The following transcript is from an interview between Lacey Halpern, HR Business Partner at Xenium HR, Alfred Dual, HR Business Partner at Xenium HR, and Brandon Laws, Marketing Manager at Xenium HR, on the podcast episode entitled: How to Engage Employees at Work
Brandon: Welcome back, everybody, we’re here for another podcast interview, I’m Brandon Laws. With me today I have two guests, Lacey Halpern, who’s been on the podcast many times, and Alfred Dual. Both are HR Business Partners and both have been on the podcast before, so we’re glad to have them back for another fun and engaging discussion.
I’m going to the lay the groundwork for our conversation today: I participated in a conference through Portland Human Resources Management Association (PHRMA) back in May called The Strategic Management Conference. They hold this every year with various speakers in HR, Leadership, and Compensation. One of the sessions was called “What’s Brewing in HR?” and was presented by Dianne Burt-Green of MBL Group and Susan Wallin of Boly: Welch, both local to the Portland, Oregon area. They gave a fantastic presentation, and I was really impressed by it. What I loved about it was that they followed up with everyone about the survey—all the participants had the chance to talk about what unique things are engaging their employees in their workplace. What Dianne Burt-Green and Susan Wallin did on the back end was compile all of the things that employers are doing and put them into a top 20 list. We’re going to talk about some of them today. I’ve invited Lacey and Alfred here to talk about some of the things that Xenium’s doing and some of the things their clients are doing, and our opinions on these topics. So let’s dive right in, and either of you can jump in at any time.
First, let’s talk about number one on the list: new hire and stay interviews. I’ve heard this come up quite a bit, in fact we did a podcast on the stay interviews, but maybe from your perspective, Lacey or Alfred, how are new hire and stay interviews playing a role in engagement.
Alfred: They play a role in engagement as they offer an opportunity to check in with an employee and talk about how their first thirty, sixty, ninety days are going. It gives you an opportunity to solicit feedback, maybe about their training experience. It’s also an opportunity for you to provide feedback to them in an open forum. It’s just great to begin that dialogue, because it lays the groundwork for what it could look like going forward, whether that’s checking in once a month, once a week, or however frequently. It at least starts the conversation and gets them used to providing feedback and also accepting feedback.
Brandon: So in the cases that you’ve seen, is that pretty much the norm with every new employee? Also, what are they doing for data collection—what do they use it for?
Alfred: Yes, one of the things I really enjoy is the 30-60-90 day check-in. As a person that’s checking in with your new hire, you’ll offer them a written piece of recognition or a little gift to say “Congratulations! You’ve passed your 30 days!” …or 60, or 90.
Brandon: I could see how that would boost morale quite a bit.
Alfred: Yes, it boosts morale and it also, like I said, it lays the groundwork. Then the employee thinks, “Oh, this is cool, this is what I can expect, I like this.” So it’s a good way to set the tone for that new hire.
Lacey: Yes, I think historically businesses have used exit interviews to get their feedback, and I think by that time it’s too late. The employee’s either chosen to leave the organization or maybe you’re a company that chooses to do exit interviews for employees you terminate. I think we’ve all been there 
and know that the feedback we’re getting from those folks maybe isn’t as valuable. We’re not at a place where we can usually retain that person. So if you are a growing business, I’ve got a lot of clients that are in growth mode right now and are looking at how long it takes for someone to acclimate to a job. They want to identify when does someone becomes proficient, who are our really high performing employees, and how do we retain those folks. Trying to find the right time—maybe it’s more than 30 days—can be a process. An example given from one company is that their average tenure in a high turnover position is about 14 months. So this business chooses to interview people at 11 months. So right before that person has maybe made the decision to start looking for work outside the organization, it gives you an opportunity to shift things.
Brandon: Going down this list that Dianne and Susan provided, number three on the list caught my eye: Friday fun. The idea was that one Friday a month you do a fun event—the example given was a bean bag toss tournament. Here at Xenium we do Friday trivia. This stuck out to me as a fun way to get away from the day-to-day grind and get the employees smiling and laughing, which they’re hopefully doing anyway. But sometimes you need a little fun and engagement once in a while.
