Do you have a favorite place to shop? Take a moment to imagine it. What does it look like? How does it feel? Whether it’s a farmer’s market, a home improvement center, or the storefront of a luxury brand, we don’t just shop there for what we buy. We love the carefully-curated experience, designed to be memorable. It’s the little touches that make a customer experience unique and keep shoppers loyal. That’s what customer experience strategy is all about.

Editor’s note: Tech decisions can set the tone for how employees experience belonging, especially in distributed workforces. Successful leaders often cultivate company culture through digital workplace experiences. CIOs enjoy an outsized role influencing company culture, even before employees or customers are onboarded. “I hold the keys to the experience that every employee has,” said Colleen Berube, CIO and SVP Operations at Zendesk.

The notion that we can return to the office as it once was—is flawed. As people question whether the office is a thing of the past, we must consider what the office of the future could look like. To do that, we must first acknowledge the flaws and gaps that existed in the workplace prior to the pandemic. Work-related stress and burnout were at an all-time high. Density of space was at capacity. Daily commuting was polluting the planet and draining our energy.

Editor’s note: Top-down initiatives can set the tone for how employees experience diversity and belonging, especially in distributed workforces. Successful leaders often cultivate inclusivity through digital workplace experiences. While remote work offers an opportunity to make the workplace more diverse, equitable and inclusive, there are also significant hurdles to overcome to ensure no one is left behind.

The term employee experience (EX) has been a trending buzzword over the last few years. But what exactly does it mean? From attracting talent to onboarding your new employees, and all the way to when an employee leaves the company–the EX considers every interaction during an employee’s life cycle. This includes the employee’s role, workspace, manager relationships, and overall well-being. The EX is a golden circle that makes both employees and employers successful.

Everyone, at some point, learns the importance of constructive feedback or criticism when they need to give it to someone at work. Whether a colleague deleted that spreadsheet you worked on for three weeks or a co-worker always speaks over you in Zoom meetings, the day of reckoning will arrive. Are you ready? Do you know how to approach a sticky situation with grace?

What does a movie about baseball have to do with digital transformation strategy? If you’ve ever seen the film, Money Ball, it’s the story of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A‘s baseball team, who’s charged with a Herculean task—building a winning baseball team on a shoestring budget. But since he’s pretty good at math, he pioneers the field of sabermetrics—the empirical analysis of baseball stats to find players with untapped potential.

As far back as 776 B.C., Olympic athletes competed in ancient Greece for fame, honor, and glory. City-states used the Games to assert influence and importance. Do you know what the only official reward for winning in the ancient Olympics was? A crown of olive leaves. Not as valuable of an award as you might think for one of the biggest events in the ancient world. Not that we think you should reward your Employee of the Month with an olive wreath.

Whether you view email newsletters as a valuable vehicle for company-wide updates or as noise that weighs down your inbox, the fact is that email isn’t going away, and neither is using email newsletters for internal communications. If your primary method of employee communication is by email or email newsletters, you’re not alone.

The term ’digital transformation‘ is a lot like love. It means different things depending on who you ask. IBM, a long-standing technology leader, offers this mouthful: “us AI, automation, hybrid cloud and other digital technologies to leverage data and drive intelligent workflows, faster and smarter decision-making, and real-time response to market disruptions.” Still kind of nebulous, huh?