Steve Jobs is known for his obsession with user experience, simplicity, attention to detail, and his desire to see his ideas through to the very end, and he was never short of words on the subject. But what would he say about employee experience?
The other day, friends and I were talking about people we’d like to have met once in our lives, or interviewed. It was interesting, sometimes amusing, and some surprising ideas even came up, whether in terms of the person/subject mix or the words we would have put in their mouths.
And then I thought “why not? Trying to put yourself in a person’s shoes and guessing what they’d say on a subject isn’t much dumber and certainly intellectually more interesting than making a list of 10 tips with a bulleted list and a catchy title (How the web impoverishes its authors and readers).
So, with all due respect, I decided to start with Steve jobs.
Me: Steve…do you mind if I call you Steve…? you’ve revolutionized the customer experience. Do you think the same principles can be applied to the employee experience?
Steve Jobs: Absolutely. Employees are the lifeblood of any business. If you don’t nurture their experience, how can you expect them to be able to create an exceptional customer experience?
That’s what the president of Mercedes-Benz USA said a long time ago: ” You can’t have an exceptional customer experience with miserable employees ” (Mercedes Benz CEO: Customer Experience is the New Marketing).
The limit of your customer experience is your employee experience! It’s called symmetry of attentions , and you should know it because it was invented in France by the Académie du Service in the 2000s.
What’s more, it’s simple: a good employee experience is like a product design: it has to be intuitive, fluid and inspiring. (How do you recognize a good employee experience?)
Me: Precisely, how would you define a good employee experience?
Steve Jobs: A good employee experience is when each individual feels that they have a role to play, that their work is meaningful, and that they have the right tools to succeed.
It’s feeling that your business is creating the human and organizational context in which you can succeed, rather than being a drag on your heels (The employee experience: a transformation lever at the service of performance).
It’s about designing an environment where friction is minimized and employees can focus on what they do best: innovating, collaborating, solving problems.
We often tend to think that the employee experience is just about perks or a nice office, but it’s not. A good experience is when everything, from the recruitment process to the digital tools and the business culture, its processes and organization, is designed with the same care as the design of an iPhone.
To quote you, because I’ve read carefully what you’ve written on the subject: “The employee experience isn’t about putting a spa next to the torture room, it’s about knocking down the torture room“. (There is a difference between “at work” and “in work”. and The flow of work, glass ceiling of the employee experience).
Me: You talk about design applied to the employee experience. Can you give us an example?
Steve Jobs: Of course. Take work tools, for example. Most businesses bombard their employees with complicated, poorly integrated software that slows them down more than it helps (A complicated IT experience. Irritant #7 of the Employee Experience) At Apple, we’ve always believed that technology should be an enabler, not a barrier. That’s why, even internally, we’ve always sought to simplify processes, to eliminate unnecessary steps (The organizational complication: the #1 irritant of the employee experience
).
But it’s not just a question of software. Complicated software is a symptom of complicated organization and processes. And in the end, it creates complicated minds who, by dint of fighting organizational debt, stop working and create nothing (How to Tackle the Biggest Threat to Your Team’s Growth).
It’s also in the way you communicate. If your employees have to guess what the business expects of them, then you’ve failed.
Good employee experience design starts with clarity: clear objectives, shared values, and an inspiring vision (What is the employee experience all about?)
And it ends with clear communication. Have you seen my keynote slides? Makes a change from your CEO’s unreadable bullet points, doesn’t it? But remember that in order to achieve this, I had to create our own software, because the so-called market leader’s product only allowed messages to be passed with the culture that was embodied in it. Complicated to create and therefore difficult to understand.
Me:What would you say to managers who are reluctant to invest in employee experience, believing that it has no direct impact on the bottom line?
Steve Jobs: I’d tell them they’ve missed the point. When you invest in employee experience, you’re investing in the quality of your product, in your innovation, in your relationship with your customers, in your operational excellence (Experience is the new name for quality and is the result of operational excellence
, Knowledge workers, the excluded from operational excellence? and The open space is not a factory but sometimes you should look at it that way). Businesses that neglect their employees often see that neglect reflected in their products and services.
Look at what we’ve done at Apple. We’ve always sought to attract the best talent, not just by offering competitive salaries, but above all by giving them an environment where they can flourish and do their best work. They want to feel that the business is there to create the working environment that enables them to succeed, without having to fight with the organization to do so.
