We have recently been hearing the terminology employee experience more often in HR forums, articles, and seminars. While very similar to employee engagement as a concept that is untenable, employee experience (EX) also does not have a clearly articulated unanimous definition.
EX is the sum of all experience an employee undergoes spanning all touchpoints of the employee life cycle in an organization entailing the formation of employee opinion/perceptions about the organization. Employee experience shall be viewed as this for the purpose of this article.
Having defined, employee experience, let us understand what drives employee experience. The factors governing the employee experience can be categorized into multiple segments. The below depiction is the acronym for WHAT (Work, Health & wellbeing, Atmosphere, Trust) which impacts the employee experience journey of an employee in an organization.
Considering the dynamic changes getting enforced or naturally happen in the workplace and with the advent of new-age technologies viz; AI, ML, RPA, etc the organizational contexts are becoming more complex requiring HR as a function to support meaningful contribution towards the organizational success.The impacting elements can be managed through two levers which requires attention from people management team viz; People and Technology to helping navigate through the factors impacting employee experience.
The people element of employee experience comprises of all factors which connects the way in which organisational softer elements operates. This would include the culture, purpose, leadership style, management philosophies, policies and practices which defines the way an organisation functions. The touch and feel factors for an employee from an interaction perspective goes into defining the people element impacting the employee experience.
Technology element enables digital experience for an employee in an organisation. Commencing from how an organisational technology supports an employee in the workplace for basic tasks completion to personalization of services using technology determines the digital experience journey for an employee.
For instance, the recent unprecedented situation warranted for employees to work from home. The people factor would be the policy design and communication pertaining to what constitutes work from home, the Do’s and don’ts, how the productivity/contribution would be treated during these times how absence management policy would be applied etc. The support in technology starting from providing the system with all access and security features, policy related questions answered by FAQs, or chatbots, digital workspaces for file sharing, communication and tasks management etc would become the experience elements from a technology perspective.
The people lever when supported with technology to help and engage employees with ease would entail enhanced employee experience.
Author: Rajesh Balasubranian
