Positively influence the employee journey: 5 inspiring techniques

When shaping new meaningful experiences, organisations should use positive influencing techniques like priming, framing, nudging and playful work design. Some of these concepts may be familiar to you from the world of advertising, but how can organisations use them for employee experience design?

Priming 

Priming means you recognise important information because you have previously been exposed to it. If we are repeatedly exposed to the same information, that information becomes stored in our memories, and we then quickly and easily recognise that information and respond to it automatically. This mechanism is very useful: because things occur automatically, our brains save much energy. Priming is thus an unconscious type of learning. We are continuously primed by the context we find ourselves in: use of colour, shape of a building, an office interior, images on the intranet, posters or word usage.

Priming helps make employees feel that they are more connected to the organisation’s mission and purpose, the ‘why they get out of bed each morning’. Show them positive images of happy customers using your products or services, use words that stimulate, that bring your core values to ​​‘life’, for example. If you want to change a certain behaviour, show positive examples, not negative ones, because employees unconsciously copy examples, even the negative ones you offer as examples of what not to do.

The ‘Peak-End’ rule

When you think about a day, week or year in your life, you do not recall every minute. Rather, you recall certain moments, and those moments determine what you ultimately remember. But if for example we did consider every hour when evaluating the day, the result would likely be much different than our overall evaluation of that day, because memories fade quickly, but the highs and lows stay with us. How we value our work occurs in precisely the same way: we remember the meaningful moments at work, and these experiences determine our evaluations. Such evaluations are therefore not based on a minute-to-minute average of the day, but rather on the moments that have stayed with us.

Research has revealed that our brains primarily assign meaning to high points, the ‘Peak’ experiences, like a first day at work or a meaningful change, and to conclusions, or ‘End’ experiences, like leaving an organisation. Low points also linger: consequently, these are key moments to identify and explore, such as a failed promotion, an unwanted reorganisation, a deal that fell through, a crashed IT system or the impact of an administrative error. Moments of embarrassment and disappointment happen, and often they are neither unexpected nor infrequent. The question is not if, but when, something will go wrong, and this is precisely why you need to brainstorm beforehand, to figure out how you can convert a colleague’s low points into meaningful moments, so that the experience is ultimately transformed into a positive one.

Not all moments carry the same weight. Negative experiences linger much longer than positive ones. Some events affect you more than others. But how long a moment lasts is unimportant: a five-minute conversation at the coffee machine can be more impactful than a two-hour meeting.

Peak experiences are made from moments that:

• are different than usual. The moment really stands out: surprising, occasionally even wonderfully over the top. It makes a big impression, can get you laughing, and is often wholly unexpected, like for instance when a management team gives everyone a hug when arriving in the morning, or a birthday cake, specially baked by the colleagues for the birthday boy, or a choir that has come to serenade a departing colleague, or the team sending a video message to a sick colleague, or playing games during training courses.
• gives insights. An eye-opener which puts a different twist on life, a quarter that drops. This can occur spontaneously, in conversation with colleagues, or be prearranged, part of a training about your purpose in life or your career, for example.
• marks a proud milestone. Celebrate one of the team’s achievements, or the first time someone gives a presentation to the group and earns accolades, or someone’s first 100-days on the job, or the successful completion of a project.
• strengthens relationships at work. This can occur via social events, like company outings, volunteer work, or, more experimentally, as an ‘outward-bound training’, or when you, as a team, honour a colleague’s life event, like the birth of a child, a marriage or moving house.

Framing

A frame is a ‘story’ that uses certain words and images to help influence the recipient’s interpretation. Take, for example, a situation wherein an organisation decides it no longer wants to send letters that include employee ID numbers, so as to avoid giving the impression that ‘an employee is just a number’. The company still needs to issue employee numbers, but now they formally present them in golden envelopes marked with the words, ‘your personal key to all our systems’. By creating a different frame for employee ID numbers, you improve the employee experience.

Good frames consist of clear, emotive words and images. It need not be a dramatic story, but certainly a stimulating and unambiguous one. Good frames should be consistent and repeatable. Give your frame time to sink in with people. A strong frame’s persuasive strength only intensifies, so do not be afraid to repeat your message over and over again.

Nudging

A good nudge is a small, subtle push in the right direction. Nudges influence people’s choices or behaviour without being coercive. Nudges are good ways to help people make good choices in a certain situation; for example, when selecting a new corporate logo online, you provide a questionnaire that prompts or nudges people toward choosing the best option, given your particular assignment. Or, when searching for hotel rooms for business trips, include a ‘most chosen’ option, because people are comforted by the fact that others also found this a good choice.
At the employees request, you could for example implement a ‘voluntary standard’ for various employment conditions or preferential tax schemes, as it then becomes the individual’s responsibility to take certain actions to cancel or reject something, while the majority remain happy the process occurs automatically, so that they cannot forget to do something themselves.

Nudging can encourage people to exercise: a notification pops up reminding employees that they have been sitting at their computers for too long, prompting them to get up and move around. Or an attractive stairwell in the building prompts people to take the stairs more often, or by moving trash receptacles further away employees must get up more frequenlty. Note however that using financial (material) incentives is not an example of nudging.

Playful work design

Employees are more likely to become excited about new experiences if they are also enjoyable to receive, observe or engage in. Enjoyable work is more engaging than ‘important’ work. The fun things we organise at work are usually separate from our actual work or done after working hours: we play ping pong during breaks or have a Friday afternoon drinks party. We hand out ice creams in summer and organise sports days, or ‘ugly Christmas sweater’ days in winter. All very enjoyable, but we can do much more within our work itself. Spicing up our assignments reduces tension, renders dull jobs more challenging, and helps keep boredom at bay. Playful Work Design, ‘a proactive cognitive-behavioural approach that makes an activity more playful’, occurs in two ways: by making the work fun, and by setting self-imposed goals and rules that create competition.

What does ‘playful’ look like, then? Like a window cleaner dressed as Spiderman while cleaning the office windows. Or a barista continuously sprinkling new cinnamon-designs atop cappuccinos. Or perhaps you have seen the popular YouTube clip of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant rapping the emergency instructions to passengers. Apply your imagination to routine work; for example, create amusing ‘stories’ for each invoice you process. Or each week devise new email salutations and greetings, or every day give at least three compliments to the people you speak to on the phone. Or, before starting a difficult writing assignment, take a refreshing walk to arrange your thoughts. In short, strive to infuse more fun into your work.

If you are the competitive type, compete with yourself: try to make each presentation more visually alluring than the last. Or time how long it takes you to complete certain tedious tasks, and then think of ways to spend even less time on them. If you are frequently on the road, challenge yourself to drive more fuel-efficiently. Or keep a personal scoreboard of your own customer reviews and think of ways to improve them. In short, set yourself deadlines and make them a competition. Faster, more, less, better…whatever it takes to challenge yourself!

To create the necessary fun within teams, consider interchanging work and play; for example, brainstorming during meetings, sharing knowledge or giving each other feedback. A stand-up meeting adds physical exercise to the proceedings. Or institute a ‘focus block’: team members cannot disturb one another for a few hours at a time, while marking the start and end of each block with funny songs.
Organise fun competitions within and between teams. At an employment agency, for example, anyone succeeding to fill a job placement rings a bell, prompting their colleagues to cheer. Or devise team challenges that run throughout the week; for instance, during one week, whenever team members speak with customers, they must ask with genuine interest how the customers are doing. And you can keep score as a team, earning points for customer satisfaction, for example.

What works well for one organization may not work for another. So it’s good to think about the part of the employee journey where you would like to offer a top experience and how you can solve that with a positive influence technique.