Editorial
“HR is here to protect the company, not the employees.”
When I became part of an HR investigation, I asked the HR rep why my colleague and his team were asked questions as if we had done something wrong. The Employee Relations representative was clear that he was investigating lawsuit potential, not whether my colleague was harassed to the point of severe emotional damage and whether that leader should remain in place.
I wasn’t shocked, but I was profoundly disappointed. Sure enough, the investigation concluded without any follow-ups or insight and my colleague left soon after. The leader stayed in place. Morale on the team plummeted.
Can HR Be the Vehicle for Employee Experience?
I couldn’t stop thinking about the imbalance inherent in the work agreement. We, as employees, are told that we are a family, we’re all in this together. But when things go wrong, we often don’t have a vehicle to escalate our personal challenges. HR leaders are trained to listen out for “trigger words” and escalate — not for resolution, but for legal preparedness. We are a family so long as we employees keep our heads down and do what is expected.
That sucks.
Of course, the challenge between HR and employees is more than just the employee relations side. We know that challenges to where we work (return to office debates), career opportunities (limited by poor performance tracking) and managing our burnout (cutbacks on wellness programs and hiring) are impacting employee engagement overall. HR as a vehicle for employee experience is challenged and we are at an inflection point.
A Korn Ferry study found by 2030, there will be a massive shortage of 85 million talent. The primary reasons for this are competition from other employers, lack of experience and lack of technical skills. At its current pace, HR teams won't be able to adjust in time. HR needs to a. invest in the right technologies, b. retrain and upskill their teams and c. understand their employees’ needs to drive retention.
Conflicting Goals Between Human Resources (HR) and Employee Experience (EX)
The intention behind employee experience was to bring human-centricity into the often operational role of human resources. Groups created mission statements to become more employee-centric, but those programs often conflict with the tactical structure of many HR organizations. As a result, conflicts arise:
- Operational Efficiency vs. Employee Satisfaction: While HR teams are aware of the need to evolve, teams are still focused on maintaining operational efficiency, which can mean strict policies and procedures that don’t align with a flexible, personalized approach.
- Cost Management vs. Employee Benefits: Organizations see HR as a cost center, not an investment opportunity. Therefore, HR aims to control costs, which can lead to limitations on investments in tools and updated journeys that create positive employee experiences.
- Compliance vs. Innovation: HR's role in ensuring compliance with laws and regulations can sometimes stifle the innovative practices that enhance employee experience.
- Siloed vs. Integrated Data: To do the deep work required to create personalized and consistent programs, analysts need access to employee data, which is often secured due to regulatory requirements. However, to protect the most sensitive data, general access to masked data is also often unavailable, making real insights almost impossible.
Underinvesting in HR limits the organization to basic functions like payroll and recruitment, preventing it from exploring programs that could benefit employees and improve efficiency. Even when the desire and strategy to create a more employee-centric organization exists, the restrictions yield small, performative actions that don't lead to significant change.
Growing Influence of Behavioral Science and EX on HR
Behavioral science, (the study of how emotions, the environment and social factors determine how humans make decisions), and understanding the employee experience through their entire lifecycle is increasingly influencing HR practices. We prepare for the talent challenges to come through a deeper understanding of how to engage and motivate employees while ensuring adherence to the corporate culture and policies. An understanding of what motivates and influences employee behavior can go a long way in prioritizing programs (driving operational efficiency), developing communications that drive action (ensuring compliance) and allowing employees to feel more autonomous (building engagement):
- Performance Management: Many organizations lean on decades-old, highly biased structures. New research highlights that performance reviews are far more than mere evaluation tools, rather they are powerful psychological interventions. Gartner found that when individual goals are aligned with organizational priorities and help employees meet changing needs, coordinate with peers and hold themselves accountable, employee performance increases by up to 22%.
- Career Planning: Our career plans are motivated by life events, personal goals and financial needs, and these drive career roadmap plans. This knowledge can help HR design self-motivated programs and offer personalized pathways. Leaning on both a guided and self-led approach, companies can include mentorship, skill development and create a culture of continuous learning that focuses on the whole person and doesn’t just assume people should follow a pre-set ladder.
- Talent Acquisition and Onboarding: New hires are often overwhelmed, as they “drink from a firehose.” By using behavioral assessments during recruitment, companies can better predict job performance and reduce turnover rates. Enhanced onboarding programs can significantly improve employee retention and productivity through the addition of buddies/ partners and appropriate training to help the new hire quickly acclimate and contribute to the team.
- Learning and Development: Enhance learning and development through insights into how employees learn and what motivates them to engage in training programs. Data from McKinsey highlighted a 35% increase in training and development adherence, such as employees following safety procedures, when employee motivations and nudges are understood. With an understanding of the psychological factors that drive learning, HR can design more effective and impactful training programs.
How HR Can Incorporate EX Into Their Strategies
To align HR and EX goals, organizations can adopt several strategies that maintain the operational needs (the HR “machine”), but allow for employee-centric structures to drive enhanced program design, adherence and overall engagement. To successfully connect tactical HR with employee experience best practices, organizations should:
- Foster Collaboration: Promote open dialogue and feedback between HR, employees, managers and senior leaders. Understand goals, needs and obstacles and work around them.
- Align Goals: Create a robust goal-setting process that includes commitment to organizational level outcomes and individual goals aligned to personal growth opportunities.
- Leverage Data: Remove the limits on nonsensitive HR data. Use listening data, people movement and engagement data to create storyboards of how your teams are performing to find the teams that are struggling.
The integration of tactical HR practices with employee experience is pivotal to foster a thriving workplace. By bridging the gap between immediate operational needs and long-term strategic goals, organizations can cultivate an environment that not only meets business objectives but also ensures their people are productive, effective and committed. Leveraging data, fostering collaboration, aligning goals and investing in talent development are fundamental practices that ensure effective and impactful HR initiatives.
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When HR departments can understand that people — not HR systems — are the engine of their organizations, they will pave the way for a sustainable and engaging employee experience that drives organizational success.
Editor's Note: Read more about the state of employee experience today:
- Where Employee Experience and Customer Experience Align and Where They Diverge — Aligning EX and CX efforts pays off. But the two shouldn't be treated the same. Here's where EX requires a different approach.
- Think Like a Designer: How an Experience Design Mindset Benefits the Employee Experience — It all begins with the mindset.
- How to Break Free From the Employee Experience Trap — If your company's employee experience looks good on paper but doesn't deliver the results you want, you may have fallen into the employee experience trap.
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