How HR Analytics is Changing the Everyday Employee Experience in 2023
How HR Analytics is Changing the Everyday Employee Experience in 2023
There seems to be a new term every few weeks in the people practices space. The latest one seems to consider the term of quiet quitting, while we are not looking at quiet quitting in this article, we are looking at something that is often seen as the cause of quiet quitting – and that is the importance of employee experience. Alongside that we are focusing on how HR analytics can make decisions affecting employee experience better for everyone.
As an organisation concerned with their employees, one of the primary responsibilities is to ensure that they have a positive experience while working. This is often referred to as employee experience, and it is becoming an increasingly important factor in the success of businesses today.
The importance of prioritising employee experience, beyond the trends, is also to improve productivity, reduce turnover, and enhance satisfaction. However, with so many factors contributing to employee experience, it can be challenging to know where to focus your efforts. This is where HR analytics can be useful. In this article, we will explore how HR analytics can be used to prioritise employee experience and improve overall organisational performance.
What is Employee Experience?
Employee experience refers to the sum of an employee’s interactions and perceptions of their workplace. It includes everything from the work environment to company culture, management style, benefits and compensation, and overall job satisfaction. When employees have a positive experience, they are more likely to be engaged, productive, and committed to their jobs.
What are HR Analytics?
HR analytics is the practice of using data to inform HR decision making. It involves gathering, analysing, and interpreting data related to HR metrics, such as employee engagement, turnover rates, and compensation, to help organisations make more informed decisions. Organisations can identify trends and patterns using HR analytics, and by use this information to make data-driven decisions that can have a significant impact on employee experience.
Why is Prioritising Employee Experience Important?
There are several reasons why prioritising employee experience is critical for the success of any business. Here are just a few:
Increased Productivity
When employees have a positive experience, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated, which leads to increased productivity. In fact, a many studies have found that highly engaged teams are more productive than their less-engaged counterparts.
Reduced Turnover
When employees have a positive experience, they are less likely to leave their jobs, which can save a company significant time and money on recruitment and training costs.
Improved Brand Reputation
Companies that prioritize employee experience often have a better reputation in the market, which can help attract and retain customers, as well as top talent.
Why Use HR Analytics to Prioritize Employee Experience?
There are several reasons why HR analytics can be an effective tool for organisations that are prioritising their employee’s experience:
Provides Objective Data
HR analytics can provide objective data that can help HR leaders identify areas of the organisation where employee experience may be lacking. For example, if data shows that employee turnover rates are high in a particular department, HR leaders can investigate the cause and take action to improve the situation.
Improve Decision-Making
By using HR analytics, HR leaders can make more informed decisions about where to focus their efforts to improve employee experience. This can lead to more effective programmes and initiatives that have a greater impact on overall organisational performance.
Measure the Impact of Programmes and Initiatives
HR analytics can be used to measure the impact of programmes and initiatives on employee experience. By tracking metrics such as engagement, retention, and productivity, HR leaders can determine whether their efforts are having the desired effect and make adjustments as necessary.
How to Use HR Analytics to Prioritize Employee Experience
Here are some steps that businesses can take to use HR analytics to prioritise employee experience:
Identify Key Metrics
The first step is to identify the key metrics that will be used to measure employee experience. This may include metrics such as engagement, turnover, absenteeism, and productivity.
Gather Data
HR leaders must gather data related to these key metrics. This can be done through employee surveys, performance evaluations, and other data sources.
Analyse Data
Once the data has been collected, it must be analysed to identify trends and patterns. This may involve using statistical analysis tools or working with data analysts to interpret the data.
Use Data to Make Informed Decisions
Organisations must use the data to make informed decisions about where to focus their efforts to improve employee experience. This may involve developing new strategies and initiatives, adjusting existing ones, or investing in training and development opportunities.
Final Thoughts
Prioritising employee experience is critical for the success of any business. By focusing on the needs and using HR analytics to address the concerns of employees, organisations can help create a positive workplace culture, improve productivity, reduce turnover, and enhance customer satisfaction.
While HR analytics can be a powerful tool for businesses to prioritise employee experience and improve overall organizational performance it is also not the be all and end all of how organisations should approach the needs of their employees. By using data to identify areas where employee experience may be lacking and make informed decisions about where to focus their efforts. There is still a human aspect to understanding employees through traditional methods like listening and reaching out to them to understand strategies to improve their organisation.
