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Hello and welcome to the Custom Experience Superheroes Podcast.
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My name is Christopher Brooks, and I'll be your host throughout this series.
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During our time, we will get to meet some exceptional individuals who have defined the industry as it stands today, and others who are breaking new ground, taking it forward to even greater heights.
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We'll get to understand their ideals, hear their ideas, gain new insights, and hopefully be inspired by what they have to share with us.
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We'll be speaking to some of the names we'll all recognise from the world of CX, those presenters and influencers who stand on stage and write books.
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Plus, we'll also be catching up with some of the real heroes of our industry, those who are working with organizations, transforming them to become more customer-centric.
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Today we speak with Simon Gilbert.
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Simon is one of those such heroes.
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He has been working tirelessly in the telecoms industry for over 20 years, helping to engage employees to achieve the business strategy.
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In today's episode, we catch up with Simon, who walks us through a blueprint for employee engagement.
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Thank you, Christopher, and I'm delighted to be here and honoured to be your first guest on your podcast.
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So, Simon, I've known you for over 25 years, but many of our listeners may be less familiar with you.
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So please could you introduce yourself and how you became so passionate about this subject?
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Yes, so for the last 20 years I've been in the telecommunications industry, mainly in marketing.
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But for the last 10, I've worked at Sony Mobile.
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And everyone thinks that Sony is this uh great brand, which it is, and a premium brand, but very much in electronics and televisions.
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But in mobile, they are a challenger brand.
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And they're up against the Goliath of the likes of Samsung and Apple Hawaii.
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Why I got really passionate about employee engagement uh was about uh nine years ago, we had to come up uh with a program where we had to engage retail staff.
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Okay, this wasn't Sony staff, this was staff from the likes of Carpone Warehouse, O2, Vodafone, so that they would believe in our product, that they would have that out-of-pocket moment to demonstrate the handset to consumers.
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So I was tasked to design an employee engagement program.
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Great, sounds uh like an interesting career you've had.
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But when you say achieve this goal, what exactly did you mean?
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I mean that we wanted the industry leading engagement program.
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And I achieved it, and it's now being taken globally at Cross Sony Mobile, but also our competitors have tried to take this on board as well.
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I'm looking forward to hearing more on that later.
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But let's start by understanding just how important employee engagement in delivering a great customer experience is.
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I'll play devil's advocate here, but surely employees are engaged because they work for the company, they get paid by that company, and if the company succeeds, so do they.
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So if the company proposes they focus on customer experience, employees will.
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It is estimated that experience will be the number one reason for customer choice ahead of price, promotion, products, or any other factor by next year.
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So companies are investing more than ever before.
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So the companies that are delivering, how are they doing it?
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It's their employees.
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So you need highly motivated and engaged employees, inspired and motivated to create and deliver market-leading customer experience.
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You know, I I've attended though many events and seen many commentators talk about the importance of employee experience.
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But surely all this talk is creating a change.
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Talk is cheap.
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I've been there and heard about the theory and the concepts, but the reality is that 60% of employees don't even know what their company's vision, objectives, or customer strategies are, according to Bain.
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So to be honest, we are starting from a very low bar.
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Let me bring in a comparison to customer experience here, if I may.
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We use a continuous improvement model which focuses the priorities across three levels of customer experience evolution.
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Level one, make it work.
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Okay.
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Level two, make it better.
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Level three, make it best, become the customer experience brand of choice.
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Great.
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Would you say in reality that for many organizations, they haven't even got the basics right yet when it comes to employee engagement?
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And if so, what's your suggestion here?
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For me, there are four fundamentals which need to be deliberate, designed, and demonstrated for employee engagement to be successful.
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The first point is you need open and honest communication.
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And it needs to be two-way.
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You need to tell employees how it is, but you also need to listen to their feedback and act upon that.
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It's so important.
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Or you explain why you're not acting upon it.
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Now, this last point is often the most challenging to fulfill.
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But employees' trust can increase if you say no.
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But explain why.
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We're not back at school, they can handle this.
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And if you do, it increases empowerment by reported six times.
