From Customer Experience to Employee Experience
We are familiar with the term customer experience?
The idea that as customers, we experience a company through our interactions with it.
We can think of employee experience in a similar way.
The collection of our experiences interacting with our employer over time.
These interactions, or touch-points, can be human, face to face, virtual, through the use of technology, or entirely digital.
Experience, the word
Experience – the noun
an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone
As employees, we go through many experiences, key moments, in our time from joining to leaving.
Experience – the verb
encounter or undergo (an event or occurrence), feel (an emotion or sensation)
As employees ,we live and feel those key moments. The ups and downs. The highs and lows. The elation and the frustration.
Adding digital to the employee experience
Let’s add “digital” to the employee experience mix then.
But wait…
DEX is neither a tool, a platform, nor a strategy.
I love this clarity from Forrester, hehe!
So what is digital employee experience?
We can think of the Digital Employee Experience (DEX), as how we live and feel all our interactions as employees. Through the digital tools, systems, and processes provided by the organisation.
In their report, “The Rise Of Digital Employee Experience Teams“, Forrester define it as:
The sum of all the perceptions that employees have about working with the technology they use to complete their daily work and manage their relationship with their employer across the lifecycle of their employment.
I like the use of the word perception. We’re all experiencing the same tools, systems, and processes, yet perceiving them differently.
To be fair to Andrew and Cheryl at Forrester, they go on to say:
DEX is not a single tool or strategy — it’s an employee’s perception of how an ecosystem of technologies, processes, and policy choices either improve or degrade their work experience.
The Digital Employee Experience is our perceived end-to-end experience, as we interact with – and are enabled by – technology.
The benefits of a Digital Employee Experience
A positive Digital Employee Experience, is one that reduces friction for us as employees. That empowers and enables us in our roles. It provides us with the information we need at the right time, in the right context, and in the right format. Freeing us up to communicate, collaborate and innovate more effectively.
A poor digital employee experience will hurt productivity. It will become a cause of frustration and make it harder for the company to attract new talent.
The importance of the customer experience is understood. We’re now seeing the employee experience – which underpins it, start to get the much-needed attention it deserves.