As an HR leader, incorporating HR analytics into your decision-making process can help you stay ahead of the competition and ensure that your organization remains competitive in the marketplace but it is not the only thing that should be considered when making these decisions. A great leader will know how to balance these aspects to find the best for their employees.
Reintegration Programmes for Women After a Career Break
According to data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, the chance of unemployment among women increases with the number of children they have. In fact, women with three or more children have an unemployment rate of up to 26% higher than their childless counterparts. There is a clear relationship between childbearing and the decline in the employment rate. However, the opposite is true for men as research shows that their unemployment rate decreases with each child.
“The role of childminding is usually assumed by women. This leads to a widening wage gap. Returning to work after a long absence is often a complicated journey. The longer you stay out, the harder it can be to get back in,” explains Massimo Begelle, Regional Manager of Top Employers Institute in Spain and Italy.
Some of the main problems encountered by women who have put their careers on hold to have a family, or for other reasons, are related to feelings of obsolescence around the current technologies and skills required to reintegrate into the workplace. “They are going to discover a different world than the one they knew,” Begelle points out, “and they may suffer from insecurities after years away from the world of work.
In leading organisations, initiatives to assist women who have taken career breaks to re-enter the labour market are an emerging best practice, with programmes that include ideas such as offering them new work experience (permanent or temporary, to serve as a platform for them to carry out another role), training in new skills, or coaching support.
“The focus of these programmes,” continues Begelle, “is not only to comply with the CSR or diversity and inclusion policies of organisations but as a way to acquire valuable, experienced talent with a wealth of life experience who, aware of these new professional opportunities, participate with a high degree of commitment.
In top organisations, these programmes are complemented by others designed to ensure that women do not have to quit their job when they have children. 74% of Top Employers in Spain already have good flexibility practices in place to adjust working hours in order to accommodate childcare. Moreover, 58% offer special leave to care for children.
Schindler and Banco Santander are two examples of companies with programmes designed for the reintegration of women who have taken career breaks.
Women Back to Business, Schindler’s Talent Recruitment Programme
In 2021, Schindler launched the Women Back to Business programme, aimed at incorporating into its organisation women who had taken a career break of several years for personal reasons, and who, despite being ready to return to the labour market, were facing a number of obstacles to re-integrate. More than a corporate social responsibility project, it was a talent recruitment programme and was approached as such.
After an intense communication campaign lasting several weeks, they set up a web page for the programme and received more than 600 applications from different profiles. They hired nine women from different areas to take on commercial and supervisory positions as middle managers.
Santander Reencuentra, a successful programme
Banco Santander’s Reencuentra (“Reunite”) programme is aimed towards women who left their professional careers for family reasons and is designed to help them re-enter the labour market with a company in their area.
This programme offers participants a professional experience in Santander in an office close to them, formative retraining that includes the completion of an Online MBA and training in digital skills, coaching for employment, and outplacement firm services, all with the aim of finding them a stable job.
In its first edition, the programme had 100 participants, with an average age range of between 38 and 46 years, returning from a professional break of between 5 and 10 years. 84% of these participants managed to find employment during the course of this initiative. Santander plans to launch the next edition of this programme in 2023.
Case Study: Deutsche Post DHL
Certified Top Employer, Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPDHL), is the world’s leading logistics company employing nearly 600,000 colleagues and operating in over 220 countries and territories worldwide.To increase collaboration and interaction between their large number of employees within the company, DPDHL has implemented Smart Workplace, a mobile application designed to improve the daily employee experience. Developing the Smart Workplace was a challenge not only because it was a huge undertaking in scale, but it was also a challenge given the diversity of employees, roles, languages and places of work.
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The organisation customised this intranet as a mobile application using tools such as the Office 365 suite.
The Covid-19 pandemic impacted the launch and need of the Smart Workplace platform for DPDHL.
Smart Workplace has become one of the leading internal information sources within DPDHL, engaging more than 300,000 employees worldwide just 6 months after its launch.
Boosting Morale by Giving Back with CPFL Energy
CPFL Energy Fosters Goodwill by Creating a Sustainability Plan
Giving back is an important part of a company’s presence in a local community and, for larger companies, the world at-large. Charity work improves a company’s image, creates a better place to live and work for employees and local residents alike, and fosters a sense of goodwill. With so many worthy causes, companies often focus their philanthropic efforts on an issue that resonates with their services, mission, and values. For CPFL Energy, a Certified Top Employer, that cause is climate change.
