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The employee experience at Gap vs. Apple
Comparing the employee experience at big brands:
At Gap my chief duty was to fold clothing that had been unfolded by customers ... felt like an eternity. This was also true of working at Enterprise rental car and Starbucks, where all of our movements were measured and monetized. Perceptions of time, I found, are closely linked to the employees' feeling of freedom: The more constrained the environment, the slower things moved, and the less happy employees were.In contrast, work at the Apple Store was set up so you were focused on accomplishing goals, not filling up time.
Guess which environment has the best customer experience.
Happy employees = better customer service = happy customers. Does that still ring true these days?
Our web production group works in Agile, every two weeks we release our updates (and its here again today, yay) so we bring doughnuts and have a sense of accomplishment regularly thrust upon us. Other unnamed groups here work for months on a project that arrives looking very different from what the developers thought they were making and with little or no favorable response from the end user, if the project ever gets finalised. It must be hard working in the mines.
Mark,
I regularly enjoy reading your feeds and this is a great little nugget. Just wanted to say keep up the good work and thanks for it!