Design the Employee Experience

Find the sweet spot where employee needs and organizational strategy meet.

Executive Summary

Situation

• Employees’ expectations of their experiences at work are evolving. Similar to their customer experiences, they want an overall employee experience that fits more seamlessly into their lives.
• Organizations not only have to compete with each other for talent, but they must also compete with alternative approaches to employment, like the gig economy. Candidates and employees have more choices, and they know it.

Complication

• Organizations have few formalized efforts to address employee experience, and where they exist, efforts are siloed or lack resourcing to address the end-to-end experience.
• Employee experience isn’t limited to areas that HR has direct control over.

Solution

• Start with the employee lifecycle and identify moments that matter – where the employee and employer needs are most aligned.
• Use a design thinking approach to engage employees in the process of designing a best-fit solution for a positive employee experience. Improve attraction, retention, engagement, and productivity.

McLean & Company Insight

In the past, organizations have focused on their own priorities as an employer, but that pendulum has swung toward a more balanced approach. The sweet spot is where employee needs and organizational strategy meet.

Glossary of key terms

This deck follows a design thinking approach. Familiarize yourself with the stages of design thinking to work through this deck.

Before starting this project

This project requires a mindset shift.

• The concept of employee experience (EX) draws from established fields like customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX). Experience design asks designers to empathize with users of the product or service to truly understand their needs and design for those needs.
• This project uses design thinking elements. Design thinking methodology requires active prototyping and testing. Ideas may not be fully vetted before they are presented to stakeholders for feedback.

As part of the experience dialogue, there is a strong focus on empathy.

• The blueprint kicks off with a strong focus on quantitative data to help you pinpoint areas of improvement; however, design thinking methodology requires you to empathize with employees to truly understand what they are thinking and feeling and design to meet these needs.
• This blueprint views the feelings of employees as a key data source to inform design. If this is not palatable to your organization, do not proceed.

This is a resource-intensive project.

• Employees will be heavily involved. If there is organizational reluctance to openly and regularly interact with employees, do not proceed.
• Many different teams will be required throughout the design thinking process to design prototypes, test, and give feedback.

Employee experience is not just about repackaging employee engagement

Employee experience (EX) is the employee’s perception of their cumulative lived experiences with the organization. It is gauged by how well the employee’s expectations are met within the parameters of the workplace, especially by the “moments that matter” to them. Individual employee engagement is the outcome of a strong overall EX.

EX changes with evolving employee expectations

Employees expect their work experiences to more closely match their customer experiences.

Where traditionally consumers would buy a product or service, a focus on customer experience has led to consumers looking to buy an experience or a lifestyle.

Similarly, employees are increasingly expecting a work experience that fits more seamlessly into their life and recognizes them as a human rather than simply as an employee.

There is also a desire for self-reliance and on-demand service offerings.

Underscoring this is an increase in transparency due to the rise of social media. Sites like Glassdoor and Indeed make it easier for employees to share their experiences at an organization honestly and candidly.

With job candidates and employees empowered to provide instant feedback on employers, we are seeing the “yelpification” of the workplace, where employees can rate a company’s culture and management just as they rate a hotel, restaurant, or movie.
– Jeanne Meister, The Employee Experience Is The Future Of Work: 10 HR Trends For 2017

Employee experience is rooted in customer experience with similar outcomes

Customer experience is the product of the perceptions and interactions a customer has with a brand. Customer experience design is the practice of aligning each customer interaction, touchpoint, action, product, and service to the brand promise.

Employee experience doesn’t need to be over the top expensive or even that complicated, it just has to match what it is that you’re trying to do on the customer side.
– Michelle Berg, CEO, Elevated HR Solutions

A positive employee experience has measured organizational benefit

Retention

Employees are 8x more likely to stay with their organization after a positive employee experience (McKinsey, 2021).

Customer Satisfaction

Enterprises scoring within the top quartile on employee experience double their customer satisfaction (Explorance, 2021).

Revenue

Organizations that score high on employee experience are almost twice as likely as those with low EX to grow their revenue (Forbes Insights & Salesforce, 2020).

Positive employee experiences lead to engaged employees, and engaged employees are 5x more likely to recommend the organization than those who are not engaged (McLean & Company Employee Engagement Database, 2021; N=202,272).

The variety of employment choices makes EX more important than ever

Candidates and employees have employment choices, and they know it. Today, organizations not only compete with each other for talent, but they also must win out against alternative approaches to employment, like the gig economy (more short-term contracts than permanent positions). In addition, they have to work to fiercely protect their reputations in an era of unprecedented transparency. It's no wonder many organizations feel the pinch caused by sustained competition for talent.

53%

of surveyed workers have (or are planning to have) a second source of income, independent from their main job (Job Seeker Nation Report, 2021).

74%

of vacancies are filled externally (HCMI, 2021).

34%

of competition for talent in city centers escalated (The Business Council, 2020).

43%

of employers are currently feeling the impact of talent scarcity and skill gaps within their organizations. 22% of employers believe this gap will continue for the next three to five years (“Beyond Hiring,” McKinsey, 2020).

74%

of CEOs were concerned about the availability of key skills (PWC, 2020).

2nd

Providing a great employee experience ranked 2nd out of 12 top organizational priorities (McLean & Company, 2022; N=826), indicating organizations are recognizing the connection between employee experience, recruitment, and retention.

The war for talent is over. Talent has won. You should care about the employee experience.
− Sylvain Bergeron, DisruptHR Toronto, June 2017

Despite leadership focus on the employee experience, many organizations are missing the mark

Senior leaders are increasingly focused on employee experience

• Nine out of ten employers are prioritizing the employee experience, an increase from only 52% before the pandemic (Willis Towers Watson, 2021).
• 70% of executives agree that better employee experience leads to better customer experience (Forbes Insights & Salesforce, 2020).
• 92% of executives say engaged employees perform better at work (Quantum Workplace, 2020).

HR leadership has also made employee experience a focus

• 78% of HR leaders consider the employee experience as “the most important” or “a very important” factor in accomplishing business objectives (EY, 2021).
• 86% of employees say that their relationships with management are a top factor in their satisfaction and experiences (“The Boss Factor,” McKinsey, 2020).
• 56% of human resources professionals believe training and development practices are essential to business (Lorman, 2021).

But many organizations wonder how to truly make an impact

• 90% of organizations face challenges when working to improve and implement a transformative employee experience (Willis Towers Watson, 2021).
• Only 61% of employees feel they have the tools and equipment they need to do a great job. (McLean & Company Employee Engagement Database, 2021; N=164,354).
• As a result of COVID-19, 49% of employers report having a hybrid work model. Within the next three years, employers expect work-from-home to decline by 30% from current levels, but the level of employees working from home will still be substantial (Willis Towers Watson, 2020).