Internal & External Factors on Employee Experience

Employees have power in an organization that is immense but well deserved. New leaders will often learn this lesson the hard way. I personally have been on both sides of this lesson, in the role of employee and the role of leader. That is how I know just how central a strong emphasis on the employee experience is to organizations that thrive.

I like to think of the employee experience as a garden of growth, rather than a house to be built. To say this another way: the employee experience is not something that can be solidified once when a company is organized and then left as though it were hard infrastructure not to be worried about.

In reality this infrastructure decays if left untended. Instead it must be constantly nurtured. When an organization grows to size, even if still a relatively small size, a leader’s relationship with employees can and should change. Once the organization is large enough that the owners or core leadership team are performing the day-to-day tasks involved in serving customers, developing product, managing inventory, etc. then the organization has turned a corner. More specifically, it has become an organization where leadership must be employee-centric in order for the workforce to remain customer-centric.

This transition can be overwhelming. It certainly was for me when I became president of a marketing firm in my mid-20s. On the one hand, I the reason I found myself in this position was because I had been a strong advocate for improving employee benefits (in addition to my work overhauling the entire business development funnel and many aspects of the client experience). On the other hand, I was now leading a team that was in many ways senior to me, both in age and in tenure.

At this point I’d like to take a step back and make something very clear: every organization is different. Industries are different. Workforces are different. Regions are different. There is no one-size-fits-all method for improving the employee experience. There instead are guiding principles that I believe are very helpful in navigating this waters.

One of the most helpful principles is the importance of delineating external versus internal forces that affect the employee experience. You must react to both, but it is critical to understand what is and isn’t in your power – and why. After all, there is nothing you can control beyond your own reactions. Understanding how external forces differ from internal forces will be immensely helpful as you tackle these issues.

External Forces

External forces are the hardest to control but in many ways provide the clearest options through which you can respond. External forces are generally everything that is going on outside of the “walls” of your company. You can consider these as you would market forces, although one could argue they extend more broadly.

A great example of an external force is wage pressure. This was one of the most significant challenges I encountered in my role as agency president. What began as an organization formed prior to the mass adoption of remote work was now fending off remote companies attempting to hire our talent.

It can feel very unfair to train a workforce only to have them poached by your competitors. This is a great example of the reasons why you must view your employee experience as you would a garden to nurture rather than a house to build. External forces can change quickly and you do not have the luxury of lamenting them while you delay changing course appropriately.

Another example of external forces are pressures of the community environment outside of your office. One factor of this environment that organizations face is housing pressure. When your employees cannot afford to live in your community you will need to make adjustments to compensation to address this reality.

Today there is also the cost of food to consider. The good news is that this can be addressed in creative ways other than simply increasing salaries. In a past leadership role I authorized the purchase of a farm-share for each employee from a local Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. Because we were not only buying a season’s worth of produce, but also dozens of shares in one fell swoop, we were able to provide this benefit at a relatively low cost on a per-employee basis. For about $300 per employee we were able to provide fresh produce throughout the entire growing and harvesting season. Consider this: when was the last time an employee asked for a $300/yr raise?

Another very real example of the external community environment is the tumultuous state of politics and public life in general today. Leaders who put their head in the sand to ignore the reaction that their employees may be having to current events will ultimately lose those employees. Some companies have famously banned talking about politics and current events in the workplace. Some of those still today believe that the employee exodus that followed was justified.

In contrast, I suggest a path that allows for employees to react to current events in the context of their professional experience. To do otherwise would be to deny employees the ability to arrive at work as their true selves. I believe that diversity is an inherent strength at an organization. By resisting opportunities to allow employees to share and process current events organizations run the risk of creating a culture that can feel hostile towards those whose backgrounds cause them to react in different ways to the sometimes gruesome scenarios that play out in the news. It is a highly privileged position to be in such that one can ignore these scenes and not be effected, even at work, and this will disproportionately effect those who cannot choose to ignore as other less vulnerable populations can.

Because that last example is one of external forces being processed internally, it serves as a good segue into the internal forces that can affect the employee experience. It also provides an example of the ways in which these forces, external and internal, can blend together. Even when external and internal factors merge, it is still a highly powerful exercise to draw this distinction so that as a leader you can better understand what parts of the situation are not in your control while taking responsibility for the factors that are.

Internal Forces

While external forces often provide the greatest upward pressure on wages, this in some ways makes them the easiest problems to solve. Internal factors are of a different nature entirely. They grow over time and they continue to fester until confronted. These are the problems that require digging, conversations, and deep listening.

A mentor once said to me that “culture” is simply what happens at work, however broadly you can define that. It was the famous management consultant Peter Drucker who said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” At this point you probably know where I am going with this. The most common internal force affecting the employee experience is culture. Because “culture” is defined so broadly we must dig deeper to truly become intentional about the employee experience.

One of the clearest examples of a cultural problem is toxic management practices. No amount of hyper-production can justify behaviors such as a manager berating employees, belittling their reports, or harassment in any way. This behavior needs to be corrected immediately, although it often is not – especially when owners or core managers are the guilty parties. Left unchecked this behavior will not only lead to employee attrition but will ultimately lead to upheaval at the top of the organization that can put the entire business at risk.

Another factor of internal forces, far less insidious that those mentioned above but still very important, is the performance management and employee growth processes in the organization. By performance management I mean the sorts of processes that ensure employees know when they are doing a good job and also when they are not and a course correction is needed. Employee growth is the process through which an organization nurtures an employee’s growth track within the company and within the industry more broadly.

When considering performance management and employee growth, I argue that you cannot have one without the other. To have neither will mean that a potential internal force for good will be missed and in its place you will nurture a vulnerability that might be easy to ignore – until it’s not. I am planning an upcoming post on this topic, so consider this a placeholder for a piece entirely devoted to performance management and employee growth. Suffice it to say that this is an example of an internal factor for which a resolution is mission-critical for a growing organization.

Managing Force Vectors

In mathematics, a vector is a force with direction and magnitude. Consider the forces at place as something you must always react to. These forces are always present, internal and external. The internal will develop slowly but can come to a head all at once. Some external forces can develop slowly and others can present themselves abruptly.

The employee experience is where those forces become vectors within your organization, ultimately sending you in one direction or another. Once these forces are experienced by your employees they will become part of your story – the story of your organization. Prioritizing intentional acts of reaction to these forces will help you retain a talented workforce that will focus on your customer’s needs as the organization grows and new forms of culture develop.

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