You wave a magic wand and voilà, all your employees’ work dreams come true, unleashing their best performance. As a talent leader striving to provide positive employee experiences, don’t you just wish things were that simple?
There are plenty of reasons why creating an outstanding employee experience (EX) simply isn’t that easy. For one, employee expectations are evolving at the speed of frequent industry changes and tech disruptions. And even then, sometimes they can get too caught up in the noise and lose clarity.
What does such a complex talent environment mean for you as a leader? Well, you must get past the challenges anyhow to ensure neutral or negative EX does not threaten your company’s productivity and performance.
Easily one of the most challenging aspects of the modern-day work environment, EX management saw 2023 emerge as a highly conflicting year. On one hand, companies upped their commitments to core EX drivers such as mental health cognizance and support, improved L&D opportunities, and effective diversity and inclusion. On the other hand, investments in AI, and mandates for return-to-office, made for a thumbs-down experience so much so that the term EX recession became a thing!
So what did the top talent leaders in the industry do differently to get past the general mood and drive enhanced EX? Let’s take a look.
Embracing fluidity
2023 saw intuitive talent leaders accept the new reality – employee experiences are unique to every individual as well as to the different touchpoints in their journey. They saw this as an opportunity to connect with each employee at a deeper level. Moving away from one-size-fits-all periodic employee surveys and feedback programs, they choose an always-on, omnichannel, and integrated approach. They also took it a notch higher with tailored responses and interventions, courtesy automation, and actionable insights.
For a year that saw record quiet quitting, the fluidity helped them stay ahead of the curve in tracking and transforming employee dissatisfaction. By measuring EX using more comprehensive metrics, including sentiment score, and closing the loop quickly, they were also able to succeed at business priorities. For instance, change management, a business imperative in current times, is a core contributor to employee fatigue and a less positive EX. By leveraging end-to-end EX, they were able to identify opportunities in individual employee lifecycles for introduction to change.
Monitoring the pulse of the employee
Top EX companies were also quick to understand that employee-centricity is directly correlated to smooth operations and business resilience. They invested in EX management tools such as employee pulse surveys – a quick, frequent, and potent channel to sense any shift in employee sentiment at a team and company level. This helped them identify and nip any potential threats to business productivity in good time. For instance, even as return-to-office mandates made it big, companies in sync with employee attitudes used surveys to substantiate if the timing was right. With political tensions, climate risk, and other external factors estimated to impact overall employee expectations and sentiment in 2024, this EX evolution couldn’t have happened at a more appropriate time. Already, millennials and Gen Zs are flooded with concerns about their employers making a positive impact on the world.
Getting more value out of tech
The year saw top talent leaders invest in end-to-end platforms and sentiment EX tools to directly strengthen relationships. Unlike their counterparts, they prioritized employee listening and engagement over employee lifecycle management efficiency. This approach was so rare that even in 2024, industry-wide tech investments aren’t expected to catapult EX management to the next level.
Yet, these leaders raised the bar higher in terms of showing intent and meeting the moment for employees. For instance, using AI-led chatbots for employee feedback served as an effective introduction to improved stress lifecycle management. Similarly, using NLP to arrive at sentiment scores has set the tone for understanding EX in a far more comprehensive manner – text and speech expressions even outside of structured feedback and surveys.
Clearly, 2023 was a year that challenged talent managers and leaders in terms of understanding and addressing employee expectations. And the ones who rose above it to build an EX-first ecosystem were the ones who accepted a harsh truth – periodic exercises, annual policies, and one-size-fits-all rewards won’t translate into magic. But an open and flexible EX environment centered around real-time data might just do the trick.
How? Connect with us to learn more about how our solutions are helping leaders like you transform EX and productivity.
