Crafting Culture: Building Meaningful Employee Experiences with FUEL

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> In this podcast

Gráinne Earley

Director of Employee Experience Solutions

FUEL

Cathal Divilly

CEO 
Great Place to Work Ireland

> About Gráinne & FUEL

As employee experience partners for companies with over 250,000 employees in 55 cities worldwide, FUEL is a global leader in employee experience, with global clients including Paypal, Meta, Coca-Cola and many more. FUEL is also the first and only agency in Ireland that are experts in all three key focus areas of employee experience - shaping reputation, crafting culture and creating experiences.

 

Gráinne and her team pride themselves on building standout employer reputation, by creating positive employee experiences that inspire pride, satisfaction and commitment.

 

Hear more from Gráinne on creating a great employee experience strategy at our Masterclasses event next month! Register below 👇

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. We help organisations quantify their culture and produce better business results by creating a high-trust work experience for all employees. We recognise Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies and the Best Workplaces™ in more than 60 countries. To join the thousands of companies that have committed to building high-trust company cultures that help them attract, contact us today, and click below to find out more about how to get Certified.

>Transcript

Cathal Divilly: Welcome Red Cube listeners, we're delighted to be joined in today's episode by Gráinne Earley from FUEL, Gráinne, you're very welcome. 

Gráinne Earley: Thank you so much for having me. 

Cathal Divilly: Gráinne, what does FUEL do? Who are FUEL?  

Gráinne Earley: Great question. We do everything! We are an experience and entertainment group. So, I suppose primarily we work in events, there's kind of a few different divisions within FUEL, I myself am on the employee experience team, so we look after kind of events, strategies, any kind of pieces of work that clients want to look at for their employees. And then we also have a brand side of the business, which works on obviously brand events with some of our clients, we have a content side and then we also have a festival site.  

So yes, we have our fingers in a lot of pies. But it's great because we have it all under one roof. We have a great content and design team and production team there as well. So it means that when we're kind of looking at events or looking at working with our clients on strategies, we have an awful lot of services in-house which is great. So we can kind of cross-work between departments and divisions to make sure we're getting the best results for our clients. But yeah, anything from festivals to events to conferencing. Yeah, all sorts. 

Cathal Divilly: That's great, Gráinne, thanks for that. And today, we're going to, if we can, focus in on the idea of employee experience right, and, you know, building an employee experience strategy etcetera. So give us a bit more details around what an employee experience strategy is and I think we'll go from there Gráinne. 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, of course. So really, what employee experience is is looking at everything that the employee experiences from day-to-day in the workplace. I suppose there's a lot of buzzwords going around; there's employer branding, employer engagement. You know, there's a ton of these kind of words that are being kind of bandied around at the moment and employee experience is really looking at everything. So it's from recruitment to the day you might leave that workplace and everything in between; it's the culture that you have in your workplace. It's how your day-to-day work life is going, you know, in terms of working with leadership, working with teams, collaboration. It's really looking at the values and the missions of a company and what that means to the employee and then really just what they're experiencing on a day-to-day, whether that is events or whether it's hybrid working or there's, you know, wellbeing initiatives or workplace balance, it's everything that the employees is experiencing. That's what really needs to go into an employee experience strategy. 

Cathal Divilly: How do I start, right, if I'm listening to the podcast today, I like what I hear. Like what are the things I need to do to sort of put an employee experience strategy in place – I'll obviously talk to FUEL, right, but what are the things I need to do? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, so and I mean it can be daunting and there is a lot of our clients that come to us and kind of say you know, we don't know where to start with this. It really is taking it step by step and taking one step at a time and just putting something small in place to start with, even if that's all that you can kind of do at the time. I look at 3 areas that I kind of feel are the key things to look at when you're starting this process.  

One of them is shaping your reputation. So it's looking at your employer brand, it's looking at your EVP, you know, what you're saying out there in terms of your brand messaging and marketing. The second is then like crafting the culture. So what is the work environment and that's your values, your DE and I, the physical environment of the workplace, looking at professional development, communication, leadership styles, anything that's really tying into that work environment is kind of the culture of the company. And then the third thing then is creating experiences – and that's the fun stuff. And that's where you're looking at reward and recognition programmes, conferencing, team building, all hands events, that kind of thing.  

So you really want to try and target all three areas. I think a lot of companies fall into the trap of let's do a summer barbeque, that's going to make everyone happy. There's no strategy behind it, nobody's looking at what's actually going on in the business at the time, you know, or really talking about what it is that the employees want. You know, they're just looking at, that'll be a fun thing and that might patch things up for a while. So you want to try and look at all three areas and really delve into what it is that the employee wants and needs so that you're really putting out a strategy that covers everything, and isn't just, you know, kind of putting a Band-Aid on things. 

