Transforming Your Employee Experience
Transforming your employee experience is just as important as transforming your customer experience
A lot has been written in the last year and a half about how the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically – and quickly – changed customer expectations about their interactions with businesses. No doubt the pandemic accelerated the already in-flight digital transformation of many businesses, most obviously those in the B2C space like restaurants and retail stores. Delivery models for healthcare and education also changed significantly, with a major uptick in the use of tele-health and online learning mediums during the pandemic.
And while we are passionate about customer experience (CX) transformation, we can’t help but notice that there’s way less talk about transforming the employee experience (EX). But with employees having more career mobility than ever before – and on the heels of a global pandemic that made many employees reassess their definition of job satisfaction – we would suggest that organizations in nearly every industry should be re-envisioning and investing in a next-generation employee experience.
In this blog, we will explain what employee experience is, why leaders of all organizations should care about EX, and how you can successfully navigate employee experience transformation.
So, what exactly is EX?
Well, for starters, we're not just talking about letting employees work remotely or implementing hybrid work environments. That is of course one “hot topic” these days (and one worth evaluating), but EX is much bigger and broader than that. Gallup nicely defines EX as “the journey an employee takes with your organization. It includes every interaction that happens along the employee life cycle, plus the experiences that involve an employee's role, workspace, manager and wellbeing.”
In other words, EX is about culture and engagement; it’s about talent management and org design; and it’s about designing and implementing processes and experiences that not only enable employees to do their jobs well, but in many cases make the work enjoyable and intuitive. Easier said than done!
Why should I care?
Talent is king. In fact, according to a study by IBM that included over 4,000 business leaders across more than 20 industries, 71% of CEOs believe that a company's talent pool is more valuable than its products, branding, and customer relationships. This is even more pronounced in the new digital economy, where employees who can keep up with the rapid pace of technology, process, and market change are not only critical to business success, but also harder to find and keep. As business management expert Jim Collins said, “the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.”
And while most business leaders understand this dynamic, actually doing something about it (other than increasing compensation) is challenging. That’s because there’s no silver bullet solution. Rather, it takes a holistic commitment to creating a best-in-class employee experience to making your company a destination for top talent. But if you succeed, you will not only avoid the costly implications of high turnover, but will also improve your brand reputation and find it easier to recruit new talent.
In light of this, here are three considerations for optimizing the employee experience.
Map and transform the employee lifecycle
Over the last decade, Customer Journey Mapping has become a hot topic, and for good reason. The practice of mapping out how and where customers interact with businesses, identifying strengths and weaknesses in that process, and leveraging the findings to develop a better customer experience has proven effective across many industries. But very few businesses take the same approach with their employee lifecycle. And I would suggest that understanding your employee journey and transforming it into a competitive advantage is now a must-do activity.
Think about all the distinct experiences your employees have with your organization and how they collectively form an employee’s perception of work. There are literally thousands of individual touchpoints in each employee’s journey. Just consider a few for reference:
What was the application process like? The interviews? The offer letter?
What was onboarding like? Do you offer ongoing professional development? Is it easy to access or a bureaucratic mess?
How healthy is the broader organizational culture? Are your team members engaged, motivated, and positive or negative and frustrated?
Are your managers well-equipped to provide coaching and professional development?
Are your tools and technologies easy to use and effective?
Are your processes and workflows intuitive and streamlined?
Do you have effective performance management processes? How do you handle compensation?
Do you have good feedback loops for your employees to help improve your organization?
Needless to say, these questions barely scratch the surface of what the employee journey encompasses. But if you take the time to assess these different aspects of the journey and optimize not only the individual components but also the holistic picture, you will develop a key competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent.
Don’t be afraid to change your org design
One key constraint for transforming the employee experience in many organizations is a legacy operating model and org design that isn’t well-suited to the new reality. Perhaps you have span-of-control issues that prevent your managers from investing in their team members’ growth and professional development. Or maybe you have siloed sales and operations teams, a structural challenge that may prevent the right level of collaboration and cross-functional cooperation needed to generate great products and services (spoiler: delivering products and services that employees are proud of is another key ingredient in being a great place to work).
Regardless of the specifics, many organizations are unable to optimize their employee experience because of legacy org design decisions. Don’t let your org structure hold you back! Rather, once you have mapped out your employee journey and identified a vision for a better employee experience, take a hard look at your org structure and redesign it for the future. Ensure you have the right collaboration across functions, the right management and leadership structures (and the right people in the right roles), and enough flexibility to evolve as your employees’ and customers’ needs change.
Develop a technology strategy that supports your talent strategy
In today’s business world, if you are a CHRO or Chief People Officer, I would suggest your best friend at work should be the Chief Information Officer. And it’s not just because that will come in handy when you have issues with your laptop!
The fact of the matter is that a technology organization’s ability to develop and enhance platforms, processes, and tools that make employees’ jobs easier is a critical component in building an excellent employee experience. More important than providing lunch for your employees or having a ping pong table in the office. More important than casual Fridays or team happy hours. And, in many cases, even more important than increasing compensation. If your employees believe they are equipped with best-in-classes tools and technologies to do what they do best, they will think twice before jumping to a competitor with an inferior technology suite.
As you think about your technology solutions and their impact on the employee experience, pay particular attention to the rise of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications within your enterprise. SaaS applications such as Cloud ERPs, CRMs, and workflow tools can generate significant IT operating expense savings via standardization and decreased in-house technology development spend. But that comes with an important tradeoff: increased standardization required by SaaS platforms means your employees may have to deal with more workaround and sub-optimal processes. This will be particularly painful if they’ve been used to highly customized in-house solutions for a long-time. That doesn’t mean you should avoid SaaS solutions altogether. It does mean, however, that HR leaders and the leaders of various business functions should be intimately involved in any IT modernization projects and should advocate for targeted customizations when they will generate valuable efficiencies and conveniences for your employees.
Wrapping up
While there’s no quick-and-easy fix for transforming your employee experience, keeping these three considerations top of mind will help you accelerate your progress in designing and implementing a top-notch employee experience. And although doing so is difficult, the investment of time and money will pay huge dividends going forward as you develop a significant competitive advantage in the war for top talent.
If you find yourself navigating the complex journey of employee experience transformation and need an external expert to advise you along the way, reach out to us. We would love to partner with you on your journey.