The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces they Want, the Tools they Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate Hardcover – March 27, 2017

I've been reading a lot lately about business and work habits -- articles on alternative work spaces, working from home, etc. I have a very unique job situation where I'm both an employee and self-employed, and so The Employee Experience Advantage looked especially interesting to me, since I have a dual point of view.I love a well-organized and well-written book, and this one didn't disappoint. It lays out the three areas employers need to improve in order to achieve this employee experience ideal, and then walks you through various points to focus on in each area. Most of the book is devoted to demonstrating how these characteristics improve the employee experience, and presenting examples. Since the book is also written with managers and execs in mind, it also makes a strong case for why it's beneficial and even cost effective to spend time, money, and other resources on improving the employee experience.I may not be a manager, but I found it extremely interesting and useful, because I could immediately see why I've been so unhappy at certain jobs, and why I loved certain others. I'm also fairly certain that a good friend's new employer either read this book or followed a similar principle in setting up their company! Even a lowly employee would find this book useful, not only to give them ideas for proposals they could make at work, but to better understand what makes them enjoy or hate their jobs, and what to look for in a prospective employer.The author made a strong case for what he was proposing and his conversational writing style carried me right through it all, flowing easily from one section to the next. An easy-to-read, well-researched, and thoughtful look into the world of work and how we can make it better.

When first starting this book, I was not sure that all of the subjects within would apply to me, even though I was highly interested. Was I in for a surprise! Jacob Morgan writes with purpose and intent about “The Employee Experience” that I never realized I was missing. Finishing this piece was not only equivalent to turning on a light bulb, it was more as if I felt I was turning over the key to start a new race car. Every chapter filled me with inspiration and knowledge for what I want in a company and how I would want to help change every other business currently operating.Morgan sets the premise in the first section, explaining that In the past, companies attracted talent by necessity - everyone had to work because everyone needed money to survive. Now, talent is being fought over. In order to do this, organizations have to create places employees WANT to be, instead of places they HAVE to be. In the following sections, he goes on in detail to describe how to shift the work experience to one that increases satisfaction. This way, instead of viewing work as “drudgery” and a purchase of an employee’s time, work itself is transformed into something that a paycheck simply rewards.Something that many of us, employees and executives alike, fail to grasp is the difference between cosmetic changes that occur in employment engagement strategies and deeper, more meaningful and satisfying changes that happen when employee experience is taken into consideration. Even though these two terms have been used synonymously before, Morgan uses clear definitions and an abundance of examples to explain why it is so important to distinguish them. In order to properly explain this, Morgan applies 17 attributes to “the employee experience” through a series of acronyms: COOL (in reference to physical workspace) ACE (in reference to technology) and CELEBRATED (in reference to the cultural environment). Each of the acronyms are thoroughly explained through their own chapters which include tips on how to implement each step as well as examples of companies that both exemplify and underperform in the attribute at hand. At first I was skeptical about the use of acronyms, as it felt like a self-help book that was too good to be true, but I quickly remembered them and was easily able to mentally catalog the vast amount of information in the book by using them.He does not bypass the ever changing world of technology and how this impacts the employee experience. In the final section, and one of my favorite and most surprising chapters I read- while suggesting how to optimize and implement the practices explained throughout previous chapters he leaves no excuses for large corporations to skimp due to data overload. Morgan incorporates the idea of artificial intelligence and how it can help with feedback when dealing with multi-thousand employee companies and feedback from each individual.I appreciate so much about “The Employee Experience Advantage”. The application of relevant, elegant and easy-to-read diagrams and graphs stood out above all. In a data-heavy, concept heavy book such as this, these visual representations helped tremendously. They were well-executed and even in the financial chapter, where any graph could easily get confusing, each image was clearly explained in a manner that someone who has not taken an analytics course can understand. This book is an absolute necessity for any organization seeking to not only to hire more talented people, but also to retain those that they already have. It is not only for the executive- it is for the frontline employee, the human resource staff and everyone in between.

In his organizational psychology book on a ground breaking read in employee experience, Jacob Morgan’s book The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent By Giving Employees the Workspaces They Want, The Tools They Need, And A Culture They Can Celebrate is full of valuable information for those in business. The study centers around a theory Morgan has put together that addresses the future of workplaces in not just providing a paycheck for their employees but an experience in an effort to not only increase profits and efficiency but to also retain employees and save money. The three areas addressed are physical workspace, technology, and culture in the workplace. Morgan has put together a seventeen point scale that can allow any business to find their employee experience score. He then goes on to suggest practical ways to improve this score after addressing why it is important to improve the score. The practical implications from the study are staggering and a must read resource for anyone in business.This is a welcome follow up to Morgan’s other book The Future of Work and addresses several areas where that book felt almost too good to be true. In truth, most workplaces are aware but not addressing the need for attention to employees and HR measures that are going to be critical in the next few years as the characteristics of the employees in the workforce make a transition. In order to address where these changes need to be made and how to become a competitive workplace for the talent demographics that are forthcoming, this book depicts seventeen key points that HR personnel will want to make sure their company is addressing. The book follows a steady progression and makes a lot of practical sense. A great deal of effort has been put into interviewing with companies who are already at the forefront of addressing these demographics and composing a measurement that is dynamic and practical all at once. The overall theory is outstanding and the observations from the study show that it is on point and accurate. The practical implications are perhaps the greatest strength of the work in making the theory come to life and more concrete for those working in people analytics. The graphics are also helpful, the book is well laid out and edited, and the progression from the importance of this research to its implications is tight and logical.The one area in which I see a discrepancy is the formula used to arrive at the employee experience score. Admittedly, I am not a math person but I don’t see an explanation for the multipliers used to get the final score in each area of the inventory so I am unsure why those particular numbers are used and where they were arrived at. Also, the bigger factor for me was the graphic in the book showed that the numbers were multiplied (the author originally said he was going to add them but that he decided it should be multiplied instead) but the actual scoring to get the employee experience score is addition. It’s confusing and since this is a new scale that the author is introducing I was definitely looking for more information on those numbers and ended up confused about the scoring. The graphic should match the actual mathematical formulas used to calculate the score; although I understand that there was possibly a concept of synergy being demonstrated in the graphic. I have not had a chance to look at the website so I am hopeful there is more information there, but I think it is important enough to deserve a place in the book.This is an important book for leaders in any business, non-profit or for-profit and an important contribution to the field of organizational psychology as it addresses an upcoming trend in employees and how this will affect the profit and competitiveness of businesses. The research is thorough and validated as well as practical and easy to understand. This book has to be considered a must read.