It’s an exciting time to join Forrester as a customer experience (CX) culture analyst. My colleagues are thought leaders at the forefront of both CX and the employee experience (EX). As we build the case that great EX leads to better CX, we also want to arm you with the right tools to lead change within your own organizations.

Most work environments and cultures have seen their share of poorly designed tools, processes, and policies. Employee personas help in the experience design process for everything from hiring, onboarding, and training to productivity. Don’t assume that the standard template will tell an inspiring story, and drive your designers and decision makers to take action. My latest report, Create Employee Personas To Power EX Strategy, discusses research, design, validation, utilization, and management considerations to make your personas most helpful in achieving your goals. The idea is to design the work from the employee’s perspective first, rather than forcing employees to fit themselves to the experience.

A report is only as good as the examples that support it. We highlighted how firms designed personas with intention to fight guesswork and mixed priorities that lead to employee experiences that are bad for employees and, ultimately, bad for business. Check out the report for the images of employee personas provided by:

  • Qualtrics. Qualtrics used cross-device data collection capabilities to collect employee data through email surveys, in-dealership kiosks, and tablets for an automotive client. In creating personas to solve for call center attrition at a client organization, it brought customer service leaders and customer experience teams into a room together to agree on the story that the employee personas should tell.
  • projekt202. projekt202 conducted observations and interviews in a client’s fertility clinic to diagram fertility coaches’ workflow. The workflow illustrated how much coaches have on their plates and what led to cumbersome processes that detracted from giving patients the best care. The consultancy conducted employee research and determined key modes that coaches switch between as they navigate their workflow. Submodes, or “modes of working,” further detailed the needs to meet to improve employee experiences.

I’m excited to cover a range of CX culture topics this year, including profiling successful CX executives, looking at characteristics of CX teams, and walking through CX transformation case studies.

I talk about a few of the research projects that are underway on Forrester’s The CX Cast.