When most work is virtual, will AI become employee experience?

First of all, we should acknowledge that, in many ways, employee experience is not like the other experiences we design. Think about it. Is the employee selling work to the company? Or is the company creating a value proposition for employee membership? What’s the goal? Are all parties after the same goal? The transaction and value created between organizations and staff are more complicated than a customer walking into a retail store. You nearly have to design the employer and employee experience simultaneously to get either right.

On top of that, we now have claims of AI revolutionizing work . How can an employer know if AI is helping or hindering such an ambiguous exchange?

To be upfront, we think AI can positively affect employee experience. But here's a hint...it’s not automation. Executive Coach and Head of Talent, Joshua Craver , and I share our views on how to address these issues:

One more thing.

We should (re)design the employee experience with the entire tech stack in mind.?

Like I said, with more knowledge work taking place digitally, our technology is our employee experience . Curating a tech ecosystem system is the new workplace design. Most people will spend the vast majority of their day interfacing with screens and machines. If we want to support the increasingly independent work lives of our teams, we should thoughtfully curate their tech work experience. We know how to do this for physical space–ethnographic research , design sprints, prototype testing–why not for virtual work?

Here are a few of the steps to get started:?

1. Identify a shared objective. If reached, employees and the organization will maximize their potential. In our case, we call this intersection point between talent and organizational potential the talent lifetime value. We’ll share more on this later.?
2. Map and measure the journey. Every experience is an array of events and activities. Each has the potential to help or hinder your shared objective. To make progress, you need to know which parts of the journey matter and reimagine them.?
3. Design the human, digital, and physical interactions. From calls to bots to office space, the nature of work experience is diverse. Employees are moving from physical to digital, and from human to machine interactions. A great culture includes the tech's behavior.

References

Anderson, B., & Patton, S. (2022, February 18). In a Hybrid World, Your Tech Defines Employee Experience. HBR. https://hbr.org/2022/02/in-a-hybrid-world-your-tech-defines-employee-experience

Emmett. J., et al. (2021, September 30). This time it’s personal: Shaping the ‘new possible’ through employee experience. McKinsey. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/this-time-its-personal-shaping-the-new-possible-through-employee-experience

KPMG Generative AI Survey. (2023, April 24). KPMG. https://info.kpmg.us/news-perspectives/technology-innovation/kpmg-generative-ai-2023.html

Mortensen, M., & Zakhour, M. (2022, November 01). To Craft a Better Employee Experience, Collect the Right Data. HBR. https://hbr.org/2022/11/to-craft-a-better-employee-experience-collect-the-right-data

We Are All Agents | podcast

AI is rapidly shifting how we organize and work. But we can’t just react to technology if we want a human-centered future. We Are All Agents in shaping change. Let’s help technology and talent work better together.

We’ll share new ways of thinking about and working with machines discovered in our own research and from the work of our guests. Our mission is to help talent, leadership, HR, and developers build more human-centered organizations. How we create, assign, and organize work, is all on the table for change. Let’s use this moment to make our work even more valuable for organizations and people alike.?

If you share this mission and would like to collaborate, or if you have feedback for our work, reach out . We look forward to learning about your work as well. And until then, be brave.