I am keen to share our experience of doing both at Humankind, as this journey forms an important part of our story.
About five years ago I remember first learning about Employee Experience (EX) and being very excited. I immediately knew EX would be the future of HR.
I was deeply interested in what EX is and how to go about designing better workplace experiences. Fast forward to today and I am proud of how far Humankind has come, our purpose and approach - but it has been a journey.
Where it all started
Realising EX was going to be the future of HR was just the beginning. I knew I would need to learn as much as I could to share this passion with my team and ultimately start educating the market, before making any impact.
Making Change
This started with the decision to rebrand to Humankind. Ultimately I knew our original brand, HR Shop would not carry this new passion forward. The decision to rebrand was obvious, to me. What I didn't anticipate though was changing our brand, changed everything. The next couple of years were tumultuous, to say the least!
Designing Foundations
Living into our new name, Humankind and growing employee experience consultants wasn't easy. We spent a lot of time discussing our own ideas about what EX is and how to describe this concept to others. Ultimately, we developed an inputs-based model to describe and work with EX.
Leading the EX discussion in New Zealand provided us many opportunities to grow. At the beginning of 2019, we realised our first model had been useful for categorising different inputs to employee experience but did not support designing employee experiences. Our team craved better and ultimately threw out our original thinking, to make way for something new.