Employee Experience: From Concept to HR Performance

Just 30 years ago, when researchers at Harvard Business School first drew parallels between employee experience and customer experience, the notion of “experience symmetry” was born.

↳ The Evolution of Customer Experience

Since then, customer experience has come a long way! It has found its performance indicators and demonstrated its contributions to the commercial and economic performance of businesses. Consequently, it has secured its place within organizations and their investments.

Which leader today could afford to repeatedly offer a disastrous experience to their customers? Which leader wouldn't recognize the essential alignment of customer experience with their strategy and positioning? Not to mention its virtues in terms of customer loyalty and the sustainable economic performance of their business?

 
↳ The Paradox of Employee Experience

30 years later, where does employee experience stand?
What results do companies expect from focusing on employee experience?
What means and importance do they assign to it within their organizations?

While recruitment remains the primary concern for HR decision-makers in companies, more than half are very concerned about employee experience. They expect it to enhance employee retention, reduce turnover, impact company reputation, ease recruitment, boost productivity, … and even potentially improve customer loyalty! This is demonstrated by our Insign - Ipsos study conducted this year with 500 decision-makers.

Even though this study is clear on what is expected from employee experience, it also highlights how rarely its effects are measured. And thus, valued. Especially these economic effects. For instance, while 65% of decision-makers expect employee experience to impact the economic profitability of the company, it's a metric tracked by less than a quarter of these same decision-makers. In reality, very few impact indicators are consistently monitored.

This raises questions about the ability of companies to tangibly connect human capital performance and economic performance. Is it due to a lack of methodology? Or perhaps a reluctance from HR teams? Is it an attempt to “protect” the human dimension of an organization from the pressures of profitability demands?

It's certainly commendable on a human level. But is it sustainable?

The ultimate responsibility of a leader is undeniably about resource allocation. Can we expect a leader to allocate resources, to invest, in something whose concrete effects they cannot measure?

Reputation, volume of applications, selectivity, loyalty, turnover, employee engagement, Employee Lifetime Value, etc. Numerous indicators exist, and many are often simple to track over time. This serves as a reminder of the many paradoxes still surrounding employee experience. Declared to be so important yet in reality so undervalued. And consequently, likely under-invested.

HR teams would certainly benefit from consulting their marketing counterparts; to learn how they have successfully made customer experience indispensable in businesses.