The Experience Strategy Podcast: Employee Engagement in a Post-Covid World

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Covid-19 fundamentally shifted the way most people work. For many companies, it’s meant newly distributed workforces and prompted a need to find innovative ways to create meaningful employee experiences. In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, we are joined by Valarie Udeh, from one of the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies, BAE Systems, to explore powerful strategies for engaging a remote workforce, managing diverse employees, and cultivating company culture, no matter where your employees do their work.

Introduction: [00:00:00] This is the Experience Strategy Podcast where we look at the best and the worst customer experiences and ask what were they thinking? And now, here are your hosts' experience nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.

Aransas Savas: Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast. I'm Aransas Savas and I'm Dave Norton. Today we are joined by Valarie Udeh.

Valerie is the Director of Communications for Enterprise Shared Services at BAE Systems. Prior to BAE Systems, Valerie was the Director of Internal Communications for the grocery chain Food Lion, and she worked for Wachovia, which is now Wells Fargo as their Senior Vice President and Director of Brand Management and Multicultural Marketing.

She's also a certified executive coach. She's done it all. You can learn lots more about Valerie and her incredible experience and career in our show notes. Dave, how would you describe Valerie?

Dave Norton: Oh, she [00:01:00] is really smart and always trying to stay at the forefront of what's going on in the work that she's doing.

So I've had a chance to work with her at Wacovia years ago. And she's just an incredible person.

Aransas Savas: I love that. It's so good to work with good people. Valerie, like so many leaders has found herself, I think at the center of a pretty significant cultural and organizational shift in the wake of Covid 19.

So our goal today, I think Dave, is to look into the crystal ball with her and try to predict ways for organizations to support their newly dispersed workforces. This is a big shift for a lot of companies in their ways of working. Yeah, they're gonna need to focus on those fundamental questions of how to keep employees physically safe.

That's essential. But what about employee [00:02:00] satisfaction in this new world? How do you keep people engaged and motivated and connected and passionate when they are in the middle of being everything to everyone all the time?

Dave Norton: Yeah. The current modern workforce, and it's been this way for a number of years, is moving to being a multichannel workforce.

 Just like consumers have to get to engage either virtually or in person. So workers are also going to be behaving that way going forward and we need new principles, new paradigms for helping companies to really think about this because the old water cooler moment is going to be very rare.

So what do we replace that with? That's I think, what we're going to be talking with Valerie about today.

Aransas Savas: I love that. So listeners, stay tuned. We're gonna talk a little about some emerging research around modes. Curious what modes are you [00:03:00] won't be soon. So to start us off, Valerie, tell us a little bit about BAE Systems and the team you're responsible for.

Valarie Udeh: Okay. BAE Systems is a aerospace and defense company. We are among the top 10 defense contractors in the US. We have about 30,000 employees that are employed over 38 states and a few foreign countries, but the organization that I support, Enterprise Shared Services, we're about 10,000 employees and we are responsible for the IT for the entire enterprise and also shared services finance.

Which is, your account's payable travel and expense, payroll, that's always important. Don't wanna forget payroll. And then also chair services, HR. So we help when with benefits and onboarding employees. That kind of thing. So we're a thousand [00:04:00] people strong. We're all over the BAE systems footprint, and all of our employees are computer based.

So for the pandemic, most of us have been working from home. A handful of us do have to go into the office cuz we're considered essential workers.

Aransas Savas: It's always striking when you hear about the scale of these big organizations that aren't household names and how much influence and scope they have.

Tell us a little bit about this big shift happening in your organization. I know so many organizations, as you said, you're moving from an in person workforce to a remote workforce. What impact has that had?

Valarie Udeh: Yeah, so like many companies, when the pandemic hit, we picked up our stuff and went remote, and I really thought it was gonna be a long snow day.

And now 18 months later we're still sitting at home. We are [00:05:00] planning to come back to our offices. And again, this is Enterprise Shared Services because the rest of our organizations have their plans for returning to their offices and their facilities. But we're looking at returning after Labor Day.

And so prior to Covid, about 75% of our workforce worked on-site, but based on. Requests from our employees, that's going to be a significant shift, and we're gonna see about 45% of our employees have requested to be remote. A hundred percent of the time. And so that's about a 20% increase from what we had pre covid.

But then 28% they wanna work on-site and then 27% wanna have a hybrid schedule. So it's a shift because for most of us, we worked in our offices, right? And we connected with each other and had fall festival picnics and those kinds of things. And now we've just, that's gonna shift.