Cathal Divilly: Very good. And in terms of what you said around you know let's do an event, this is not a sort of a we put a fruit bowl out in the office and all of a sudden, we're doing wellbeing; this is a well thought through strategy. You've been really clear there on the three key areas, right. So shaping your reputation, crafting the culture and creating experiences then to match your needs there.  

The ongoing debate Gráinne around hybrid, back into the office, fully remote, Amazon etcetera making big announcements then some of us feel like we have to change our approach. Any thoughts around let's say hybrid, right? Any thoughts around an employee experience approach in a hybrid setting? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, like, and I think companies have to look at what works best for them as well. There is that tendency to jump on the bandwagon and oh, what other people are doing. You know, companies work in different ways and company cultures are built in different ways depending on what the product of that company is or what the employees are working towards. So I do think in terms of hybrid working and a flexible model, you know, there's plenty of statistics out there that are showing that that is what employees want and companies are seeing the biggest benefits from their employees when there is that flexibility.  

But there's a lot of things that really have to be looked at in terms of the environment as well. If your employees are really struggling to be in the office five days a week or that the office isn't kitted out in a good environment for people to work there properly, you know, then it's not a good idea to force people back into the office. If people working from home means that you're really losing the connection and people aren't collaborating and people are feeling isolated and there isn't that joy in your workplace anymore, then you really have to focus on trying to bring people in.  

So I think it's really about finding that balance between the two. And I think that's what most of the companies are seeing at the moment is that when they find that balance, they give that flexible work model and that hybrid model to their employees, they're getting the best of both worlds. Their employees are coming in and having that connection with the workplace, but they're also having that time out at home, if it means that they need to actually plough through some work in an environment where they're not going to be disturbed or you know things like that. 

Cathal Divilly: And any examples Gráinne, within that hybrid setting because, like it's hard, right? It's hard to get it right, it's hard to get the balance right in terms of performance, the work that needs to be done and the connection piece right, yeah. So at Great Place to Work, we're sort of on a fully remote model, right? Of course we meet up during the year, but you definitely find it tricky just to keep the connections going and it's not easy to figure out. So any work that you've done maybe in terms of that hybrid setting practice that organisations have introduced to try and strike that balance? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, like obviously we did a huge amount of it during COVID, and there's definitely a lot of it that we've scrapped since then, but there is some of it kind of coming back, I mean during COVID, what I thought was really interesting was that a lot of companies, maybe like global companies that might have offices in multiple cities and they're very much focusing on the connection in their office in, let's say, Ireland or London or wherever it is. What we found during COVID was that they all started to really want to connect globally, because suddenly, virtual was a thing and you could have these virtual engagements and virtual connections and parties online and all of this, the companies were all starting to connect again globally, rather than just in their office, which was a really nice thing that I don't think has gone away. 

And it means that now companies are much more keen to have that sort of connection globally as well. So we've quite a few companies that are working on toolkits and playbooks from a global level. So let's say they might come up with for this quarter, we're going to look at connection or you know, the theme is going to be the future of technology or whatever it's going to be. That theme will be rolled out globally, we will work with them to create kind of some concepts for in-office engagement, for hybrid engagement, for virtual engagement for employees. It will be rolled out globally and then they all connect by showing what has your office done. You know, so there might be some people that are in a great big office in Dublin and everyone comes in and everyone's doing some amazing event to all connect and be a part of it.  

But it also means then there's that connection element with the globe because they're seeing what they do in India and what have the US done today as well. And I think it's a lovely piece that has kind of fallen over from COVID because we had that ability to virtually connect with all these offices across the globe. And now it's still kind of there, which is really nice to see. Sorry, I've probably totally gone off piece on what you really asked! But I think a lot of it is finding the balance, but I think that's a nice piece that I think we're seeing still is that there is that hybrid connection and that virtual connection as well as the in person. 

Cathal Divilly: Love that Gráinne and one of the pieces that struck me there in that answer is we need a reason to connect. Is that the case? 

Gráinne Earley: I do think so. Like, I mean, it's great to say there's bagels on a Wednesday, everyone go in and you should all be in the office on a Wednesday, because everyone appreciates a bagel. I mean, the cost of my petrol isn't going to cover a bagel, you know? Like, I think there was a lot of those things that we fell into when people were trying to force people to come back to the office. And the reasons weren't really good enough because people had found great ways to work at home. They had found that they really enjoyed the flexibility of being there when their kids got home from school or whatever it was. 

