First Results of our 6th Annual Global HX Survey and Tips for building HX in 2023

First Results of our 6th Annual Global HX Survey

(A condensed, serial version of our report coming out in early January)

Summary: Employee Experience roles are the fastest growing in the past 5 years (from zero to 35K people in companies of all sizes). Most people in these roles have no prior experience or skills. What are the key skills to learn, what will make HX stick? What is a strategy/plan for 2023?

Outline of this report:

1-???The Explosive Growth of HX

2-???What are the key skills we need to learn? What is the gap in our skills?

3-???Where we are in the journey – what is our level of maturity

4-???How can we move forward?

5-???A strategy & plan for your organization for 2023

The Explosive Growth of HX

Employee Experience, or as we prefer to call it: the Human Experience of Work (HX), really began to take hold and grow in 2017. When we did our first global survey and set of case studies that year, there were fewer than 100 people on LinkedIn with the title ‘Employee Experience’ or similar. HX has grown to be a prominent role at nearly every F500 company and other organizations of all shapes and sizes. Today[1], there are 35,000 people with Experience-related roles (Employee Experience, People Experience, etc.). Connected roles include Agile HR (70K people) and People Analytics (20K people). Making a total of nearly 130,000 people in HX-related roles.

Fig.s 1 & 2 – size of roles that make up HX-related roles & their readiness (source: LinkedIn)

The major challenge for people in this new discipline, as well as for their colleagues in organizations today is most have little or no prior experience, skills or content knowledge e.g. in Human-Centered Design, Analytics or Agile. Over 85% of EX/HX Heads began their role since January 2020. 90% of them were doing something completely different in their previous role[2]. Most of them were in another HR role unrelated to HX. Add to that the “HX Capability Gap” for HR Business Partners, Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, OD, Learning and other CoE’s and for business leaders who want to be HX Champions/Ambassadors and we have a real problem. Perhaps this is the basis for why we see challenges in Stakeholder support for HX efforts and resistance to implementation.

What are the skills we need to learn?

If we look at UX and CX disciplines which preceded HX, they are strong in Human-centered Design (HCD) elements such as Design Thinking, Service Design, User Experience and Systems Thinking. They are likewise adept at integrating Analytics and Agile practices. By ‘Agile practices’ we mean that people in UX and CX work in cross-functional product teams to break experiences into smaller bits or ‘products', utilizing Agile methodology as they rapidly develop and test prototypes and MVP’s. Design Thinking is great at identifying problems while Agile helps us manage backlog and organize how and when we pitch to the business. People in UX and CX have also developed Analytics to measure touchpoints and Moments that Matter, and they typically use metrics for Satisfaction, Ease of Use, NPS and other measurements.

How do people in HX roles compare in terms of how training and certification with those doing Analytics, Agile or CX?

We examined people in HX roles in several major markets on LinkedIn as well as on the Fortune500. We found that 90% or more of Analytics people had served in a prior Analytics role and (more importantly) have education and training in Statistics, Data Science, Modeling, Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, Text Analytics, Behavioral Science, etc.?

Likewise, nearly 85% of people in Agile roles have prior experience and training as Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Lean, Six Sigma, etc. There are established norms for the certification and training in the tools and methods for both Analytics and Agile.

We found that over 75% of CX people have prior experience and training in Brand Management, Design Thinking, Service Design, Digital CX, Digital Innovation, UX/UI, Product Management, etc.

UX people have extensive experience and training in UX methodologies, UX Research, Service Design, Design Thinking, Digital UX, etc. They know how to design their research, how to use Analytics to identify Problems to Solve, and how to work in UX Product Teams.

People in these roles of UX, CX, Analytics and Agile have found that learning the skills, tools and methods within their disciplines are effective ways of working and critical to their success.

A more robust training and certification, based on Human-centered Design, Analytics and Agile needs to exist for HX people and we need to get serious about learning the methodologies. Indeed, everyone in the organization needs to learn more about how to apply these tools and methods.

I heard someone today say that ‘It doesn’t matter what tools you use to listen.’ I strongly disagree. There are some great tools out there with UX and CX that we could make better use of. These tools help us gain new insights that challenge our assumptions, and help us prioritize, reduce work and focus our resources, people and money.

It also matters where we learn those tools. We frequently hear that consultancies, including the top design thinking firms, simply do not understand organizational challenges. They don’t know what it’s like to build stakeholder support or how it is to practice HR tools (HCD, Analytics or Agile) inside a company with politics, inertia, resistance, you name it. A few weeks ago, a senior HX leader at a large global company shared that they had trained 500 colleagues in Design Thinking with a very reputable Design Thinking firm, but the learning had failed to take hold. This was largely because this provider didn’t know how to teach them about how to apply inside an organization with its inherent challenges. These challenges include specific hacks about methodology and practice combined with how to gain stakeholder support, engage cross-functional teams, etc. The barriers to implementation were different than what this provider was prepared to offer.

In addition, Design Thinking is only one part of one of the 3 pillars of HX – that of Human-Centered Design or HCD. The other 2 pillars being Analytics and Agile practices. With Analytics, you have the ability to discover problems to solve, how to properly segment Users, set up metrics for Moments that Matter and analytics for User Testing, etc. Agile, as we have mentioned, helps us with rapid prototyping, User Testing and managing our backlog.

Fig. 3 – the HX Playbook & Toolkit, integrating HCD, Analytics and Agile (full download available on HXWize.com)

Where are we in the journey - Maturity Level

Where are we in the journey to ‘Master HX’? We asked both HR and HX leaders to respond to our 6th annual survey and talk about their learning journey. ?As you can see in figure 2, most respondents say they have already mapped some personas and journeys across their organization (in a later report we will share the journeys). The next largest groups are ‘Researching’ and ‘Building New Capability’. This percentage hasn’t changed much in 6 years and we don’t see growth on the high end of the ladder with ‘New Ways of Working’ and getting HX and CX closer together.