Right now our [00:06:00] logistics we're really focused in on how do we get people back into the office safely, right? How do we stagger people in so people feel comfortable? Will you wear a mask or won't you wear a mask? Do we have touchless technology so you don't have to touch anything? But now you know for me as Communications Director, I'm really thinking about what will our culture look like?

We are used to being able to connect, create community, those kinds of things prior to Covid. But now we've been virtual and we've just, I think been in survival mode, but now we're gonna go into, this is how we work mode. And so what will that feel like and how as a person responsible for engagement and experience for our employee base, what should I be thinking? What can I do to really help keep people connected and feeling a part of something beyond their office, their dining room table. Wherever they are, that they're working remotely. And then also how do we help those who are in office, in our offices feel that they're [00:07:00] connected to their colleagues who are sitting at home.

Aransas Savas: That is a really significant difference. And you're so wise to consider this because I think anybody who's ever looked at workplace culture has found that while those tactical safety measures are fundamentally important. It's that higher-order stuff that creates long-term employee retention and high satisfaction.

And so to allow yourself to wander into these big questions preemptively is so smart. And I think you're issuing here hopefully a call to action to all of our listeners who are responsible for employee engagement, no matter how big or small their organization is, to start to ask these questions.

Dave Norton: It's almost like employee engagement has been flipped on its head just because of the need to do remote work. So you think about, just like you said, Valerie, like people getting together for festivals and being together in [00:08:00] conference rooms and how to talk to each other and really connect with each other and feel like the person that's sitting two seats down from me I've got a rapport with, cuz I walk by all the time. And all of that has gone away and been flipped on its head to where now employee engagement oftentimes is about a relationship through a screen. That's exactly what it's become. Do you agree with that?

Valarie Udeh: I do. And in thinking about this conversation, I started to think about, okay, when we have an employee engagement activity or encounter, what is it that we're trying to do? And I put it in these buckets, right? It's create community, giving back. We do community service. Sometimes we're just having fun or we're improving our knowledge of our jobs, a skill or just how our company's doing, right? A business update. So some of that we been able to do virtually some of it we haven't been able to do really well, [00:09:00] and so I started to think how would I take those objectives or the feeling or the experience I wanna give people? If it's giving back , how do I do that when you know nearly half of the workforce is remote?

When I really relied on, the experience on site where we're packaging things together or we're making donations and things like that, where we're seeing ourselves being connected to something greater than our own company. And the community service aspect of it. And it really is challenging.

I know companies have emerged that are offering these kinds of experiences, but there's a price to pay for that. And I also feel it's not as organic when a third party's coming in and helping you create these experiences. And some of the real opportunity for people to feel connected is that it feels authentic and real and not planned in stage. And that's the part also, how do you create that in a virtual [00:10:00] environment?

Dave Norton: So when you think about engagement with employees and creating a culture for employees that they will benefit from, that seems meaningful to them, what is the ultimate goal? Is it retention? Is it loyalty? Is it performance?

Maybe it's all of the above. Maybe it's treating people as people, recognizing that they're not machines, they're not just somebody sitting on the other side. What's the ultimate goal? Do you think, or is it all of those?

Valarie Udeh: I think it's all of those, and depending on the driver, like if it's when you talked about kind of community, or I wrote belonging because that's one of the things that we talk about from a diversity and inclusion perspective that people feel like they belong. When I think about the business, the town hall meetings we have that talk about how we're doing, we're performing in the marketplace. I think about performance and skill and just business knowledge. You understand what your role is, right? In terms of keeping the [00:11:00] company on track against our strategic objectives. So it really depends on what that activity is. So what the goal is. I think more than anything though, it's just giving people the opportunity to feel connected across the things that are meaningful to them. There are some people who care about the business a lot. And others who don't so much. There's some people care about career development and growth and others, yeah, not so much. Depends on where you are in your career. So just trying to find that magical spot for people that makes them, it scratches that itch, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Dave Norton: Absolutely. And I love that idea of giving people the opportunity to connect in a way that's meaningful to them. You're not forcing it on them, right? You're not saying you must be engaged. These are the ways that we will engage. You really want to personalize it to some degree to them, and you want that to be able to work across what in consumer language we'd call multiple channels. Hybrid, [00:12:00] in person and remote. Similar type of challenge that companies are dealing with is they're trying to engage their customers to a large degree. Would you agree with that? What do you think Aransas, what are you thinking?

Aransas Savas: Yeah, I think what we're looking at here is because we've now run our businesses from inside individual's homes. I think we have a much greater appreciation than ever before that our employees are individuals with individual needs, individual experiences, and individual expectations of what gives them meaning and purpose and a sense of connection. And the more we've insulated inside our bubbles in the past year, the more obvious that has become. And so what we're talking about here in my mind is how do we make this individually meaningful in a way that is scalable across, in your case, this is a massive organization and even your chunk of it is a [00:13:00] massive organization with lots and lots of different needs. So, find that individual meaning and value and connection at this broader level, and I think that to me really is a place to start talking about the work you've been doing on modes, which I just find endlessly fascinating. Dave, can you I introduce that concept a little?

