other aspect, which I know is part of what, the services that you provide at Pathlight, but the other one is putting visibility and recognition in a bigger way to those that are doing it well, and that's what becomes contagious. I've seen so much over the years, especially in customer experience and sales, that the, how am I doing question tends to put a light on areas of opportunity, and you need to really shine the areas of strength, because that is the employee experience you're looking for, is if I'm recognized and I feel good about what's going well, then there's a psychological component, which not only gets me to do more of it, it gets others around me to do more of it. And that's a big part of the employee experience.

Alexander Kvamme 25:15
Yeah. Yeah. Recognition. And this actually leads us into a topic about the frontline manager, or the first line manager. One of the things that we always see is if the first line manager is stressed out or overwhelmed or not set up for success, all they're doing is firefighting. That's all they have time for. And so what's the thing that they don't have time for? Recognition, because the only thing that they have time for is coaching the biggest fires of the day or of the week. Maybe help elucidate a little bit more on how you help your customers think about these first line managers and their importance and what they can do to make them more effective, and how important they are in general?


Diane Domeyer 26:04
Well, first of all, if you think about the importance of first-line manager and the teams that they manage, frankly, is the face to the customer. So in many organizations, it is the most important role, but it is also one of the most challenging roles to your point, because of the demands of the customer, the problem resolution. They often tend to manage teams that are higher in turnover, and they're constantly in fire mode. So, first of all, I would say the way we help organizations to think about that, and I mentioned it previously, is the importance of upskilling. Almost 60% of employees that we surveyed said that they feel that they do not get the appropriate level of leadership development. So investment in programs to help leaders in their communication style, and in some cases, crisis management, in employee recognition and in employee engagement is time that is really, really well spent. If you think about the impact of turnover. The impact of turnover has your frontline leaders constantly paying catch up, playing catch up, constantly dealing with being maybe understaffed.


So a couple of things that you can do is A, consider bringing in contractors so that it doesn't affect your customer experience, but also really investing in that upskilling and leadership and upskilling of the front line to make sure... And the employee engagement programs so that you ultimately can deliver that outstanding customer experience. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think the investment in leadership development, now some organizations don't do a great job of that. And if you're a frontline leader that you feel that your organization does not provide that leadership development, how do you recognize your team? How do you engage your team? How do you manage a team? How do you manage the business and manage a team? There's lots of resources that you should take on your own that you can find externally, but also be the voice internally for you and your peers to basically ask for the programs that you need to develop to feel that you can be as effective a leader as possible. And employers are investing in that, they want that feedback.


Alexander Kvamme 28:40
And you had said earlier how important that is to just general employee experience. And it's something that we leaders hear all the time is how important a career growth path is to retention. And one thing I'd advise our audience is there are certainly lots of leading indicators and investments that Diane mentioned that you should be looking into. From a diagnosis perspective the first thing to look for, even beyond retention is just promotion rates and mobility rates, because if folks aren't getting promoted in your organization, then no one's going to believe you have a career growth track. And so you have to start with the actual ground truth, which is, do you actually have a career growth track in your organization? And for that new person, are they going to see over time, hey, those top performers, they do get rewarded. They do elevate. The time that they put in at that level was well spent and was recognized and rewarded.


And, of course, you've got the qualitative recognition, but at some point you need quantitative recognition as well, either through compensation or through increased responsibility, or promotion, or what have you. And so I would certainly ask our audience to go back and just look at promotion rates and make sure, because that is the necessary foundation upon which you build these leadership development programs and stuff like that. There needs to be an output or an outlet for all this. And so let's keep moving on, because I know we've got a lot to talk about. So one trend that's so common or so popular in the CX industry is a move towards automation, it's a move towards self-service, it's a move towards chatbots. And there's even some crazier ideas floating around about the future of CX. So I'd love your perspective on how that future maps to employee experience and just the current staffing model of CX organizations moving forward, as well as the skills required for both frontline managers and just organizations in general to succeed in the future.


Diane Domeyer 31:05
Well, first of all, regardless of what is happening from an automation standpoint, there is always, and I believe will continue to be eternally an importance on the human touch, but it is without a doubt the what technology is enabling is changing the expectations of how we deploy that human interaction. So first of all, I would say that aspects of... Well, first of all, in customer experience and aspects of automation, as you mentioned, like chatbots and how artificial intelligence is applied, et cetera, there are some who may think well, is that replacing the roles of certain customer service representatives, but for those that are in that space, in my opinion, it's actually, and in many of our clients' opinion, it is opening opportunities to take that customer service value and CX value in other directions.


So what I mean by that is when you think about over the last 20 years, how many organizations looked at what we say is CX, and we all know CX means a broad number of things. So CX from the standpoint of customer service, frontline, then CX customer experience from a marketing standpoint, customer experience in terms of how technology now enables customer experience. Over the course of the better part of the last 10 to 15 years, much of that was somewhat siloed. And now not only do most organizations look at CX across the entire customer journey, including back office operations, every touchpoint with the customer is equally valuable, as many world class organizations are bringing employee experience into that customer experience.