Lacey: Yes, I think when it comes from the leadership team, too, can help. Our Friday trivia at Xenium started as an initiative from Suzi Alligood, our Director of Training and Development. So even just someone in the leadership taking five minutes to do something silly, I think at least for me, empowers me to take five minutes and step away from my desk and engage in a conversation with a coworker.
I have a client who has a foosball table at their office. And they don’t just play on Fridays. If they have someone coming in to apply for a job and are waiting for the interviewer to be ready, an employee might go up and say, “Hey, would you like to play?” to help loosen the person up for their interview and get them acclimated to the culture that that particular company has. I think it’s best to just use the things you have around you and ask your employees, “What would be fun?” Even if it’s just 30 minutes, or everyone going on a walk at lunch, things like that can make a huge difference.
Brandon: Let me ask you both this, to put you on the spot, what would you want to see?
Alfred: Well, it’s just really a non-business related activity. That’s the key part of it. Particularly on a Friday, which is probably the day your employees are least engaged at work. At the end of the work week, beginning of the weekend, maybe someone’s going on vacation the next week. They’re not necessarily checked out, but it’s probably the least engaged they’ll be that week. And to take that break to do something non-business related gives them permission to maybe take 10 or 15 minutes to be silly, to get it out, and then come back and re-focus on work.
What would I like to see? Maybe something fun…businesses sometimes have something like Casual Fridays, so having a themed Casual Friday could be fun. I had an employer that did 80’s Day on a Friday. So everyone came dressed like it was the 80’s, and it was such a good time.
Brandon: I love that, because what you get to do is laugh at other people. And you’re laughing at yourself, because you probably look like a fool, since it’s 2014! Getting to laugh at yourself and other people seems like such a fun and engaging activity; you’re totally right.
I remember years ago here at the office, just to get away for thirty minutes or so, we’d actually watch the TV show The Office. Because we’re in a professional environment, we could draw some parallels between what we’re doing in the office here and that show [The Office]. We’d go in the conference room, and whoever wanted to come could come and bring a lunch or snacks, and it was a good way to break up the day.
So, to keep moving, number six was one I found interesting, because a professional environment for many companies out there is meeting-heavy. You’re in meetings constantly. But there’s this idea of huddles, like stand-up meetings or other ways of getting together and sharing ideas, which seemed like an interesting way to make sure all employees are heard. What do you think about that?
Lacey: I agree. We do something like that at Xenium, too, as part of our new client onboarding process. They do a morning huddle, although I don’t think they actually call it a huddle, and stand around a white board sharing ideas and making plans for the onboarding process to make sure that it’s successful for our new clients.
I have some clients that incorporate into their stand-up meetings giving kudos to each other. So not only are they sharing the news and the updates, but they’re including acknowledgments of employees in real time, out loud, and face-to-face. I think that can have a really great impact on morale and teambuilding, so I’d like to see that, as it’s been great to be a part of some of those meetings.
Alfred: It’s also a great way to refocus everything on the business and what your key objectives are, particularly if you’re trying to drive some type of change, such as your new focus for the year is going to be employee engagement, or getting everyone engaged in profitability and understanding their role in driving profit. It’s a good way to bring it all back there at that moment. The more you can communicate these things, the better the results you’ll see throughout the year.
Brandon: I think it’s also a great way to get employees involved who aren’t typically included in committees or a bigger team. The people who aren’t in meetings all the time may feel somewhat isolated, and I think this huddle method could include people who aren’t normally included. I like the idea just for that reason alone, to get everybody together to share feedback, ideas, recognition, and all those great things.
Let’s skip to number fifteen on the list. Because we’re so professional development heavy here at Xenium, we all care about this. It’s actually part of The Xenium Promise which is our set of company values. The idea was to have a list of resources, whether they’re CDs, DVDs, podcasts, online courses, or other types of things. What do you think of employers providing those readily?