So yeah it's finding that reason. And I think tying it back to the company's mission and values as well and that crafting culture piece of, we want you to connect because ... and we would like you to come in here because it's for a bigger goal. It's not just to give you a free bagel. It's for a bigger goal of the company and we want you to be a part of that. And I think that's when employees start to buy in more; it's not just about coming in for the free stuff or the band that's playing or you know, all those things are lovely, don't get me wrong, I love a bagel, I love a band playing in the office, I think it's great to have all of these fun things! But I think it's that: the reason and that's really tying back to them being a part of something that they feel good about, that the company is putting out there. 

Cathal Divilly: Of course, yeah, I know for you if it was Fleetwood Mac, you'd be in the office. 

Gráinne Earley: I would. I would, absolutely every day of the week yeah! 

Cathal Divilly: So look, there needs to be a reason as to why people connect, right? Because that is a frustration for people, which is: why am I in the office doing something I could do from anywhere. I know that's caused a frustration, so love what you shared there on the organisation, you know, a particular topic that might be important to the business, develop a playbook around that topic and then we get to connect with different countries, locations or from our point of view it could be different teams within different counties and we understand how are they showing up in terms of that key piece. 

Office design Gráinne is interesting, right? So one of the things we’ve seen in our work is of course, COVID, everyone's remote, some organisations put a big investment into office redesign in the hope that people would return. And then it's something they're trying to figure out, will they come back? Will they not? In your experience, is there any key aspects that an office needs to have in order to really drive that employee experience piece? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, I think anyone that's trying to get people to go back to the office in an office layout that was pre-COVID is a disaster. I think everything has changed and adapted so much that I think that the key thing is to make sure that if you want people to be back in the environment of the office that they are in an environment that they're comfortable to work in. 

Like I know myself, if I have a day where I have a lot of calls, I don't want to be at a desk shouting beside three or four or five other people that have calls, and I know that's what we were all used to! We were all used to sitting at these desks with these dividers between us, you know, and we all somehow got on with it. But it's changed now. We've realised that you know, I can plough through work in a quiet space, and then there's also times when I need to collaborate and be creative and work with a team and have whiteboards and stick things to walls and really get the juices flowing. 

So I think for the workplace environment, companies need to be adapting to all of that, that there is enough – I know the biggest bugbear for people is there isn't enough quiet spaces when they need it. It's not that they want to be locked away on their own in a room for the whole day, but if they have an important call or they have a pitch or they have something that they need a little bit of quiet for that they can book a room and they can disappear for an hour and then they can come back to a collaborative space.  

So I think it's finding that balance you know and also looking at what the offices are like in terms of windows and light and flexible spaces for lunches. And I know some offices are well kitted out compared to others and some offices may not have the space. But I think if there isn't the space to kind of bring some of those nice things in, then it's to have a little bit of flexibility in terms of letting people, you know, head out and do meetings on the fly while you're walking around the park and getting a bit of exercise, or, you know, working from home those couple of days a week so that you do have that flexibility and you're not tied to kind of one environment for your five days. 

Cathal Divilly: I feel like it's a nice way to do meetings as well, sort of do them as you're walking, right? So we're seeing some of our clients, Distilled would be an example of one organisation that have really embraced wellbeing, the performance piece, the connection piece and they really embrace the idea of teams going for walks, leaders going for meetings on the walk, which I think is great. 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, it's lovely. Yeah, I try and do it with my team. Like in terms of the one to ones, you know, I'll try and head out for a walk with them or when I'm having one to ones with my own mentor, you know, we'll try and head out and get out of the office environment and just have that time. I also have one of those little walking desks, those little walking pads that I think a lot of people invested in during COVID. Now I think it gives everyone on a zoom call vertigo and people tell me to turn off my camera! But you know, it's just that change of space and change of situation to try and get the juices flowing again and also just give you that variety that you're not, you know, stuck in a black box for 8 hours a day with no sunshine, no flexibility – we need to get away from that. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, and grab a bagel, go for a walk. 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, yeah, exactly! But I mean, you're gonna come home in a much better mood, you know, there's days; like our office at FUEL, it's very much open, go in when you want, you know, work from home when you want. We try and encourage teams to go in at least once a week just to be together. But I know that if there's a week where I'm at home for the full 5 days and there isn't a need for me to – you know, I'm in Greystones, FUEL is on Camden Street, the traffic and stuff can be bad. If there's a week where I decide not to go in for the whole week because of whatever my circumstances are, I know I'm not in as good a form by that weekend as I am if I've had that connection through the week and I've had collaboration and I've gone in and met people and I've maybe gone for lunches or stayed for a drink after work. 

