Talking about employee experience
with MediaMarktSaturn CHRO Iris Prüfer.
Retaining top talent is key to success across industries. This is especially important during a time when so many businesses are facing a skilled labour shortage. All of this makes employee experience crucial to success. That’s why we sat down with MediaMarktSaturn CHRO Iris Prüfer and GoodHabitz Customer Succes Coach Jennifer Gerstl to discuss their views on the topic of employee experience.
MediaMarktSaturn went through a massive evolution from a brick-and-mortar retailer to an omni-channel retailer. The company developed an entirely new strategy whose focus was on the employee’s experience as well as the customer’s experience. They were convinced that their team would need to drive excellence in an omni-channel environment, so they started their transformation by exploring the employee experience.
They approached the employee experience as marketeers approach customer experience, asking: what are the touchpoints? They found that key aspects of worker experiences were technology, physical workspace, and culture. Then, they set about exploring how to improve each one. One interesting discovery was the role that communication plays in culture, both in terms of what leadership shares but also in terms of employees’ ability to share with leadership. This is especially helpful as different generations can communicate their goals and hopes for their workplaces.
Putting core values into action can be a challenge across a big international company, so MediaMarktSaturn was thoughtful about their process. “We looked at our core values, what we believed in, and we aligned it internationally within the 11 countries in the group. Based on that, we’ve since then linked every initiative back to our values. So, it's a core foundation we saw and we defined.” Learning and development programmes were an effective tool for bridging the gap between the words on paper and the actions employees take. It’s important that employees, especially leaders, know how to put those values into action.
Core values can form the basis of the employee relationship from the get-go. They can help attract skilled workers with similar values and develop a culture that will help them thrive once they join. MediaMarktSaturn’s transformation process included thinking about the kind of people that they needed in their organisation and looking at what type of organisation would attract them. They rolled out their values to current employees and began to evaluate skilled candidates based on those values as well as necessary job skills. For example, if clear communication is a core value, then all managers and team leads would need to be able to foster dialogue.
You can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to learning and development. That is especially true if some of your employees don’t work in an office. For example, customer-facing retail salespeople can’t just do a training at their workstations. So, MediaMarktSaturn had to get creative about how to structure trainings. One helpful solution was to develop a trainer for each store. Working with GoodHabitz also allowed them to roll out a wide range of trainings from which employees could choose, empowering them to direct their development.
MediaMarktSaturn has continued to adjust how they work with training time. They initially provided four-hour workshops for salesfloor employees before starting the trainers initiative, but they discovered two hours worked better. They’ve also been interested to explore how this varies across countries, both in terms of culture and in terms of what employees can legally be asked to do outside of their primary roles. They’ve been happy to find, however, that workers outside of offices have been eager to engage in development opportunities, despite stereotypes to the contrary. Dialogue between managers and workers has helped hone in on the kind of courses workers want while keeping employees motivated and engaged.
MediaMarktSaturn has many KPIs to evaluate, but they wanted to study how the business is perceived by employees. They’ve instituted anonymous Net Promoter surveys within the company to examine the core question of whether employees would recommend working for MediaMarktSaturn. These results lead to in-depth interviews and measurement workshops to help refine what the survey shows. Managers can see results and areas to work on, then move to address them with the team.
MediaMarktSaturn has been happy to see both high participation in the surveys and a steady increase in the scores. One key factor is that they are seen to be acting on issues revealed. Another useful tool is using qualitative analysis to dig into findings, rather than rest on numbers. Companies that only focus on quantitative analysis tend to see participation in surveys drop, as employees (rightly) perceive that surveys don’t lead to anything. The two kinds of analysis need to go hand in hand to first identify issues, then set up a structure to solve them.
Ultimately, it all comes down to setting up processes that are based on company values. We are living through a time of extraordinary change, but flexible processes anchored in the foundation of values allow companies to evolve. As MediaMarktSaturn shows, focusing on employee experience is a great way to improve customer experience, raise the quality bar, and retain top talent in a competitive landscape.
Want to listen
to the full episode?
Discover more insights, tips, and tricks in our podcast episode 'Elevate your employee experience'.