Employee Experience: Repainting the Canvas During & Post-pandemic.
| Author | Sharma, Ekta |
Introduction
Pandemic has disrupted the normal life for everyone--personally as well as professionally. Each of us at the individual and organizational levels had to reinvent our ways of working to adapt to the new normal. The situation would never be the same as before the pandemic, at least in the near future. Organizations would have to find ways to keep going and discovering and inventing their processes for sustainable organizational growth. All the systems of the employee life cycle need to be re-invented to enhance employee experience at every stage. With a dispersed workforce, virtual connect, digital collaboration, and increased uncertainty, creating a unique employee experience has become even more important.
Employee Experience (EX) is no more an HR-owned practice but requires strategic involvement of the leadership (Tavis, 2020). Employee experience, aligned to business requirements, is one of the crucial factors that differentiate companies from good to great (Plaskoff, 2017; Lemon, 2019). Though intangible, the positivity developed from the employee experience is long-lasting (Nguyen & Pham, 2020; Tang, et al., 2020). This positivity needs to be developed well before the candidate joins the organization. Employee experience begins to take shape passively even before he/ she has no plan to switch jobs. The communication about the organizational culture, work environment, norms, values, etc. attracts the attention of the candidate and stimulates the aspiration to join the workforce of the organization. The employee experience begins when the prospective candidate starts thinking about or aspires to consider a particular organization as part of a career prospect. Technology, social media, and other platforms provide enough information about the organization and the experiences it creates for the employees. Also, employees who exit the organization carry the experiences to share, which becomes an important data point for everyone to know about the organization. Positive employee experience contributes to organizational growth by adding business value, enhancing productivity, and engaging the workforce. IBM's Chief Human Resource Officer Ms. Diane Gherson shared how IBM has brought EX to the center of people management, "We've found that employee engagement explains two-thirds of our client experience scores. And if we're able to increase client satisfaction by five points on an account, we see an extra 20% in revenue, on average" (Burrell, 2018). The current study identifies the challenges and the organization's initiatives to provide a positive employee experience during the pandemic.
Literature Review
Plaskoff (2017) defined employee experience as, "the employee's holistic perceptions of the relationship with his/ her employing organization derived from all the encounters at touchpoints along the employee's journey". Employee experience is shaped based on all interactions occurring between employees and the organization (Morgan, 2017). Such interactions are impacted by the physical office space, the organizational culture, policies-processes-systems, and the facilities in terms of tools, technology, equipment, etc. provided by the employer. But the pandemic has changed most of these factors like physical office space, ways of communicating organizational culture, in-office facilities, tools, etc. Nonetheless, the importance of employee experience has increased manifold in these virtual spaces.
There are different views about the origin of employee experience management. Few researchers believe that it is based on customer satisfaction and experience management (Harris, 2007; Davenport & Beck, 2002; Pullman & Gross, 2004) whereas others believe it to have proximity with design thinking (Lemon, 2019; Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report, 2017). Pullman & Gross (2004) compared employee experience to the brand experience and explained that just as the brand provides a unique experience to customers which would lead to retention and loyalty; the same experience is provided to the employee by the company in terms of work environment which is laid on principles of trust, respect, and empowerment.
Experience is the response to the external stimuli and is shaped by the cognitions and effects of an individual toward the stimulus (Belk, 1975; Gardner, 1985; Hirschman & Holbrook,1982; Zuckerman, 1971). When these experiences are directed towards the realization of needs and want, they strengthen the relationship and loyalty between experience provider and experience seeker (Tang, Xie & Zhao, 2020; Davenport & Beck, 2002; Gobe & Zyman, 2001; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Reichheld, 1996 ; Schmitt, 1999). When this bond is developed between the employer and the employee it becomes a psychological contract. Organizational culture and engagement practices facilitate the shaping of employee experience. Analytics and artificial intelligence are the important tools that help organizations to analyze employee expectations and motivators and strategize the employee experience for higher satisfaction, productivity, and loyalty (Omar, 2018; Psichogios, 2013).
Satisfied employees can only make customers satisfied and so a positive employee experience could provide a favorable customer experience. But it has been observed by various researchers that the companies fail to provide the appropriate employee experience as they don't involve in understanding the employee needs and expectations (Schmitt, 2003: 219). Plaskoff (2017) divides the employee lifecycle into Pre-employment, Employment, and Postemployment and discusses the practices important for employee experience at all three stages of the employee life cycle. Pre-employment phase is marked by the application of prospective employees, administration of selection tests, and sending out the decision of the selection process and the decision of the prospective employer in accepting the offer. The organization needs to be completely prepared to provide a positive experience at every point of contact. Irrespective of whether the candidates accept or decline the offer or have been selected or rejected, the overall experience that the company provides at each stage affects the quality of his/her experience towards the company. In the second phase of 'employment' Onboarding, tasks performed, development and growth, physical structure, tools and techniques, and organizational culture leave the marks on the employees' impression of the organization. The third phase is marked by the exit of the employee and beyond. So, the employees' experience during the association with the company defines their positivity even after they leave. This positivity spreads out to the external talent pool and triggers their aspiration to explore more about the company and many times converts into the application for the job. However, the other corporate communication tools also shape the aspirations of the talent pool.
Method
The current study is based on secondary data sourced from various websites like people matters, quantum workforce, and annual reports of the five companies which include Reliance, Infosys, and Indian Oil Corporation. Sample selection was convenient random sampling as the data was pulled out from the sources available in the public domain and had easy accessibility. The analysis was done with the help of qualitative software QDA Miner (trial version). Themes were identified on the basis of a literature review. Literature on employee experience designing mentioned that key practices which are part of the employee life cycle impact the employee experience. Such practices include recruitment, onboarding, performance measures, de velopment and growth, compensation and benefits, etc. (Yohn, 2016). The employee experience has become a critical factor for talent management in the organization. Re-imagining and re-inventing the employee experience during the pandemic and post-pandemic is at the core of human resource function.
Employee Experience
Employee experience is described as the cohesive, coherent, and complete experience of the human...
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