Dave Norton: Sure. Yes. Let's talk a little bit about modes for a second here. And in fact, Valerie, you mentioned that in the way that you introduced it, that you were in a certain mode and now you're moving to a different mode.

People have talked about the pandemic as being in crisis mode. This is their own language, right? This is the way that people talk about it. You have to flip sometimes between. A lot of people have to flip between being in mommy mode and jump right into work mode. They have to go back and forth.

Of course they had to do that as well when they were working together in [00:14:00] person. When everyone was together in the conference room, maybe having a meeting, maybe three or four were actually paying attention and three or four were actually off doing something else, but they were just physically present, right? That happens on a regular basis where they're not all in the same mode and therefore, their overall performance is not as great. From an experience,

Aransas Savas: Or Focus. Because we used to have transitions. We used to commute.

Dave Norton: Yeah. And commute as a mode.

Aransas Savas: And now walking 10 steps. There's just not as much time to transition between these modes.

Dave Norton: That's right. And in fact the commute was a mode, right? You got into the zone, you thought for a while. My definition of a mode is it's a mindset and a set of behaviors that you get into temporarily.

Okay. It's not a permanent state. Like a routine would be a permanent state. But a mode is just like a temporary thing that you get into and people get into modes [00:15:00] by accident or, without thinking about it. And they get into modes intentionally. We're watching the US Olympics right now, they're in championship mode, right?

They have to be so focused. They have to be so on the ball and their level of performance is incredible because of it. There was a behavioral scientist that some people might be familiar with. His name was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And he wrote a number of books about a concept called flow and how important it was to artists and to other high performers.

Athletes to get into flow. And flow is a mode, it's a temporary state. You can't be constantly in flow or you will die, right? You need to be able to balance that with other kinds of modes and so that's a little bit about what modes are, and Valerie, I think that if your organization [00:16:00] was more intentional, about talking about modes, explaining that we understand that at certain points, you're not always gonna be in a high performance mode, but you may be in a lower performance mode because you need to relax or you need to rest or something along that line.

You can begin to have a very different conversation. And the great thing about modes is that they work, whether you're in person or whether you're hybrid or whether you're remote. There's gonna be different modes and in fact some of the people that are remote might say to themselves, Hey, you know what, to get this job done right, that I'm doing right now, I really do need to go into the office. I need to be there until I get this part done. Which can be a really powerful for them because they're starting to take ownership for what it is that they're doing. Does that make sense? Do you see where I'm going with that?

Valarie Udeh: Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. And I was, thinking how we [00:17:00] even position the experiences that we're trying to create for people, right? If we said this was about, how do I get it done at home mode, this is a whole conversation about how to get it done at home and we frame it that way instead of saying this is about remaining productive, nine to five, which sounds really hard and oh my gosh, you think I'm not productive?

Oh my gosh. Yeah. But how do I get it done when I'm at home kind of thing. It just feels like you get that I'm sitting at home. You get that. Maybe it's sometimes challenging to get it done when I'm at home and hopefully you're gonna give me some really good advice and guidance on how to do it.

That I can adapt for myself. I can take this wisdom and guidance and I can adapt it for whatever my situation is. And so I think it's only the identifying the mode, which feels just more familiar and comfortable and authentic than maybe these titles that we give. Training or opportunities for people to do things better. [00:18:00] I think would really be helpful for people as well.

So I do like that. And I do think you're right. We are in modes. I think not knowing that we do it. Like I did say survival mode. I did start off saying, we're all in survival mode and so I think that there's opportunity there. Am I describing it right though in terms of like on the back end Dave, like what the engagement might look like?

Aransas Savas: I like that example.

Dave Norton: Yeah, that's a great example. Just like you would do with a team building exercise where you're trying to understand each other's personalities. I'm an invert or I'm an extrovert, or I'm this on the Myers Briggs scale or whatever. You might say, let's talk about what working-at-home mode looks like for you. And some of your hacks, some of your techniques, how you handle things, and let's learn from each other a little bit about what you're doing that really works and celebrate it. And that gives them permission to do that type of a thing. And you can think [00:19:00] about, all right, what is your high-performance mode? What do you call it? Do you call it beast mode? I'm in beast mode right now on my computer, , I don't know. But you name it and you talk about it.

