The 3 superpowers of employee experience!
A tight labor market, rising turnover rates averaging 20%, higher absenteeism, more mental health issues, lower recommendation of the employer, difficulty getting employees into the office – a lot is happening simultaneously in HR. Is it something to despair about? Fortunately not: in 2024, HR can play a key role by prioritizing employee experience. If the organization doesn’t get a solid 8 in the employee survey, there’s still a lot of work to be done!
Focus on the journey, not just the destination
Placing employees truly at the forefront and being an attractive employer for them is the best response to many employee-related problems. Numerous studies have shown the link between happy employees and successful organizations. Employees who feel happy, engaged, and enthusiastic put more effort into their work, their customers, and their colleagues. Both their productivity and creativity are higher, and their absenteeism is lower. Moreover, the likelihood of them leaving the organization is smaller. All of this enhances the organization’s attractiveness in the labor market.
To increase employee happiness from within the organization, focus not only on the outcome but also on the journey: improving the employee experience. “Employee experience builds on the best HR theories, methods, and practices,” says HR guru Dave Ulrich. That’s why the term employee experience is increasingly synonymous with the HR policies of the best employers. The starting point for employee experience is the perspective of the employees themselves: what do they believe is necessary to increase their engagement, enthusiasm, and productivity?
In 2024, 54.5% of HR respondents expect to spend (much) more time on employee experience
The superpowers of employee experience
Why does employee experience work so well in becoming a better employer? The superpowers of employee experience can be summarized in 3 C’s: congruence, corporate empathy, and co-creation and innovation.
Congruence
Congruence is the pursuit of consistency and harmony among all aspects of the organization. There is alignment between thinking, acting, and feeling. Congruence is like the foundation of a good building. A strong foundation in your organization reinforces identity and provides a clear message and direction. It instills confidence, and the expectations towards employees are clear. Employees thrive in such an environment. Working on employee experience means strengthening congruence and communicating it internally in an inspiring way. Employees are very good at sensing inconsistencies, which can bring about confusion, discontent, and irritation. Organizations that are unclear about their strategic goals or values, or tolerate behavior that is not appropriate, undermine employee engagement and experience.
Corporate empathy
Placing employees at the forefront can only be achieved if you can empathize with the feelings and experiences of others. That means being open to the emotions, attitudes, and motivations of others and understanding the impact your actions and behaviors from the organization can have on others. Truly listening to experiences, wanting to acknowledge and understand them. Working on employee experience means actively searching for pain points and drop-off moments and helping them move in a positive direction quickly and in small steps. This doesn’t involve biennial employee surveys or occupational health examinations; they no longer fit. Instead, it requires a ‘listening strategy’ with room for surveys, pulse surveys, employee focus groups, and data analysis. HR can also learn from marketing by utilizing tools such as working with personas, journey maps, and identifying ‘moments that matter’. This way, you achieve solutions that truly meet the needs of employees.
Co-creation and innovation
Employee experience is about working together in co-creation on innovative solutions. So, not just tapping into employees for information but collaborating through testing and feedback throughout the entire innovation process. No longer thinking for employees from a management or expert role, but leveraging the creative ideas of employees who are close to the operation. Co-creating with the end user of the intended product or service, and in co-creation with all stakeholders needed to develop, test, and maintain the solution – IT, Facility Management, Communication, managers, Works Council. This prevents solutions from not aligning with the needs of employees, causing resistance among uninvolved stakeholders, and ultimately wasting efforts and money.
HR can be more initiative and activist
What does putting employees first mean for HR? To truly make it happen, HR can lead with a higher ambition. HR can be more initiative and activist: precisely in these times, the organization needs HR. Too many HR employees indicate that the bottleneck to do things differently lies with their own HR management. So, let go of ‘requested and unsolicited advice’ and a passive attitude. Change course!
Be the pioneer and proactively get started. Make the transition to delivering products and services created in co-creation. Exchange generic HR advisory roles for project teams and employee experience architects that will make a difference in 2024! As Simon Sinek says: “Dream big, start small. But most of all, start!”
