Taking Experience Data Seriously Amidst the Great Reset: An SAP Concur Podcast Conversation with EY

Resetting employee and manager expectations around the best ways to collect and leverage experience data is now a need to have rather than a nice to have. Listen to a Principal Value Experience Architect of SAP Concur and a People Advisory manager from EY on how SAP Concur solutions users can build an outstanding employee experience based upon regularly collected data, feedback, and actions.

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Transcript:

Andrew Walker:

So, thanks for joining the latest episode of SAP Concur Conversations podcast series. I'm Andrew Walker. I'm a principal architect on the Value Experience programs team. Joining me today is Crystal Schoenhals, a consultant for travel and expense at E&Y. We're here today to talk about employee sentiment and why it matters and the state of things. Crystal, if you want to go ahead and give yourself an introduction, that would be great.

Crystal Schoenhals:

Sure, thank you. Happy to be here. Crystal Schoenhals. I have about almost 30 years’ experience in the industry, including supply chain logistics, but primarily in the T&E space. Happy to be aboard and give my thoughts on employee sentiment.

Andrew Walker:

Awesome. So, I want to start ... When we connected on this and we prepped, a lot of it from my end was how do we get people to see the value of employee experience? We know everybody understands operational data. We've been drowning in it for the better part of three decades. And it's easy to get people to bite when we say, "Hey, you have Y performance across X time."

But when we start talking about quantifying this qualitative data from employees as to their experience with the process and why it matters, I'm curious as to what you see in your space with clients and organizations coming around to the idea of buying into the employee sentiment idea and leveraging it for change at their organizations.

Crystal Schoenhals:

Yeah. A lot of our clients that are starting to come to us in this space just don't know where to start. It's such a big topic on how to gather this data, how do you slice the data, how do you make it meaningful? And that's just it. And given the market is still changing post pandemic, well, I'd like to say post pandemic, but hopefully towards the end of the pandemic, what is important to the employee base? Do we survey, do we use a tool? How do we, again, make it actionable in terms of what the employees want and need? That's their very first question.

And so, we even take a step back in that coaching and say, "Well, this is more than just T&E questions now. Have you communicated with your HR department, have you communicated with your communications team?" It's now a all hands on deck approach from a company perspective and making sure you stay aligned with your, maybe you have new corporate initiatives, maybe you have corporate goals like sustainability that would impact T&E, et cetera, remote work policies.

And just really from a team perspective, ensuring that you have all departments on board, you're asking the questions that you think you need to ask the population, and then you can start worrying about slicing and dicing that data and making it actionable. It's just overwhelming at this point for the clients that we've spoken to and the sheer amount of change and I'll just say environmental changes and issues that are coming about. Again, it's just getting your head around, "How big is this?"

Andrew Walker:

Yeah, I think it's interesting. We had a session at Fusion about this just this year and I'm hearing what you're saying and thinking, when we go to them with the idea of employee sentiment or this experienced data, we're saying like, "Hey, you only have half of this sorted with operational data." So, when you say that it's overwhelming, it doesn't surprise me because it's like saying, "Hey, open your other eye." Right? And now you're taking in all of this. It's a lot to process. And so what I asked people there, and I'm curious as to your experience here, we've talked about people starting to come to the well to drink, starting to open up to this idea. And so we're saying, hey, is your company currently collecting this data?

And so you've pointed out, hey, go to HR, maybe a sustainability group. Look at for where this is happening. And obviously we're here to mostly talk about how it pertains to travel and expense. And so one of the things I was asking is, well, have you been involved in the process? And if you have, are you leveraging information to affect process or policy? And so looking at that next step, those people that have started to have that conversation and maybe got past the phase of being overwhelmed.

I'm curious, what are you seeing through the transition of those three phases? So are you collecting data? If you are, are you involved in the process? And then once you have that information, are they leveraging it to affect process and policy? So, I'd be curious to hear that middle state of experience at this point.

Crystal Schoenhals:

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, some clients have started the process not by choice. So we've had the Great Resignation. We've had folks, now that travel is starting to open, be asked to travel and then push back. And so some clients haven't been given the choice to deal with it. They're being forced to deal with it.

So, that's a different tactic on, oh my gosh, how do we keep up? We're tired of losing people. Are you collecting data? The data they're more than likely collecting before they were forced to deal with this are more those operational indicators you're talking about. But unfortunately those are just lagging indicators of the program. They're nothing giving you foresight into what employees want or need. If you are, how are you making it meaningful?