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Now, it's a skill communicating and one that's often not recognized or trained within companies for employees on the front line.
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Typically, they are trained in the sales process, but not how to communicate effectively with each other.
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Now, my second point is leadership.
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Now, we all can envisage great leaders both in business and in sport.
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Someone who personifies what you want others to do.
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They need to be able to make decisions which are right for the company, but not for the individuals.
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So when this is not the most popular decision, you need to ensure individuals recognize why decisions are made.
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Again, it goes back to the open and honest communication.
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Now you've got to bring the team with you.
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The leader sets the standards expected and empowers employees to surpass them.
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And possibly most importantly, they need to be approachable.
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There should be no barriers.
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But you need to be accessible at all times.
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Look at all the successful leaders.
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I look at sport, and someone at the moment I look at is Jürgen Klott.
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His players are with him and he's accessible.
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And he inspires and motivates them.
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That's what business and sport leaders do really well.
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And you know what?
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It gives employees the confidence to succeed and be successful.
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The third point is arguably the most important, which is building trust.
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Trust is earned through leadership and open and honest communication, which I've just spoken about.
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But possibly the most impactful way I have found is that accepting your mistakes and showing how you've learned from them, even as a leader.
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Too often we see apologies and the same mistakes are continually made.
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But integrity is about not just saying sorry, but proving you have learned and making good so that you never make the same mistake again.
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I really learned that while I was at Sony Mobile.
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Now, which means at every level you just can't engage with employees if there is an us and them culture.
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And again, this can be a tough decision.
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If your top performing employee is getting there by not being trustworthy, you need to address it, not accommodate it.
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My fourth point is recognition.
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Now, people often jump to big awards and bonuses as a worthy measure.
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However, it's a lot more human than that.
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And we all seek recognition in most things we do.
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Making it personal, a phone call or an email, or even a WhatsApp message just to say thank you for doing a really good job or thank you for doing something for today.
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An unbelievable 71% of employees would like to be thanked by their line managers for their contribution.
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This again is not about making it best.
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This is about making it work.
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This is just the fundamental basics.
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So that's the blueprint.
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Clearly, years of working in this space have led you to know what really matters when it comes to employee engagement, Simon.
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So thanks for sharing that with us.
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Now we know what it takes.
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I'm afraid not really.
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You need to design an effective employee engagement program.
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The first thing to do is take a step back and understand what your goal is.
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Now, let's use the Sony program as a framework here.
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So, firstly, what are your goals and objectives?
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If you don't have those from the start, you can't get an engagement program off the ground.
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The second point is that's a reality check.
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You really do need to do a survey to find out how engaged are your employees and what is missing, you know, what is working.
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This means you can understand what does need improving, where the strengths are and where the weaknesses are.
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Thirdly, your program design must close the gap between the goals and where you are now.
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So, whilst there are some common elements, no two programs should ever be the same.
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Some factors to consider which will impact your program design are budget.
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So you know what incremental budget that allows for your program and how much you want to invest, and the return investment you will get.
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Secondly, the talent, the employees who are to be engaged.
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You need to understand what you're working with.
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Best way to get this insight to me is meet them, talk to them, share your ideas, see if they believe in you and the idea, find out what's gone before and what their own ambitions are, how they want to progress, both career and personally.
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Then you need a dedicated resource who will be available to run and keep this program going daily.
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Often this resource is shared initially because until the value and contribution of the employee engagement program is recognized, it's probably been seen as a on top of your day job undertaking.
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But if you can get dedicated resource from day one, you can go further, faster.
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Then you need a framework.
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People need confidence in an organized approach.
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That doesn't mean you can't be spontaneous or surprise them.
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It just creates authority and command.
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And these are traits of all good and inspirational leaders.
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And then you need a vision.
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Now, this can be hard because ultimately you're taking a punt at the start of the program, which says the direction we are traveling on is the right way.
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And the reality is you want the ability to reappraise.
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So your vision should be smart.
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It must give you potential to evolve with conditions beyond your control.
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And then you need sponsorship.