CPFL Energy is the largest energy company in South America. Headquartered in Campinas, Brazil the company was founded in 1912 and operations are supported by 13 000 employees. Their focus is on the distribution, generation, and commercialization of energy services to over 10 million addresses, which represents more than 22 million people.
The company recently implemented a Strategic Sustainability Plan with 15 commitments and an investment of R$1.8 billion from 2020 – 2024. CPFL’s plan is fully aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainability Goals. Some of their goals include maintaining at least 95% renewable energy sources in their generation portfolio, reducing greenhouse gas emissions – which they did by 24% in 2020, and generating carbon credits by assisting consumers’ energy transition with decarbonization and energy efficient solutions.
Three value pillars are the basis for CPFL’s sustainability plan: sustainable energies, smart solutions, and shared value. These values succinctly summarise how the company will focus its efforts on creating a smaller environmental footprint. It’s a clear way to share with both the global business community and the local community they serve how they are taking action.
In addition to the obvious benefits of combating climate change, this initiative contributes to greater employee cohesion and job satisfaction. Working for a company that gives back improves employee regard for company leadership and fosters a positive sense of connection. Good morale is an important ingredient for successful operations and a giving back initiative is a great way to bolster it.
Rodolfo Nardez Sirol, CPFL’s Environmental and Sustainability Director, offers more detail about the company’s sustainability plan and what motivated them to devote so many company resources to it in this video. He describes how employees collaboratively developed the plan and what they are doing to keep up momentum. Check out the video to hear more about how CPFL finds fulfilment in giving back.
Changing the Game: New Rules at Work
If there is one topic on the agenda in all organisations, it is undoubtedly to need to design – and implement – a new working model. While it is a priority it is also the topic that raises the most questions amongst HR leaders and decision makers.
Hybrid, flexible, personalised, digital we are all familiar these terms. But as we incorporate these terms into our organisations strategic objectives, we continue to look around us at the most cutting-edge businesses, to find ideas that work, initiatives that inspire us, and of course, the right results.
To begin with, we seem to have the dilemma of number – what is the optimum percentage of time to work remotely? Data shows that since the emergence of the pandemic 80% of the companies certified as Top Employers worldwide have defined a work from home policy for their employees that clarifies this working model. It also shows that for 21% of Top Employers, employees are able to work remotely between 80% and 100% of the time. Moreover, if we expand this range, we see that in 35% of them it is possible to work remotely more than 50% of the time, usually depending on the job position.
A Model of Total Flexibility
The debate on the number of days of remote work is beginning to become obsolete. Looking at certified Top Employers, we can observe that the most advanced organisations are opting for a total flexibility-type model in their working policies. Flexibility means personalisation and it prioritises the employee’s ability to choose. More than half of Top Employers worldwide place decision-making power in the hands of the employee and promote a high degree of autonomy and flexibility since they are companies based on a culture of trust and responsibility.
Obviously, there are practical limitations or restrictions that prevent the application of full flexibility in certain jobs, but in that case, alternatives are offered to employees to allow them to make decisions about how to organise their work. It is a cultural approach, which far exceeds a model based on percentages of working from home time. Companies that have a culture of autonomy and flexibility have indicated that employee satisfaction is very high, with these organisations report a score of more than 9/10, and short-time working has been noticeably reduced. Now the focus is on monitoring whether mental and emotional well-being improves in the medium term.
Physical and Virtual Spaces for Collaboration
As organisations look to incorporate new ways of working to be successful, they will need to redesign the workspaces, both physical and virtual. Flexibility and collaboration are the concepts that inspire this new work environment. In newer offices, flexibility allows you to choose the workspace you need at that moment, with quiet rooms for work requiring concentration, as well as rooms for connecting, sharing, chatting informally, and taking a break – and, of course, rooms for working together as a team. If flexibility is the first key to this new work environment, the second is the plan for collaboration.
The plan to optimise and encourage collaborative work among employees should be embodied in the new design of the physical company facilities and should extend to virtual spaces. Doing this work in the virtual spaces is done to make it easier for people to connect, share ideas and work collaboratively. Tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Suite, Slack, Trello, etc. are already part of our lives and are evolving rapidly, moving towards a more immersive experience which will undoubtedly arise in the years to come. Nine out of ten Top Employers design not only their virtual workspaces, but also their physical ones, to meet both needs – flexibility and personalisation, and collaboration. Moreover, companies have noted that the plans they have implemented are by no means definitive; these plans are constantly evolving because the needs of employees shape the setup of their workspaces.
