Workplace Well-Being – Digital CxO Podcast EP102

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani and I'm excited today to have James McMan. He is the director go to market strategy at barrant.

How are you doing? Amazing. Great to see you again.

Again, happy to have you on our show. Can you share a little bit about Varant? What services does varant provide, and then maybe your background there.

Yeah, absolutely. So Verin, uh, we are a CX automation company, so we provide kind of an an end-to-end open platform that helps companies, you know, connect, support and engage with their customers. Um, my background, I really focus on the employee experience side of things, which is kind of often an overlooked part of, of customer experience.

Like we tend to focus on, you know, how our customers and, and automation and how we kind of, um, you know, really talk to them, but we sometimes forget about who's doing the talk, you know, who the face of our brands are and who's really representing us in those, you know, those really pivotal interactions. Uh, and that's where I focus the kind of the way that how employees, you know, connect with us and then how we can support them in, in connecting to our customers. Wonderful.

So you are definitely the person to talk to today about our topic, which is workplace employee wellbeing and work life balance. And we seem to still be struggling in this area, I think, ever since Covid, it's been more of a struggle. So share a little bit about, from your experience, what are you seeing as some of the key concerns and issues we're still facing when it comes to work-life balance and employee satisfaction?

Yeah, I, I think Covid did an interesting thing here because it, in some ways it kind of highlighted and emphasized, you know, something that had been there for a while, which was this kind of, this disengagement, this dissatisfaction, this kind of need or desire from a, especially younger generations for greater flexibility at work. And I think the, you know, the, the thing that came out of Covid was that a lot of organizations were kind of forced to really rethink how flexible they could be. 'cause they didn't have a, they didn't have a choice.

They were kind of forced to go work from home and to really rethink ways of working. Um, and in some ways that's kind of opened their minds to, to what's possible. Um, I think that the challenges we still see are really about, uh, how do we find that balance between giving our people the flexibility they keep asking for whilst continuing to deliver for our customers.

And it's kind of that, that give and take that, that push and pull that, you know, a lot of senior leadership are struggling with. Um, and, you know, they, the kind of rethinking of, of, you know, our people from a cost center to an opportunity space, and then how do we then empower them and kind of, you know, unlock the ROI that we can if we focus on flexibility. So it's, it's kind of a, it's an interesting space where it's really, you know, tools, process, technology, but it's, it's people.

Um, and it's kind of that, that trust in the relationship between organizations and their people. Um, And so from your experience working with companies, um, are you seeing that when employees, uh, are more satisfied at work and feel that they have a better work life balance? Um, the pro the productivity gains are pretty significant, Su substantial.

I think not only, um, are they gain substantial, but people, they stay around. Um, so we get longer tenured employees who are more engaged and are happy to be there and do a better job representing our, our brands and talking to our customers. And when we think about the kind of the way that that work is changing, we're finding that a lot of the kind of low skill, low impact interactions, uh, they're the first to be automated away.

And so what happens, this stuff that gets left to our people becomes more impactful, more complicated, but greater opportunity. And as a result, it becomes kind of more and more important to have those long tenured, well experienced, well-trained, engaged employees that want to be there, um, because they have the opportunity to, to make a significant difference. Absolutely.

So I imagine there's probably, um, a bunch of different solutions, uh, kind of a blend of solutions. One is probably better leadership and communication and, uh, maybe, um, um, allowing employees to voice what they need. Um, so maybe we could talk about that.

The second would be technology solutions and tools, which I'm sure you can share a little bit about that as well. So, but first let's talk about, um, what are you experiencing, what, what tips do you have for business leaders as far as better communication and maybe having some employee meetings to, to share their concerns? Yeah, I mean, I think the, the first one is we want to be listening.

We wanna make sure there are channels that, that people feel they can voice their needs, so that we are really making sure that we are, you know, capturing the sentiment from our frontline workforce that that is filtering up correctly. So making sure we have those, you know, those regular channels, those methods of communication so that people do feel, you know, like they can, they can share their experience and that their needs are being met. Uh, you know, whether that's through, you know, formal kind of, you know, surveys and interview processes or whether it's more informal, making sure that, you know, your frontline team leads and managers feel empowered to, you know, filter up the feedback that they're getting from the frontline.

And the flip side of that is, when you do that, you really need to make sure that you are then acting on what you're hearing, because there's nothing worse than kind of opening the conversation and saying, we're here to listen to you and look at all these channels to kind of tell us what you're thinking. And for that to then, you know, go into a black box. Um, so the, the second piece of advice would be to, to make sure you're being really transparent about what you're doing with that feedback.