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You need a key stakeholder who gets it and supports it.
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This is typically a respected leader within the business, but it needs to be the business priority which ultimately has a sponsor.
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And last but not least, measurement.
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So this is less about KPI, more about continuously evaluating where we want to be and how we can continually improve.
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This is not the annual review of employee satisfaction that companies do, but it should be against branch, regional, and employee level outcomes to find out if we are on track.
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To do this again, you need the honest and open feedback.
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But employees should be able to raise their hand if they need the support that they require.
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Otherwise, you failed and there is no engagement.
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Really appreciate that.
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Could you outline the approach you take and what elements go into making a successful employee engagement program, please?
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Okay, so you need to start with the program branding.
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It's key to give employee engagement some authority and visibility in organization.
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So at Sony Mobile, we created the ambassadors program.
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This had a cachet to it, which I mean is we made a desirable thing to become a Sony ambassador.
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We identified who would be our ambassadors based on passion, curiosity, and drive to personally progress in their career.
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Now we equipped them with the latest Sony phone, which was a loan phone, but they were our early adopter users.
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We gave them a community to connect, which helped to motivate each other and to communicate through.
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It's worth pointing out here, we had competitor retailers from the likes of O2 or Vodafone or CarPhone in the same community, helping each other to be more successful and help in things like customer service, sales, and training.
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We treated them the same and they did us.
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We had a daily communication via an app, updating on products, uh performance, or personal interests.
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They quickly became active in the group as they connected to others on so many levels.
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With everyone active, we started to thank our ambassadors.
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We had things like uh Thank You Fridays, nothing more than a thank you.
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They chose to share this socially.
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They loved the recognition.
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This helped them and us get recognition for the program to a wider plane.
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We started to see an impact on ambassador store performances, sales and satisfaction levels went up.
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And ultimately, ambassador productivity went up.
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But we kept going, ensuring everything we did connected to that original vision and importantly included those CX superpowers we spoke about before.
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Such was the success that we took the community from a digital sham platform to a pizza restaurant, by which I mean colleagues met up.
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Again, remember, you know, they were rivals, but they also became real friends and they shared their ambassador challenges and successes.
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Being an ambassador became a badge of honor.
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They were proud to be a Sony ambassador.
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They told us that via the app.
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With 550 recruited, we started to deliver a real commercial difference.
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We doubled market share in most stores, and in some cases, we tripled them, which led to the recognition program involving an award, an annual award salary to our top 40 ambassadors and ultimately a community get-together for the top 10 high performers in Las Vegas, where we went to the biggest electrical show in the world, a consumer electrical show.
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Now we had great fun throughout with employees appearing in carpal karaoke videos and also improvement workshops.
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We hosted a game show where there were prizes and offer.
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There was a live quarterly Facebook QA.
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We always kept it fresh.
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But importantly, it was all part of the Design Ambassador Programme with a vision, objectives, and a framework to deliver.
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Now, in terms of success, that you measure success in a more personal way, could you share with our listeners what else you achieved?
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Well, two things.
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One was that disengaged employees became engaged and in fact were promoted with their employees maybe to store managers or to their head offices.
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And that means they've become a much greater asset for their organizations.
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And secondly, we were recognized across the mobile industry and retailers as the number one employee engagement program.
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Congratulations.
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Thank you.
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Now, when I started the idea of the ambassador program, I stated that as an ambition to my MD and to others as well within the organisation.
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And they just laughed at me, which I understand, and it was fair enough.
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It was like saying that Accriton Stanley would win the premiership.
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But we did it.
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We achieved that goal.
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It's the framework program that makes it a success.
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So that's what we've designed so it can be replicated across any sector and any geography.
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So thank you so much, Simon, for sharing that with us.
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Brilliant.
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Thank you.
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And if anyone listening would like to speak to Simon directly about employee engagement programs, you can reach him on Twitter at Simon Gilby.
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Or of course, you can contact me and I'll get Simon to get back to you.
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Hello and welcome to the Custom Experience Superheroes Podcast.
