Are you ready to upgrade your employee experience?

Today, you can’t attend a technology conference or read a ‘tech trends’ article without being bombarded by references to the customer experience. And, of course, CX is important. It is crucial organizations strive to delight their customers and make it easier and attractive to consume more products and services. So understandably, organizations are looking at the contributing factors to a good customer experience.

Historically, many organizations approached good customer experience with ‘the customer is always right,’ but there is a growing acceptance that it’s your people who will pass on your culture to the customer in the first instance. They’re the torch carriers and toastmasters for your brand, and, in a world where it’s almost impossible to compete on price, the service they provide both internally and externally will be one of your primary sources of success.

However, we live in a hugely disruptive time for the employer-employee relationship. Digitization and flexible working mean the era of presenteeism, the commuting grind, and the expectation of nine-to-five, five days per week are going, going, gone. And there are other disruptive effects: changes in leadership and mergers and acquisitions are occurring more rapidly than ever. No wonder people feel discomforted and even afraid.

In a changing world that can often appear disconcertingly unfamiliar and scary, employees need employers to step up. They want a balanced, healthy life, but they also want to respect the soul of the organization. Is it ethical and sustainable? When the chips are down, can it be relied on to do the right thing? Does it foster its people, and is it attentive to culture and nuance?

Giving people the right tools and environment to be effective will generate tangible benefits. A Gartner® report states that: “employees with a high-quality UX are at least 1.5 times more likely to have high levels of work effectiveness, productivity, intention to stay, and discretionary effort.” Also, Gartner adds that: “over half of employees (55%) say that whether they can work flexibly will impact whether they stay at their organizations.”

The ongoing phenomenon of the Great Resignation, which has seen millions of people quit their jobs during the pandemic, has shown that we can’t take employee loyalty for granted. Employee satisfaction is critical, so we need to review more often and build more touchpoints that allow people to check in. The annual review is dead, long live regular dialogue and discussion.

It’s also critical that managing people, dismissed as “the job of HR”, is a board-level issue. Ventana Research, in its article Improving the Employee Experience and Internal Mobility for Workforce Agility, stresses the particular importance of HR working in lockstep with Finance to harmonize financial and people goals. Certainly, the company that is not regularly taking the pulse of how people feel about their work is one that is taking big risks with its assets and its brand.

Especially in the case of in-demand groups such as talented knowledge workers, when people feel disappointed by their employers, demotivated, uninspired, or under-rewarded, they will walk. But it’s easy to talk a good game about EX and harder to live it. The trend of hybrid working is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it offers employers the chance to provide staff with greater options for flexibility and work-life balance. On the other, there is a risk that it loosens some of the ties that bind company culture. That includes a sense of companionship, being on a shared mission with people who hold similar values, and the feeling of a collaborative culture where the value of the workforce exceeds the sum of the individual efforts.

EX and getting hybrid working right is a test of organizational resilience but an opportunity too. Startups addressing EX are attracting interest and money – look at funding for companies such as Leena AI, Whistle, and Winningtemp. For organizations ready to reengineer, there is scope to excel and build teams of people that are fulfilled, able to give the best of themselves, and provide positive referrals for others.

This is a golden age for employees who constantly upskill themselves, for example, through online courses to make themselves even more attractive job candidates. The best employers won’t fear this and will encourage learning velocity while understanding the need for “skills within skills” and seeking people with soft skills and ‘E-shaped’ all-rounders who offer experience, execution and expertise but are also willing to explore and learn.

Today at progressive organizations, the employee experience is being reimagined from hiring and onboarding onwards. We are seeing the interviewing process reduced from a five- or six-stage process to two or three stages. More automation, AI, and Machine Learning may hone this further soon.

We also need to listen more and understand that if people are underperforming or unfulfilled, then internal mobility can be highly desirable. Continuous learning opportunities can present the chance for colorful careers, even without ever quitting a company.

Conversely, we also need to think about what stays constant. We know that many people seek stability in such turbulent times. Stability needn’t be a negative so long as people feel fulfilled and part of the crew on the organization’s journey and treated as individuals. That means having line managers with strong emotional quotients who can understand nuance and know when people are having bad times and react accordingly. Feedback and non-invasive monitoring can help us stay on track.

Of course, table stakes such as salary still need to be competitive, but increasingly the onus will be on employers to go further than simple compensation and reward schemes. People need to be positively challenged and their enthusiasm piqued from job application to leaving day, where there remains vast scope for feedback, consultancy, alumni networks, and goodwill to be maintained. If we allow stagnation and inertia to rule, we lose out.

Technology is our friend here. We can screen and make better use of the interview process through automation, so we spend more time talking to the inner person than laboriously checking CV minutiae. We can set goals that both sides can see and simplify everyday rote tasks such as managing expenses, business travel, and time off.

Change is never easy, but the alternative is far worse. So, consider how you bring more transparency to managing, and listening to, people. Run festivals of learning and ensure people know that not every project has to be successful, but it must be educational. Think about how you equip people with business skills but also the life skills that make them rounded individuals. Consider how leaders communicate, when and how often, but also how you can best receive honest (not always positive) feedback. Of course, it is also critical that once leaders have received feedback, they are seen to act on it. People love being asked their point of view but just as quickly disconnect when they feel they have not been heard and no changes materialize as a result of their feedback.

These are challenging times but exciting ones too. We are living through a revolution: choose to take advantage of that.