3 Reasons to Prioritize Employee Experience in 2019

Why should we care about employee experience? Many leaders have started to make their strategic plans for 2020. As you work on ways to improve for 2020, one important area to consider is employee experience. Is your employee experience in good shape? Does it support your business goals for 2020 and beyond?

Why should we care about employee experience? Many leaders have started to make their strategic plans for 2020. As you work on ways to improve for 2020, one important area to consider is employee experience. Is your employee experience in good shape? Does it support your business goals for 2020 and beyond?

Employee Experience (EX) is the totality of your employees' perceptions within a human ecosystem as they contribute to the business, manage day-to-day operations, innovate and produce business results. The challenge for business leaders, however, is that employee experience is not an easily understood system of inputs and outputs. Instead, the employee experience is made up of the various relationships that people in your organization have between the company, the manager, the customer, their colleagues, and their perceptions of those relationships. In the employee experience, perception is really reality. It is more about the heart than flowcharts and diagrams.

When you think about how aligned your employee experience is with your strategic goals in 2019, I recommend that you take the time to examine the 3Ps (People-People, Product-Product, Process-Process,) three points in every business or organization, especially considering digital developments.

1. People - Human
2. Product
3. Process - Process

We find this "Three P Model" useful for various reasons. It should also be noted that the ranking is deliberate.

1. People come first

The most important asset in your organization is your people. Your organization is not a living, breathing object that can move on its own. Rather, your organization is a community of people coming together for a common purpose. The only way for your organization to actually do something is for a person or a group of people to take an action. It is therefore obvious that nothing can happen without your people. Therefore, your employees should be your top priority.

If you want 2019 to be better than 2018, your employees need to perform better than they did last year. And for many organizations, labor is the biggest expense item. That's why designing your employee experience to get the best out of the talent in your company is everyone's business, including the secret sauce - the finance department. Because it is vital for the employees in your organization to work at peak efficiency.

''Employee Experience is a leadership job''

Ways to develop your people include everything from providing them with development opportunities to attracting the right candidates. It also involves leaders taking the time to align their vision with the people who will put it into practice. The task of building the right EX is critical and cannot be delegated to the HR department on the quietest floor of the company's headquarters. An organization's employee experience is primarily the responsibility of the senior executives we call the C-suite. A department's employee experience belongs to its leader. This idea works by cascading downwards. The HR department is not the primary unit of the organization responsible for EX, it is simply a resource and is there to provide support and guidance along the way.

2. Employee experience = Customer experience

The second ingredient in the Three P Model is your product (or the good or service you sell in the marketplace). Some of you may question why this item is listed second rather than first in our methodology. You might think that if your product is substandard, it doesn't matter how well your people do their jobs. This is wrong! Our database of more than 24 million employee survey responses has revealed two great principles that defy conventional wisdom.

• First of all, the data suggests that by creating an excellent employee experience, you create a world-class customer experience. In other words, your customer's experience is directly related to how well your employee experience works. We're so firm in our view that we call it a law - the Law of Equivalent Experience. Your employees will deliver a customer experience that is directly proportional to their employee experience (EX = CX).
• Second, when your employee experience is well designed and successful, there is no such thing as a crappy product or service. Our data shows that engaged and motivated employees will not allow your company to produce or sell something that destroys trust or is unsellable. Even if this principle doesn't apply in all cases, our experience also shows that an average product in the hands of a company with an excellent customer experience/employee experience is more likely to be successful than a great product packaged and sold in the hands of a terrible customer experience/employee experience.

The third "P" in our model is your business processes. When thinking about how to improve your processes, we recommend not ignoring one of the most important sources of data and insights - your frontline employees. They often know your customers better than anyone else in your organization and are more likely to know how your customers are actually using your product - invaluable information. Finally, in addition to gaining meaningful and actionable insights, our research shows that asking your employees what they think will increase employee engagement, create a feedback culture and improve your EX.

Chicago Public Transportation Directorate

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) spent nearly $500 million to transition its passengers from a fare system it owned to a system acquired from a third party called "Ventra". The goal was simple: Improve the way drivers collect transit fares. But implementation has been problematic.

One reason for the system's collapse was that the system designers failed to talk to CTA employees. For example, one of the first problems was that the new system charged passengers twice. When passengers entered through the front door, the card reader automatically deducted the fare from the person's account. Then, if the same passengers got off at the front door of the bus instead of at the back because the bus was too full, the card reader again recognized the passenger as checking in and charged them. Had the designers taken the time to talk to CTA bus drivers, they would have easily understood the likelihood of this scenario and proactively worked on a solution before the system was implemented.

Of course, there are other factors to consider beyond these three P's. And that is technology. Since technology can integrate with every aspect of the 3Ps, it is critical to consider the technological aspects of these three pillars. Also, by focusing on the three P's, leaders can think about how to improve the employee experience in every area. In today's changing workforce, employee experience cannot simply be ignored and must become an essential part of business processes in every organization.

OTHER ARTICLES ON EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

What is Employee Experience?

What is the Difference Between Employee Satisfaction, Engagement and Experience?

What is Employee Experience Really?

Employee Experience is More Complex Than You Think

Customer Experience Improves with a Good Employee Experience

What is the Formula for Creating a Profitable Customer Experience?

Why Your Customer Experience CX Depends on Your Employee Experience EX