Philip Bayne-Jardine, National Manager Client Solutions at Davidson HR Consulting has been attending the Qualtrics X4Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah this week. Philip and the Davidson HR and Consulting team are a fully accredited member of the Qualtrics partner network and together they can help employers enhance their workplaces. 

Philip talks here about some of the learnings he has taken away so far from the X4 summit.

Being part of the Qualtrics Partner Network has already been phenomenally successful and having the opportunity to come to Salt Lake City and be a part of the Qualtrics X4 event has been a privilege and I'm very grateful to Davidson for enabling me to have this experience.

So, what have I learned? Well, I learned that although Utah is Republican, Salt Lake City has a lot of love for President Barack Obama. And you can see why. His poise, humility, candour and humour make for an amazing story teller that captured and held the audience of 10,000’s attention for the best part of an hour.  Hearing how he moved on from losing a congressional race to run for senate, recognising that if he won that he would become a national figure which would increase his book sales and maybe get a new book contract. Because at the time, he was broke and needed to find a way to provide for his family whilst seeking out his ambitions. At the time it seemed to Michelle that this was a bit of a “magic beans" approach to solving their financial and career challenges, but President Obama's self-belief and positive outlook meant that they achieved his vision and so much more.

As Ashton Kutcher said earlier in the morning, unbridled enthusiasm combined with hard work and tenacity can help you achieve or overcome anything. Ashton combined this message with one of responsibility, the responsibility to “wake up to yourself" and bring your whole self to every day, responsibility to fight for what is right, and the responsibility to fight for those that can't fight for themselves. A life fulfilled is a life of hard work, gratitude and social responsibility.

Sir Richard Branson reflected on his entrepreneurism being driven by frustration, and how if you're going to topple a giant of industry you better make sure that your product is significantly differentiated from the competition. Sir Richard highlighted how important it is to make your employees feel valued and how actively listening to your employees and acting on the feedback will do this. And if you don't, your people will leave.

The insights from Zillow, Qualtrics, Buzzfeed and other speakers shared some common threads. The speakers said that if you want to know how to improve workplace performance you need to funnel your efforts into the areas that matter to you most. An active listening strategy must be established to understand what has the most meaning for your people and if you can do this and consistently act on the feedback ,  you will always get a greater response than simply doing what you think is needed. This approach will turn your employees into highly engaged ambassadors that want to work hard for you every day.

They also reinforced the importance of listening to your employees. This should start when they are candidates and the expectations set during the attraction and selection process need to be reinforced during the first 3 months of a new employee’s tenure. It’s well known that the cost of miss-hires is about 1.5 times the salary of the person hired. When combined with the lost productivity compounded over time, the cost is even greater. As part of that, understanding “Candidate's remorse", which occurs when the experience of the new role/culture is significantly below the expectation, is vital to closing this experience gap and avoiding regrettable attrition.  

So, a lot learned and more to think on over the coming weeks.  

Looking forward to today's speakers including Bill McDermott from SAP and of course, Oprah!

If you would like to arrange to speak to Philip about enhancing workplace performance, please  click here  to register your details.