Most of us relish a challenge, and something to get our teeth stuck into. Just look at the way engagement levels rose at the beginning of the pandemic when it was all-hands-on deck. Our research into what makes a great experience at work highlighted ‘challenge’ as a key component featuring in those times when we thrive. But why is it that challenge at work is fundamental to a great experience?
Challenges require problem-solving, challenge brings novelty, and demands personal growth. Challenges provide us with intrinsic motivation. Building experiences with an element of challenge into workplace practice, engages the essence of employee wellbeing in organisational culture. An EX with right amount of stretch provides opportunity for personal development, and freedom to tackle challenges features in our best experiences.
We know that a compelling experience elicits positive emotions, but our research shows that great experiences aren’t without challenge – or sometimes even pain. We never hear anyone say an experience was their best because it was easy, and required no effort. Most often our best experiences involve overcoming challenges, solving problems, and some kind of personal growth. There are a few ways we can look at both understanding this finding and applying the learning to the way we design EX.
The idea of ‘pain is good’ within customer experience has been around for a while. Have you ever heard about the IKEA effect? It’s a cognitive bias that occurs when consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they have partially created. Researchers from Harvard, Yale and Duke University discovered that self-assembly impacts the evaluation of a product by its consumers. Their findings suggest that when people use their own efforts to make something, they value it more than if they didn’t put any effort into its creation – even if it is done poorly! While there are probably very few people who would describe assembling flat-pack furniture as a positive experience, the outcome of such an experience can elicit positive emotions.
It’s not just about the experience itself, but how it ultimately makes you feel and the lasting impact on you. Just think about those people who describe running a marathon as a compelling experience. Once again let’s use the lens of the ‘best experiences’ stories to understand this phenomenon. Firstly involvement and autonomy often feature in these stories. Our research has shown that involvement and autonomy are significant elements of a great EX. If an EX facilitates autonomy and features employee involvement, employees are more likely to value it. Secondly, as we know, best experience stories very often involve an element of challenge, problem solving or difficulty. We’re not advocating you design painful experiences necessarily, but these ideas are useful to keep in mind as you develop EX. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that good, or positive, equals easy, and this is not often the case.
What is interesting is that, broadly speaking, experiences which relate to hygiene factors tend to be more positive if they are easy and straightforward. So for example, getting paid on time, having the tools to do my job, being able to find colleagues contact details, accessing my place of work – these are experiences that work best when they are easy, seamless and almost invisible. However, those experiences which link to motivator factors are more likely to require an element of challenge, and, or mastery. For example delivering a project, working with a great team, even onboarding in a new role.
It’s likely that as practitioners, we will be involved in the design of experiences which cover both hygiene and motivator factors. Let’s take the example of onboarding into a new role or organisation. Having the right kit and access on day one of employment is hygiene. These experiences should be simple, straight forward and easy. But those elements of onboarding which relate to motivator factors such as being given some autonomy, involvement in work and more, should have some element of challenge. No one wants to sit there bored and twiddling their thumbs for the first few weeks of a new job.
So, whilst it might be tempting to remove friction and make things easy for our people when we design great experiences, just remember that and element of challenge is good.
