Is the employee experience you’re delivering the one your people want?

Yet EX isn’t merely an HR issue. Forrester’s research unearthed a clear correlation between EX and long-term business value. With good experiences, teams become more agile and productive. They work harder to overcome hurdles and improve customer service. The quality of their work goes up. It means the most talented people are more likely to stay at the organization longer, and to recommend their peers join them.

Better experience outcomes have been correlated to increased revenue, an improved top and bottom line, superior customer experience, and a stronger, more competitive brand. While only 21% of organizations write EX goals into all business unit strategies, 74% of those that do find such activity to be effective. Hence, EX is very much on the C-suite and boardroom radar, with firms around the world now seeking to build comprehensive EX strategies.

The perception gap

There is, however, a problem. It seems there is a fundamental gap in perception between the employee experience that businesses think they are delivering, and the lived experience of those employees themselves. According to the Forrester survey, 39% of HR professionals believe their EX provision will be “excellent” within two years; yet only 15% of employees expect the same.

In some areas, the disconnect is pervasive, even down to what constitutes good EX in the first place. While 81% of employees believe that creating and sustaining a positive culture is important to good employee experience, only 58% of HR managers think the same. And only 54% of HR managers feel confident in being able to deliver it. And this disconnect is mirrored in most of the initiatives employees find important.

For a more specific snapshot, look at technology, the provision of which is a critical factor in how employees experience work. While 80% of HR leaders believe they’re successfully equipping employees with what they need to succeed, nearly half of employees say the tech they’re provided is difficult to use; over half say it’s lacking key features; and three quarters say the applications and data they need aren’t always accessible on desktop and mobile. 

What is behind the EX disconnect?

When we begin to dig into the root causes of these discrepancies, we unearth issues that, while pervasive, are readily repairable. The issue lies in part with perspective – many leaders are simply disconnected from the realities of work and from the realities of the people they employ to do it.

As such, the issue of insight becomes critical. The organization needs to know what its people are thinking and feeling – yet the EX data that would reveal this tends to be something that HR doesn’t have. According to the Forrester research, a third of firms don’t have a method for measuring overall EX, and others aren’t collecting and analyzing that data effectively. 

They may, for example, simply attempt to gauge employee sentiment once a year, in an annual survey. This rarely delivers insight into how people actually work, to the impact of work on life, and how they’re truly feeling. This lack of insight can have serious consequences – when HR fails to understand the levers that make the most difference to employees, dissatisfaction becomes a work feature, not a bug.

Another striking takeaway from the research was a lack of confidence among HR professionals on how to make EX better. This may come down to lacking the insights, technology and processes they need to do so; or it may be an upskilling issue, as job requirements increase and performance stakes become higher.

How to get EX right

Any organization seeking to build and deliver an effective EX program first needs the ability and latitude to collect, comprehend and apply that EX data. Listening to employees should be a business’s top priority – in order to understand them, their sentiments and their behavior.

Listening means designing consistent programs or mechanisms to collect feedback and gather information – from capturing employee interactions and mapping employee journeys, to introducing voice-of-the-employee feedback programs and ongoing employee engagement surveys. Moving from annual engagement surveys to more regular “pulsing” delivers more valuable insight.

Equally critical is that any listening should extend beyond the individual, to understanding how people in the business influence each other, examining the quality of the relationships between each person and their teams, their customers, managers and peers. This takes leaders beyond the formal processes and workflow they may expect, and gifts them an understanding of the informal networks and connections that really drive behavior. Then there are the environmental aspects of experience, including how well the organization’s tech ecosystem enables its people to do their jobs.

Through that listening, businesses can develop an understanding of the perception gap, and begin to close it by designing and implementing EX initiatives. The EX data must remain distinctly aligned with a clear understanding of what the organization wants to do and the kind of experience it seeks to offer. 

This means being clear on the cultural behaviors the organization wishes to encourage in the first place, which may require leaders to ask more fundamental questions about purpose, strategic direction and market aspirations. Then it involves looking at the individual, relational and environmental levers the organization needs to pull to deliver on that agenda. 

These are fundamental organizational considerations. As such, this is not just an HR responsibility. Instead it has to bring the broader business along on the EX journey. By getting buy-in at C-suite level, HR will be able to secure greater investment, better tools and superior headcount with which to improve EX. And to get the momentum to drive lasting change, efforts need to be coordinated across departments, from legal and finance to marketing and IT. 

More than three-quarters of HR leaders now believe EX will be one of the most important factors affecting their organization’s ability to deliver on key business objectives within the next two years, in fact 37% believe EX will be the most important factor. But the impact of any efforts to harness this opportunity will be dramatically reduced if those organizations fail to close the disconcerting gap between the experience they think they are delivering to their employees, and what people are actually receiving.

Closing that gap requires human and technical innovations that bring the organization closer to what’s actually happening with its people. New data gathering processes and structures enable them to make sense of that experience, and to align this understanding with the broader needs of the business.

It is an approach that keeps humans at the center, providing an opportunity to build a stronger culture, to retain the brightest talent, and to drive genuine long-term benefits. And while the process may present its challenges, those organizations that open the door to experience now are most likely to walk straight through to success in the future.