Unlocking employee experience from its silo

When no one is in charge – which is often the case for new concepts as no one really knows if it’s a buzzword or a major trend that is going to turn into something that is here to stay – nothing happens. But as EX is gaining traction, two situations are emerging: 

• No one wants to be in charge either because it may look like a minefield for some old-minded managers or execs, or because some want to protect the status quo.
• OR, everyone wants to be in charge in taking ownership since employee experience is the ‘place to be’; the new shiny thing in the workplace.

The point is that if employee experience needs ownership. it can’t be locked into a silo. 

HR seems to be the most legitimate but EX goes far beyond their expertise. It requires a kind of tech-savviness at some point, but it’s also about improving operations, what is not their usual playground.

IT? It will play a role, for sure, but solving employee’s problems and making their work simpler and easier is not something they’ve been good at in the past. So IT will be the partner of employee experience but won’t lead it.

Employer branding, internal or external communication? Employee experience is about real work life, not about the company’s promise.

Digital transformation? It may be a good pick in businesses where a digital transformation unit exists and is really driving change in both the customer and employee field.

Moreover, most of the time, many businesses consider digital transformation as being about customer experience first and the need for employee experience appears when they eventually realize that the limit to a successful customer experience deployment is employee experience.

Unfortunately, such units are too often more in charge of digital than of transformation and have neither the power nor the assignment of initiating and driving such deep internal changes.

Read more:

• Making it Happen at Mondelēz
• Employee Experience: Beyond the Buzz Towards B.I
• Improving the Organizational Experience for People In A Post-Pandemic World

No matter who’s in charge of employee experience, it will have to work with a cross-functional team to be able to manage all the touchpoints

In fact, employee experience is like customer experience. It’s about managing multiple touchpoints between the company and its employees, it’s also about sharing data across silos for better knowledge and understanding of employees.

So, obviously, no matter who’s in charge of employee experience, it will have to work with a cross-functional team to be able to manage all the touchpoints.

A bolder approach is to avoid creating one more silo, one more director or chief something officer but to replace an existing function with employee experience.

That’s what happened at Airbnb, one of the first companies that turned the Chief Human Resources Officer function into a Chief Employee Experience Officer one.

The “CEEO” is not only responsible for core HR functions but also for many other things ranging from facilities to internal communications, including food (yes…food!).

It’s my point of view, the best way to achieve a consistent employee experience provided it’s more than rebranding the HR function. It implies either that HR collaborates much more with many other functions or acquires the capacity to manage fields that are out of its typical scope. I

In my perspective, I also consider that the CEO will have to be closer to the CMO. Why? Because since there is no CX without EX, employee and customer experience must be consistent in order to leverage the first to better deliver the second.

There’s still a long way to go and organizing for employee experience will be like an internal tsunami for many old-fashioned organizations. But is there any other realistic alternative in the XXIe century?