00:00:19.359 --> 00:00:23.199
My name is Christopher Brooks, and I'll be your host throughout this series.
00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:35.119
During our time, we will get to meet some exceptional individuals who have defined the industry as it stands today, and others who are breaking new ground, taking it forward to even greater heights.
00:00:35.119 --> 00:00:43.840
We'll get to understand their ideals, hear their ideas, gain new insights, and hopefully be inspired by what they have to share with us.
00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:53.439
We'll be speaking to some of the names we'll all recognise from the world of CX, those presenters and influencers who stand on stage and write books.
00:00:53.439 --> 00:01:04.319
Plus, we'll also be catching up with some of the real heroes of our industry, those who are working with organizations, transforming them to become more customer-centric.
00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:07.200
Today we speak with Simon Gilbert.
00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:10.480
Simon is one of those such heroes.
00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:20.560
He has been working tirelessly in the telecoms industry for over 20 years, helping to engage employees to achieve the business strategy.
00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:27.040
In today's episode, we catch up with Simon, who walks us through a blueprint for employee engagement.
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Thank you, Christopher, and I'm delighted to be here and honoured to be your first guest on your podcast.
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So, Simon, I've known you for over 25 years, but many of our listeners may be less familiar with you.
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So please could you introduce yourself and how you became so passionate about this subject?
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Yes, so for the last 20 years I've been in the telecommunications industry, mainly in marketing.
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But for the last 10, I've worked at Sony Mobile.
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And everyone thinks that Sony is this uh great brand, which it is, and a premium brand, but very much in electronics and televisions.
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But in mobile, they are a challenger brand.
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And they're up against the Goliath of the likes of Samsung and Apple Hawaii.
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Why I got really passionate about employee engagement uh was about uh nine years ago, we had to come up uh with a program where we had to engage retail staff.
00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:41.280
Okay, this wasn't Sony staff, this was staff from the likes of Carpone Warehouse, O2, Vodafone, so that they would believe in our product, that they would have that out-of-pocket moment to demonstrate the handset to consumers.
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So I was tasked to design an employee engagement program.
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Great, sounds uh like an interesting career you've had.
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But when you say achieve this goal, what exactly did you mean?
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I mean that we wanted the industry leading engagement program.
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And I achieved it, and it's now being taken globally at Cross Sony Mobile, but also our competitors have tried to take this on board as well.
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I'm looking forward to hearing more on that later.
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But let's start by understanding just how important employee engagement in delivering a great customer experience is.
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I'll play devil's advocate here, but surely employees are engaged because they work for the company, they get paid by that company, and if the company succeeds, so do they.
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So if the company proposes they focus on customer experience, employees will.
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It is estimated that experience will be the number one reason for customer choice ahead of price, promotion, products, or any other factor by next year.
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So companies are investing more than ever before.
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So the companies that are delivering, how are they doing it?
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It's their employees.
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So you need highly motivated and engaged employees, inspired and motivated to create and deliver market-leading customer experience.
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You know, I I've attended though many events and seen many commentators talk about the importance of employee experience.
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But surely all this talk is creating a change.
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Talk is cheap.
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I've been there and heard about the theory and the concepts, but the reality is that 60% of employees don't even know what their company's vision, objectives, or customer strategies are, according to Bain.
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So to be honest, we are starting from a very low bar.
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Let me bring in a comparison to customer experience here, if I may.
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We use a continuous improvement model which focuses the priorities across three levels of customer experience evolution.
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Level one, make it work.
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Okay.
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Level two, make it better.
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Level three, make it best, become the customer experience brand of choice.
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Great.
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Would you say in reality that for many organizations, they haven't even got the basics right yet when it comes to employee engagement?
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And if so, what's your suggestion here?
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For me, there are four fundamentals which need to be deliberate, designed, and demonstrated for employee engagement to be successful.
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The first point is you need open and honest communication.
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And it needs to be two-way.
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You need to tell employees how it is, but you also need to listen to their feedback and act upon that.
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It's so important.
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Or you explain why you're not acting upon it.
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Now, this last point is often the most challenging to fulfill.