So when you think about, going back to your question about what does that mean as it relates to how automation use of technology may change careers, there are now career paths in CX that are far more defined and broad-based. And if you can demonstrate when you first start your career journey in maybe entry-level CX related roles, let's just say that's call center or something else, where even with automation, even if maybe an organization has different staffing levels for traditional bodies, they're dealing with more complex challenges, they're responsible for higher level of problem resolution, cross-functional collaboration. And if you can demonstrate success in that area, there's a lot of different directions you can go in CX.


Now back to your original question about innovation, automation. First of all, no matter what role you have in any organization, and especially in CX, the speed of technology change is not going to slow down, it's only going to accelerate, and the importance of digital literacy to embrace the tools that you have, but also to be an early adopter of how you can even be more productive, more effective with additional tools and resources is something that as a CX leader, you need to demonstrate by example, you need to show that you are embracing the technology. You are an early adopter. You are looking at innovative ways to use the technology to do your job better, or for your team to do their job better. So I see it riddled with opportunity. I'm an optimist by nature, but there are studies that prove out that it's expected that the roles in CX and EX and how that impacts an organization and what that means for career paths is only improving and increasing.


Alexander Kvamme 35:05
Maybe the unofficial title of this episode is why EX still matters and will matter, because I think what I'm touching on is there are so many trends that I think if you were to look at face value it's like, oh, EX isn't going to matter as much because it's going to be easier to hire, because the market's tightening, EX isn't going to matter as much because I'm going to have fewer head count on the agent side. And just on that second point, what you just said, which I think is very important, is actually EX is going to matter more in both those cases, but in the second case, EX is going to matter more because the agents who are still working on the human touch, they are going to need to be more skilled, more collaborative, better problem solvers, and therefore harder to... It's going to take more time and effort to retain those folks, to develop them. And so EX... And you will be the pain both financially and culturally, that you would experience by losing those folks who are going to be more significant.


So the underlying trend is regardless of macroeconomic trends, regardless of these trends towards automation, EX is still a critical part of your strategy.


Diane Domeyer 36:23
Absolutely. And we don't see that slowing down regardless of what happens in the employment market, if you will. And it's primarily based on the fact that you think through the world-class organizations who went through a period of time for the better part of more than a decade, which was those most innovative companies were those that could apply technology in innovative ways and were still on that journey for many large and small companies, and that's not stopping, but there's now the emphasis from the C-suite on the importance of what is now measurable as a result of technology, which is what is that customer experience? How do we measure our employee experience? And when you put the two of them together, what impact does that have to our business? So, let's just say we head into an economic downturn, I would argue that those organizations that really connect CX and EX are the best positioned to persevere regardless of economic conditions.


Alexander Kvamme 37:37
I'd like to end with one last question, I want to squeeze one last piece, a bit of tactical insight out of you before we end. So let's quickly talk about burnout. If we look in the last two and a half years, and we haven't had a chance really to catch our breath. It was pandemic and the roller coaster of that, the dip and then the rise. And if you think about this from a CX perspective, it's like the CX organizations feel pain, both in the highs of the economy and in the lows of the economy, just in different ways. And so we've had this roller coaster, and then all of a sudden starts to peter out, invasion of Ukraine, economic downturn and recession. So we just haven't had a chance to catch our breath.


And so people have been going at this for two or two and a half years full bore. And so I think burnout is a pretty popular topic. And there's no shortage of armchair experts giving recommendations on various ways to reduce burnout. Maybe, again, using this context of the hypothetical CX leader going to their LT meeting, what's the one thing that you've seen, and I'm sure there are a few, but what's one thing that everyone could go back into their team, roll out immediately, and it would make a market impact on this?


Diane Domeyer 39:02
In order to combat burnout, we all know we need a break. And so organizations have vested a tremendous amount of encouraging their teams to take time away. And what we have seen is it's not enough to encourage your staff to take a break. You have to have an environment that will allow them to take a break. You have people who are doing windowed working, working after hours, they're working in periods of time that work with their lifestyle. They're working maybe too many hours. And so, what we are seeing is organizations that not only promote the importance of time off, but they either allow for cross-training and job share. You need to make sure your team has somebody to cover them so they can take time off.


So either cross-training, job share, allowing for windowed working, but, or consider using contractors to cover while they're out, because a lot of time you think about these companies that have offered unlimited, whatever they call it, PTO, CTO, time off. Studies have shown that most people don't take that unlimited time. And it's typically because the culture doesn't either allow for it, or they don't have the resources to cover them for their time off. So I would say that is one of the most important things to do to address burnout. You got to be able to not only encourage your team to take the time, but that you've got the support and the resources for them to feel comfortable taking the time.


Alexander Kvamme 40:40
And that's easy to measure. You've got, putting my accounting hat on, it's like you've got PTO liability on your book. So you've got accrued PTO. Look at how much accrued PTO has been taken and do whatever you can. And your accountants will thank you too, because it's a liability you're removing from the books. Do whatever you can to reduce that and encourage folks to take time off. I think that's a great way to end, Diane. Thank you very much. For our audience, if you'd like to get in touch with me or Diane, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Robert Half, reach out to Diane as well. If you want to learn more about Pathlight or get a demo, visit pathlight.com or reach out to me. For Diane and myself, that's it today. We'll see you next time. Thanks everyone for listening and watching wherever you are.


Diane Domeyer 41:31
Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here.

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