And leaders can do this. And they can say, okay, our team for the next two days needs to be in strategizing mode. So I'm thinking that we really need to be together in person to do this right. Do you all agree? Let's get together in person. We recognize that some of you might not be able to be there, but you're gonna be on a Zoom call all day because we're strategizing.

And then once we're done with that, we're gonna maybe be in problem-solving mode. You can do that on your own, and report back in different ways. So leaders can take more control of what's going on based on just talking about the mode that the team should be in, in a particular situation.

Aransas Savas: There's something so expansive in the way you talk about this. When we talk about so much of our work lives, it feels very constricting. [00:20:00] It feels like we one-dimensionalize people and we think about humans who are super complex and interesting as machines. And what you're doing with modes here as you describe it, I think is your dimensionalizing people and you're normalizing that people are interesting and complex and multi-dimensional and living all sorts of different modes in every single day. And I just think that releases so much tension. From a coaching standpoint, I find it exciting because it allows us to introduce the whole of the person into the experience. There's a whole level of acceptance that comes with that, and all of that really is so effective in terms of setting our employees up for high engagement and satisfaction.

Dave Norton: I love the idea of coaching.

Valarie Udeh: I think, one of the things that is so critically important, and I've heard it on calls over the past like year that we've been [00:21:00] working remote. The little voice on the call that says, I'm a working mom and how am I supposed to like, have my kids school during the day? And then also, do my job, and we have these meetings and there's this anxiousness in the voice to ask this question in a town hall of about 700 people knowing that, probably 20% of the people are thinking the same thing. And I think , the thing about modes is that it just, it humanizes the work experience and it allows people to not be fearful. To be who they are. I think that's critically important. And I think that when we talk about retention. I know that's for me, like the next part, right? When we're all remote and we're hiring people that are remote and they're not connected, that to me is the next head scratcher, right?

So how do people feel genuinely connected to their company, to the organizations in which they belong? And I think being multidimensional, as you were saying, I think it's critically important. So it's not just about [00:22:00] engagement and for me purely like how do I make people feel connected, create community, do all these things. It is culture shift as well. And so that's been an exciting part of the conversation to me.

Dave Norton: You remind me of a company that we studied in some research that we were doing a few years back. The woman was a young 26 year old recent grad. She was a consultant for a consulting firm and she was on the road all the time. Except on Fridays. So she would travel to wherever her clients needed her to be. And then they'd be home on Thursday evening, and on Fridays they would be in the office for two hours with the rest of their team. And they would just be telling stories.

The team lead would just be telling stories. They would stand up, they would talk, they would enjoy each other's company. And then Friday afternoon was theirs to do with whatever they needed to do. And [00:23:00] what an amazing way of bringing the organization together when everyone has to be spread out most of the time. It was just a really impressive thing and you could do something similar with your organization.

I'm not saying that's an exact fit, but that's certainly an example of using a mode and designing a mode for a group that everyone experiences together.

Valarie Udeh: And I think that's what's really critically important to all of this too, is just the role of managers. And you talked about leaders in my head went immediately to senior leaders. We have 200 managers, 200 plus managers, that their ability to embrace this approach to understanding the different modes in which their teams may be functioning is critical because that's where we're gonna sustain it. If this is something that we feel we want to do that manager group is critically important. So it's even finding out their modes as a manager. What mode are you in?

Aransas Savas: And I think that's [00:24:00] probably the straightest path to buy in across the organization. There was something you said a moment ago that really struck me. As I look back on past client interviews, there is a fear in our culture of human employees being perceived as human beings. We're gonna get found out that we're humans and have lives and other interests because in America we fetishize overworking and putting 150% of ourselves into service of our work.

And so I think the way to really engage human beings is to do exactly what you just said and say, hey, we get it you're human beings. As managers, you are also managing human beings who are living as a lot of different things in the course of every day, and the [00:25:00] clearer we can get with ourselves about what our own individual modes are and how that influences our ways of working the faster we can get to an integrated and holistic way of working in this moment of reset, right?

This isn't something that only needed to happen now, right? Yeah. I think we can all look at this and say, okay, this is a long time coming. We are probably 50 years overdue on having these conversations, but this is the great reset with Covid. We were forced into, asking these questions and now we have the forcing function to answer them hopefully with a lot more courage because of the intensity of this time.

Dave Norton: Yeah, I think that there was a lot of intentionality that was put into all of the routines and practices that were associated with the old way of doing work. And so we understood it. We knew how to measure it. We [00:26:00] knew best practices and so forth. We need to put the same level of intentionality into these new ideas around workplace culture and thinking. Frankly, I think you've gotta focus on the individual and allow the individual to be more intentional, his or herself, right? And we've found with some of our biggest clients that getting them to talk about modes is the first step towards that level of intention.

