Effective employee experience management: A driver of sustainable organisational performance

By: Eboagwu Samuel Ifechukwude

Eboagwu Samuel Ifechukwude, MBA, B.Sc, B.Eng, is a Strategy and Organisational Development expert with professional experience spanning multiple economic sectors. With intense bias for data analysis and the balanced scorecard strategy tool, he has provided in-depth knowledge and practical solutions to the concerns of human capital, organisational development, performance management and business strategy for organisations within and outside Nigeria. He can be reached via samprox2002@gmail.com

Background

The concept of Employee Experience (EX) is increasingly gaining serious attention in today’s global organizations. It entails the totality of the experience that a hired and working personnel of organization gets from the moment S/he expresses interest in working for the organization, through  the in-career experience, to the point of exit from the organization.

1.0 The Employee Experience Flow

As an integral part of the wider concept of Experience Management (XM), Employee Experience (EX) is also a critical source of organization’s competitive advantage in its operating industry.

It is a known fact that the average employee spends a larger part of their active daily life in the workplace. Hence, employers of labor are expected to create enabling environment that will speak well to the employee’s expectations, which would in turn, have positive impact on them throughout their work life. The expression of the different experiences by any organization’s workforce largely dictates the perception of the general market place of the organization.

Hence, the inference that organizational concerns such as Brand Value, Talent Management, Performance Management, and the corrresponding Sustainability Metrics are highly connected to employee experience indices.

Developments

Recent developments around the basic functions within the HR value chain has necessitated the need for proactive approach to managing employee experience. With the need to pay good attention to basic tasks like job posting or advertisement, crossing all T’s and dotting of all I’s on documents has become more crucial than ever. Whether the hiring process is fully being coordinated internally or out-sourced, it is very important that communication items are well vet before they are publicly transmitted.

As a clear reference for talent attraction, great talents begin their assessment of the organization with the quality of job posting that they come by. While others in the talent pool and other prospective employees are very likely to start their assessment of the organization in another stage of organizational interaction, communications (Style and Effectiveness) to prospective hires from the interview stage is also very important, and should be managed effectively by any recruitment or talent acquisition team.

From the aforementioned, it is clear that the organization’s Talent Acquisition Team is the first face of the organization. Further to the frontline management position of EX by  talent acquisition teams, Staff On-Boarding and Orientation/Induction Process is also a very crucial segment of the employee life cycle that should be very well managed.

To effectively master and manage Employee Experience (EX) in an organization, designated units of the holistic HR function must carefully design a communication channel with which they get contributions from the employees regarding their individual and collective expectations of the organization. This facilitates the right direction for effective delivery of personalized employee services in the identified areas.

Recent developments in the employee life cycle points to the dimensions of Physical and Technological factors and influences. While the physical factors refers to the ergonomics, design (Ambience), and management of the office space, the technological factors deal with the provision of modern work tools such as laptops, phones, other mobile devices, scanners, printers, IT infrastructure etc., that jointly facilitates seamless workflow for the employees.

Stages of Employee Experience

With the school of thought that there are five (5) stages of the employee experience curve named below;

• Recruitment
• On-Boarding
• Development
• Retention
• Exit

A simulated assignment of points from 0 to 10 with zero 0 being the ground state of a prospective employer’s excitement, and 10 being the indicator of the highest level of excitement is represented for the stages of employee experience in the table below;

1.1(a)

1.1(b)

The Data Analysis

Having agreed that the recruitment process is the entry phase of employee experience process in an organization, at point 4, the curve indicates an initial level of anxiety of a prospective employee about an organization. This is slightly below average expectation. Perhaps, this would be a result of the limited information on the organization prior to the employee’s entry.

Upon resumption and entry into the organization, the new employee begins the real walk of the experience where-in onboarding activities; Orientation and Induction brings enlightenment on the organization’s realities. Ranging from physical infrastructure, through to technological tools access and provisions to people culture, the new employee begins a re-assessment of the new work environment. Often times, this usually exceeds the original assessment by some points. However, the marginal difference may be at point 5 or greater on the curve.

Ideally, if the employee experience process is very well managed with the earlier stated propositions, the average employee in such an organization would have an employee experience index around point 8 on the curve. At this point, most employees have near satisfactory feelings about their work place. However, owing to the constant change in industry trends and market dynamics, a serious task that borders on Talent Retention is raised for Talent Management Teams. This entails a constant review of existing talent management strategies to meet the contemporary needs of the organization’s employees in order to maintain sustainable organizational growth.

Often times, at least a few staff of the organization leaves for personal reasons even when they still feel good about the organization. The paradox here is that there is something better than good out there at about point 7.5 on the curve. Ultimately, the worst case that this situation can provide is for a staff of an organization who wants to leave the organization out an unpleasant experience ascribed to point 3 lower than the assumed anxiety at the point of entry. Such an employee would also very likely state all the odds knowing that there’s nothing to lose after successful exit from the employer’s organization.

1.2

The Conclusion

The above analogy (Table 1.2) leads us into the conclusion that there is a correlation between Employee Experience and Organizational Performance.

With organizational performance management largely sitting within the HR function, and the dynamics of managing employee experience cutting across the entire processes in the HR value chain, it’s imperative that practitioners of the noble profession take much closer look than ever to these latent but very sensitive views on employee experience management. This would substantially foster employee engagement and commitment and in turn, guarantee sustainable high performance for the organization.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com