Enhancing Employee Experience. Molly Workman’s Journey with The Emotional Culture Deck

Molly Workman, with her rich background in People and Culture at RUSH and now leading at Air New Zealand, has shared her comprehensive journey with The Emotional Culture Deck. This video captures Molly’s innovative use of The ECD across various aspects of her role, illustrating the deck’s versatility in fostering workplace connections and psychological safety.

At the heart of her strategy is the daily use of the ECD for team check-ins, a practice that has become essential in building and maintaining trust. Molly recalls her initial experience with the ECD during a leadership team meeting following a significant restructuring at RUSH. This period saw many redundancies, creating a tense atmosphere that required rapid trust-building among the remaining team members. The ECD proved to be the fastest way to achieve this, highlighting its effectiveness in difficult situations.

Molly has utilised The ECD beyond internal team dynamics, applying it to improve the candidate experience during the recruitment and onboarding process. Identifying that candidates were undergoing a less-than-ideal journey, she embarked on mapping out the candidate experience using human-centered design principles. Through workshops with The ECD, Molly and her team explored each step of the candidate journey, identifying current emotions felt by candidates at various touchpoints. This introspective process allowed them to pinpoint areas for positive intervention, ultimately aiming to design an ideal emotional journey for candidates joining RUSH.

The project underscored the power of The ECD in providing a reality check, reminding teams of the core emotional needs and expectations of both employees and candidates. Molly’s approach demonstrates a proactive stance on designing work experiences that not only meet operational needs but also foster a supportive and understanding environment. Her advice to others considering The ECD is to embrace experimentation and the natural uncertainty that comes with trying something new, emphasising that there’s always an opportunity to learn and adapt.