Data-Driven HR: Issue #5 – Employee Experience Special

Jacob Morgan compares organisations that have invested long-term in ‘experience’ to those that have invested short-term in ‘engagement’. The results are highly interesting – see An indicator of how far the field of employee experience has developed is that there is now a maturity model (see Andrew is one of the most knowledgeable folks on employee experience and text analytics (as the numerous insightful articles on This study from IBM is the perfect primer on employee listening and its move to the forefront of management thinking. Recommendations are provided on how to design an employee listening program, the stakeholders you need to involve (Josh has probably written more than anyone else about the case for, growth of and examples of employee experience. The most recent Whilst far from being a definitive list, In this article for UNLEASH, I highlight My regular round-up of the best people analytics and future of work articles from July and August includes an article by Andrew Marritt on how to understand open-question employee feedback, and also one by Ian Bailie on THE WHY
Three articles providing a powerful business case for employee experience:

Jacob Morgan – Why the Millions We Spend on Employee Engagement Buy Us So Little
Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Companies that invest in Employee Experience outperform those that don’t (Source: Jacob Morgan)
Thomas Rasmussen – Engagement Drives Performance: Evidence from People Analytics

Does engagement drive performance? Or is it the other way around? Thomas Rasmussen presents evidence that engagement really does drive both business and individual performance over time (2-3 years), and that the potential uplift in Sales or Customer Satisfaction (NPS) is typically in the 15-25% range.
McKinsey – Winning with your talent-management strategy

Fascinating research from McKinsey on the three talent practices, including enabling a positive employee experience, that have the most significant and direct impact on business and financial performance.

THE HOW
Articles on how to design, deliver and measure employee experience programs including lessons HR can learn from consumer analytics, how to implement continuous listening, how to run quantitative and qualitative analysis, deploy AI and agile methodologies and more.

Volker Jacobs – A Maturity Model for Employee Experience
Figure 2). The fact that this was co-created by Volker and his team at TI People together with over 20 member companies including the likes of BMW, Bosch, Cisco, Roche and Zalando, makes it even more compelling.
Figure 2: A maturity model for Employee Experience (Source: Volker Jacobs, TI People)
Andrew Marritt – New ways to run engagement surveys
his blog testify). In this article, Andrew describes how the way we measure employee engagement is changing. He then digs into the technologies that are revolutionising the supply side, which he breaks down into four categories: automation, changes to mobile and user interfaces, big data technology (to support people analytics) and machine learning (text analytics and predictive).

Laura Stevens – Why HR Analytics is Critical to Employee Experience Success

Like Andrew and Volker, Laura Stevens has published a number of excellent articles on the employee experience theme. In this one she outlines why investment in people analytics is a pre-requisite and then describes three ways analytics can boost employee experience programs: i) segmentation, ii) targeting and prioritising investment as well as iii) understanding and demonstrating value.
IBM Smarter Workforce Institute – Amplifying Employee Voice: How Organisations can better connect to the pulse of the workforce
Figure 3), the range of listening channels available and the importance of having a sound analytics strategy in place: Listen, Analyse, Act.

Figure 3: Key stakeholders in an employee listening program (Source: Amplifying Employee Voice, IBM Smarter Workforce Institute)

Josh Bersin – 5 strategies to maximise the employee experience | AI in HR: A Real Killer App | Feedback Is The Killer App: A New Market and Management Model Emerges
HR Technology Trends and Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends reports are testament to that. In the three articles referenced above, Josh gives his five top five strategies to maximise employee experience, describes the integral role of AI and People Analytics, and in his seminal analysis from 2015 outlines how a new market for employee feedback has emerged.
Peter Hinssen – What HR Can Learn From Marketing About Employee Experience

This article highlights that whilst companies have harnessed data to improve revenue, reduce costs and enhance customer experience, mostt have neglected to use this treasure trove of data for the benefit of the employee. As Hinssen passionately argues “Let’s change that. Let’s mine all the data that’s available and turn that into value, not just for the company, but for the individual employee”.
McKinsey – When the customer experience starts at home

McKinsey outline how a successful transformation of the customer experience not only requires a common vision, but also a parallel effort to energise and improve the employee experience too.

THE WHAT
Six case studies that collectively cover the creation, design, delivery and impact of employee experience and listening programs:

Diane Gherson and Lisa Burrell – Co-creating the Employee Experience
This interview with CHRO Diane Gherson outlines how IBM has radically co-created the employee experience through a lens of the employee as customer.

Patrick Coolen and Frank van den Brink – HR is hitting a second wall: the continuous listening journey at ABN AMRO This article introduces the ‘Second Wall for People Analytics’ and focuses on the challenge of developing continuous analytics and leads neatly to the main topic of the article – the continuous listening journey at ABN AMRO. Frank and Patrick define what ‘continuous listening’ means to the bank, describe the active and passive data sources in scope and then lay out the path ahead in this critical area of employee insight.

This case study describes how insights from data helped a fast-food restaurant chain drive a successful turnaround, increase customer experience and grow revenues. Carla Arellano, Alexander DiLeonardo and Ignacio Felix – Using people analytics to drive business performance

Jeanne provides two examples from Marriott and Hilton of how each company harnessed machine learning to improve candidate and employee experience respectively.
Jeanne Meister – Future of Work: How Using AI Creates an Enhanced Candidate And Employee Experience

This excellent white paper outlines a people analytics project at ISS that sought to i) analyse the strength of the link between employee engagement, customer satisfaction and profitability, and; ii) use data to identify the HR processes to adjust that would have the biggest impact on improving employee engagement. The findings of the project showed a strong correlation between employee engagement and customer experience, with key drivers identified with regards to motivation, service quality, knowledge and responsiveness of service staff. Additionally, a close link was also found between high customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) and contract profitability. The project led to ISS initiating changes to training programs for supervisors and employees as well as onboarding programs.

Morten Kamp Andersen, Simon Svegaard and Peter Ankerstjerne – Linking Customer Experience with Service Employee Engagement
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! This HBR article suggests that the days of the humble employee survey may not be over yet. The team found that at Facebook surveys are still great predictors of behaviour, provide employees with the chance to be heard and are a great vehicle for changing behaviours.

Scott Judd, Eric O’Rourke & Adam Grant – Employee Surveys Are Still One of the Best Ways to Measure Engagement THE WHO

Figure 4 below provides a selection of i) people (analysts, consultants and practitioners) who create, curate and/or share great content on employee experience, and ii) innovative vendors in the employee experience space.
..WRITTEN BY ME
Figure 4: People to follow for Employee Experience, Vendors innovating in the Employee Experience space (Source: David Green)

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Designing Employee Experience to enhance engagement and productivity Earlier this year, I interviewed Laura Stevens to get her thoughts and tips on how organisations should implement a continuous listening initiative as part of an employee experience program.
research from IBM, which outlined that companies are deploying five key components to create effective employee experience strategies: personalisation, transparency, simplicity, authenticity and responsiveness with people analytics being front and centre to these programs.

The Dos and Don’ts of Continuous Listening The best HR and People Analytics articles of Summer 2018 how to use design thinking in HR.