They always start with, we're losing people. We don't know what the priority is. And even to the point where I know even within EY, we have found a disconnect between what employers think is important for the employee and employees saying what's important to them. And so there's this disconnect. And so how do you close that gap is where we try to help them focus.

So, we are collecting the data. You thought it was, not to go back to operational, but you thought it was X and now it's actually Y. How do you close that gap? And is it a project? Is it a simple communication? Is it a policy change? There's going to be all kinds of different answers to closing those gaps.

And what we've told them looking ahead, and it's going to be iterative. If you change your policy, don't think your policy's going to sustain for probably more than a year at this point. You're going to have to keep looking at it. Again, where does it cross over with the HR group in terms of a rewards total? A total compensation package. Is travel involved in that now with remote work? Do you start rewarding individuals for being, on the T&E side, more sustainably focused? There's so much to come out of this. But ultimately it is on that third phase of dealing with that iterative process. It's a project team. And maybe it's not even a project team, it's now a program team because now your program is not just a simple project, right?

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. It has to be operationalized. So, I want to touch on something that you mentioned there, because I remember when we were prepping, we both were saying the same thing about the exit interview being the worst point to collect data if you're trying to make a change. It's already way too late.

And so, we talk about the laggards and we're talking about people being drug into this, they're being forced to address employee sentiment whether they wanted to or not. And to me, you mentioned the great resignation, and I also, not to take too much of an optimistic perspective on it, but it almost feels like the great reset, where we have to reset our expectations. And I feel like the sentiment collection and basically leveraging it has to be operationalized that way.

And so, what I'm curious about is what are some good questions you've seen? Or what are some good results that you've seen from this? We've been pulled into it. We know we're forced to ask these questions and we have to go through this. What are some success stories or some successful questions or starting points that you've seen for clients that, hey, we're finally into it. We're going to be leveraging it. Now what are we asking? And what changes are we seeing?

Crystal Schoenhals:

It's not incredibly complicated. They're very basic questions. But I think the ones most people are asking is in the exit interview, what is the reason you're leaving? Obviously that's very basic. But if you were to, to your point, the exit interview's too late, pull it up. What are the reasons you would leave? And they get very specific. Don't necessarily lead the employee to what you want to hear, but obviously work flexibility.

Do you want remote work? Is travel still important to you and necessary to do your job? And then you ask sustainability. But it's really hard to nail down what are the five key questions because I think you'll get, from the employees, even if you ask, what are your priorities in your job or, from a T&E perspective, do you still think you need to travel?

I think it'll be organic. So again, it's not a one time survey, it's a constant. So, somebody might feel like travel is important to them in their day to day job and they go back to travel and they realize, actually I can actually do this with not 10 trips a year, but three trips a year. I realize now I'm actually a stronger worker from remote than I thought I was. I wanted to take a trip and now I didn't miss it as much as I thought I missed it. Potentially, right? And I could still do my job very effectively.

So, they go back on their next trip and you get more feedback. And they're going to adjust, sometime, their opinion. So, are the questions stagnant? No. Are the answers stagnant? No, it's just going to be this constant ask and answer communication. Not just this one time survey.

We really try to get our clients out of the, don't survey twice a year. That's highly ineffective. It's not going to help you. And hopefully you have something from an infrastructure perspective available to get that immediate feedback. After every trip, do you send a survey? Do you have a social media site that you're gathering? Whatever it is. Employees? And I'll say even within EY, the way we slice data too is you have Gen Zs, millennials, it's by age. And each one of those needs a different survey tactic potentially.

Andrew Walker:

So, actually, let's dive into this a little bit because when I've had conversations with people about this, a lot of times we talk about the burden. The survey fatigue or the burden of response. And an example that's interesting to me is if you look at industry expectations for broad survey feedback, it's like less than 10% response rate.

But we do an unfiltered survey internally where we're getting our feedback on the organization, on our leadership structure. And I think they do an outstanding job with the corporate communication strategy to push our engagement. And I want to say we hit 98% or greater response rate and that's because it's prioritized and it comes all the way down through your leadership structure of, "Hey, we have outstanding people. Let's get this done, let's get this done."

