“Employee Experience is Truly New Wine in New Bottles”

Many HR professionals recognize the importance of a good Employee Experience (EX), but they often struggle with how to effectively address this topic within their organizations. Experts Heleen Mes from HXWork and Renate Hezemans from Welliba explain why investing in EX is crucial and how to make significant progress in this area.

According to research by Welliba and HXWork, 55% of HR professionals in the Netherlands state that EX is a high priority. But why is it such an important topic? Heleen Mes, founder of HXWork, points to several underlying factors.

“Firstly, it’s a continuation of the focus on customer experience. It quickly became clear that if you don’t ensure your employees are happy and well, you can’t deliver a good customer experience. A second factor is the tight labor market, where employers want to present their best selves. Additionally, there’s the rising incidence of burnout and employee turnover.”

Why Invest in Employee Experience?

Renate Hezemans, employee experience expert and country leader at Welliba in the Netherlands, agrees. “Caring for employee well-being is extremely important. Absenteeism and mental stress are on the rise. You need to get the most out of the people you have. If they drop out or leave, you have a problem.”

“We need to rethink how we approach being an employer. We need to become better workplaces to attract and retain people.”

There are other factors making EX a key issue. Mes continues, “We also have younger generations entering the workforce who no longer accept traditional employer-employee relationships. Moreover, with the retirement age increasing, people are staying in their jobs longer, and they need to reach the finish line in good health. All these factors mean we need to do things differently; we need to rethink how we approach being an employer. We need to become better workplaces to attract and retain people.”

Hezemans adds, “You really can’t afford not to invest in employee experience.”

Employee Experience Stuck in the Starting Phase

Despite the high priority HR professionals place on employee experience, they are not particularly satisfied with how EX is being implemented in their organizations. Dutch HR professionals rate their organizations an average of 6.4 out of 10 in this area. “They find it important but don’t really know what to do or how to approach it,” says Hezemans. “That’s where it often stalls.”

“Organizations often get stuck in the strategy formulation and data collection phases. Our advice is to just start and start small. Focus on something with the most urgency or something that’s easy to improve. Small, visible improvements build trust that something is being done with the feedback given.”

The research shows that a quarter of organizations are still in the orientation phase or have no plans at all. More than half have taken some EX initiatives, and 17% consider themselves advanced or very advanced. “That means about 80% still need to make significant progress,” says Mes. “I see this more as a starting point, a baseline. But we shouldn’t stay at that baseline for too long.”

Interestingly, these findings are almost identical to those from 2022, when the same study was conducted. Despite the awareness that EX is important, there hasn’t been much progress. Mes notes, “Organizations find it difficult to make the necessary strides. Many are trying to achieve new results using traditional methods. That doesn’t work.”

Is EX HR’s Responsibility?

EX tasks are usually assigned to the HR department. According to Hezemans, HR should indeed be involved in employee experience, at least in the role of a coordinator. EX is, however, a multidisciplinary responsibility, intersecting with various departments, with HR, communications, facilities, and IT often being the most involved.

“HR is often the driving force. It’s about people, it touches on turnover, absenteeism, well-being, and listening to employees. These are naturally HR topics.”

The research shows that HR professionals are strong in fostering connectedness, making them the ideal candidates to bring departments and employees together in managing EX. “HR is often the driving force. It’s about people, it touches on turnover, absenteeism, well-being, and listening to employees. These are naturally HR topics.”

Getting Started with EX

So, what can HR do to improve employee experience? According to Mes, it starts with truly understanding the difference between employee experience and traditional HR. “It’s about knowledge, about understanding that different perspectives and methods are required. In practice, I see that this isn’t going smoothly yet. Organizations think they understand it, but they’re really just putting old wine in new bottles. But employee experience is genuinely new wine in new bottles.”

Effective EX management requires a new mindset with new methods and tools: EX-design. This method, derived from design thinking, has already proven its worth in areas such as user design and customer design. EX-design incorporates the best insights from marketing, user design, and positive psychology, supported by a wide range of techniques. EX-design puts the employee and their needs at the center.

The research shows that organizations are still struggling to systematically shape their EX policies. It seems that HR may not yet have the necessary skills and tools.

Appointing an EX Expert

Hezemans advocates for having an EX expert within organizations. Employee experience is quite different from ‘regular’ HR. “When someone takes on EX as part of a broader set of responsibilities, the question is whether they can devote enough time to it and give it the priority it deserves. Additionally, it’s important to consider whether they have the right knowledge and skills. An EX expert can also manage the program across departments. That’s often difficult if they have many other tasks and responsibilities.”

“You see that organizations making significant progress in employee experience often have a specific EX role within the organization.”

Mes agrees. “You see that organizations making significant progress in employee experience often have a specific EX role within the organization. That helps because you need knowledge, experience, and a coordination point to move forward.”

Consider Context and Personal Factors

When evaluating employee experience, Welliba focuses on how employees can bring out the best in themselves and what organizations can do to help their employees achieve this. It’s about the interaction between the employee’s characteristics and the context in which they work.

Personal factors include subjective well-being, such as feelings of calm, positivity, and vitality. It also includes whether the employee experiences meaning and personal development and has personal resources like optimism, self-esteem, and connectedness. Contextual factors include job content, strategy, culture, and communication.

It’s valuable to consider the combination of personal characteristics and context, as both aspects influence the experience, says Hezemans. “For example, the workload employees experience is often influenced by factors partly related to the individual, such as focus and calmness, and partly by the environment. Workload can be objective: there’s too much work for the current capacity. But workload can also be subjective: some employees experience it while others in the same role do not.”

“Since high workload can lead to absenteeism, it’s crucial to understand the underlying factors. If you don’t understand the interplay between personal and contextual factors, you might take actions that have no effect.”

Predicting Business Outcomes

These different factors can also help in predicting risks, such as turnover and absenteeism. If employees are leaving the organization or absenteeism is increasing, it’s often too late to take action. Therefore, it’s important to start improving the employee experience in a timely manner.

“Research and literature show that a certain interplay of personal and contextual factors can reliably predict whether someone is likely to leave the organization within six months,” says Hezemans. For example, a lack of focus and purpose as personal factors can increase the risk of turnover, while context-related factors such as the immediate manager, communication, and team dynamics can have a significant impact.

“If you’ve measured the EX factors (personal and context) for a particular group of employees, you can use that data to assess whether the risk is high or low for that group. If the risk is high, you can identify the reasons behind it. What makes the risk so high? Once you know that, you can take action and measure the impact of your interventions.”