The Employee Experience How to Attract Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Results

Ever notice how companies with the best service also have the happiest employees? That’s no accident. 

Do you want to build a strong, successful organization? Start by ignoring your customers. Really. Instead, focus first on creating a better employee experience, or EX. Your employees interact with customers, make them smile, and carry your brand message from the warehouse to the front lines. If your employees are having a great experience, so will your customers.

            In The Employee Experience, employee engagement pioneers Tracy Maylett and Matthew Wride reveal the secrets not only to attracting and retaining top talent, but to building a deeply engaged workforce—the foundation of organizational success. With deep insights into the dynamics of trust and mutual expectations, this book shows that before you can deliver a transcendent customer experience (CX), you must first build a superlative EX.

With real-world examples and more than 24 million employee survey responses, Maylett and Wride reveal a clear, consistent pattern among the world’s most successful organizations. By establishing a clear set of expectations and promises—collectively known as the Contract—and upholding it consistently, employers can build the trust that leads to powerful engagement.

Whether in business, healthcare, education, sports, or nonprofit, these organizations are consistently more successful and more profitable, enjoy sustainable growth, and win the battle to keep today’s rarest resource: talented people. Blending rigorous research, detailed case studies, in-depth interviews and expert insights, The Employee Experience will teach you to:

• Make the employee experience a core part of your strategy
• Understand employee expectations and bridge the “Expectation Gap”
• Establish rock-solid Brand, Transactional, and Psychological Contracts that breed trust and confidence
• Build an employee-employer partnership in creating something extraordinary
• Turn employee engagement into fuel for customer satisfaction, profit, and growth

Attracting talent, retaining top performers, and creating an environment in which employees choose to engage drives results. The Employee Experience shows you where truly extraordinary organizations begin…and how to build one. 

TRACY MAYLETT, Ed.D, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO of DecisionWise, where he currently advises leaders across the globe in leadership, change, and employee engagement. Maylett holds a doctorate from Pepperdine University and an MBA from BYU. He is a recognized author, and teaches in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

MATTHEW WRIDE, JD, PHR, is the COO of DecisionWise. With an extensive business background, Wride brings a fresh approach to organization development and leadership consulting. He is passionate about helping leaders create winning employee experiences. Wride holds a JD from Willamette University and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. 

For over two decades, DecisionWise has advised organizations and leaders in more than seventy countries on leadership, assessment, talent, organization development, and the employee experience. Visit us online at www.decision-wise.com.

TRACY MAYLETT, Ed.D, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO of DecisionWise, where he currently advises leaders across the globe in leadership, change, and employee engagement. Maylett holds a doctorate from Pepperdine University and an MBA from BYU. He is a recognized author, and teaches in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

MATTHEW WRIDE, JD, PHR, is the COO of DecisionWise. With an extensive business background, Wride brings a fresh approach to organization development and leadership consulting. He is passionate about helping leaders create winning employee experiences. Wride holds a JD from Willamette University and a master's degree from the University of Washington.

For over two decades, DecisionWise has advised organizations and leaders in more than seventy countries on leadership, assessment, talent, organization development, and the employee experience. Visit us online at www.decision-wise.com.

Dedication and Acknowledgements vii

Foreword ix

Introduction xi

PART I Great Expectations

1 You’re Digging in the Wrong Place 3

2 The Expectation Gap 21

3 Ask Your Doctor about Expectation Alignment Dysfunction 43

4 An Intentional Framework 67

PART II Three Contracts

5 The Brand Contract 91

6 The Transactional Contract 111

7 The Psychological Contract 131

PART III Trust

8 Moments of Truth 153

9 Engagement MAGIC® 175

10 Building the EXtraordinary 191

Appendix Comparing the Three Contracts: Brand, Transactional, and Psychological 199

Notes 201

Index 209

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