People want to feel proud of what they do. And that pride translates directly into the quality of what you offer the world, which is only as good as what you offer your employees.
Me: You’ve often talked about the importance of simplicity. How does this apply to the employee experience?
Steve Jobs: Simplicity is the elimination of everything that doesn’t serve a clear purpose. In the employee experience, this means eliminating unnecessary policies, complex processes, and tools that only create frustration (How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated). In short, the fight against organizational debt.
Compare MacOS and its historical competitor and you’ll quickly understand.
It’s also about simplifying the way employees work together. For example, at Apple, we’ve always had small teams dedicated to specific projects. No endless meetings with 50 people. You put the right people in the room, define a clear objective, and give them the freedom to execute (Employees must follow the processes. Are you sure? and How to love control and not be a burden to yourself and your teams?). That’s simplicity applied to the employee experience.
Me: Many businesses are talking about agility and innovation. How do you think they can foster this through the employee experience?
Steve Jobs: Agility and innovation come from an environment where people feel free to take risks, where they know they won’t be penalized for failing. It’s a question of culture. But this culture cannot be imposed; it has to be lived at every level.
And that starts with trust. You can’t micromanage people and expect them to be creative. You have to give them autonomy, but also tools and processes that allow them to focus on what really matters. And above all, you have to show them that their work has an impact. Innovation is about passion. And passion can only exist in an environment designed for it.
You know, passion is like engagement: employees don’t make decisions by pressing an on/off button, you have to understand their personal motivations and give them reasons to be engaged, to be passionate, and then everything follows (Employee Engagement: Illusion of Performance or Real Impact?).
It’s like designing the iPhone: we started from what the user wanted to do with the technology, without trying to make a rich product and ask them to love it.
Me: If you had to give just one piece of advice to managers on how to improve the employee experience, what would it be?
Steve Jobs: Focus on people and what they need to achieve, and the rest flows from there. Too often, businesses get lost in KPIs and processes that are disconnected from the reality of employees. Talk to them. Understand their frustrations, their ambitions, their needs (Improving a team’ s work: a story of continuous improvement and Change and transformation need a new approach). And then design everything around them.
It’s like a product: you don’t create something because it’s cool or because your competitors are doing it. You do it because it meets a real need, in the most elegant and intuitive way possible. Do the same for your employees, and you’ll be surprised at the results.
Me: Steve, do you think the employee experience should belong to human resources?
Steve Jobs: That’s an excellent question. My view is that employee experience shouldn’t be confined to a specific department, although HR obviously plays a key role. Employee experience should be a responsibility shared by the whole company.
Executives, managers, product teams, even the IT department – everyone must contribute to creating an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration and well-being. HR can be the custodian of the HR vision and processes, but it can’t do everything on its own, if only because it doesn’t have a hand in everything that has to do with processes and work organization (From employee experience to operational excellence: HR not so well equipped!).
At Apple, for example, every manager was responsible for ensuring that his or her teams had the tools and resources they needed to excel. This wasn’t “HR’s job”; it was ours, as leaders. For me, that’s where the real difference lies: in the collective will to design an exceptional employee experience, regardless of your role in the organization, and the closer you are to the concrete dimension of work and daily life, the greater your impact.
Me: Thank you for this fascinating exchange, Steve.
Steve Jobs: Thank you. Remember: your employees are your first customers. Design an exceptional experience for them, and they’ll create exceptional experiences for your customers while being much more efficient.
Ah, before we finish… one more thing.
Creating an exceptional employee experience isn’t just about culture or tools. It’s about respect. Respect for the talents, for the time, and for the humanity of every person who works with you.
Imagine a world where every employee gets up in the morning, not with anxiety about the day ahead, but with enthusiasm for contributing to something bigger than themselves. That’s the world we’ve tried to build at Apple.
And do you know what? It can be done. But only if you’re willing to ask your teams one simple, powerful question, every day: “How can I help you do your best?”
Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about numbers or market share. It’s about leaving a lasting impact – on your employees, on your customers, and, why not, on the world.
Never forget: great businesses are built not just on products, but on people.
Me: Once again, thank you Steve.
NB: as I never had the chance to meet Steve Jobs, you’ll have to forgive me for some possible discrepancies and approximations with his life, personality and reality, even if I’ve done my best to document it. But you’re never safe from his famous reality distortion field, even if you try to use it yourself.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he had no interest in the subject of employee experience, but it was interesting to wonder what he would have said if he had.
Image : Tom Coates