Aransas Savas: So Dave, for organizations that want to engage in modes work for their employee population, what would that process look like?

Dave Norton: I think the first step is to collect all of the modes. And you can do that at an individual level. You can have somebody write down an audit, say, what are all the modes that I get into? You can do it as an organizational level. You can do it as a research activity. But you just ask people. We recently asked a group of employees about modes that they get [00:27:00] in. Focused, selling, burnout, disengaged, problem-solving, zoning, discovery. They can fairly quickly begin to identify them. Once they identify them, then you need some kind of a way of prioritizing or focusing on the ones that you really need to focus on. And we have an exercise that we can do around that.

But you need to get it down to six modes that you're really gonna focus on. Three of 'them need to be performance, high performance. And three of them need to be low performance or disengaged because you can't really help people around modes if you're just focusing on when they're visioning or when they're in the zone or when they're in beast mode.

You have to be able to support them also when they feel disengaged or burned out or in a swirl or something like that. And so because you're gonna help [00:28:00] try to move them out of the swirl into feeling more productive. And so that's the next step in the process.

And then it's about design. And the individual gets to help to design his or her own mode to fit what they're trying to do. The group gets to design their particular mode. The company gets to say this is a mode that we're going to celebrate and we're all gonna understand it. Maybe at that point, it becomes an event. But it's also, everybody understands that you're supposed to get into Mardi Gras mode when you're at this particular event, right? Something along that line.

Aransas Savas: Sign me up please.

Dave Norton: Yeah. I knew you'd say that. Those are three basic steps that you could take. There's probably more that could be done, but it's a good starting point.

Aransas Savas: And I think probably the biggest part of this is asking the question. , because as I listen to this conversation, it feels like the [00:29:00] normalizing of modes is the most important part of it.

 Designing to them is great. It's helpful. But fundamentally, the first and most essential thing we have to do is organize ourselves around an acknowledgment, an acknowledgement of modes existing so that we acknowledge the whole human there and then decide what we celebrate and what we design for.

Great stuff there. So as we try to summarize some of this thinking, Valerie, what feels like the biggest aha or the biggest takeaway from your perspective based on this conversation?

Valarie Udeh: I think just kind of talking about modes and then finding like the three critical ones that we should focus in on. The high and the low-performance mode I think is important. And I think about it, if I'm not able to fully integrate this like into my organization, I feel like there are bits and [00:30:00] pieces, some best practices that I might be able to do.

Leading towards a broader acceptance of it. We have a multi-generational workforce and so we have, baby boomers who have a different perspective of what work looks like versus our millennials. And so people may embrace these modes concept differently. But I think just the fact that we do say a lot of times as individuals, I'm in this mode and people are supposed to understand what that means when we say it. I said survival mode. I'm assuming you understand what that means. And so I think helping people understand that they can take a mode and not use it as just a description but as a way in which they work. I'm saying that correctly. And then that even their manager can help them design to be better in that particular mode. If it's a high-performance one or how to get out of a low-performance one. And I think that would be an important shift. And then [00:31:00] I also know that I can design experiences based on these modes.

I can do some kind of focus group, that general surveying folks and understanding where they are. And I think spreading that out over course the organization, I feel like I could begin to create some experiences that connect at the individual level and then also resonate at the group level.

Aransas Savas: I love that you point out the opportunities for folks in so many different seats within the organization. So it's not just from a people leader standpoint or an employee standpoint, but also from a functional standpoint. There are opportunities here to inform our ways of working based on appreciating and understanding modes and those which are highest priority and those which are lower priority.

I just want to take a moment and celebrate you, Valerie, for asking these questions. We have been in [00:32:00] crisis mode for so long. There are moments where it feels like we may be in crisis mode forever and chasing our tails, and to listen to leaders like you and hopefully those who are listening to this show get curious about how to move out of crisis mode and move into a proactive, thoughtful new world of engaging employees where we are now. Super inspiring and energizing. And I hope that your questions, your thoughtfulness via this podcast and elsewhere inspire other leaders to start asking these questions because it really can make a world of difference to look at our employees as whole human beings instead of [00:33:00] just button pushers, or folks who are showing up solving big complex problems outside of the rest of the world. Because the truth is we are all these things at once. But we need different things in different moments. So thank you for being so proactive. Thank you for being an inspiration to your team and also to other teams.

Valarie Udeh: Thank you for allowing me to ask the questions and ponder the topic a little bit further. Really appreciate you both.

Aransas Savas: Thank you and thank you all for listening. Come back with lots more on experience strategy in our next episode.

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