John Moore recently wrote a piece on his Brand Autopsy blog in which he answered this question from a reader:

Judy: “Can you tell me what it means to create an employee experience? How do the best companies ensure that the employee experience is aligned to the customer experience?"

The question is as unusual as it is insightful - and considering the amount of posts recently that address the issue of employee morale and its impact on brands, it couldn't have come at a better time.

John answers "creating meaningful employee experiences revolves around making the company something employees can believe in (tribal truth #32). It’s also about a company realizing that its products do not make great brands but rather, its people make brands great (tribal truth #37)."

Pow.

He continues:

"The best companies, namely those listed as one of Fortune Magazine’s "100 Best Companies to Work for in America," spend just as much time marketing to its employees as it does to its customers. In other words, these companies realize that happy, knowledgeable employees will usually translate into happy, knowledgeable customers."

Sound familiar? (I swear - and mea culpa, John - I had completely missed that post until now. Good to know we're all on the same page though. I feel all validated and stuff.) Here's more:

"For example … The Container Store is a Dallas-based privately held company specializing in selling boxes, bins, and everything in-between to help consumers organize all their stuff. They have been highly successful with sales in 2005 topping $425 million with just 37 locations in 12 states.

New Container Store employees are given more than 240 hours of training in their first year compared with the industry standard of 7 hours of training per new employee. Employees are paid two-to-three times more than the industry average. And employees are given a generous 40% discount for anything purchased at the Container Store. The company is renowned by retailers and customers as delivering great customer experiences which helps to explain why the company is so successful.

With its focus on making the employee experience matter (tribal truth #33), The Container Store astonishes its employees who in turn, astonish its customers with great customer service.

Given this Container Store example, one sure-fire way to ensure the employee experience is aligned with the customer experience is to treat employees like you would want employees to treat customers. Sounds simple. But if it was so simple, more companies would be doing it ... right?"

And why aren't they doing it? Mostly, because they just don't know any better. Because nobody told them. Because the concept of happy employees (and happy customers, for that matter) doesn't get much play when it comes to grown-up things like internal politics and maximizing shareholder return.

That's changing, but not nearly fast enough. Yet.

David Taylor (of the brilliantly named Where's The Sausage blog) picks up where John left off with his "brandwashing" concept:

The whole are of "brand engagement" is booming, with companies launching into big and expensive initiatives to help employees "live the brand". However, in my experience many of these are a total and utter waste of money, as they fail to address the basics of making a company a nice place to work. Many of them are more like exercises in "brandwashing".

Yeah. Pep rallies. "Go team" chants. "Brand Spirit" weeks. If you're a joiner, great. If, like me, you're a little more independent, good luck with that. The caffeine-induced exuberance, the forced propaganda and the attendance-required motivational meetings don't work. Thanks for trying though. Most of us are moderately intelligent, educated,well adjusted people. You aren't fooling anyone with your lame "let's talk about how awesome it is to work here in dingy cubicles for a fraction of what we should be making" meetings.

Please spare us.

And spare your employees. They aren't stupid.

David continues:

"One of the most successful companies at creating great and consistent customer service is sandwich shop chain Pret a Manger, and I wrote a little case on them for the new book, Brand Vision (out in Jan 07). This was inspired by the findings of an FT journalist who went to work at Pret to understand the secret of their success. And as you will see below, engaging people with the brand did not figure:

1. Managers are not over-qualified and embittered:
- 75% of mangers are promoted from within
- Other 25% have at least 2 years relevant experience
- Join in and help instead of ‘barking orders’

2. Staff are not ‘routinely humiliated’:
- Smart uniform, not polyester nightmare
- No dressing up for kiddie parties
- Most stores have no toilets, so no cleaning of the loo

3. Staff are paid well:
- Team member: average £6.58 vs. £5.68 for competition
- Team leader: average £8.39 vs. £7.52 for competition

4. Staff have a say in who joins:
- Candidates work in store for a day and team votes whether to hire them.

5. Hire nice people:
- Large number of well-educated international students

The other really important thing is that the product people are selling is 10 times better than your average fast-food of course. It reminds me of the story of a kid working at McDonald's who when asked where he worked preferred to say he was unemployed!

So let's see: Hire great people, treat them well, pay them well, give them the opportunity to move up if they so desire, make sure that they can be proud of the product they sell and the job they do, and let them have a say in who gets hired (or doesn't get hired).

Is it really that hard? Really? Does it still make more sense to treat employees like a commodity and treat them like children when it comes to motivating them? Is it really so hard or expensive to be genuine and caring? Are those words really not part of the business lexicon? Cynicism is an ugly thing, and it has no place in business. None.

One last question for you: If a company doesn't make the effort to treat its employees as well as it can, how do you think it will treat its customers?

More on that in future posts. In the meantime, here are some other great posts on the subject:

- Kathy Sierra's "Knocking the exuberance out of employees"

- Dumb Little Man's "50+ Ways a Manager can get Employees to Quit."

- The BrandBuilder's "Exorcise your organization's inner dysfunctions today."

- Francois Gossieaux's "CEO's with big egos are always bad news."

Have a great Thursday, everyone. :)