What is Employee Experience?

Some people mistakenly confuse the term "Employee Experience" with other popular terms such as "Employee Value Proposition", "Employee Branding" or "Employee Engagement". While Employee Experience (EX) is undoubtedly related to these, it is not synonymous. EX is much broader in scope:

Employee experience is the totality of employees' perceptions of their interactions with the organization they work for.

Over the past few years, the effort to understand and define the employee experience has gained significant momentum, and for good reason. There is an emerging trend that has led to many HR managers (and even marketing departments) earning titles such as "Chief Employee Experience Officer".And of course, as a result of every rising trend, in order to respond to this demand, I witness people who graduated from university 3-5 years ago, who are not yet competent, positioning themselves as "Employee Experience Designers" in the market, creating process documents with the information they have compiled from various publications, and opening "Employee Experience Workshops/Courses". On the one hand, it is great to see these developments resulting from companies making an effort to understand the issue. However, when asked to explain what "Employee Experience" means, they actually produce graphs and models that describe the Employee Life Cycle (ELC).

Employee Life Cycle

While the Employee Lifecycle is certainly part of the broader concept of Employee Experience, it is distinct from it and consists of all the steps or processes that the employee engages in throughout their relationship with the organization. Chronological and sequential, the ELC has a beginning and an end. The Employee Lifecycle includes key events and processes such as recruitment, induction, employee development, promotion, exit interview, etc. It is an important part of the human resources process because it takes into account the steps that occur from the employee's first contact with the organization until the final interaction after they leave. The ELC is an important part of the human resources process because it takes into account the steps from the employee's first contact with the organization to the final interaction after they leave. Nevertheless, the Employee Lifecycle differs from the Employee Experience in two important ways: perceptions and expectations.

Think of it this way: Two colleagues, Yasemin and Emre, start their new jobs in the same company on the same day. They are assigned to the same manager for the first year, work in the same production facility and have similar job responsibilities. Their salaries are the same. In fact, almost every step of ELC is the same. However, their Employee Experiences are very different.

Yasemin has two children, both of whom are interested in soccer and regularly go to training in the evenings. One of the things she found most appealing when she started at the company was the emphasis on the importance of work-life balance, which was very important to her as she wanted to support her children's sporting activities after work. Emre is single. He finds it difficult to come to work before 9:00 in the morning (at least sobered up), as he gets caught up in partying at night, especially after nights of playing guitar with his band.

The good thing for Yasemin is that the company has the flexibility for employees to start work at 8:00 a.m. sharp and leave at 4:00 p.m., provided that important projects are finished before they leave. Yasemin sees this as a real plus. Emre, on the other hand, feels restricted by the 8:00 am start time. This simply does not meet his needs. When he started the job, he had an expectation of a "work-life" balance and thought that the flexibility offered by the company policies would make the "life" part easier. However, this was not the case. In fact, the last time she raised this issue with her manager, she was told to "read the company policy booklet". In short, the rules of this company were too strict for her. She also thought that if she showed promise, which she certainly did, she could quickly rise to a managerial position. But he was still in the same position as when he started with Yasemin a year ago and he started looking for new jobs. Yasemin is very happy with her life, her company's policies are in line with her motivations, whereas Emre is looking for a job. Two employees. Same employee life cycle experiences. Very different Employee experiences!

Employee Experience Equation

EX is largely based on perception and expectations. The perception part determines the outcome of the experience. The Employee Experience is not always based on the facts themselves, but on the employee's perception of what happened. Therefore, even if Yasemin and Emre have the same experience, the EXs can be completely different.

Most organizations fail to understand this concept. They believe that creating a brilliant EX is a matter of calling themselves "great places to work" after coming up with a set of benefits that they believe are universally appealing. Yet their employees are still not engaged, and they go elsewhere where their expectations of the employee experience are more in line with what they are looking for.

Meeting Expectations

A positive Employee Experience is not just about what the company puts in front of the employee. Nor is it entirely dependent on the events that occur in the Employee Life Cycle. Rather, it is a result of how the employee perceives these experiences and whether these experiences meet expectations

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