And it's, you know, even if you're not able to address it all, being very clear about why, you know, we hear you, this is what we're working towards, these are the things that we're struggling with. And being really as open as as possible with, with your workforce, uh, to, to make sure that you, if they've trusted you by opening up about their experiences, they feel like they're kind of getting that, some of that respect back. Yeah, absolutely.

Because I imagine it would just add to the frustration if they finally feel that they're getting a chance to be heard and then nothing's done, and they're like, well, that was pointless. Not gonna attend any more of those. Absolutely.

Like they've, you know, they've taken a step forward, you know, they, they've put themselves out there, they've opened up about their, their lives, their concerns, the things that they need, um, and to then have the kind of door shut or to hear nothing back, you're gonna be in a worse place than if you never did anything in the first place. And we, we, you know, you hear about that sometimes, occasionally, right? That people will take the first step about, right, we're gonna be open, we're gonna have these dialogues.

And that's kind of the end of it. You know, we've all been part of these, you know, these, these implementations, these projects that kind of kick off and don't, don't close out. And I think that is, is a real risk, you know, if you're going to, to open the door, really be committed to seeing it through.

Definitely. So now let's talk about some tools and are there some technology solutions that can help companies with a better balance for their employees? Yeah, absolutely.

And we, you know, we, we ran some research, uh, middle of today's middle of the year, it feels like yesterday, but that was a while ago already. Um, and we asking this kind of specific question about particularly work life balance and schedule flexibility and kind of what the, the challenge is worth. Um, and the first one was what we already spoke about around that kind of need to, to balance delivering for customers and meeting the needs of our employees.

And the second one that wasn't far behind was technology. You know, people being held back by their technology platforms. Um, and I think there's kind of a, a historic reason for that.

You know, a lot of the technology was built around this kind of very rigid idea of schedule. You know, we treat people like resources and we're focused on efficiency and maximizing our, you know, allocation of resources against demand. And it was kind of a very industrialized, you know, approach to, to people.

Um, and so I'd say that on the technology side, you know, AI has really opened the door to being able to not necessarily force you to replace your entire technology stack, but to be able to augment it, to be able to, um, you know, bring in AI bots and point solutions that allow you to enhance flexibility without replacing your entire stack. Whereas, you know, in the past, kind of building customized schedules and being able to respond to agent preferences in real time would require, you know, whole teams of workforce analysts and planners and a lot of heavy lifting. You know, there is now the ability to, to leverage AI to kind of automate a lot of that stuff.

And, and I think sometimes we, we kind of focus on, you know, AI's interaction with the customer and automating customer interactions, but it's actually much larger than that. There's ways to, you know, scale back office operations that allow you to do things, you know, like unloved schedule flexibility that just would not have been, you know, viable in the past. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, contact centers have such rigorous schedules because, you know, they've got hundreds of employees that they need on the floor to make sure they can manage all the calls. And so they need a way that allows them still to leave if there's an emergency and, and not feel stressed out or upset 'cause they're stuck at work. Absolutely.

And I think that, that, you kind of nailed it there, right? It's about the feeling. So it's not just about, you know, did I get what I needed?

It's, what was that process? What was that relationship between me and my organization on the way to the outcome? You know, was it a kind of black box process where I don't know what actually happened?

Was it something where I really had to, you know, beg my teammates to swap shifts or kind of open up my life to my organization and really defend why I needed some flexibility, even if I got to the outcome, if I've gone through that experience, you know, how does that, how do I feel about my organization and do I feel trusted and valued? Or do I go, Hmm, hang on. Um, you know, if this is what it took to get the thing that I desperately needed to take care of my personal responsibilities, how am I gonna feel about representing the brand going forward?

Um, and, and I think that's, that's part of this, right? Is it's, it's, you know, can you find the technology to enable that experience, but also how are you packaging it? How are you talking to your people when you're rolling this out?

Are you, you providing the right narrative about, you know, why you're doing this, how you're empowering people, we're all, you know, working together to deliver these outcomes for our customers, but, you know, we trust each other and we, we have this kind of relationship. Um, so I think that the kind of narrative is, is important to when, when rolling out, you know, any technology solution to the frontline staff. Definitely.

Well, if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be? I, I think it would be to, to, to push the boundaries. To really think about, you know, are there ways to unlock flexibility for our people in our environment as it is today?

You know, we've been doing things this way for a long time. What can I do today to, to improve the lives of my people? And we, we know from, you know, everything we've seen in the past and the research that we do that once you do that, you will improve the experience for your customers.

All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your insights with our audience today. Amazing.

I really appreciate the opportunity. All right. And thank you to our audience.

Stay tuned. There's more.