Fig. 2 – Our HX Maturity Level

We hear from many organizations that they are stalled in their HX work because they don’t know where to go next with their insights. Many have focused almost exclusively on the HR side of processes and HR journeys, while most people don’t interact all that much with HR. We don’t join or leave for great HR and processes are not 'experiences'. Others have gathered a lot of data but don’t know how to make sense of it, where to prioritize or how to communicate or where to go next in product development.

Again, that often comes down to not really knowing how to use HCD, Analytics and Agile tools in an organizational setting. We lack experience in knowing how to use these tools.

How can we move forward?

We believe that a stronger commitment towards learning Human-Centered Design tools and methods, becoming more adept at use of Analytics, balancing qualitative with quantitative Analytics and working end-to-end in Agile Product teams will help us deliver on the promise of the Human Experience of Work.

A great way to start building that internal capability is to look at UX and CX people in your company. How strong are they in their listening methodology, in their ability to identify problems and emotions, focus on Moments that Matter, and working in Product Teams to quickly prototype new experiences? Does that capability sit anywhere in your organization? Can you borrow those people to do a few HX projects and help you start somewhere small?

How well do your Customer Analytics people understand and articulate the Customer Experience? What could they teach you about applying these methods to HX? A few years ago[3], I profiled Walmart, who borrowed over 100 people from other areas of the business in CX and UX, Analytics and other roles, to teach their business and HR people how to do HX and map experiences. IBM’s Employee Experience Design began as a small team of designers who were brought in to design their colleagues’ experience in Development journeys, and they ended being formally brought under HR and becoming a larger global team. Where do you see similar capability already in your organization?

Another way to build capability is to reach out to others who do HX work who have been doing it longer than 2 years. Look for whether they talk about experimentation with and practice of HX skills along with practical knowledge. Do they share examples of HCD? Are they certified as Agile Coaches or Scrum Masters? Be cautious about those who talk about HX but who in reality do not use the tools or methods.

If you are building an HX Team, you would do better to utilize those with UX or CX experience first before hiring someone from another HR role with no prior experience or training. Just as we used to say it is preferable to promote a technical person into management over other technical people, so it is better to hire a person with UX or CX background to lead your HX project teams.

A strategy & plan for your organization for 2023

We suggest you develop a Borrow, Buy and Build strategy for creating HX capability in your organization.

1-???Start with the ‘Borrow’ strategy first as that is where you can leverage inside talent who already know your business. Where can you find talent that can bring quick results and impact? Bring people from other areas of the business and have them teach your team and other functions e.g. CX, Brand, Design people from Marketing, UX/UI, Digital, DevOpps, App & Web Design from IT, Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, DevOps, Research, Product Development

2-???A ‘Buy’ strategy is using outside talent for hire to teach and work alongside your people as they co-create new experiences, model how to use HX tools and methods and add HX content knowledge quickly, while building important journeys. Use them to augment the skills you already have. Be sure to involve Analytics to develop deeper Insights, understand behavior – the Why of what is happening and identification of Problems to solve. Think about what tools or methods would help us prioritize and move faster?

3-???A ‘Build’ strategy is role-based and helps you make HX sustainable across your functions and businesses. Different roles require different learning. Ask for volunteers to be HX Champions or Ambassadors and teach them the HX Playbook & Toolkit. Sponsors need to learn how HX works and how and where to invest money and resources. HX Heads need to know how to build a team and lead a transformation. HX Product Owners (people who are in CoE, Digital roles, etc.) need to learn how to lead HX projects in a Product Team with people of other functions who ‘touch’ a particular journey. You will want to develop HX Coaches who become expert in both practice of methods and how to lead Culture Change who can sustainably coach and teach business and HR leaders and others.

Your plan for 2023 depends on where you are in the Maturity Model. If you are just beginning: start small, find a willing business leader who wants to be more data-driven and do a small HX project involving analytics to identify a problem and then use Design Thinking, Service Design or UX to understand the context and co-create a new experience. Don’t limit yourself to HR problems and use the project to prioritize resources so you show a financial impact as well.

If you are Building New Capability, consider what you might use of the Borrow, Buy and Build strategy above to jump start and expand your capability. Build HX Champions across different parts of the business who can in turn advocate and lead further development of skills and know-how in your culture. Develop people in their roles to be able to do their part leading this effort across your HR team and business leadership - Sponsors, Stakeholders, HX Leaders, Product Owners, etc.

If you want to achieve New Ways of Working, consider especially the Build Strategy and how you can develop internal HX Coaches to accelerate that work. Coaches ideally should have some practical experience and training in HCD, Analytics and Agile application inside your organization, and know how to coach others on changing ways of working to be more Human-centric.

If you are attempting to Master HX, we suggest you use those Coaches to align HX and CX efforts closer together and have a central pool of people that work on both. Companies at this level have teams working on physical and digital experiences for both colleagues and customers e.g. Deutsche Telekom, IBM, ABN Amro,?and AkzoNobel.

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Written by Elliott Nelson for HXWize LLC. The HX Playbook & Toolkit is reserved and copyrighted by HXWize LLC.

[1] LinkedIn research 1 December, 2022 compared with LinkedIn research in September 2017

[2] LinkedIn research November, 2022 on 11 major metro markets plus F500 companies

[3] HX 2020 Annual Report – available at www.hxwize.com