It’s a sentiment I’ve heard a number of times over the last year from professionals working in the People & Culture / HR space. I love the intent behind these assertions – evolution of thought, a desired focus on employee outcomes, achieving success through people. However as I then heard about the variety of exciting P&C-led EX initiatives that they had planned for the next 12 months, I was left with the sense that the assumed ‘path to a great EX’ looked very much like the paths P&C have travelled over the past couple of decades, with varying success.
A year ago our company launched the inaugural Humankind Employee Experience Awards programme. We were privileged to learn lots about what great employee experience looks like, with my favourite being simply that those who commit to following through on their intent to create a great EX greatly increase their chances of success! Less expected, though, was the realisation that our own approach to understanding and designing for EX needed to change. It added little value over what had been done before.
The problem with the most common models of EX
If you consider yourself a student of EX, you might be familiar with the work of Jacob Morgan, who has identified that any employee’s experience is influenced by their organisation’s technological environment, cultural environment, and physical environment. It makes sense, and last year we were using our own model of EX that was similar (see below).