How Patagonia’s employee experience comms cut through the noise

Employee experience is key to your company’s sense of culture and supporting recruitment, retention and employer branding. But when your company needs an employee experience refresh that gets past all the noise of the day-to-day grind, it’s a good idea to call upon the comms team to get the job done right.

At Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference, Theresita Richard, chief people and culture officer and global head of justice and belonging at Patagonia, told the audience that when her team aimed to overhaul its approach to employee experience, it started the process by embedding itself with the company’s employees.

“We immersed in stores for three weeks,” she said. “Rode the subway, met people at home, all so we could understand the lived and felt experience.”

Richard said that during Patagonia’s reimagining of its employee experience and the comms pushes that come with it, the team used a three-step process. That included:

She emphasized that in the attention phase of the revamp, Patagonia rethought how it approached clarity in employee communication — in both directions.

“We myth-busted the idea that experience work means saying yes to everything,” Richard told the audience. “Clarity helped us say no to low-impact asks and a more powerful yes to what matters.”