Why Employee Experience Initiatives Fall Short

After a decade of growth and historically low unemployment, organizations now find themselves in a much different world. But even as companies are forced to shed jobs and dramatically tighten belts, smart managers must keep their eyes on the horizon: Recessions eventually end, and when this one does, companies in many industries will return to an atmosphere where keeping talent happy is a priority. That can be a challenge. According to a global study by the research and advisory firm Gartner, in 2019 companies spent an average of $2,420 per person on efforts to enhance the employee experience. Such initiatives typically include flexible work policies, workplace redesigns, and learning and development opportunities, to cite just a few examples. When organizations meet their workers’ experience expectations, the researchers found, they see boosts in effort, productivity, and retention. But the ROI from such initiatives is disappointing: Only 13% of employees in the study reported being fully satisfied with their experience. “Simply investing in these programs is not enough,” says Caroline Walsh, a vice president in Gartner’s human resources practice. “Companies taking that approach only drive up expectations,” creating a vicious cycle in which employee desires and organizational spending fuel each other. The study—a survey of nearly 150 HR executives and 3,000 employees worldwide—reveals that for better returns, organizations need to complement investments with measures to help shape people’s understanding of their experience. That’s a three-part process. Calibrating expectations. Most companies ask employees what they want from their work experience—but too often they stop there. “Expectations are relative,” Walsh says, pointing out that they are influenced by prior jobs, personal events, peers, and other factors. They may also be incomplete: Research shows that only about a fifth of employees are candid about their wishes. And those may be infeasible or impossible to implement. So an organization should be clear about what it can—and can’t—deliver given the available resources and priorities, which will change as the economy ebbs and flows. “There need to be some guardrails,” Walsh says. “Is this idea relevant to the entire company? Is it tied to our business goals and strategy?” Once those guardrails are in place, HR leaders should involve employees in creating a companywide “experience vision”—for instance, by surveying them about what changes they would implement and what makes them excited to come to work. Managers should take a long view, focusing on salient events, not smaller incidents. Finally, rather than issue top-down, blanket directives about what to expect, managers should engage in one-on-one dialogues to align each employee’s hoped-for experience with the organizational vision. At Silicon Valley Bank, employees create “experience blueprints” in daylong workshops designed to help them determine and document their priorities. These become the basis for ongoing conversations with their managers (whom SVB calls coaches) about what to anticipate and whether those priorities are reflected in their realities over time. Personalizing the day-to-day experience. Most organizations recognize the pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all approach, but customization usually falls to managers, who may have limited bandwidth, may lack full visibility into what each employee wants, and may not be completely trusted by direct reports. Firms get better results when managers partner with employees to this end. The first step is sharing information so that workers can see places to make improvements. “It’s hard to benchmark your experience if it’s a sample of one,” says Leah Johnson, also a VP in Gartner’s HR practice. One large software company created a dashboard on which it posts biannual engagement survey results and personal descriptions of experiences employees have had. Town hall meetings and webinars can serve the same purpose. A team learning that members lack confidence in their digital skills might request training, for example, while an employee with young children might look for areas of the firm with the work/life balance he’s seeking. Tim Bower Employees might fear repercussions from voicing their requests, so leaders need to create a psychologically safe environment for discussions. To keep people from being overwhelmed by possibilities, managers can provide each worker with a set of relevant choices—for instance, personalized suggestions for training opportunities. They can create default options to make it easier to act. And they can connect employees with others in the organization who have insights to share. Shaping memories—both good and bad. Organizations often focus on responding to negative experiences with all possible speed—but that doesn’t always help, and it can mean engaging in issues that don’t actually matter much to employees or the business. Managers should borrow a leaf from the customer-experience book and take a long view, concentrating on how employees will recall their experience over time and focusing on salient events rather than on incidents, such as technology glitches, that may feel urgent in the moment but quickly fade. They can seek to reframe memories of negative experiences by acknowledging that a problem occurred and emphasizing that because of the employee’s feedback, things will go better in the future. As part of Microsoft’s Acknowledge It email initiative, HR and business