Initiatives for digital disconnection
Inevitably, in this new working environment, digital disconnection initiatives have emerged at an accelerated pace. 76% of companies certified as Top Employers explicitly discourage working extra hours and reinforce this particularly in the case of remote work. Half already have policies to discourage the use of email outside of established working hours, and it is a growing practice. Disconnection extends to the holidays, and a third of Top Employers have implemented a “do not disturb” policy during the holidays, and of course, paid leave for all. Alerts in the form of pop-up windows are already frequently displayed with an alert whenever any of the disconnection rules are about to be violated. This, by the way, is meant as a right, not an obligation. The goal is to significantly improve the well-being of employees, helping them to disconnect, freeing up time which can be used for personal care and enjoyment.
This reinvention of the working model generates new challenges; employers must learn to benefit from this new way of working while simultaneously limiting the risks involved.
Helvetia Case Study: The Impact of Internal Best Practices Sharing
Certified Top Employer Helvetia Insurance, established in 1858, is headquartered in St. Gallen Switzerland. As an organisation they currently have over 11.500 employees and more than 7 million customers across their different operating countries.
Helvetia have prioritised improving their people practices over the past few years as they joined the Top Employers programme. In recent years they have wanted to improve their practices not only through benchmarking but also through learning from the various Helvetia branches. This desire for improvement and learning lead them to create an internal best practice sharing session.
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Helvetia have been able to create a unified best practice sharing session that has improved HR practices across their offices.
They use the Top Employers programme to guide the improvement of their HR practices.
Employees in Helvetia have experienced the internal best practices sharing sessions.
Mental Health Q&A: Bentley
In advance of #WorldMentalHealthDay, we caught up with Emma Humphries from certified UK Top Employer Bentley. Emma is co-chair of its wellbeing network BeAccessible – in this interview she reveals more about the network, how it contributes to positive change within the organisation, and how mental health has moved up the organisation’s priority list.
Tell us about yourself and your organisation?
I’m Emma and I work as a Technical Analyst here at Bentley Motors. Bentley has a proud 103-year history of building the most sought-after luxury cars, and we’re also on the most ambitious journey with our Beyond100 plans to become exclusively electric and end-to-end carbon neutral by 2030.
At the heart of Bentley are our 4,000 colleagues. Whilst those numbers might sound big, we’re a tight team with generations of families working here, which makes Bentley a very special place to be. I am proud to follow the footsteps of my late Grandfather who joined the business the day it opened its gates, followed shortly after by my Nan. Since then, there has always been members of my family throughout Bentley’s history; my father, working mainly in Security, and my three brothers working in Purchasing, Maintenance and Finance. When I finished college, I knew I wanted to be a part of the Bentley brand and family. I’m proud to have just completed my 25 years of service, working predominantly in Logistics – a department and family that is full of drive and passion.
It’s our people that bring our vision for Diversity and Inclusion to life with our colleague led networks. I co-chair one of those networks, known as BeAccessible. It was launched following World Mental Health Day in 2021 and our ambition is simple; we support colleagues in all aspects of health and wellbeing to ensure our workplace is inclusive, and aim to create an equal environment for colleagues with disabilities. Other colleague networks include BeProud, who advocate for our LGBTQ+ community, our BeUnited network who represent colleagues of ethnic minority, our BeReady network, who support colleagues with a background in the army or other recognised force and our BeInspired network which brings together those with an interest in increasing the proportion of female colleagues across all of our business areas to accelerate our progress towards Bentley’s Beyond 100 goals of 30% women in management by 2030.
How has Bentley’s mental health strategy evolved over the past year, in what we all hope is a post-pandemic world?
The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted us all in different ways, and we quickly realised that we could not deliver a one-size fits all approach to mental health. With the support of our Head of Diversity & Inclusion, the BeAccesible network established a Positive Mental Health Workstream, and evolved our strategy to have a range of touchpoints for colleagues in a way that works for them, whether that be at work or in new home office.
So, our multi-tactic approach means colleagues can get access to face-to-face peer group support through our regular Time to Talk sessions or get more tailored and personalised support through a trained Mental Health First Aider. But we have also evolved our strategy to focus on day-to-day mental health through BeFit walking programmes, BeFit fruit giveaways etc, as well as the opportunity for colleagues to join our allotment community to enjoy the outdoors because we know helping colleagues with positive habits can help mitigate the impact of mental health stressors.
