Creating exceptional employee experiences – IBM Blog

As the lines between employees’ personal and professional lives become more blurred than ever, employees expect a more flexible and empathetic workplace that takes everything about them into account. This shift in employee expectations is occurring in a challenging environment of rapid technological advancement, widening skills gaps, and unpredictable social and economic challenges. Above all, the nature of HR resists optimization because employee experiences are difficult to quantify and organizations are difficult to change.

Despite these challenges, employees expect their interactions and experiences with their company to live up to the brand values. HR has a critical role to play in meeting these expectations to remain competitive, and leaders believe generative AI can help drive HR and talent transformation. If companies adopt a proactive and dynamic HR approach to address current and future challenges, attract and retain top talent, and develop future skills, they can deliver world-class experiences for everyone.

Rewriting the Employee Experience Through Advocacy and AI

HR leaders think about their workforce holistically, including current employees, contractors, candidates, and past employees.

HR leaders are increasingly recognizing employees not only as part of the workforce, but also as unique individuals who fill a variety of roles. This holistic approach is a paradigm shift that embraces the multifaceted nature of humans and the landscapes they navigate. As it happens, employees already think of their personal and professional priorities as intertwined and mutually influencing each other, and they want their employers to do the same. A recent survey found that more than 70% of employees ranked working conditions, work-life balance, and flexibility as most important.

During their time at a company, people go through many changes that affect not only what they contribute, but also what kind of support they require from their employer. HR helps people develop career roadmaps that fit their experiences and goals, provides support as they navigate the various stages of family planning, and creates or provides flexibility in physical workspaces to accommodate accessibility needs and personality traits. There are a number of ways you can help people navigate these changes, including by providing: Ready for work.

HR is now tasked with improving the entire lives of employees and transcending short-term interactions through technology-driven experiences such as generative AI-based automation, intelligent workflows, virtual assistants, chatbots, and digital assistants. Incorporating AI and automation into every process allows employees to focus on what matters to them as individuals. These costs are complex, but when executed carefully, these investments deliver a powerful employee experience that can potentially help employees be happier and more productive at work.

Although HR is not solely responsible for an organization’s employee experience, HR departments are increasingly playing a key role in championing new employee experiences. HR is helping to reimagine the employee experience, shifting to a consumer-centric, flexible delivery model that is proactive, personalized, relevant, and results-driven. Organizations must also leverage enterprise-wide imagination, vision, and empathy to creatively engage and serve individuals who crave simplicity and agency.

Holistic solutions through the entire employee experience

This holistic HR approach to employee experience goes beyond mandating digital access channels. The idea is to make these channels so attractive that they naturally attract users. And, crucially, employees can still access human support for time-sensitive, urgent and highly personal situations.

A holistic mindset empowers employees to independently access resources, anticipate their own needs, and provide proactive solutions.

The benefits of these innovations create business value through improvements such as:

• Employee Engagement and Satisfaction
• Attract, develop and retain talent
• Personal, professional growth, and other dimensions of well-being
• Workforce productivity, operational effectiveness, efficiency and cost savings

To make this transition into a full employee experience and reap these benefits, companies need to do three important things:

1. Understand and anticipate employee needs and expectations.. It is important to go beyond static segmentation models and acknowledge deeper insights into the underlying behavior. This means taking a holistic, dynamic view of who your employees are and what motivates them. This requires managers and executives to develop, strengthen, and maintain relationships with employees and understand who they are inside and outside of the workplace. Trust, communication, respect and cooperation should be the core principles in developing these relationships.
2. Solutions to changing scenarios. Companies must adapt to a dynamic environment and provide relevant options across services to accommodate changes in employees’ lives (e.g. marriage, new parenthood, urgent health issues, caring for an ailing relative, retirement, etc.).
3. Simplify for Relevance. To foster a culture of simplicity, companies need to make it easier for employees to make decisions. This requires leveraging data, AI, and expert opinion to help employees identify relevant information and easily navigate systems.

The goal is to transform HR into a modern service delivery model that shifts the perspective and focus to the employee. It’s important to understand why people need certain experiences at certain times and make those experiences as seamless as possible. Designing from a consumer perspective means breaking traditional silos both inside and outside HR to simplify work, support employees through life transitions, and provide access to information and skills development resources. With generative AI, HR finally has the technology to help scale these highly personalized, highly customized interactions.

The shift to delivering a complete employee experience involves the next evolution of HR. It acknowledges the complexity and dynamism of individuals, the ever-changing nature of external forces, and the pivotal role of employee experience in navigating these realities. Companies that embrace this model are positioned to attract, develop, and retain the talent they need to compete.

See how IBM helps clients deliver world-class employee experiences. Use AI to Transform HR and Talent