There's just there's no comparison in the difference between that and being isolated at home. You know, maybe it's different for people that have kids and families that are running around the place. But I know as a single person as well for your mental health and everything you need that connection. And I think for a lot of young people coming into careers and coming into office jobs now, it's so, so important that they don't fall into the trap of working from home and getting used to that isolation and thinking this is the way it should be, because their growth and their mental health and all of that stuff is going to be tied to connecting with other people, and the workplace is an amazing place to do it. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah. And are we seeing anything from a generational point of view Gráinne, in terms of a preference, one way of doing it over the other. Have you seen anything like that in your work? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, it's funny, actually, because the younger generation don't mind the push back of going into the office as much as the older generation do. That's what the stats are kind of coming out, whereas like everyone has been saying, oh, this is a new way of working, nobody wants to go back into the office again – it's actually not true. I mean, the people that are kind of stuck in their ways or have a lot more to juggle, you know, maybe towards the end of their career are kind of happier to be at home and are maybe established, but the younger generation who are coming into the workforce are quite happy to go in every day. They like going in every day. That's the way they know they're going to jump up the ladder quickly. They're going to have meetings with people or they’re going to see people on the corridor that they might not get an opportunity to speak to that's on a more senior level. And so it is interesting, actually, that we're seeing the younger generation are quite happy with the in office.  

Now everyone wants the flexibility, everyone does want the balance of the option to be at home. I don't think anyone likes the idea of the enforced 5 days, but it's definitely something that we're not seeing as much objections to in the younger generation than we would the older. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, I met a friend of mine coming out of the gym the other morning. I've never seen him more depressed; he was in week two of a sort of a forced back into the office for five days a week. And he was incredibly frustrated, right? 

Gráinne Earley: And it's hard like because we're getting used to the commute again and the traffic and there's so many other things that, you know, impact your day before you've even got to your desk and you're getting home, you're leaving in the dark, you're coming home in the dark. Obviously thank God we're not doing that now in the summer, but there is a huge impact on the mental health and I would always try and encourage flexibility in terms of times of working as well, you know, and obviously some companies can't do that. They have shift workers and things like that. But like I know, if I go into the office for 10:00 rather than 9:00, it's a 45-minute spin in instead of an hour and 45 minutes to try and get in for 9:00. And if it doesn't impact my job or my teammates or anybody else then giving me back an hour of my day that I could spend in the gym is a huge, huge benefit to people.  

So I think a lot of it is trying to find that flexibility and that balance, and companies having the trust that their employees are actually going to perform better this way, rather than thinking no, I need an employee at their desk by 9:00 AM to make sure they're working which I just think is old news, we need to get over that. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah. Personally, I feel like if the worry is that somebody isn't doing work in a remote setting, the chances are that person is already slacking, possibly in a physical setting. 

Gráinne Earley: Yes, 100%, yeah. 

Cathal Divilly: Again, it's always the challenge, about having the right people on the team, the right people on the bus, and have we set them up for success, and of course everything has to be grounded in performance. Gráinne, you're going to join us on May the 7th – here's a shameless plug, we have a masterclass, we're excited about it and you'll be joining a panel around sort of the workplace of the future, the workplace of now, I guess, right, the future is now! And so we're excited to have you on May the 7th, but I want to make sure we bring the employee experience pillars alive, right?  

So the three things you gave at the start, shaping your reputation, crafting your culture, and then creating the experiences to match all of that. Is there any specific examples you can share from perhaps an organisation you can mention or not mention the organisation if you want, just want to really make sure we bring it alive for organisations as here's the three pillars and here's how it could look for you. 

Gráinne Earley: I suppose it's a hard one to pin down one. The funny thing about those three areas, and I suppose just to break down a little bit more is that organisations are at different journeys on each of those three areas at the moment as well, which is very interesting. So there's some organisations we're really working with at the moment on shaping the reputation; they want us to work on the E VP with them, they want us to look at their brand messaging. How are we putting ourselves out there? How are we perceived by the public in terms of attracting new talent, that kind of thing. There's other clients then, that we're working with who are very much about, we've got that down, our brand is great, our reputation is great, but we haven't really delved into how that culture is displaying internally in the workplace. You know, we're talking about it, but we aren't really living it yet. And how can we get our leadership to start recognising that? How can we get them to start, you know, from the top down start pushing all of these things that we're telling everyone publicly that we're doing and we really want to live and breathe it. And then there's others that are looking at we want to do a barbecue, we want to do a Christmas party, we want to do something for International Women's Day, for Black History Month and they're kicking off all the events without doing any of the research or any of the, you know, insights into it.  