Has mental health moved up your organisational priority list?
Absolutely, in fact it is being actively championed, from board level to factory floor. It makes me feel proud to work here and excited about what the future holds for Bentley.
Bentley offers an array of resources for colleagues. This month, along with the network’s regular monthly Time to Talk sessions, we are promoting our Mental Health Traffic Light guide, which contains several useful resources – for example, a list of our Mental Health First Aiders and information on our BeFit programs, designed to get colleagues moving and exercising. We are also sharing colleague’s experience of Ben, the Automotive Charity, and the great support that they offer to colleagues from our automotive industry. The network chairs and members have regular opportunities to meet or ask questions with the Board where we receive full support, answers and guidance, ensuring that we are all striving for the same goal of improving colleagues’ experiences.
How have conversations around mental health changed?
I’m a firm believer that the more we talk about mental health, the more we can demystify. We’ve got a supportive communications team who help make health and wellbeing a priority across our messaging, and we’ve been empowered to host monthly MS Teams sessions to reach our remote colleagues, or those working at home. We also use national events to bring awareness, for example May’s Time to Talk was about Loneliness.
This constant conversation has seen the network reach 170 members, as well as engaging with many more thousands of our colleagues in some way.
Mental health is definitely becoming something that more and more people want to talk about and support and I am really proud that our BeAccessible network has been an enabler for this.
What will be your priorities in Mental Health in the year ahead?
The network has just advertised a companywide Movember campaign, we will be focusing on mental health during International Men’s Day with our Men’s Forum Workstream to ensure we continue our mission to remove taboo and stigma and encourage colleagues to start conversations and signpost. BeAccessible also promotes Bookboon, which is a digital learning service provider for corporate learning & development. In particular, we will be promoting titles linked to mental health and stress as a priority on awareness days and throughout the year generally.
UniCredit Bulbank’s ESG Learning Journey
Certified Top Employer UniCredit Bulbank is the leading bank in Bulgaria and a member of UniCredit, a successful pan-European commercial bank operating in Italy, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. It has a unique service offering and its purpose is to empower communities to progress, delivering best-in-class for all stakeholder, unlocking the potential of clients and people.
UniCredit puts integrity, ownership and caring at the heart of its decision-making in everything it does, and digitalisation and a commitment to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) principles are key enablers for delivering this. Their commitment to their ESG values and the ambitious energy goals that have been set in the EU for 2030 and 2050 is what started their award winning ESG Learning Journey in 2021.
For UniCredit Bulbank, ESG is not the responsibility of one department, team or individual, but everyone’s duty.
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UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria used a pyramid approach to restructure their ESG principles.
They created an integrated group and local learning offer for ESG that had targeted initiatives for different groups of employees across the organisation that addressed specific needs and accountabilities for them.
UniCredit Bulbank Bulgaria created ESGpresso, an ESG education platform, for colleagues to have easy access to information about their policies.
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“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” – W. Edwards Deming
Data is one of the most important resources available to organisations. Leveraging data, can help organisations to develop and create efficient systems to improve their business practices. While data analysis has been used across different departments, it is often overlooked for its applications in HR teams.
As part of our Inside the Mind of the HRD series, Line Vercammen, HR Auditor at Top Employers Institute, and Britta Fischer, Standards Analyst and HR Researcher at Top Employers Institute, acknowledged the importance of getting and analysing HR data. Their knowledge, which was firstly shared in an internal presentation, was essential to this article as their presentation informed many of the points that this article hopes to reach.
We are regularly analysing the responses of Top Employers to understand how the world of work is changing on any given day. In our latest survey and in the validation sessions, HR Auditors at Top Employers Institute saw that some leading organisations are experimenting with predictive & prescriptive people analytics. With this kind of analytics, they get a prediction of the future via data analysis. That gives them more insights into the specific actions that need to be taken to achieve a certain goal.
An important question is if other companies, who have not yet began to work with their data, feel ready to ‘predict’ and look forward, instead of only looking back. Essentially, are more companies ready to break through the wall?
Descriptive analytics are more common than predictive analytics. This analysis tool is applied by many Top Employers worldwide. Already in 2022, we noticed that 87% of the Top Employers are translating their people strategy into key HR metrics (and related targets). This number increased by 12% since 2020 and it’s bond to keep growing.
