Business leaders have been trying to use a variety of factors to increase employee engagement and their desire to stay, building on the legacy foundation of organizational practices set up in the past. However, with the disruption in the workplace and the way people management practices have been hit by an avalanche, some of the existing tools and tricks have become basic expectations.
As a result, in companies cutting across industries, employees have revisited and reassessed their expectations in areas like pay, benefits, well-being, development and values. Leaders need to embrace the future of work in 2023 and seek to drive the transformations and innovations in employee experience, or EX, to make business more human.
Also read: Path to Becoming an Employer of Choice Starts with Good Employee Experience
‘EX’ KPIs and changes
Qualtrics, an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States, has published its latest edition of employee experience trends that provide key insights into how things are changing in the future of work.
The firm conducted a study last quarter with 28,808 respondents in 27 countries across 28 industries. It noted that while there have been no seismic shifts in EX key performance indicators (KPIs) from the previous year, beneath the surface, employee priorities are changing.
The most noticeable change has been in the relationship between experience and expectations. Organizations are slowly aligning their experiences with what employees expect, as reflected in the intent to stay scores that have been going down since 2021.
That said, there is a stark difference when it comes to these KPIs between individual employees and executive leaders, or those in the C-suite category.
The employees are far behind the leadership team in all parameters. Broadly, the EX is drastically different for those at the top of the hierarchy when compared to those lower down in the work chain.
This difference is much more apparent in areas like experience versus expectations, followed by engagement, well-being, inclusion, and intent to stay.
Therefore, the primary challenge for businesses is to bridge this chasm by determining what employees want and how to meet their expectations.
Also read: Seven Proven Reasons HR Leaders Must Invest in Employee Experience
India: An outlier in EVP
In times of flux, organizations naturally focus on tackling the most immediate challenges, but they risk losing sight of future workforce planning and employee development. In the latest edition of the annual survey by Qualtrics, one of the most pervasive drivers across all experience metrics was the belief that career goals can be met at the employees’ current organization.
Growth and development opportunities were in the top five factors for intent to stay, engagement and inclusion. Close to two-thirds of Asia Pacific and Japan employees reported positive perceptions of growth and development with their current employer, a tad more than the global average. But India stood as an outlier. At 88%, India was not just way above the global average and the region, it was also above other countries in the pack such as Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
Growth and development opportunities were in the top five factors for intent to stay, engagement and inclusion. Close to two-thirds of Asia Pacific and Japan employees reported positive perceptions of growth and development with their current employer, a tad more than the global average. But India stood as an outlier. At 88%, India was not just way above the global average and the region, it was also above other countries in the pack such as Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
Ex Factor Dos for employers
The Qualtrics annual survey throws some dos for employers in 2023 to lift the ‘EX’ quotient of their organizations. These have four pillars.
- Pay and benefits are two of the top drivers of intent to stay. Employees demand fair compensation for the work they do, and that it’s reflective of their performance. But the percentage of respondents who indicate they are paid fairly for the work they do is expected to slide sharply in the coming year, after inching up in 2022. Companies need to think about how financially inclusive their pay and benefits are. Having a conversation about pay is not taboo anymore and as the external landscape has changed, so meaningful dialogue on how to meet employee expectations in this area is critical to providing a great experience.
- Work-life balance has taken the centre-stage since the start of the pandemic. But the worrying aspect is that the overall satisfaction with work-life balance has decreased by 2 points year-on-year for 2023. The implication is that employers’ efforts to accommodate flexibility and balance are lagging and employees are doing it for themselves with “quiet quitting”, which essentially means doing no more than the job’s basic requirements. Here the expectation is for the employer to continue checking in on employee well-being and ensuring people are not overwhelmed, treating employees with respect and offering more ways for employees to balance work and life to reduce stress on their family. Employers need to increase efficiency in operational workloads and bring work flexibility and the option for employees to choose working hours. Employers should consider “job creep” where employees take on more responsibilities to help keep businesses and communities afloat; equal and fair distribution of work-life balance and flexibility is crucial; uncovering pain points or barriers to flexibility across the organization.
- While the pandemic sped up digital transformation and the adoption of new technologies to support new ways of work, it also uncovered the glaring inadequacies of many existing legacy processes. Employees knowingly weathered these work inefficiencies, many for years — and now, almost 4 in 10 are showing signs of burnout, and, as a result, are likely to be less productive. Employers now need to do better by listening to team members who say they are burnt out after going above and beyond consistently, need to bring flexibility with employee metric ratings to help reduce stress and focus on employee well-being, staff morale, and resource availability to relieve people and avoid excessive hours.
- The past few years gave employees the opportunity to rethink the role work plays in their lives and the impact it has on the people, communities and world around them. Employers need to improve their promotion policies based on employee performance rather than tenure; promotion of minorities into the leadership ladder; career paths for people to progress into roles required for the future; opportunities for new starters to develop their skills and the visibility of organizational values and its foundations.