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But employees' trust can increase if you say no.
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But explain why.
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We're not back at school, they can handle this.
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And if you do, it increases empowerment by reported six times.
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Now, it's a skill communicating and one that's often not recognized or trained within companies for employees on the front line.
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Typically, they are trained in the sales process, but not how to communicate effectively with each other.
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Now, my second point is leadership.
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Now, we all can envisage great leaders both in business and in sport.
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Someone who personifies what you want others to do.
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They need to be able to make decisions which are right for the company, but not for the individuals.
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So when this is not the most popular decision, you need to ensure individuals recognize why decisions are made.
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Again, it goes back to the open and honest communication.
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Now you've got to bring the team with you.
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The leader sets the standards expected and empowers employees to surpass them.
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And possibly most importantly, they need to be approachable.
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There should be no barriers.
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But you need to be accessible at all times.
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Look at all the successful leaders.
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I look at sport, and someone at the moment I look at is Jürgen Klott.
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His players are with him and he's accessible.
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And he inspires and motivates them.
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That's what business and sport leaders do really well.
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And you know what?
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It gives employees the confidence to succeed and be successful.
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The third point is arguably the most important, which is building trust.
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Trust is earned through leadership and open and honest communication, which I've just spoken about.
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But possibly the most impactful way I have found is that accepting your mistakes and showing how you've learned from them, even as a leader.
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Too often we see apologies and the same mistakes are continually made.
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But integrity is about not just saying sorry, but proving you have learned and making good so that you never make the same mistake again.
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I really learned that while I was at Sony Mobile.
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Now, which means at every level you just can't engage with employees if there is an us and them culture.
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And again, this can be a tough decision.
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If your top performing employee is getting there by not being trustworthy, you need to address it, not accommodate it.
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My fourth point is recognition.
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Now, people often jump to big awards and bonuses as a worthy measure.
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However, it's a lot more human than that.
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And we all seek recognition in most things we do.
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Making it personal, a phone call or an email, or even a WhatsApp message just to say thank you for doing a really good job or thank you for doing something for today.
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An unbelievable 71% of employees would like to be thanked by their line managers for their contribution.
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This again is not about making it best.
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This is about making it work.
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This is just the fundamental basics.
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So that's the blueprint.
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Clearly, years of working in this space have led you to know what really matters when it comes to employee engagement, Simon.
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So thanks for sharing that with us.
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Now we know what it takes.
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I'm afraid not really.
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You need to design an effective employee engagement program.
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The first thing to do is take a step back and understand what your goal is.
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Now, let's use the Sony program as a framework here.
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So, firstly, what are your goals and objectives?
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If you don't have those from the start, you can't get an engagement program off the ground.
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The second point is that's a reality check.
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You really do need to do a survey to find out how engaged are your employees and what is missing, you know, what is working.
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This means you can understand what does need improving, where the strengths are and where the weaknesses are.
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Thirdly, your program design must close the gap between the goals and where you are now.
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So, whilst there are some common elements, no two programs should ever be the same.
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Some factors to consider which will impact your program design are budget.
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So you know what incremental budget that allows for your program and how much you want to invest, and the return investment you will get.
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Secondly, the talent, the employees who are to be engaged.
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You need to understand what you're working with.
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Best way to get this insight to me is meet them, talk to them, share your ideas, see if they believe in you and the idea, find out what's gone before and what their own ambitions are, how they want to progress, both career and personally.
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Then you need a dedicated resource who will be available to run and keep this program going daily.
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Often this resource is shared initially because until the value and contribution of the employee engagement program is recognized, it's probably been seen as a on top of your day job undertaking.
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But if you can get dedicated resource from day one, you can go further, faster.
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Then you need a framework.
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People need confidence in an organized approach.
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That doesn't mean you can't be spontaneous or surprise them.
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It just creates authority and command.
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And these are traits of all good and inspirational leaders.
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And then you need a vision.
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Now, this can be hard because ultimately you're taking a punt at the start of the program, which says the direction we are traveling on is the right way.
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And the reality is you want the ability to reappraise.
