A lot is currently in motion when it comes to Experience and Technology. Apart from the big conversations around the Great Reshuffle the possibilities, changes and developments across Experience & Technology are getting nurtured almost on a daily basis, are a constant topic. A new area has been formed: Employee Experience.
Employee Experience
Employee Experience has multiple definitions, can be seen and understood in multiple different ways – from a very narrow view of reinterpreting HR processes into experiences to a very wide view and subsuming each and every employee interaction within a company into it. I don’t want to say what is right or what is wrong – I don’t even think that we need such categories of right or wrong. Baseline is that in any shape or form, looking after and actively shaping the Employee Experience has a positive impact on a company’s ability to compete in the market.
There are multiple reasons as to why Employee Experience is important and there are multiple ways you can interpret Employee Experience – narrow or wide – but it all has one thing in common. Among cultural aspects, Technology is THE important factor to create a superior Employee Experience. It is the enabler and driving force for Employee Experience. And at the same time Technology needs to be not the prominent aspect of the Experience. It is the backbone, not the front-end. It is there to improve and connect the experience, not THE experience itself. This is what many companies offering Experience technology get wrong – and also what many companies that go down the route of Employee Experience get wrong. It is not about Technology, but about Enablement.
In the last 2-3 years many technologies have surfaced claiming to improve the Experience, some call themselves Experience Platforms. I don’t want to judge them – some of them are really good and utilized correctly can make a difference. Others are just a technology in need and search of a problem (try to avoid these). You can easily identify them in the way HOW they approach and sell itself – they place the technology first, not the problem or actual solution they bring.
The Experience (market) will grow
This market has come from nowhere and will grow even further given the importance and clear business outcomes of Employee Experience. But also, we have finally entered (quicker now thanks to the pandemic) a labor market that places the seller, the employee in the focus as there are much more interesting opportunities for employees than there are employees for these open positions (of course, this is not in each and every field and not for each and every job-class the same – but the direction is clear). These employees can then freely choose which opportunity to take – and the Experience at work will form an important decision-criteria to join and to stay or leave. I don’t think you can at this stage underrate the importance of Employee Experience. If you are not yet there, go start quickly.
But where to start and how to get going? What is the right strategy? What are building blocks of a superior Employee Experience? How do I bring it to life? – these are very valid questions (and there are more) and there is not an easy answer – and also, there is no current role that is actually predestined to play in this field and bring a superior Employee Experience into the organization. Given the importance of Employee Experience – I make the case that it deserves and requires a specialized role – a “Chief (Employee) Experience Architect”.
The CXA
So, what is the role of such a Chief Employee Experience Architect? – it all starts with your definition of Employee Experience, narrow or wide. And within this frame of reference, the objectives at hand are very similar.
- Rephrase or define
- What is the right, fitting Experience for your company? What does you company stand for and how does this translate for employees? If you have an EVP, you should be able to rephrase it into an Experience statement. This statement is your North Star, your direction and decision support. It needs to fit and be right for your company
- Listen to understand
- Second you need to build up a proper listening infrastructure. You need to understand the current employee sentiment. What is important for your employees, what isn’t. What is working well for them, what isn’t? – this is already the first area where Technology is important. For most companies, it is impossible to constantly listen to and understand employee sentiment without technology support. The right infrastructure will give you what you need with the least effort – and this is important as the sentiment is key to understand where your employees are but also transforming the Experience takes a significant effort – don’t waste too much energy listening
- Identify the key areas
- Based on what you heard as well as what you defined as your Employee Experience, identify the Moments that Matter – the areas where you should make a difference for your employees to have a positive impact on the sentiment. You cannot address all you hear but you need to get some key Moments right. These can be specific for your company or generic – depending on how you define your Experience and how your employees feel
And now it is time to actually make a difference.
Build a superior experience
Until now, it was all research – now it gets into practice. With everything you learned and prioritized, build your Experience design and strategy to enable it – and put it into practice. This is a real long-term journey – and actually never really ends as you always go back to “Listening to understand” and cycle through the steps again and again. When it was good to have technology support and knowledge as part of listening and prioritization, it is now key as Experiences at scale can only be build with the right technology architecture, platform(s) and extensions – while at the same time Technology should never be the visible outcome. It is a means to a superior Experience, not THE Experience. Technology is also the element that connects and simplifies Experiences across multiple functional areas. And this is another key – the Experience Architect needs to work across functional silos within a company to make Experiences happen. You cannot build a superior Experience just within HR or just within Workplace or just an Experience Culture – it needs to be End-to-End to make a difference, to have an impact. This ability is key, both from the Architects capacity but also the willingness of the organization.
Experiences are a composition of culture + process + technology + UI to connect and simplify what makes a difference (Moments that Matter) and you need to build multiple of such experiences to actually create a superior Employee Experience across the company. This is the job of the Chief (Employee) Experience Architect. If you don’t have it yet – go and create it.
Chief HR Officer 