Employee Experience exceeds HR

Noortje Hartman
Written by
Noortje Hartman
Service Designer
Oct 15, 2019 . 4 mins read
Share this article

Discussing Employee Experience with HR professionals, we came to interesting insights about a) how to attract and keep your employees b) the future of sustainable organisations and c) how to implement EX and the role of HR in it. We hope this topic and these take-outs inspire you.

EX for engagement: we need more than chocolates

Why do people take a job at your company, why do they stay and what makes them leave? All questions to help you understand how you can attract and retain your human capital. With talent scarcity, HR needs to focus on figuring out the needs of their (potential) employees. And by making decisions based on their needs in order to improve the Employee Experience, your company gets more interesting for employees.

There is no one-size-fits-all EX 

We humans differ in needs, in expectations, in beliefs and in things we value. Also in our vision when it comes to work. So how do you design an ideal Employee Experience that fits everyone? Tools, methods and visualisations like ecosystems, tension models, Need Based Personas and Customers Journeys can help us organise and manage all information. Combining different tools and data sources helps you to prioritise so you know where to start. A continuous process then helps to improve this piece by piece.

Time to look at the entire employee lifecycle

Although an employee lifecycle often starts at HR, all experiences that employees have, add up to their view of your organisation. Welcoming new employees with fireworks at the entrance, a new computer waiting at his or her desk, but with no person of the team available to get them settled in, probably results in a bad experience after all. So let us be very clear that EX is not only for HR: it takes the whole organisation. However, HR has the logical position to guide the Employee Experience process in the organisation.

So let us be very clear that EX is not only for HR: it takes the whole organisation.

The clear role for HR:  guiding the process

1.Human resources needs to guide the process for understanding the concept and value of EX throughout the entire organisation, because it is important that everyone speaks the same language in order to get results.

2.HR should be in charge of researching and analysing the current Employee Experience and then guide the organisation on how to relate employee needs, -types and, -lifecycles to everyday decisions. 

3.HR is the one to stimulate a culture shift so that instead of thinking for your employees, the organisation starts to talk to their employees. Design decisions should be based on real insights instead of assumptions to create real impact. This will save the organisation money that otherwise would have been spent on rework or useless investments.

The Employee Experience of the future

Although most people are convinced of the value of Employee Experience, implementation can be tough. How to convince your colleagues and management? How to measure the effects of EX? Who to involve at what moment? What will the role of HR be? 

At Koos we are learning fast, and we have developed a good idea of how we could make it work. We would love to explore that with you. Please let us know if you want to join forces and build your future Employee Experience.

Interested in using Employee Experience?

Noortje Hartman
Written by
Noortje Hartman
Service Designer
Oct 15, 2019 . 4 mins read
Share this article