Canadian HR Reporter Weekly

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 October 10, 2018 "is is an evolution of traditional HR. And it's absolutely going to be the way that we think about it going forward." e trend is a direct result of failed employers' employee engagement programming, according to Morgan. "e whole shift to employee experiences is because companies are realizing that all the time, money and resources they're putting into these engagement programs is going nowhere — the engagement scores aren't going up," he said. "Employee engagement — although it had very good intentions — has now basically become this idea of investing in short-term perks to try to drive employee satisfaction. at doesn't work, at least not for the long run." Data insights Meanwhile, technology and online experiences have pro- vided copious amounts of data with which companies can make decisions and map employee life cycles, said Veronica Van, senior product manager of people experi- ence and culture strategy at Telus Digital in Toronto, who spoke at the summit. Employee experience is similar to customer experience, she said. "It's just a different product offering," said Van. "It's like the culture in the work that you're selling versus the actual product. But you still need to attract talent in the way you need to attract customers." "As the entire economy moves to more of a digital experience… the benchmarks have changed in terms of traditional competitors," she said. "When people open an app on their phone, they're comparing that experience from Airbnb to Telus." Accenture is attempting to be employee-obsessed in how it solves issues, according to Denino. "We are attempting to be very data-driven or insight- driven in solving the right problems. We talk a lot about working from insight and not assumption when creating certain interventions that we think will help our people," she said. "I also think that we are attempting to move away from the desire to go after the shiny and new and really think about 'What are the main needs we are solving for? And how does technology play in service to that technology and workplace?'" Companies focused on bettering employees' experiences see returns on investment in terms of improved productivity and performance, said Morgan. "People want to work for an organization that invests in their experience," he said. "at is something we all care about as humans; it's something we all value as individuals." "If you want to be able to compete and succeed and grow and thrive in the new world of work, the best way that you're going to be able to do that is by investing in the experiences of your people," said Morgan. "It's a survival thing. You're not doing it because it's nice; you're doing it because you want your business to be around for the next five, 10, 15 or 50 years." Advice for HR Employee experience can be approached in different ways, according to Denino. Some employee experience managers report to their CHRO, while other companies have simply renamed their HR departments. Accenture's team is dedicated to establishing consistent measurements of experience, attempting to bring in employees' voices to drive improvements and innovation efforts within HR, she said. "What we have been appreciating is that there is a need to introduce new mindsets to how we improve experience, bringing in skills like human- centred design as you attempt to reimagine a certain experience. When you look at traditional skills within HR, not many people have those types of foundational skills." "A lot of what this area is meant to be is a way to become much more employee-centric in how we solve," she said. "A lot of employee experience teams… have been created with the underlying desire to shake up how things work within HR, to bring in tools that we use when solving for customer experience in service of our own people." "ere definitely is this desire to bring in a more radical or novel approach to what we provide to our people every single day." Senior leadership is essential for the success of employee experience initiatives, said Morgan. "If you have managers and leaders in the company who don't care about experience, who don't care about kind of the human side of business, these initiatives will fail right away." Human resources also needs to ensure they aren't operating in a bubble, said Van. "If we're only reading HR articles, we're kind of in an echo chamber." There definitely is this desire to bring in a more radical approach to what we provide people every day." Credit: Monkey Business Images (Shutterstock) Employee experience is about changing core workplace practices around employees, focused on three environments: culture, technology and physical space, according to expert Jacob Morgan.

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