Instead of thinking of a traditional employee life cycle, it's more valuable and effective to think of moments that matter or moments of impact. The blurring of our personal and work lives means that these moments also transcend these boundaries. Moments that matter can include things such as your first day at work, having a child, getting promoted, buying a house, leaving the company, or anything in between. By focusing on these moments the organization is able to look at employees as whole individuals with unique experiences as opposed to just employees who are there simply to complete a job. This is what allows organizations to bring a level of personalization to the workplace. Not every organization will have the same moments that matter, but regardless of what they are, every organization can respond by doing something concerning technology, culture, or the physical work environment.

There are three categories of moments that matter, which you can see in Figure 18.1.

SPECIFIC MOMENTS THAT MATTER

These are specific moments in the life of an employee that have clear significance. They include things such as your first day on the job, buying your first house, having a child, and getting promoted. These are common moments that will most likely be shared across the majority of your workforce. Specific moments that matter are special because they don't happen all the time. They may happen all the time to your collective workforce but not to each employee.

ONGOING MOMENTS THAT MATTER

The continued relationship you have with your peers or managers would be considered an ongoing moment that matters. In other words these moments can't be clearly defined. If one day your manager shows up to work and calls an all‐hands meeting just to say thank you for a project you completed, that is not something that is planned yet can have a profound impact on your experience. Similarly, if one day your manager berates you or takes credit for your work, then that too will forever affect your experience at work but negatively. In both of these situations these moments aren't specific things that are planned or designed for. They just happen. These ongoing moments also include how employees interact with technology and the physical workspace that your organization provides.

CREATED MOMENTS THAT MATTER

Company‐wide parties, team building events, innovation challenges, or company hackathons are all a part of created moments that matter. These are moments the organization creates because they and the employees feel they are important and are oftentimes focused on a specific business need or challenge.

MOMENTS THAT MATTER AT CISCO

One of the companies pioneering the concept of moments that matter is Cisco. I spoke with its chief people officer, Francine Katsoudas, to learn more about its approach. This all started a few years ago with its Our People Deal, an employee‐created concept that outlines what Cisco stands for, what it expects from employees, and what employees can expect from the company. Listening to employees, Cisco realized each employee had different milestones and things he or she cared about that shape his or her experiences. To date, it has 11 moments that matter, each of which has various elements that fall within it. What's fascinating is that these moments came directly from employees who participated in focus groups, discussions, and surveys, during which they candidly shared which moments they cared about most during their career journey. This includes everything from an employee's first interview to his or her last day at Cisco, to celebrating one's birthday with a day off, to having five paid days off (outside of vacation time) to volunteer. In a sense these moments have become the new employee life cycle from the actual perspectives of the people who work there as opposed to how Cisco thinks the employee life cycle should look.

Although Francine and her team helped design these experiences, it is the managers whom Cisco relies on to make the employee experience the best it can be. One particular moment is owned not by a single team or person but by a cross functional team. Each moment has an executive sponsor, a team of experts, and a group of individuals working to design and continuously improve these experiences. Still, it's not as though Cisco doesn't have its own set of challenges. As an organization with over 70,000 employees around the world, making sure that the moments that matter scale across geographies and cultures is not an easy task. Investing heavily in management training and making sure that the relevant teams are global in representation are both crucial things to do.

By focusing on moments that matter, Cisco has created an agile and adaptable model. New moments can always be added or removed based on employee feedback, and each one has a robust road map that connects technology and the human touch. Later in Chapter 25 you will see exactly what these moments at Cisco are.