Lacey: I think that’s a great idea, and we just started a similar initiative here at Xenium to evaluate the top four topics employees are the most interested in. So our XCITE team, which is our employee satisfaction committee, our culture committee, put together a list of fifteen different ideas. It included things like wellness, happiness, finance, and other topics we thought we could get content on. We put out a survey to the team asking who would be interested in receiving information about these topics, and which would you be most interested in. Our goal is to put out information and maybe even have some type of internal electronic media to share information and resources, whether it’s TED talks or articles or books people have read with book reports so people can have an idea of what they’re getting into. I think that any opportunity a company has to share learning, and not just job-specific learning but life skills too where it’s more of a personal development topic, is great.
Alfred: Yes, and the investment for the business from a monetary standpoint is fairly low. Those things that are purchased can be re-used, and TED talks are just links. Anything that can add value to the employment relationship will make the business better overall. An employee will think, “Oh wow, I love my employer because there are all these cool things I have access to!” And the more you have people saying that they love their employer, imagine how much productivity will increase.
Brandon: I know the point with this one was more toward online learning, but I think the learning resources can stretch way beyond that. At Xenium we have the book club, where you’re not only getting education from the book but also pooling the knowledge and ideas from within the whole group. So the discussion is huge.
Having an employer that gives you access to something like that is, in my opinion, very valuable and engages me as an employee. And another thing, going along the lines of audiobooks and tapes, is our library. You can check out a book, and if you submit a summary you get $10 or $15. So it provides an incentive for reading a book and developing professionally, or if you’d like to read anyway, it’s an added bonus. So I love that idea. I think learning in general is a great way for an employer to engage their employees, and there are so many creative ways an employer can implement that.
Lacey: I think the easier the information is to access, the more likely it is that employees will take advantage of it. You also feel like your employer is investing in you by making those things available. It would also be great if you could be the employer that has people lining up along the block to have people come work for you. I think that’s just another added way to do it.
Brandon: I love number seventeen on this list, which is to have employees present workshops in their area of expertise. I actually have an example of this which I recently brought to our senior leadership team. I mentioned that we hadn’t brought anyone in for a training on Microsoft Excel or personal branding on LinkedIn. Those are some of my areas of expertise, so I thought, why not develop a workshop to allow employees to come if they would like to learn about personal branding on LinkedIn—what to share and what not to share—or about formulas and using pivot tables in Excel. Those are things I can bring to the table, so we wouldn’t have to hire someone from outside the company. It’s really a win-win, you save money, plus you also have me engaged as an employee because I’m teaching my peers how to do something they may not be experts in. What do you both think about that? I know you, Lacey, have some experience with this.
Lacey: Yes, I did that before I was at Xenium when I worked at our sister company, Express Employment Professionals. I did training for some of the sales folks when I was there and I’ve done some internal training here at Xenium. We also have a group called XenTalks, which is a group of us who get together every month to practice our public speaking skills, which has been a great opportunity for me to work on how I come across. For me it can be more difficult to present in front of your peers than it is to talk in front of clients or people I don’t know. To have the opportunity to tweak our skills and practice that in front of one another has been great. It’s actually an internal person on our team, Molly Kelley, who leads that discussion. She has a wealth of knowledge about training and presentation skills. It’s nice to be able to learn from someone internally and have that resource available. Like you said about the Excel training, Brandon, I am definitely not an Excel person, but I know now that you absolutely have that skill, so if I have a question, I know we have someone internally and I know who the resource is.
Alfred: And most of the time when someone has expertise in something, it’s something that they really enjoy doing. So to have the opportunity to present to someone on a topic you’re passionate about just feels good to you and gives you value at work. It feels pretty good to me to have someone come to me and ask me, “Hey, I know you’re good at this, do you mind showing me how to do that for a second?” Like, yeah, no problem! It’s a feel good thing.
Lacey: Right. At Xenium we have a culture of people who want to help. That’s what we do, that’s what we’re in business for, to help the clients we work for and each other. I don’t think the purpose of having you show everyone about Excel, it isn’t to further the culture, but it’s an activity that would end up doing that anyway.
Brandon: Yes, absolutely. Well, we’re running short on time, but I’d like to talk about two more. Number nineteen is clearly defined mentor programs. At Xenium we actually launched a mentor program almost two years ago. Ironically, I recently published a blog post about Xenium’s mentorship program and my personal experience in it.
