Editorial
Over the last few years, employee experience (EX) has become a cornerstone of enabling talent. It touches upon every aspect of talent management,making it a priority for organizations looking to retain and attract talent in a labor market facing skills shortage.
However, EX is widely misunderstood. The lack of a common definition, and misconceptions about what it is and how to use it makes it challenging for leaders to approach. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss two overarching myths about employee experience and why leaders need to rethink their employee strategy.
Myth 1: EX is the Employee Version of Customer Experience
The “customer journey” or “customer experience” is often used as a blueprint for the “employee journey” or “employee experience” (Figure 1) for a few reasons:
- Similar to customers, employees have several “moments that matter” in their lifecycle.
- These moments are easy for HR to focus on and operationalize.
- Doing so allows vendors to create products that pertain to one or more areas.
Myth Busted
While it may appear that EX and CX have a lot in common, approaching them in the same way fails for three reasons:
- The customer journey and employee journey are different. While a customer journey map may accurately recognize the majority of a customer’s experiences with a company, an employee journey map does not. The different stages in the employee journey map (such as onboarding, promotions, etc.) only represent a small fraction of an employee’s time at an organization.
- Common “moments that matter” are not necessarily those that matter most to employees. It's likely that some of these moments However, most organizations fail to use data to figure out which moments matter to their specific employees. Instead, many organizations use an employee journey map and focus on the items listed there, such as onboarding, becoming a parent, receiving a promotion or exiting the company.
- Employees and customers have different relationships with organizations. For customers, this relationship can range from purely transactional to something more involved. Employee relationships tend to be longer-lived, deeper and more complex.
By continuing to think of EX as similar to CX, companies may fail to address a large portion of their tenure and moments that might matter more to them.
Myth 2: EX is Primarily About Employees
One of the biggest and deep-rooted myths around EX is that it is primarily about employees. There are a few reasons for this:
- “Employee” is a part of the phrase “employee experience.”
- The traditional approach to EX has always focused on employees.
- Co-employment risks can make it challenging to design processes and practices for workers who are not full-time.
As companies continue to hire different types of workers to meet organizational needs, the reasons listed above are no longer valid.
Myth Busted
Increased volatility and uncertainty means organizations must be more responsive to change. One way they can do this is by using contingent workers (contractors, freelancers, temporary workers, project-based workers, 1099ers, etc.), to allow organizations to quickly adjust the size and skills of their workforce, given the business needs.
The use of contingent workers is already prevalent, with McKinsey estimating that 36% of workers at large companies today are contingent. There are a few socio-economic factors that are driving the extent of the need for these types of workers among organizations (Figure 2).
- Market volatility: The market volatility over the last few years has led companies to change the way they respond to the environment, which means they have had to look for/rely upon a variety of skill sets. Contingent workers can be an important source for attaining those skills.
- Demographics: The tight labor market in 2023 is reflective of a bigger demographic shift — we have too many jobs open and not enough people to fill them. The mismatch between available talent and job openings is projected to continue, with the BLS expecting the economy to add 8.3 million jobs but only 7.7 million workers between 2021 and 2031. The result will be organizations scrambling for talent to fill gaps, which contingent workers can fill.
- The skills gap: As the previous point highlights, organizations can only hire so fast. As technology advances and organizations require different skills, current employees will only be able to upskill at a certain speed. Therefore, accessing contingent talent from outside can help organizations fill the gap in the short term.
If companies only continue to think about employees when thinking about the experience, they may be cutting off more than one-third of the people doing the work. Co-employment shouldn’t stop leaders from thinking about how they can enable a positive experience for all types of workers, so “employee experience” should instead be understood as “worker experience.”
With the myths busted, it is clear that companies need to rethink their approach to EX and apply a more human-centric approach to enabling the workforce.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
