The Employee Experience Advantage

CHAPTER 16The Starbucks Model of Transparency

As you think about employee experiences, you might realize that the larger the organization becomes, the more ideas, feedback, and experiences you have to create. If your organization has 5,000 employees and half of them are contributing ideas or providing feedback regularly, that's still many thousands of ideas a year. What about an organization with 10,000 employees, 100,000 employees, or 300,000 employees? All of a sudden things can get a little bit out of control, and the employee experience design loop model starts to break down. Then what's the solution? How can an organization listen to the ideas of many thousands of people and then implement those ideas regularly? The answer is it can't. At least not yet. In the future as we start to see more AI in the workplace, organizations will be able to deliver an amazing amount of customized experiences. Software will “know” all employees, what they care about, what they value, what they want, and what they need individually. That type of granular view of employees is just not possible or practical today. You've heard of all sorts of smart things, such as the Nest Thermostat that knows when you're home, what temperature you like and when, what time you go to sleep, and what overall temperature conditions you prefer your home to be in. Well what if we took that concept and applied it to how you work? AI that knows how you work better than you do!

For many years Starbucks has been a prime ...