This week, the TI People team and I travelled to Nice, France, to join 800 HR professionals at the fourth annual HR Congress. Partners of the congress since its inception, TI People were delighted to showcase some of the world’s brightest ideas and most valuable case studies as sponsors of the Employee Experience track.We are so grateful to everyone who presented, attended, debated, questioned and supported us throughout the process. There were many highlights throughout the three days of workshops and talks, but for those who were unable to attend, I have put together my top takeaways. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments – and enjoy!
1. Employee Experience is a new priority
While Customer Experience (CX) has rapidly become the face of marketing, sales and customer service, Employee Experience (EX) is still relatively new to HR. Through the lens of TI People’s brand new research conducted in partnership with more than 500 companies, however, delegates agreed that prioritising EX – a goal for 55% of CHROs this year – will redefine HR as the function driving people success, but were concerned that only 12% of leaders have an EX roadmap in place.
2. Traditional CX methodologies can bring EX to life
Challenging HR to assume responsibility for shaping thoughtful, human-centered experiences while bringing others in the organization along on the EX journey, global communications and EX director for companies such as N26 and Liberty Latin America, Ellie Terry put it best when she said: “Our employees should be treated like our ‘internal customers’.”
3. Acquire knowledge – then use it!
Glint Head of People Science for EMEA, Steven Buck, reminded executives of the importance of 1) finding the intrinsic triggers of engagement (such as an employee’s personal growth journey) and 2) installing these into people success frameworks.
4. The relationship between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement is clear
Challenging traditional engagement models with his frameworks for the new human workplace author of Engagement 4.0 Bernard Coulaty and the audience agreed that the right view into EX allows us to connect to an individual’s motivation. Checking in with the audience via Menti.com poll, the room concluded: engagement is the result, but EX is the cause.
Powerful stories of Vodafone’s EX ambitions shared by Catalina Schveninger captured the best and toughest parts of putting cross-functional participation at the heart of designing their ‘think human’ and ‘find opportunities to wow’ strategies: keeping up the collaborative effort and using (but not being beholden to) agile principles and being comfortable with iterative thinking are essential to achieving great EX in today’s workforce.
6. Relevance to the individual is key
Linking talent strategy to EX via DPDHL’s employee value proposition has been a game-changing strategy for the 550,000-strong workforce. Emphasising the importance of making the employer brand relevant to each individual in an organisation, SVP Corporate People Management and Platforms, Dr Ralph Wiechers explained that it is through well-defined employer brand attributes, critical talent segments and journeys that DPDHL has been able to (sustainably) boost employee value proposition across the company.
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