My last blog addressed the concept of Human Experience Management (HXM) as the next evolution of HCM solutions, with employee experience (and not HR) at the centre. While technology does play a role, HXM also represents a mindset shift; To stop treating people as interchangeable assets (as human capital) and start putting people at the centre of what powers our businesses and to care as much, or more, about our employees as individuals, as we do our customers and in doing so, releasing the potential of our people to excel in their jobs.
Employee Experience is distinct to Customer Experience and can be defined as having four key areas which organisations seeking to understand Employee Experience should address:
- People and Culture – People around me help me thrive at work.
- Workplace Experience – The resources to do my job well.
- Individual Experience – The company cares about me.
- Transition Experience – I can grow through tines of change.
For many companies the path from HCM to HXM may seem a daunting task. Some do take the total transformation path like EY who reaped the benefits with the most engaged teams boasting higher personnel retention and higher revenue growth per person. We have also observed our customers taking incremental steps.
Sometimes the starting point at an organisation is one of distress. Where experiences including technology experiences are stressful, disjointed, complex, or frustrating for employees. Employees may have difficulty finding what they are looking for, or maybe it is so confusing, the experience leaves them far from feeling valued, (sound familiar)?
Step one is to alleviate the distress, ideally by creating frictionless interactions. Frictionless interactions are experiences where employees find what they need at the right time through the right channel. Basically, finding what you want, when you want it.
The application of the right resources including people (who) process and technology (when and how) are key to providing frictionless experiences. For example, the imbedding of intelligent technologies such as AI, machine learning and chat bot functionality to provide suggestions and guidance to employees, supports frictionless experiences and enables employees’ experience at work to be like the experience they have as consumer.
However, even these experiences are really the minimum baseline today and are not enough when it comes to really motivating your workforce.
Moments that Matter, are the events which delight and maybe even inspire. These events could centre on a work experience such as a joining a new team or completing a project or learning achievement. Or they could be of a personal nature such as a leave of absence. Traditionally HR attempted to understand these through an annual employee survey, in keeping with the technology at the time.
However now technology can support an interactive ongoing listening strategy from an employee’s first day and throughout the changes in their career. Supporting and prioritising the moments that matter the most to your workforce is a key part of addressing employee experience.
The holy grail in the maturity shift from HCM to HXM is Sustained Enthusiasm. Where employees are engaged and inspired in their day- to-day work. Sustained enthusiasm is the result of employees at working at their best and is driven bottom up and not pushed down from HR. This requires that all facets of employee experience are addressed.
The bottom line is that employees are not restricted by the environment or the technology around them, but rather freed up to exercise creativity and provide a higher level of customer satisfaction to accelerate business growth.
Learn more on how your business can transition to Human Experience Management. Register for the SAP SuccessFactors HXM Digital Summit being held on 27th March.