leaders send personal messages to employees who had rocky moments in their onboarding, thanking them for their feedback and underscoring how it made a difference for others. They also send thank-you emails during the offboarding process, acknowledging the contributions of departing employees. Since rolling out the initiative two years ago, the company has seen boosts in engagement, retention, and advocacy. “Everyone Goes at Their Own Speed” Stanley Chow Peter Vultaggio is the global head of talent development and change management at Silicon Valley Bank. He recently spoke with HBR about the organization’s “experience blueprints”—an ongoing initiative to help employees identify the values, interests, strengths, and goals that are most important to them. Edited excerpts follow. How did you begin? The first task was to encourage more-expansive thinking among employees. We ran workshops on the neuroscience of change, on mindset, on mindfulness, to start cracking open our ways of seeing ourselves and what we’re capable of. Only after that did we move to the blueprint workshops. Describe how those work. These are full-day immersive sessions that help employees learn about themselves and discover what they value most. In one exercise, for example, participants think about people they look up to, and we help them break down the specific behaviors they admire and want to emulate. By talking about the results in one-on-ones and in groups, people form a story about themselves that they can share with their teammates and coaches and with the larger firm. What happens then? The real power comes after the workshops, as employees have ongoing conversations with their coaches. Once they’ve identified their key values and areas of interest, there’s the question: What’s keeping you from them? In some cases, people decide they’re in the wrong role and move to a different position or department. Other times, they realize that pursuing a particular interest doesn’t align with certain priorities they’ve just identified—family or community work, say—and they internally recalibrate, reducing a source of stress and angst. Some people find that our firm actually isn’t a good fit, and they leave with our blessing. How do you create a psychologically safe space for this work? Coaches go through the workshops in small groups alongside their teams, so they are learning about themselves and their people at the same time, which helps everyone feel more secure. And there aren’t any mandates: Everyone goes at their own speed. Coaches are trained to ask open-ended questions that let people share as they see fit. What challenges did you face? At first, our leadership was concerned that people might not be realistic about what we could accommodate, though we actually found the opposite. In addition, some people initially said, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this—it sounds like therapy.” We had to overcome that. Finally, time and cost were an issue. We operate a lot of call centers and had to be creative about how we rotated people in and out to attend the workshops. But the firm quickly saw that this more than pays for itself by what we get back and how great the employees come to feel about themselves and SVB. What gains have you realized? More people are taking advantage of development opportunities as they become more confident about what to seek out. Business units that have gone through the workshop are also seeing improvements in engagement. And we can run change management a lot more smoothly now. When people are working on things they value and feel good about their contributions, it’s a little easier to turn the ship. It’s equally important to reinforce positive experiences—an insight that was one of the researchers’ biggest “aha” moments, Johnson says. Too many firms treat employee experience initiatives like a marketing campaign, issuing formal statements when they are introduced—an approach that can feel inauthentic and irrelevant. One large government agency has taken a different tack. It created a road map depicting all its employee experience improvements, from new phone systems to a mental health resources program. HR leaders ask employees to reflect on how the programs have improved their work lives and encourage them to post their stories on the road map and share them in team meetings, off-sites, internal newsletters, and other forums. As companies emerge from the current crisis, leaders might seek ways to highlight examples of how they supported their employees, such as by continuing to pay sidelined workers or providing extended sick leave. All these activities should supplement, not replace, an organization’s fundamental investments in experience, the researchers emphasize. “Companies have to be shaping the experience of something,” Walsh says. They constitute a significant opportunity for employees and employers alike. Each year, Gartner finds, organizations that take a shaping approach will have largely satisfied 32% more employees than their counterparts have, at a 32% lower cost. Those employees will be less likely than others to jump ship, and they’ll put in more discretionary effort and perform at higher levels—raising their companies’ chances of meeting their customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputational goals. About the Research: “The Modern Employee Experience: Increasing the Returns on Employee Experience Investments,” by Gartner (white paper)

Why Employee Experience Initiatives Fall Short

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