Ben Whitter is known as Mr Employee Experience in business circles, and his role as a global Employee Experience (EX) leader brings him into contact with many companies keen to improve how they accommodate their most important resource – their staff.
He is the CEO and Founder of the World Employee Experience Institute, which partnered the 2018 Employee Experience Awards, and also leads CXM’s Employee Experience Masterclass.
As part of an exciting new blog series exclusive to Customer Experience Magazine, Ben is touring the headquarters of awards finalists to uncover and highlight what makes them EX pioneers…
The weekend before I visited the IGNIS HQ in Fulham, the whole team were in New York for a team experience – a great example to begin with when describing the exceptional Employee Experience on offer within this ambitious marketing agency.
On arrival, I was offered a personalised welcome, a Virtual Reality presentation of IGNIS staff members’ award-winning work with clients, and popcorn!
IGNIS is an organisation that shares my own philosophy: experience is everything! This shines a bright light through their entire business strategy – from the way they work with clients to the way they intentionally develop the experience of work for their own staff.
Valuing values
As a growing company, the team recognised that a major factor to enable continued success was to double-down on the core values of the business whilst developing aligned experiences for their new and existing staff. It was this fusion of values and experiences that had a profound impact on the business.
Two measures that matter most to companies are profit and earnings. The EX at IGNIS has been cited as the key factor in a 17 percent rise in gross profit in 2017. The organisation has also won a number of prestigious creative and financial awards. EX has delivered incredible results, no question, but what were these experiences and how did IGNIS deliver what I’m calling ‘Growth by Design’?
The ‘IGN-itiative’ platform was developed to enhance and elevate the experience of work at the firm. The kick-off was the ‘Iglympics’, an unashamed “school sports day meets Bake-Off”, which was further developed to include their Ugandan charity partner, EaC, with the ‘Ign-athon’, a 10k annual fundraising run held alongside other cultural events.
The culmination is their bi-annual trip to Uganda to build a cattle-shed and teach in schools. I also enjoyed hearing about their ‘Virtual Fridays’ concept, which actually takes place on Thursday! This is a global digital meeting for colleagues around the world to share, create, and interact. Another example of this bond-building (and one that actually does take place on a Thursday) is their legendary ‘Thirsty Thursdays’ – a regular get-together of the team to have fun in different ways.
These events are consciously and thoughtfully designed to connect people with purpose, and to unlock the power of this community of colleagues and friends. They bring people together to work and learn together in an environment that cultivates trust and positive behaviours whilst amplifying and ensuring values are genuinely lived and breathed within the business.
Investing in ideas
The organisation also invests in ideas and has demonstrated some great examples of things they are taking a punt on by backing staff to create a new product or something of real value to their client base. This is powerful – not just listening to staff, but backing them with funds to get something off the ground. True EX organisations are not walking blindly into the future; they are constantly evolving, innovating, and co-creating with their staff.
A big buzzword within Employee Experience these days is alignment. This is something that stood out from the visit. IGNIS work very hard to ensure their experiences, on both the client and employee side, are connected and strongly aligned. This is a critical factor in EX approaches.
IGNIS has consciously cultivated a multi-disciplinary approach to work and a flat structure, which proactively stops a silo mentality from emerging. It is this that enables them to continue to operate with an entrepreneurial and creative flair.
Work hard – play hard
Work hard – play hard is mantra that often presents itself within successful teams, and IGNIS is proud to have built a company based on challenging work while having fun at the same time. In the very fabric of the organisation is a can-do attitude, both in the individual and the organisational sense. This is a team that overcomes challenges together and actively designs experiences to strengthen their bonds.
The company actively encourages a deep connection with the world around each person and encourages colleagues to ‘get out more’. The team is clear that seeing, experiencing, and expanding interactions with the world delivers great work and greater people.
Part of the EX is about reflecting and building on experiences, which is a compelling practice in and of itself, but connecting this to business and individual outcomes is often the part that organisations don’t do. Not IGNIS however – they get that the world, the business, and the employee are connected.
To join Ben at the CXM Employee Experience Masterclass, click here.