13th April 2023
A brand new era of Employee Experience
In this article that appears in HRO Today, Tim Stahl, VP Experience at Rightpoint explores trends that are ushering in a new era of opportunities in the employee experience that will benefit both employers and employees.
The New Era of Employee Experience
“The work world is undergoing seismic change, and it’s fair to say we’ve entered into a new era of the employee experience. The pandemic has been widely viewed as the source of these changes, but the seeds were planted long before COVID-19.
An abundance of opportunities, from new start–ups to the gig economy, lured top talent away from the traditional work world, and The Great Resignation accelerated those trends, exacerbating the ongoing war for talent.
When all is said and done, these changes will have a lasting impact. So, companies that want to attract and retain top talent must understand the trends and developments in the employee experience. Employees, after all, are a key differentiator for every organization. In addition to contributing to customer success, they attract new candidates and are a key reason why other employees stay with an organization.
Let’s look at some key trends in the employee experience.
Employees Will Continue to Have the Upper Hand in 2023
Layoff announcements aside, employers still need talent more than talent needs employers. In fact, three out of four companies say they continue to struggle to recruit and retain top talent.
Companies who believe they can dictate work conditions will be the ones that struggle the most. Recruiters must vie for the same pool of skilled candidates who still have many options.
To attract and retain the best employees, organizations will need to offer more than competitive salaries and benefits; they need to invest in the employee experience.
Forget Life-Work Balance, It’s About Work-Life Integration Now
The traditional “life-work balance” was all about drawing boundaries: here is where I work; here is where I conduct my personal life, and never the two shall meet. But the pandemic obliterated those boundaries, and people did what they do best: they adapted.
There were some employees who learned to close sales and deliver projects in between home-schooling and Zoom meetings. And others learned which times offered the least number of distractions, letting them concentrate on the task at hand. If an employee discovered that they, for instance, can have two hours of uninterrupted work time immediately after the kids get on the school bus, don’t expect them to willingly give up that time to commute to an office.
With that said, employees are concerned about how to integrate work into their lives, and their lives into work. Progressive employers understand that they can no longer dictate what constitutes a workday. Put another way, they get to define what “8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.” means, a term coined “ the triple-peak day.”
View the full article here