From your perspective on mentor programs, are your clients doing these? What are you hearing, and what is the purpose? Every company’s purpose for launching a mentor program is probably different.
Lacey: I have clients that do mentor buddy programs for a few reasons, I think. For one, it allows a junior person to have experience with either a more senior person in their field or maybe get some experience in a different department that relates to their career goals. It also adds value and supports the 
person who becomes the mentor who’s maybe working on their supervisory skills and doesn’t have direct reports. Or maybe they do and they want an opportunity to share their expertise with someone who’s not directly reporting to them. I don’t think they have to be as structured as the manager-employee relationship, so it adds some flexibility.
I think it can be very beneficial. I’ve participated in our Xenium mentor program both as a mentor and as a mentee from the start. It’s been a great experience and I’ve learned a lot. I don’t want to have a new mentor, I’m having a great time at the monthly meetings.
Brandon: I’m sure they appreciate that.
Alfred: That relationship is great, too, because most of the time it’s driven by the employee. They own their development by going to someone and asking, “Will you mentor me?” And sometimes the conversations are a mentor sitting down with a mentee and saying, “What do you want to talk about?” It adds some accountability for the things that person wants to work on. Accountability is always a great thing. And, also, there’s time dedicated to just that employee where they’re able to sit down and talk about how their professional life is crossing into their personal life. Most of the time if you have an opportunity in one area, there’s an opportunity in every area and you really get to develop some strong close personal bonds that go beyond the bounds of the brick and mortar.
Brandon: I want to wrap up by talking about number twenty-three on this list. There’s a local company here called Ruby Receptionists that has been known for having a great culture. They have something called a “Wow Station,” which is something I was never familiar with until I read this, though I’ve heard other people talk about it. Lacey, I know you are very familiar with this, so could you maybe give listeners an idea of what it is and what the purpose of it is.
Lacey: Yes, I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard great things about it. My understanding is that there’s an area of the business with gift wrap and cards and bags, basically all the things you’d need to give a gift to someone internal or external. The postage is right there, and they also have an Amazon account that the employees all have access to. I’m not sure if they have limits on it or how it works, but employees can go on there, no questions asked, and are totally empowered to take care of each other and their clients. It’s sort of like the knowledge-based learning we were just talking about, if you make something more accessible for people, they’re more apt to do it. So by making this gift station, this “Wow Station,” available for employees to use, they’re out there taking care of their clients.
I actually have a client who used them, and their contact at Ruby Receptionists ended up sending them a cardboard Star Wars cutout, because that connected with this particular company’s culture. They took the time to do this, went on, ordered it, sent it over to them, and they still have it there on their bio page–they have this character set up as an employee of the company. It’s great they could take this personal touch and send something to a client. Giving employees the ability to do this and put it on an expense report is one thing, but having it accessible allows those employees to do it more frequently. Their client retention and employee retention are very high.
Brandon: That’s the thing that fascinates me about a program like this. On the surface you just think, oh this is simply a client recognition method. It’s great for sales, it’s great for marketing, and it helps keep clients since it contributes to good customer service and all that. But it’s really a culture thing, too. If employees feel empowered to do something like that, think about the level of trust that the leadership has with all the employees to create something like that. I wonder what it does for the culture, I’m sure it does wonders for it.
Lacey: Yes, Ruby Receptionists is usually on the 100 Best Employers list that comes out every year, so they’re doing something right. I think this is just a small piece of some of the cool things they’re doing over there.
Brandon: Well I’d like to thank you both for coming on and discussing some of these things. I’ll try and find a way to provide this list as a resource for everybody to see, because I think it’s worth reading through. I also encourage folks to discuss on our blog some of the things your company is doing to engage employees. I think it’s worthwhile to share some of these ideas with each other. And of course we’ll share ideas as we come up with new ones. Lacey Halpern, Alfred Dual, thank you both for being on the podcast today, I appreciate it.
Alfred: Thanks Brandon!
Lacey: Thank you!