ICYMI, our CEO, Brad Grossman, appeared on Marketplace Morning Report with David Brancaccio to discuss an issue that is foremost in the zeitgeist: Employee experience, or EX for short.

Businesses used to be about pleasing investors first, customers second and employees last—after all, workers were paid to support an organization’s success. Now it’s about putting employees first, and making sure that the employee experience is the best it can possibly be. 

Taking employee experience into account adds up to good business. That’s because happy employees make for better customer experience. And customer experience leads to an outsized positive impact on business success.

And as we explored in ZEITGUIDE 2018, the necessity of a great work experience is only growing as our work and personal lives become more intertwined.

This new reality is no longer about work-life balance, which suggests a compartmentalized lifestyle of work and leisure, or work and family.

Instead, it may be time for what Jeff Bezos calls work-life harmony.

“Balance,” he says, “implies there’s a strict trade-off. Work is about generating energy, not depriving energy.” He adds that being a productive team member at work “makes me better at home. If I’m happy at home, it makes me a better employee, a better boss.”

Of course, not separating work from home life is the reality for many running their own companies. For everyone else, it may be important to draw a clear line between work and home, even as it becomes harder to do so. The office can be a stressful place—whether due to fear of job loss, the frustration of lengthening commutes, or the constant pressure to impress—and shaking off the anxiety of work is a growing issue.

Achieving a harmonious blend of the professional and personal, or not having employees carry the stress of the day home with them, comes down to addressing EX. Companies are looking at a new measure of future success: How happy, they want to know, are their employees?

It’s not just about ping-pong tables and kegged cold-brew coffee. It’s about operating with transparency and cooperation. That can mean instituting collaboration tools that make it possible to access the best ideas no matter who they’re coming from. More importantly, employees need to feel supported and protected when voicing concerns about the workplace.

It’s about giving employees the skills to navigate the new processes of the future, and teaching them how to thrive in a landscape transformed by AI and automation.

It’s about being in a company that not only rewards employees for their work, but also enables them to have productive lives outside of it. This might manifest itself in strict limits on emailing outside of work hours, or reducing the number meetings employees are required to attend. It means offering more robust parental leave or other family care policies.

In a competitive landscape for premier talent, addressing EX will become more and more important. “More jobs available means more competition for great employees. So it’s very important that you appeal to them in a great, amazing way, so that they choose your company as opposed to another company,” Grossman tells Brancaccio.

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