You can find out more about thie and other trend downloading, for free, our World of Work Trend Report 2024 at the end of this article!
These numbers and their noticeable increase begin to paint a picture of the growing role for HR analytics for leading organizations. The painting is, however, unfinished and for many organizations the painting is something that they are looking to improve.
The use of HR analytics goes across many of the expected HR tasks like reporting on talent acquisition KPIs, but it also can be used in more interesting ways that may include the tracking and analysing the employee experience.
What are HR Analytics?
HR analytics offers a systematic process to drive business decisions about people. It offers businesses a way to use their data to uncover, interpret and communicate meaningful patterns in work-force related data to inform decision making while improving performance.
HR analytics cuts across the business and encompasses a data-driven solution for HR leaders to gain insights into the whole business. For this to succeed, there is a strong need to encompass a data-driven culture at the organisation level. We can see this in the number of Top Employers that have leaders that are committed to using HR analytics to make their decisions about their workforce.
While many organisations are beginning to embrace HR analytics, many are not getting the most out of their HR analytics because they are not yet at a stage where they can analyse them. In fact, many businesses are still merely reporting their data and not taking the next steps in leveraging that data.
This may be because many organisations do not yet understand the difference between the two activities.
The Differences between HR Analytics and Reporting Data
One way to explain the difference is to recognise that reporting summarises and organises data in easily digestible ways while analytics enables questioning and exploring that data further.
Where reporting focuses on reportable data, analytics is seeking to look at several points in the data to see if there is a link and do more work to uncover why the data is the way that it is. Reporting is a full stop, whereas analytics is an open question that can inform business decisions and strategies from a place of knowledge.
Three Ways Businesses can Integrate HR Analytics to their Benefits
Businesses need to move beyond merely collecting data and begin analysing the data if they are to move beyond the what and begin to explore the why.
This can be done in a variety of ways, but in this article, we will limit our exploration to three:
HR needs to develop an expertise in their team to analyse the large amounts of people related data. This can be done by welcoming new members in their team that have a knowledge base that favours them proactively leading their team to analyse the data within their organisation. Organisations can also upskill and reskill the workforce in theri HR team so they do not leave anyone behind in the journey that their organisation will undertake in leveraging the HR data.
Businesses will need to select relevant analytics software that they will be able to integrate across the organisation. The integration of this software is especially important in large multinational organisations as the data they will uncover may be more far reaching than their local workforce.
HR teams will also need to embrace the ongoing and continuous collection and analysis of data. That is because data, and the patterns that can be drawn from it, is only effective if it is incorporated as a task that they do throughout the year.
HR Leaders and team members are beginning to understand that data-driven analysis is no longer a nice to have but an essential part of the business to improve decisions around their workforce.
The challenge, for HR leaders, is to adopt the use of HR analytics in their organisation with the right tools and an enthusiastic team that will lead them to have analytics that allow them to make strategic workforce decisions to improve their business performance. This can only be done with clear insight as they undertake this exciting work.
Top Employers Institute’s World of Work Trends Report 2023 analyses the latest trends in people strategies and practices from leading organisations globally. The report examined data from 2 053 Certified Top Employers to give a broader insight into how global developments will impact workforces in the year ahead.
What’s Inside?
Our latest research shows that the top 3 people priorities for these organisations in 2023 will be to create a high-performance culture, develop new leadership capabilities and align purpose, vision, and values. These three priorities reflect the following three key trends we have identified in our research.
Our contributing researchers and HR auditors explore the changes happening in the world of work, focusing on three major trends that are shaping global people practices:
The Employee Experience will become “super-personalised”.
We will see an unprecedented level of personalisation in the everyday employee experience. The personalisation of consumer needs has been a challenge for organisations and now employees expect to be treated as “internal” customers. The rise of individual employee needs will have much further to run in 2023 – what has been “people centric” will become “person centric”. Only those businesses that can go the extra mile in providing a genuine and heartfelt commitment to their people in this way will generate the emotional reaction necessary to enable a high-performance culture.
Leaders will actively listen for the “heartbeat” in their organisation.
Leaders will develop new strategic skills, particularly that of “listening to the heartbeat” of the organisation. Leaders are effectively having to “double screen” their working world. They need to simultaneously think about long term horizons, while acting decisively in the short term to survive, not to mention to thrive. They, and the next generation of leaders they nurture, will need to place a more committed listening strategy front and centre, to win the emotional commitment of their teams for in preparation for disruptive challenges.
