Do We Know What the “X” in Employee Experience (EX) Really Means?
Experience is an integral part of human — but how does it apply to the context of employees?
In 2013, Mark Levy, a seasoned figure in the field of Human Resource, joined Airbnb as the Global Head of Employee Experience. However, Airbnb’s concept of Employee Experience was no different than most company’s HR concept at that time — and so did its function. Albeit its name, it was mainly focused on traditional HR activities such as recruiting and implementing company’s culture in daily activities (such as internal communications and or events). The function was also scattered throughout different groups with every group reporting to different unit, which made them quite disjointed.
Airbnb is a company that is heavy on good customer experience (CX), and upon acknowledging this, Levy thought how those different HR units can be incorporated into one seamless group that enables them to deliver the same customer experience, to their employees. His defining question: “If Airbnb had a Customer Experience Group, why not create an Employee Experience Group?”. So, in 2015, the company initiated an Employee Experience (EX) campaign which focused more on how to promote positive employee experience across various HR functions in day to day activities. The campaign worked very well that they became Glassdoor’s #1 Best Place to Work in 2016.
From “Engagement” to “Experience”
The success of Airbnb’s employee experience program is a part of the story that made this concept blew up among human resource practitioners. Employee experience is currently being considered as the future of HR and employee engagement, where it might complement the traditional employee engagement function. On his book called The Employee Experience Advantage, Jacob Morgan stated that the trend of employee engagement is starting to be exhausted because of several reasons, mostly because of its ineffectiveness in addressing the root cause of engagement issue and delivering long term solution for it. According to Morgan, a lot of companies “forget to take a step back to understand what causes engagement to begin with”, as they only look at the effect but forget to look at the cause. This, according to Morgan, would often lead to off-the-cuff interventions (such as free meal or office layout change), which he called “an adrenaline shot to temporarily boost employee happiness”. It only works for limited amount of time, and after that, the effect will wear off.
Such extemporaneous approach, Morgan thought, will not work in a long run. Rather than being reactive, companies need to take a proactive approach in addressing employees’ wellness and satisfaction. The main goal is what he envisions, which is “an organization creating a place where people want to show up instead of assuming that people need to show up”. Such organization will truly be able to deliver an ultimate employee experience.
What the “X” Actually Means : Human Beings
When we are talking about employee experience (EX), we also should examine some other “Xs”, such as customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX). These “Xs” — which stands for experience— basically share the same thing: they are centered on the need fulfillment of human beings and are focused to improve human being’s overall satisfaction through integrated positive experiences. Experience is ingrained in every human, and an individual’s experience with a product or a company — be it as the customers or employees — will pretty much influence their perception of and their interaction with that company. Employees, just like customers, are human beings. When they engage in positive experience with a company, they will grow fond of that company. When they engage in negative experience, they will grow to hate it. And when an employee came to hate a company, they will leave it in no time. In other words, they will become disengaged.
The importance of connecting to employees as human beings is also what Josh Plaskoff mentioned in his article. Amongst the five principles about employee experience he proposed, his number one was: “Employee experience starts with getting a deep understanding of employees in relation to the organization”. He mentioned that employee experience has an “outside-in approach”. In this apporach, organizations put employees in their shoes, just as what they always do with their customers. Instead of merely being treated as a worker, the employee is enjoying the experience of being treated as a customer. Companies have been continuously trying to make customers (or potential customers) choose their brand by giving them a positive experience, and, by applying the same principle to their employees (or potential employees), they will ensure that those individual will choose their company over another. When employees have developed a sense of trust, belongingness, and identity towards a company, they will become a loyal employees, much like a customer who keeps coming for a brand because they trust that brand . Or, in other words, they will become engaged.
The Holistic Experience of Human Beings
Gallup, a global analytics firm, stated that employee experience encompasses entire employee life cycle, from recruitment to exit. The engagement phase itself, according to Gallup, occurs after an organization is able to attract, hire, and onboard its new recruits. These phases between finding talents to convincing them to stay is known as “honeymoon phase”, and it is a very crucial phase since it will greatly influence whether an employee will decide to stay or leave. If we neglect this phase or sloppily execute it, employees might perceive their workplace negatively. This, in turn, will make it harder for the company to convince them to perform well — or even simply to stay.
The human-centric approach of employee experience focuses on the whole process of the life cycle, or as Plaskoff previously wrote, the “journey”. “To truly look holistically at the journey,” he wrote, “we must recognize that the employee’s journey starts, before the first day on the job and even before the offer is accepted”. Of course, every journey has its own beginning, milestones, and end; each comprises of unique and different events. Employees will develop particular feelings and thoughts to every event they encounter, and will weave them to their long-term memory. Every part of it is inseparable — it is what makes a journey a whole experience. Therefore, it is unwise to only focus on discrete, specific events or parts of an employee. If we focus only on employee engagement, for example, we’ll end up taking a partial approach to the employee life cycle and pretty much leaves out the holistic “human being” experience.
In the end, unlike the employe engagement, the employee experience is not a goal. It is a journey, with the employees as their own heroes. It starts from making people become attracted to join a company until they decide to leave said company. By trying to provide a positive experience through integrated human-centric approach, the company will eventually become the employee’s choice to work at.
Written by Herjuno Tisnoaji for Human Talent