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So your vision should be smart.
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It must give you potential to evolve with conditions beyond your control.
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And then you need sponsorship.
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You need a key stakeholder who gets it and supports it.
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This is typically a respected leader within the business, but it needs to be the business priority which ultimately has a sponsor.
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And last but not least, measurement.
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So this is less about KPI, more about continuously evaluating where we want to be and how we can continually improve.
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This is not the annual review of employee satisfaction that companies do, but it should be against branch, regional, and employee level outcomes to find out if we are on track.
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To do this again, you need the honest and open feedback.
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But employees should be able to raise their hand if they need the support that they require.
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Otherwise, you failed and there is no engagement.
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Really appreciate that.
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Could you outline the approach you take and what elements go into making a successful employee engagement program, please?
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Okay, so you need to start with the program branding.
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It's key to give employee engagement some authority and visibility in organization.
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So at Sony Mobile, we created the ambassadors program.
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This had a cachet to it, which I mean is we made a desirable thing to become a Sony ambassador.
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We identified who would be our ambassadors based on passion, curiosity, and drive to personally progress in their career.
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Now we equipped them with the latest Sony phone, which was a loan phone, but they were our early adopter users.
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We gave them a community to connect, which helped to motivate each other and to communicate through.
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It's worth pointing out here, we had competitor retailers from the likes of O2 or Vodafone or CarPhone in the same community, helping each other to be more successful and help in things like customer service, sales, and training.
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We treated them the same and they did us.
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We had a daily communication via an app, updating on products, uh performance, or personal interests.
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They quickly became active in the group as they connected to others on so many levels.
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With everyone active, we started to thank our ambassadors.
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We had things like uh Thank You Fridays, nothing more than a thank you.
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They chose to share this socially.
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They loved the recognition.
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This helped them and us get recognition for the program to a wider plane.
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We started to see an impact on ambassador store performances, sales and satisfaction levels went up.
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And ultimately, ambassador productivity went up.
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But we kept going, ensuring everything we did connected to that original vision and importantly included those CX superpowers we spoke about before.
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Such was the success that we took the community from a digital sham platform to a pizza restaurant, by which I mean colleagues met up.
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Again, remember, you know, they were rivals, but they also became real friends and they shared their ambassador challenges and successes.
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Being an ambassador became a badge of honor.
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They were proud to be a Sony ambassador.
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They told us that via the app.
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With 550 recruited, we started to deliver a real commercial difference.
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We doubled market share in most stores, and in some cases, we tripled them, which led to the recognition program involving an award, an annual award salary to our top 40 ambassadors and ultimately a community get-together for the top 10 high performers in Las Vegas, where we went to the biggest electrical show in the world, a consumer electrical show.
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Now we had great fun throughout with employees appearing in carpal karaoke videos and also improvement workshops.
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We hosted a game show where there were prizes and offer.
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There was a live quarterly Facebook QA.
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We always kept it fresh.
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But importantly, it was all part of the Design Ambassador Programme with a vision, objectives, and a framework to deliver.
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Now, in terms of success, that you measure success in a more personal way, could you share with our listeners what else you achieved?
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Well, two things.
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One was that disengaged employees became engaged and in fact were promoted with their employees maybe to store managers or to their head offices.
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And that means they've become a much greater asset for their organizations.
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And secondly, we were recognized across the mobile industry and retailers as the number one employee engagement program.
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Congratulations.
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Thank you.
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Now, when I started the idea of the ambassador program, I stated that as an ambition to my MD and to others as well within the organisation.
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And they just laughed at me, which I understand, and it was fair enough.
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It was like saying that Accriton Stanley would win the premiership.
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But we did it.
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We achieved that goal.
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It's the framework program that makes it a success.
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So that's what we've designed so it can be replicated across any sector and any geography.
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So thank you so much, Simon, for sharing that with us.
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Brilliant.
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Thank you.
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And if anyone listening would like to speak to Simon directly about employee engagement programs, you can reach him on Twitter at Simon Gilby.
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Or of course, you can contact me and I'll get Simon to get back to you.