And so when, what you're talking about with this basically just in time surveying and this just in time feedback collection, I'm curious, how are we managing that burden of response at survey fatigue on the travelers or the employees? I'm just curious, maybe some guidelines that you could give or some experience that you could share about how we can have that conversation with an organization in a way that alleviates the concerns of exhausting their employees with that.

Crystal Schoenhals:

I do feel ... There's definite fatigue, right? I mean, there's always surveys going around and I think the fatigue will not play a factor if you're actioning what they're giving you in terms of feedback. If all you're going to do is survey, gather, and report out, there's no sense. And that's where people feel the fatigue, is you're going to ask me and nothing's going to come about. There's no results. You didn't take any action on our information.

And I think if you show the employees that you are taking these steps and you tie back to a change in policy or a change in the rewards policy or a change in the T&E, I don't think people necessarily have that fatigue if they see you care enough to take action. So, that's something we promote, right?

Now, do you survey after every trip? I think that's extensive. Maybe you do that for a short period of time. Maybe you do that with your sales folks or road warriors. Again, the tactics have to be very specific to whether it's age, role, industry, gender, name it. It could be very different tactics, because they're all going to be, in my opinion, obviously Gen Z, Millennials – social media, just give them that outlet. They're going to talk through it, where maybe your Baby Boomers, Gen X, are a traditional type of survey or again, the mechanism is different.

But I think employees, and what we're hearing out of the employees, is you ask, that's great, you're showing me you care. But now I want to see the outcome. I want to see change. If you're not going to change, then I'm going to leave. And that's, back to the great resignation, that is the line they are drawing. If I don't see change, if I don't see what I like in terms of what I think are my priorities, I'm just going to walk away. So, companies have to come in with the mindset of, they are going to put action. They're going to make a plan. They're going to have a roadmap and show the employees that they not just enough to care to ask, but enough to care to do.

Andrew Walker:

No, I was just going to say, people are tired of hearing the feedback of, "We hear you." Right? It's not enough. We heard you and we made this change. I totally agree with that. I think that's great feedback for anybody that's thinking about going down this road. It's like anything. The commitment has to be there all the way through. If you were just collecting data to pile it up and report on it, you just as well save your money and your time because it's not going to have the effect that you want.

Interestingly enough, to the point of the burden and fatigue, it will most likely decrease employee satisfaction because they will become disenfranchised with your lack of sincerity in the effort.

So, we've heard sustainability, great resignation a couple of times. And as I was becoming indoctrinated in experienced management, one of the key things that was pushed was the idea of the research goal. And that's what I view. When I hear sustainability, it's like, "Hey, how do we improve our footprint?" When we talk about the great resignation, if we were trying to solve that, our research goal would be to solve the retention problem. That's what we're getting to. So, we're trying to figure out why are employees leaving? With sustainability, we're trying to figure out how do we have a greener footprint? And I'm just wondering what other like common goals are you seeing behind these sentiment efforts, or these experiences?

Crystal Schoenhals:

Sure, sure. Thank you for that.

So, actually, the great resignation, why are employees leaving, really ties back to an overlying theme of what we're actually hearing from the industry is total compensation, flexibility is a huge word, work hours, time off, travel. The flexibility of travel. Flexibility is a huge word today and as it crosses over into HR. I have never seen, my background, large tech company, T&E and HR were cross pollinated, if you will. I've never seen it more pollinated now than ever before where the T&E policy has HR elements.

But HR is dealing with, to your point on the retention and then going a little bit off track here, but the retention piece, and everyone's saying, we want flexibility, we want flexibility, flexibility now. What does that mean in terms of travel? What does that mean in terms of work hours? What does that mean in terms of technology and in terms of what you offer employees from a technology standpoint.

So, that's a big buzzword that we've been hearing. But it bleeds into so many things. The other thing we're hearing is wellbeing. Which back to flexibility, if you give folks flexibility in terms of their benefits, what they want, their wellbeing and mental health will obviously be better taken care of. Total compensation, et cetera.

So, they all bleed together for me, right? Because some people believe sustainability is their priority when it comes to travel, where others believe, no, I want to take personal travel while I actually have a business trip and I want the flexibility to do that. So, there's a lot of things that, from a policy perspective, I would say people are trying to, again, get their head around, because it means so much.

