Employee experience is king: HR trends set to transform the workplace

Every aspect of our lives can now be tailored to meet our specific needs – your mobile, meals delivered to your door, the content you watch, the holidays you take… how long will it be before the employee experience needs to become this flexible too?

The world of work is already changing at an unprecedented rate as forward-thinking businesses move towards this flexibility. WeThrive client Expand Executive give their team unlimited holiday and total work flexibility – the results are all that matters. Being at the desk 9-5 no longer represents high performance in the modern knowledge economy.

This creates many challenges for those responsible for employee experience - including how to measure how the organisational culture is working, in a cost-effective and scalable way.

Having met more than 30 HRDs one-to-one at The Grove with Richmond Events for the Human Resources Forum (#HRF18) last week, I thought it would be helpful to give an insider’s view of the market. Discussing HR trends that are set to stay behind in the archives and those well-placed to propel us forwards to a better future at work. 

Everything with the word ‘annual’ in it is dying or already dead

Appraisals and engagement surveys are part of HR history. At the time it seemed like a good idea to find out how ‘engaged’ your people are – but in my view it only compounded disengagement in the bulk of cases!

The intention was often good, but post-survey follow up and actions were in the main woeful. This was not the fault of the organisations themselves but the service providers - the outputs of most annual surveys were top-level, anonymous and thematic. We have reviewed many such reports where the number of specific, actionable outputs could be counted on one hand. The “So the survey’s closed... now what?” problem was rife, and organisations got trapped in a cycle of ‘engagement’ reporting while wondering why their scores never really changed!

Simply the best: let’s set up some awards!

Next came the ‘most awesome place to work’ brigade with their glitzy ceremonies and trophies. Personally I always despised these beauty parades for 3 reasons;

1.  Target Obsession Disorder

Human nature is such that if you give me a target to hit I will spend more of my time worrying about hitting it than doing a good job of the work needed to reach it. If our goal is to be in the top ten companies in our sector then it cannot help but skew everything we do to achieve that goal. The aim of genuinely creating a better place to work comes second to getting on the podium.

2. Award Proliferation

As people flocked to these awards (so much more impressive than an annual survey) the providers rubbed their hands with glee, concocting new awards and categories so more people could be winners! Oh and don’t forget the fee per category…

3.  What do they prove?

The organisations with the bigger budgets will always win over the little guys doing it right. Unless a new category is created for them!

The frenzied feedback train: The right answer? Well, no…

To get around the problem of the annual survey not achieving much, lots of clever techies built products that constantly pester your people for feedback – like a needy toddler. Why is that a problem? They mainly ask the same top-level questions that the annual surveys did – so the “Survey’s closed - what now?” problem is just constantly there!

We can see some benefit in taking the temperature of the organisation on a regular basis, but it’s hardly going to bring about real, carefully considered change to the employee experience. Having done plenty of looking I don’t think “Your team would benefit from some team building exercises” is a massively helpful suggestion for a busy line manager! What exactly needs doing, and why, who needs it and how much?

So, what is the right answer?

Well, if you are already beginning to listen to your employees through feedback surveys then you are almost there. Problem is, too many employers are listening and then not doing anything about it, which if you think about it - is worse than not listening and not doing anything. So, the right thing is to start with listening, ask the RIGHT questions and actually follow through on that feedback. Shock horror - who’d have thought it right? Actually doing something with the reams of feedback you have from employees? Putting in place strategies to actually improve employee experience based the data collected from employee surveys.

Sounds good - but how does it work in practice? Well, this is how we roll at WeThrive:

Step 1: Employee survey: ask the right questions

Not just any standard survey will do. You need to ask questions that are less obvious and more likely to uncover both the conscious and subconscious factors impacting employee experience. You can check out the type of questions we ask on our website here: https://wethrive.net/welisten-employee-feedback-survey/. Ultimately, our WeListen product helps you survey who you want, when you need to and make sure it gets to the root of what is going on and why.

Step 2: It doesn’t have to be anonymous - humanise the process

Secondly – you may want to sit down here – we are the only platform to offer a version of our tool that is not anonymous. Surely not, I hear you cry - no one will ever fill that in honestly! Well, that turns out to be a myth. Our survey data reveals that employees engage more willingly with a programme based on their individual data, and participation rates are higher than in anonymous surveys, at 93% vs. 83%!

Many organisations are surprised by that, but it makes complete sense to us – staff increasingly expect a personalised experience of work, and why should coaching or management be any different?

Step 3: Turn the data into action

One of the major frustrations staff have with employee surveys is nothing happens. Just asking questions every week or month without a solid understanding of what you want to know if just going to get peoples’ cortisol and adrenaline pumping even more! When asking staff for feedback there is an implicit agreement that they give their feedback and you will react. Failing to do so just aggravates the situation… this is where in the bulk of cases the annual survey process fell short.

If you understand ‘why’ people feel a certain way about an aspect of the employee experience it is quite straightforward to remedy it. This all comes back to understanding human behaviour and knowing which questions to ask and why….

Wrap around some learning content specific to the recommended actions, and add a log of who is working on what, and voila! You have a platform that supports line managers as they help the leadership craft a sustainable culture of coaching.

Now what?

Well, I may be biased but I would say getting a quick free trial of our employee survey WeListen is certainly a good start. However you do it though, if you start asking your employees the right questions, actually take action and then improve employee experience - you will finally be one step closer to meeting employee demand for a more personalised experience at work. Because if you don’t, someone else will and those employee retention rates will just keep on dropping.

Sound good? You can also have a read of one of our latest blogs on how to meet top HR objectives with your wellbeing strategy.