So honestly, most of the clients that we're working with are on one or two of the things at the moment, but they're not doing all three. Now there is a couple of clients that we've worked with over the course of maybe four or five years who have touched on all three and are in a really good place now and are looking at, you know, the full scope of employee experience across their company. But I think it's important to say that for a lot of companies that does seem daunting and it's a lot, but doing it one piece at a time is fine.  

But I would encourage to not just go down the fun, exciting events route, which is fantastic, and look it's FUEL’s bread and butter. We absolutely love doing Christmas parties, we love throwing a festival on for employees. It's amazing. But I think it's the strategy behind it and understanding the insights from the employees. And from what the company wants before really delving into that, is a really key part of it. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, and there's a lot in those three things. I suppose one thing I see is sometimes we're not conscious as a company when we think about experiences for it to match who we are as a company. We do an experience, but actually there's no correlation really with who we are. Any examples of experiences that we've done for a client that actually matches who they are, as in it makes sense? 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's many an example of when it doesn't make sense, I definitely have a lot of those! You know of people kind of thinking this is what the employee wants and throwing it on and then suddenly 20 people turn up and then they go, why on earth did no one turn up to this amazing thing we put on?  

But I do think where it really is ingrained is, let's say it is just a Christmas party or it's a conference or something like that that you're doing. I think bringing those values and the cultures and what you want the company’s messaging into that is really, really important. So what we found last year was that quite a few of the companies; they wanted to make sure they were giving back to the employees with let's say some sort of party, but they also wanted to make sure that they were informing the employees of what was to come in the company.  

So we found there was actually quite a lot of people that were combining maybe an all hands, which was all about the messaging of the company, getting people excited. Here's what we're going to do for the year. You know, here's what we really value. Here's what we want you to be a part of. And now let's celebrate this together and have the big wow moment. And we found there was quite a few companies doing that last year, and it worked amazingly because you were getting that investment into something that the company really needed was, you know, to give this messaging across to the employees to have senior leaders up there speaking to the employees and everyone was invested. But then they also had this moment of celebration afterwards and it meant that the celebration wasn't just I'm turning up to that party, that yoke, you know, whatever that thing is that they've told me to come to. It was about, oh, my God, we're all here to celebrate the great year that's ahead or the great year we've achieved and we've just heard this from the people at the top that we really respect and listen to in the hour session beforehand. So that was a big turning moment, I think, for us in the last couple of years was seeing the difference that made and the attendance numbers and stuff for the employees of the companies, which is great. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah, and like, if we're not in a position to do all three, right, it's at least that we're conscious about the connection elements of like we're doing this because it's related to this. We interviewed the Head of Employer Branding for DHL a number of months ago and was fascinated by how they connected the Coldplay sponsorship, partnership that they had in place with actually their talent and their EVP and their attracting talent approach. What about sort of future proofing your employee experience strategy, anything we need to be conscious of there? 

Gráinne Earley: I think the biggest thing is listening and communication. I think what we've done over the last few years has been great. There's been a great evolution in employee experience over the last 20 years, from when it was just one survey that was sent out once a year and we hoped that we'd get some results from it to, you know, looking at engagement and now looking at the overall experience.  

But I think really having that insight into what the employees want, so that communication piece, looking at listening to them, what is it that they need, trying to get those insights is going to kind of future proof us because this is an extremely agile area. It's moving all the time and especially in the last five years it's jumped like miles forward. So I think companies are going to have to be agile in this, but they're going to have to look at the employees on a personal basis as well. I think personalisation is a real buzzword around employee experience at the moment. It's not a one-size-fits-all. We have to be agile. We have to listen to our employees and then we have to adapt to what the needs are.  

So just because an amazing tech company that we aspire to be like are doing something amazing, that may not work for our employees. So listen to them, communicate with them and adapt and be agile. And I think that's what's just going to have to continue to replay over the next 5-10 years as well, just while we're on this journey and while we're trying to future proof, you know, where each of the companies are going. 

Cathal Divilly: Yeah. So we need a strong listening ear, Gráinne, right. You need a listening ear as an organisation, wee need to understand our demographics, right? Because you know every organisation has different demographics and we need to understand their needs. It's good to be inspired by what others are doing. And then of course, it has to make sense within your business and grounded in performance, right? Gráinne listen, really appreciate you joining us today. We're looking forward to seeing you on May the 7th at our Masterclass, we’ll put a link in so everyone can see it. 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah. Can't wait. 

Cathal Divilly: Gráinne, good to see you, thanks for joining us. 

Gráinne Earley: Yeah, you too. Thanks a million for having me.