But how do you deal with that in terms of a policy and how do you deal with that in terms of the how behind a trip? How are you going to give them this flexibility when you traditionally lock them into potentially a mandated environment of all those operational indicators, you lock them into all those things. Well, now you need to tear all that down and start over potentially. But I don't know if I answered that the way you intended, but yeah, there's no one real message. The general theme in my mind is flexibility for folks.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. I think that's that's interesting though, because when you say you're talking about all these different points of flexibility, it brought a few things to mind in terms of specifically that scheduling personal travel. It goes back to your original point, right, is that this is an iterative process that needs to be operationalized, basically now. I think further highlights the importance of starting sooner than later.

Don't be the company that's starting to truly integrate experience management five years from now. I don't think, in my opinion, you will just be able to catch up. It's not going to be, "Hey, we started this XM project five years from now." What I would consider a serious laggard in this space starts this up and is like, "Okay, we're in trouble. Now we got to catch up."

You're not going to catch up in a year because of all those little pieces that you said, right? You need all of these little different points in the process to capture at the moment. People don't want to go back and remember what they did two years ago, or try to accurately define how they felt two years ago about a process that was already five years old or a policy that was already five years out of date.

You need to be getting that now and building up that understanding. So, I think that is so interesting to hear and I hope that more organizations will do this. Because I remember six years ago putting a spreadsheet out on SharePoint, emailing a distribution list of people, asking them to go in and flag their responses so I could process it as we were going through some reengineering work at a former employer.

And it worked, right, but it was such a pain and it was so backwards from what is really available and possible that I hope more organizations can get out of this concerned phase and just get into adoption and start moving forward. I think it's going to be better for everybody. Employees, employers, I think it's going to make the relationship a lot more harmonious.

Crystal Schoenhals:

And I think that's a great point. There is absolutely no catching up. And if you don't think that the generations coming in aren't ... It's funny, when you apply for a job, you get told, "Oh, they're looking at your social media page. They're looking at your resume and your background and all that." But there's so many means now to get data on employees applying for a position.

Well, if you don't think that's not happening in reverse with the upcoming generation looking? And even my generation, to be honest, now there's so much data that says, "Well, what is this company? What is its message? What is its policy?" They're researching. Now there's so much competition in terms of they're really now not just comparing your base pay or your bonus. It's now all of it. And it's all available out to them.

And even social media sites where your company might be getting a bit of good news or bad news in social media. People are considering that. So, forget the resignation. Can you even hire at this point because people don't want to work for you before they even start?

Andrew Walker:

Yeah, reputation, yeah.

Crystal Schoenhals:

Reputation and the effect of the access to all the data around it and this sheer conversation that people have about a company and where they're headed. What are their goals? What are their key success factors or vision, mission? All of those wonderful things. People are really considering those. So, if you want to wait until folks leave and then you want to ask why, you won't be able to backfill those positions once they leave, because you haven't done anything to change. And so back to the original thought of, don't just survey to survey. You have to have your mindset of we're going to do something different, we need to do something different. Not just so we don't get people to leave, but so we can hire effectively.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah. It's interesting that there was a stat I remember hearing years back, it's probably changed, but they had surveyed a group of people and basically 80% of people said that the current role they were in was at least partially because they knew somebody at the organization. And the interpretation there was that if you didn't know somebody, you weren't going to be able to get a job and I think that's probably how I viewed it at the time.

But it's interesting now as we talk about the sentiment stuff and as I've had definitely the mind shift towards seeing operational and experience data, is that I would like to go back and ask those people if it had just as much to do with the confidence that the reference gave them in coming to work there.

Like, "Hey, this is a great place to work." So, they were willing to take the job because they had confidence that the organization wasn't in disarray. And to your point, right, the onboarding, the reputation. And like I said, I'm sure that number has shifted now. Especially with the broader opportunity for remote work. But I really do feel like there was a big portion of it that probably had to do with getting at least a personal feel for the reputation and the experience they could expect from the company.

So, I think maybe we can use this as our last topic here. I wanted to ask, is there a situation where somebody is just knocking it out of the park? You've been involved with an organization that is at the leading edge of experience management and they've seen measurable improvement. How long have they been on that journey? What has that process looked like? Just curious if we have anything like that. Maybe dangle the carrot for everybody to chase there. "Hey, this is the goal."