Positive Impact – the new “North Star” for better decisions.
A clear commitment to “positive impact” will be the new North Star for everything that enlightened businesses do in 2023. Positive impact among our Top Employer organisations can be defined and achieved in three ways:
A “lived” purpose that works best when it comes straight from the heart of all employees after all – and remains a constant in their everyday decisions.
The positive impact made by an organisation can only ever be as good as the views that it allows itself to hear. So enlightened attitudes regarding diversity and inclusion are not only important in their own right, but also for the forward momentum they create in all organisations.
Sustainability is key, both in the way an organisation ensures its own continuity through a positive wider impact – and in the way it is perceived and behaves as a good employer.
2023 will be all about these three trends. They will show a powerful human shift towards respecting individuality and valuing difference. It is vital that we attend to these needs because old management models are no longer useful. The best companies listen – truly listen – to their employees, invest in the individual experience, and create a shared purpose that gives meaning to the everyday employee experience. For organisations that achieve this, the future, despite the uncertainty we see all around us, will be very bright.
Inside the Mind of the HRD on … the employee experience
Over many years, we have become used to data showing us how disengaged employees are at work. According to Gallup, for example, only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their work, while 85% are either passively or actively disengaged. In attempting to convert the latter into the former, however, the HRD first needs to understand the difference between engagement and the employee experience.
Engagement vs the employee experience
The employee experience is a broad and increasingly powerful weapon for the HR Director. It means nothing less than the long-term resdesign of the organisation, with people strategy at its core.
It is effectively the sum of all the touchpoints that a potential employee has with his or her employer, from the starting point of being a candidate to becoming part of an organisational alumni upon departure. It gives HRDs the opportunity to work with the business on organisational design to give a fair chance of employees feeling engaged enough to want to make a difference.
It’s taken most organisations a long time to get to this level of understanding. A century ago, the workplace wasn’t a place people went to to be happy or engaged – it was simply a means to an end.
Fifty years ago, the focus was on productivity, with companies openly looking to get “more for less” from their people. In the last twenty or so years, employee engagement (augmented by attractive benefits and incentives) came to the fore. It is only much more recently that the needs and wants of the workforce have come to be seen through the more holistic idea of the employee experience.
What makes the biggest difference?
Research by Josh Bersin earlier this year “Employee Experience: The Definitive Guide” in partnership with one of our Top Employers, Microsoft, reveals that the modern employee experience is driven by many factors, but with trust, transparency, inclusion and caring to the fore.
That’s why is so important for leaders and HRs to be able to read employee insights.
Among the specific factors that Bersin found, the most significant included:
A mission and purpose beyond financial goals.
Transparency, empathy and integrity of leadership.
Continuous investment in people.
Inclusive, diversive and sense of belonging and community.
The impact of a great employee experience
Another study by Jacob Morgan of 252 organisations found that only 15 companies (6%) are doing a great job at creating employee experiences. Rewards for the few organisations that achieve this are signficant in terms of business, people and innovation:
Business Outcomes
The successful are 2.2 times more likely to exceed financial targets than the unsuccessful.
4 times more likely to delight customers.
People Outcomes
1 times more likely to create a sense of belonging.
2 times more likely to be a great place to work.
1 times more likely to engage and retain employees.
Innovation Outcomes
7 times more likely to adapt well to change.
3 times more likely to innovate effectively.
How to get started
One of our Top Employers, Accenture, published research in 2020 showing that winning the war on talent means that the HRD must improve the employee experience in three ways:
Co-creating the experience. Customers are regularly engaged re their desired experiences and companies must do the same with their employees. There must be a co-creation of what the experience means, through human, physical and digital lenses.
Reimagining the model. Traditional levers like compensation and benefits are not enough. There must be clear single accountability for all of the people processes, experiences and tools to achieve the desired outcome.
Empower both humans and machines. This is necessary to deliver new models at scale and speed. Expanding in this way can unlock new sources of value through innovation.
Top Employers and the Employee Experience
Finally, our Top Employers Certification Programme gives us a unique perspective on the employee experience because it begins with our HR Best Practices survey covering every aspect of an organisation’s people practices. To help HR Directors in their thinking on this important subject, we have brought together what best practice looks like in a three-part series of e-books, Optimising the Employee Journey.
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