How to Start Working Strategically with your Employee Experience

If you want to work with your employee experience on a strategic level in your organization, we recommend you to look across these 4 cornerstones. All 4 employee experience cornerstones are critical to the employee experience because they interact and are dependent on each other. 

Building an employee-centered organization is complex and time-consuming. Firstly, you have to define your employee experience strategy. If you want to work with your employee experience on a strategic level and as a strategic focus area, there are 4 different EX cornerstones to get familiar with. 

The 4 Cornerstones of Your Employee Engagement Strategy

If you want to work with your employee experience on a strategic level in your organization, we recommend you to look across these 4 cornerstones. All 4 employee experience cornerstones are critical to the employee experience because they interact and are dependent on each other.

However, this does not mean that the organization needs to focus on all of them simultaneously. You can certainly begin your employee experience strategy by focusing on the individual areas first – but in the end, all areas are important for being able to create a holistic employee experience and a solid employee experience strategy.

It is our conviction that the areas should be anchored, owned and facilitated by the HR function; however, it is of course entirely critical that local anchoring and implementation efforts exist across the entire organization.

1. Create a strategic framework

The first cornerstone is about establishing certain strategic frameworks in the company. Success is only possible if the executive board and board of directors are prepared to work in a focused and committed way with employee experience. There must be a vision for the area and a program with initiatives that can ensure that the employee experience ambitions are realized.

Our analysis from 500+ organizations shows that mastering the strategic frameworks is of significant importance for whether the organization managed to make progress in this area over the last three years.

2. Establish a data-driven culture as a part of your employee experience strategy

This cornerstone states that the foundation of any employee experience transformation should be data driven. During the course of the year, insights should therefore be collected about and from the employees in an intelligent rather then overly-frequent way. Insight from data, analyses and facts must be anchored in such a way that the whole organization wants to act and thus generate a real positive change.

Our employee experience survey shows that the organizations that perform ongoing measurements on the experiences across the entire employee journey and are able to act quickly and with agility to the insights were better able to improve the employee experience over the last three years.

3. Implement a brand new way of working as a part of your employee experience strategy

In the efforts to take the employee experience to a new level, it is necessary to master some new techniques with respect to designing the best possible experiences. HR, managers, etc. must be trained in being able to perceive the organization through the eyes of the employees, so as to be able to assume a true outside-in focus.

Employee Journey Mapping, Design Thinking and hackathons are important methods in this regard. Another key focus is that the employee experience should be created together with the employees – and not for the employees from an ivory tower far from the real world.

Our surveys show that are still very few organizations that have uncovered the journeys and experiences of the employees in the organization and identified the critical moments, friction points, etc.

4. Transform the employee experience

If you want to be best at employee experiences, it requires a massive transformational focus. The entire organization must be mobilized via ongoing EX education and training since the area can be considered a craft.

Therefore, it is not just HR but also other parts of the organization that must work with employee experience on an ongoing basis. Also, C-level, middle managers, the team manager, the team, and the individual employees play an important role in their own and their colleague’s wellbeing, engagement, and experiences, as each owns different contact points across the employee journey.

According to our analyses from over 500 organizations, an organization's ability to continuously mobilize and support everyone in creating excellent employee experiences is the primary driving force for having managed actual significant improvement within employee experience over the last three years.

If you master this cornerstone as a part of your employee experience strategy, you are well under way for EX improvements. 

Mastering Employee Experience

If you want to know more about the 4 cornerstones and how to work with your employee experience strategy in detail, you will probably find this book interesting. Download a free chapter here: 

Test Your own Employee Experience Maturity 

Before you start working specifically with your employee experience strategy, it is necessary and helpful for you to know your point of departure. Take the test and get your employee experience maturity of your company.