Crystal Schoenhals:

Yeah. Well, obviously I can't name names. But there's definitely those that are setting the benchmark. Is the benchmark set? No. Because the world is still changing very quickly, very rapidly, et cetera. But there are definitely those ... And the strongest characteristic, I would say, of the folks that I think that are knocking it out of the park, are those that are committed to both resourcing, gathering the data, making the data actionable, and having project teams to do so. Reviewing their policy on a regular basis, adjusting their policy on a regular basis.

So, you can see the results of their work very quickly. It's not going to take two years to change the policy. They are committed. The leadership, to your point earlier, the leadership is bought in. It's necessary to keep the culture alive and getting the highest quality employees you can that are committed.

Everyone thinks that, again, the generations that are coming up are job hoppers, but those companies are saying, "We're not okay with that. We're going to put things in place so they don't want a job hop." And it's just that commitment from the very top down. It's articulated, it's in their mission, it's in their vision. They're investing in technology. It's just like any project, to be honest. As long as there's a leadership that's committed, messaged, and invested. Whether that's your resourcing, funds, change, et cetera, that's the benchmark, and that they're striving to be.

It's hard to commit to changing a policy or updating your policy on this accelerated pace and this iterative pace, but they're bought into the thought and they've seen the results of their work. And so that even makes the commitment even stronger. So, I think they had that in their culture to begin with to be quite honest, of those that I'm thinking in my mind. I haven't seen somebody make a 180 in this space.

They still want to hang on to those operational indicators to make the change and to drive the right behaviors. You can still focus on that. Obviously they're still necessary. But I think there's definitely got to be that culture shift if you don't have that in your mindset already. But those that are already ahead of that and had it in their culture are the ones that I see are making those changes and they're much more effective and they would be happy to tell you, how did the project go? And they can pinpoint, our retention went from this to that. Our hiring went from this to that. We are aligned with all departments cross-functionally and this is, what our vision is, our mission is, and it aligns with the corporate objectives. And then show you the results probably of their employees surveys and what's important to them.

Andrew Walker:

No, I think that's good and completely unsurprising. The organizations, winners keep winning. They have operationalized, they have executive stakeholder buy-in, and when they commit, they make it happen. And I think that's what it's going to take for organizations that are thinking about doing this. This isn't just, "Oh, send out a handful of surveys and that'll make you feel better about what you're doing."

Like this is meaningful, iterative change. Which I think, if we wrap up our key takeaways, that was what stood out to me the most from this. That iterative requirement. You have to stick with this, the twice a year isn't enough. Those data points are too far apart. The world changes too fast. And I'll be honest, that's something that personally I definitely struggled with early on getting indoctrinated into experience management, was the idea of survey fatigue. I will not reference any establishments. But there are more than enough places that said, "Oh, how was your visit today?" Or, "How was your flight?"

And I'm like, "Well, I could have used four more inches of leg room, but you're not going to do anything about that, right?" So, I think hearing that as an organization, that's where the opportunity is, is getting that frequency of feedback and finding ways to deploy that so that your employees know that you're not just hearing them, you're really taking action and making it happen. I think the other thing that maybe stood out to me as a takeaway was the importance of starting now.

You always hear, when's the best time to start? Right now. When's the next best time? Right now. And I think that's absolutely it. Anybody that's lagging on this, I think they're going to pay exponentially. I don't think it's going to be like some of the other adoption areas where you've been able to get by with Excel. You can patch things together and make things work and you're not exponentially behind.

I think on this experience management, I think if you're behind, you're way further behind than you know. And then I think just lastly what you said, that commitment to the program, to the buy-in from leadership and really putting the program in place and finding ways to make it integrated into the culture of the organization. I think those three takeaways really stood out to me. Was there anything that you would add to that?

Crystal Schoenhals:

No, I think that's all great. And I don't mean to end on a, in my thoughts, on a corny hashtag, but my kids, and I think I got it actually from one of their sports teams, it's "hashtag day one," or, "hashtag one day." You make the choice, right? Is it going to be today or is it going to be one day out in the future? I think day one has approached. We got to start now if you haven't already. And you probably have access to some data already, you just may not know it. And just again, go talk to your HR, go talk to other groups. Yeah, there's no better time to start than today.

Andrew Walker:

Yeah, yeah. I think that's great. That's a great place to end. So, again, this was the SAP Concur Conversations podcast series. I'm Andrew Walker and this was Crystal. Thanks for joining me.

Crystal Schoenhals:

My pleasure. Thank you.