14 Steps to a human-centered employee experience

Be it the ‘big resignation’ or not, competing, and winning in the marketplace requires becoming an irresistible organisation that is really sought after by top talent, and one that rivals want to emulate. A critical lever is the Employee Experience (EX) your company offers its people. EX is the sum total of experiences employees have during the various stages of the employee lifecycle and is the next evolution of employee engagement. The focus is on the human experiences over processes, although it is underpinned by robust data driven scalable processes that deliver the experience.

According to a Josh Bersin report, companies leveraging the right EX strategies are 2.2 times more likely to exceed financial targets, 5.1 time more likely to create a sense of belonging and 3.7 times more likely to adapt well to change. So, thinking of work as an ecosystem of employee experience could become the new lens and organising principle for viewing your people-related practices.

Below is a summarised version of the 14 steps to building your EX-Framework. For the full piece hop on over to LinkedIn where Puneet Sachdev has published a detailed step by step guide.

1.Why EX:

Get clear on why you want to introduce an EX-lens in your business at this point, and its end-state vision. Begin with the end in mind. Research by Qualtrics and Josh Bersin may help.

2. Anticipated Business Impact:

Build the business case. Define the intended business outcomes. Provide clear linkages to KPI’s (tangible and intangible) e.g., retention rate of top talent, time to hire, employee engagement. Link these to ultimate business outcomes and dollar impact.

3. Build Your Project Team:

A cross-functional team that represents your organisational diversity, comprising members from the support functions, and line managers from across levels. The EX-initiative is owned by the business with sponsorship from a top leader, ideally the CEO.

4. Build a Collaboration Group:

Co-design the EX-ecosystem with a diverse cohort of employees within the organisation who will be consulted at each milestone. This way you are designing with the people and not for the people, and the likelihood of organisational antibodies resisting the change is reduced. I’d also recommend creating a regular “team leader briefing” Why? TI People research data shows, of the 285 touchpoints between the individual and the organization, 23 are critical ‘moments that matter’ (highly emotive and impactful). 22 of these are directly influenced by a team leader.

5. Baseline Current EX:

Review employee engagement data, onboarding evaluation, exit interview data, Glassdoor reviews, and NPS. Analyse and identify the thematic trends. Establish what kind of an EX you desire your people to have and why. Refer to your employer value proposition as you do this.

6. Scope & Objectives:

Define what is in and out of scope. Get clear on the impact on business results and set your objectives and the definition of success at the 1 year, 2 year and 3 years horizons.

7. Outcomes:

Define the business outcomes you intend to drive by investing in EX, how will these be measured and validated across tangible and intangible indicators. Create a business case with ROI.

8. Design of Solution (Journey Map):

Flesh out the journey map of the employee experience at a) the traditional stages of the employee life cycle i.e., recruitment - onboarding - development - retention - exit and b) at the customized stages that you want to identify touchpoints and moments that matter which may be unique to your organization and ones you consider are drivers of employee experience.

You want to make sure these touch points occur regularly, are actionable, and are business relevant. Practices related to trust, transparency, inclusion, and caring have a disproportionate impact.

9. Mapping Listening at Scale across the Moments that Matter:

This is about a continuous listening strategy and tools in place, gathering real-time feedback and more often across the entire employee lifecycle, especially at the moments that matter. A Josh Bersin DEI research of over 500 companies found that of 84 practices correlated against a series of business outcomes, listening was by far the best predictor of excellence.

10. Tech Stack & Data Transparency:

An insights-driven EX at scale needs to be employee-centric and datadriven, and therefore best supported by technology.

Today you have the choice of opting for end-to-end EX platforms that will help with developing personas, journey mapping, identifying MoM’s, listening functionality, and analytics e.g. Qualtrics, Microsoft Viva.

11. Organisational Impact Assessment:

Conduct an impact assessment to determine the changes necessary in systems, processes, tools/software, behaviors, mindsets, role expectations, reporting structures required to deliver the desired EX across the different teams/departments/roles.

12. Budget:

From the organisational impact assessment will arise the need to build a budget. A TI People research has established that you can expect to bump up your HR budget by an additional 13% to provide for your EX-initiative.

13. Pilot the MVP:

Identify an area of the business and business problem the area leader is dealing with that you believe can be positively impacted by the EX solution. Set up the hypothesis, discuss and co-design the 'proof of concept' solution with the leader, associate KPIs, align resources, time commitment, roles and responsibilities, and the start-stop time frame.

14. Scale-up Strategy:

Define your scale up strategy. You can choose from big bang i.e., org wide roll-out simultaneously, linear i.e., area by area or geometrics i.e. in progressive bigger waves. Your strategy will depend on the resources available, the level of urgency and anticipated levels of resistance.

EX Is A business imperative sponsored by top leadership, it’s not an HR Initiative.

Let me close with a reminder that companies with a great employee experience often have Inclusive environments that outperform in every way. Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business. n

About the Author

Having lived and worked in four continents, Puneet Sachdev is a globally experienced leader in people & culture, and an executive coach focused on the tech sector. He currently leads Digital and Organisational change for Enzen, a global green tech consultancy in Australia. Puneet is an industry speaker, regularly publishes his views on LinkedIn and his work as won international recognition at the Brandon Hall Excellence Awards. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.