Employee Experience industry useful reports – December 2023
IT teams must put employee experience front and centre
Eamon O’Doherty, enterprise director at Logitech, discusses how to achieve this in an interview with Installation.
Takeaways:
- Hybrid collaboration tools must be easy to use - otherwise employees may not use them and/or feel excluded if they have a poor experience
- IT must focus upon an equitable experience - employees should be seen and heard equally, no matter if at home or in the office
- Employees must have the right home set up - if you want people to work from home, then you should provide them with the right tools such as headsets, cameras, a safe environment etc.
We’ve all been there… booked a meeting room where video conferencing is required, and no one can get it to work – even the person you called from the IT Helpdesk! Employees need and deserve the right tools to do the job, and they shouldn’t be asked to muddle through with sub-standard hybrid-working equipment – or worse, expected to buy their own. Time is money and a poor tech experience will impact upon productivity.
Link to report: https://www.installation-international.com/thought-leadership/exclusive-how-employee-experience-is-front-and-centre-for-tech-investment
Are we heading for an Employee Experience recession?
Forrester believe that turbulent times are ahead... but these can lead to opportunities.
Takeaways:
- Organisational EDI investments will fall from 33% in 2022 to 20% in 2024 - the report predicts this will lead to (yet more) box ticking EDI efforts rather than anything substantive
- Employee engagement and culture energy will decline again - as the old saying goes: if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got; so, with minimal EX investment, it's no wonder things are slipping
- AI will help and hinder recruitment - sure, it will help with applying and sifting, but will this really help you to get the right candidate?
- Leaders should buck the 'EX recession' trend - yes, they should... there's your point of difference right there
As we always say, you really don’t need to spend mega bucks to improve your EX. For example, if you build EDI aspects into employee experiences at source, you don’t need separate programmes. And if you focus upon co-creating your EX with your employees, then this will organically increase their engagement and energy.
Link to report: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/predictions-2024-future-of-work-employee-experience/
Is HR the 'natural leader' of the Employee Experience?
This article by Raconteur suggests that the long-heralded shift to people-centric businesses has finally happened - and it should be led by HR.
Takeaways:
- The article states that: "Human Resources (HR) professionals have long made the case for employee experience to be a key strategic driver within organisations" - I couldn't disagree more; EX is still underfunded and under resourced because (generally speaking) HR hasn't made the case for investment
- 60% of C-suite leaders see HR as 'purely administrative' - there's nothing wrong with that if you're doing what you're expected to do… HR has become a catch-all for people-related teams and functions, but it shouldn’t be
- Retaining good talent will always be more profitable than bringing on new recruits - we've been saying this for years, yet few organisations seriously invest in talent retention, over and above paying a salary and on-costs
- Companies that don’t have a people-first voice on their board will lose out - very true, how can you lead people if you don't understand them?
One of our rally cries from the Employee Experience Opportunity is that anyone can own EX. It needs to be a separate function, sitting independent of others, and the lead can come from any people background. At present, if thought about at all, EX tends to get lumped into HR – but it’s a completely different skill set than payroll, dealing with pay disputes, and grievance procedures. Let HR do HR work, Internal Comms do Internal Comms work, and invest in the right people to lead EX.
Link to report: https://www.raconteur.net/talent-culture/new-role-hr