‘From Insight to Impact: A Case Study Proving the Inextricable Link Between EX and CX in B2B,’ with Clare White
Clare White recently hosted a case study for our community, telling a story of how culture transformation and a focus on employee experience turned a business around from decline to growth. Through a clear narrative with lots of examples, she shared her learnings with the audience, emphasising the importance of employee experience. In this article, we’ll give you the key takeaways from Clare’s session.
TL;DR
It starts with employees: A toxic culture results in poor employee experience, declining customer experience and business performance.
Engage them early in the process: Ensure employees are included in building out the vision of what the future culture will look like and regularly check in to measure sentiment and identify opportunities for improvement.
Involve stakeholders: Being able to demonstrate impact through regular updates using data helps maintain alignment with organisational goals.
Be inclusive and transparent: Foster a sense of ownership and commitment by involving employees in decision-making processes and being transparent about the journey ahead.
Culture is never a job done: Successful employee experience strategy and culture transformation require senior leadership engagement, organisational inclusivity, and ongoing focus with clear frameworks.
It Starts with Employees
Clare's case study takes place within a company that was on the verge of decline. In 2018, the organisation was dealing with internal conflicts and a diminishing sense of employee motivation. The toxic culture directly resulted in poor employee experience, which in turn impacted customer experience and business performance. With the only rising company metric being attrition, Clare and her team realised the need for change and set out on a mission to transform the company's culture.
Making a Plan
Clare's team realised they needed a plan to improve their company's culture. Since they lacked the necessary expertise, they engaged culture experts. The culture partners conducted peer group interviews to gain insights into the company's culture. Some of the words used to describe the current state of affairs included burnout, stress, silos, and distrust.
From the insights gathered, the team proposed recommendations and used data to develop a plan of action. The plan was presented to the stakeholders, and it was underpinned by improvements in business metrics with specific timelines.
One recommendation was to create a team of culture champions within the business. “They were from different levels within our organisation. Representatives from different teams, we were very keen to have cross-functional teams represented consistently,” Clare explained.
An Employee-Created Manifesto
Clare explained that one innovative idea was to create a manifesto. “The culture champions came up with a number of values or behaviours that they felt the business needed or they wanted their business to have.” This manifesto was then shared with the employees, who voted on “the top eight manifesto areas that they really felt that they wanted as part of their business.”
To further track their employees' overall sentiment, Clare's team organised manifesto workshops. “We needed to continually know how our employees were feeling. The global survey went out biannually, but this was more than a global survey. We needed to know how our employees were feeling about the change. How did they feel about the manifesto?”
The manifesto is now integrated into recruitment, induction, and performance management to inspire employees to embody the company's values.
Involving Stakeholders
Clare stressed the significance of involving senior stakeholders in the cultural transformation process from an early stage. The stakeholders were also kept in mind when developing the manifesto: “Particularly when you're taking it to senior stakeholders, they want to know the ins and outs, they want to know it's going to happen [...] So it’s really key to make sure those were clear. One of the first steps we took was to embed our manifesto areas into key result areas for the team.”
"I think we were demonstrating that starting with our employees was really starting to pay off. And our stakeholders were realising that too, which was the main point."
Providing regular updates and using data to demonstrate the impact of cultural changes helps maintain alignment with organisational goals. For Clare’s team, that became easier as numbers improved: “The tide was turning. Employee satisfaction scores started to increase within the next twelve months [...] We still had a long, long way to go, but I think we were demonstrating that starting with our employees was really starting to pay off. And our stakeholders were realising that too, which was the main point.”
Be Inclusive and Transparent
Inclusivity and transparency are fundamental principles of successful cultural transformation, according to Clare. Organisations foster a sense of ownership and commitment by involving employees in decision-making processes and being transparent about the journey ahead.
“Be inclusive. Ask them what's important to them, find out what's important to them, and then be transparent about the journey that you're going on. There will always be things you cannot tell your employees, things you can't share with them because they're confidential, but be transparent where you can.”
Culture is Never a Job Done
Clare explained that cultural transformation is an ongoing journey that requires continuous effort and dedication. When she left the business eight months ago, culture was still a big focus, requiring a lot of work, with an employee committee still in place.
“All of these things were still happening because if you don't put the work in, then things will slip. And this is the learning that we took from how we'd gone from a brilliantly successful company into a period of quite serious, significant decline. Always keep working at it.”
Watch Clare’s Case Study
Interested in learning more? Become a WiCX member and watch the full case study now! Clare shares her key learnings from turning a business around from decline to growth.
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