The Number 1 Challenge to Data-driven Employee Experience Success and How to Start Addressing it.

The Number 1 Challenge to Data-driven Employee Experience Success and How to Start Addressing it.

The bar to invest in the employee experience has been raised for organizations. In my previous article, I argued that – in order to create truly impactful, personalized and profitable experiences - organizations must adopt people and HR analytics early on in their transformational efforts.

However, whereas the adoption of analytics has been central to customer experience management in the areas of sales and marketing for years, HR still struggles to leverage data and advanced HR analytics in order to better understand and proactively manage its biggest asset.

The number 1 barrier: HR silo’s and cross-functional collaboration

The problem often isn’t the availability of data; most organizations collect numerous data on their employees. The real obstacle to better employee experience management is built into the siloed nature of HR and how those functions share that data, analyze it, and work together.

Too often, critical employee data are trapped in stovepiped databases or functional silos, or even outside the organization (some apps do not allow you to retrieve your own data!). Many organizations we meet do not systematically combine different data sources, as they feel it is too complex. As a result, they are constantly at risk of missing the big picture needed to truly understand and personalize the employee experience at critical moments, even as they work hard to improve their own contributions to the employee experience.

Similarly, and instead of focusing on the end-to-end experience from the employee perspective, efforts to improve the employee experience are often approached in silo, with budgets frequently chasing the latest shiny app or tool.

Functional silos make it extremely difficult to get the big picture needed to truly understand and personalize the employee experience at critical moments.

Avoid prompting a cascade of negative consequences

Here’s the problem: your employees look at everything that happens at work as an integrated experience and expect you to operate as one seamless organization. Failing to appreciate this can prompt a cascade of negative consequences, most notable lower employee morale, survey fatigue, poor productivity and higher turnover.

Indeed, when employees embark on journeys that involve multiple devices or applications, their experience can substantially decrease, whether those experiences are provided digitally or not.

3 Tips to Promote Cross-Functional Data-Sharing for Employee Experience Success

Employee journeys are cross-functional by nature, and changing this dynamic is tricky. However, I strongly believe that adopting a data-driven approach will help different HR functions (e.g., recruitment, performance and reward) to complement each other for the employees’ and organizational benefit.  

To secure later success, here are 3 tips to promote cross-functional data-sharing and integration and get the best out of your transformational efforts:

  1. Set-up a cross-functional data-champion team

Getting managers and HR leaders to think in terms of data-driven employee experience success requires a change in thinking. An idea might be to put together a cross-functional employee success team with representatives from all touch points.

Provide training, insights and inspiration on how employing and integrating data to enhance the employee experience will make their jobs more satisfying and impactful. These data-agents can ensure you get off the blocks quickly and facilitate data aggregation to understand what truly matters to different employee clusters.

I personally believe that people analytics leaders are uniquely positioned to drive this effort. But to take charge and steer HR and the organization toward introducing data and analytics to employee experience management, they must broaden their scope and expand how and what they think about their role.

2. Get an understanding of the entire employee data landscape

Together with this cross-functional team, invest in identifying and mapping available employee data entities and corresponding systems for all different touch points (e.g., applying for a job, onboarding, receiving performance feedback, leaving the organization) across the employee lifecycle.

Your organization likely has significant stores of data on employees, but much of it may never be used. The reason may be inaccessibility or being maintained within a department or functional area. Investing in data-driven employee experience management requires embarking on a voyage of discovery to identify these hidden assets.

This step will serve as a foundation for determining where technology and data gaps exist (e.g., a survey tool may be needed to capture and act on real-time employee feedback) and then designing your data and systems strategy to enable a comprehensive employee-centric view.

It will also help to identify overlap between different initiatives and investments and highlight potential opportunities for streamlining data collection.

3. Bridge employee feedback silos and develop a cross-functional continuous listening strategy

Increasingly, we see clients moving beyond annual engagement surveys to regular pulse surveys and open feedback systems to build a complete, real-time understanding of the issues their employees face. Annual surveys do no longer fit with the new, strategic and business-oriented HR function.

Today, numerous technologies and apps exists to allow for almost constant ‘checking in’ on your workforce. However, don’t get trapped in the ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ and become more focused on the technology than the impact the information will have. Frequent feedback collection is important, but it needs to be relevant, robust and consistent over different HR functions.

This becomes even more important when considering the fact that asking employees for regular feedback without acting upon it can prompt a cascade of negative consequences, including survey fatigue, low employee morale and cynism.

Therefore, re-think your employee feedback collection and invest in a cross-functional continuous listening strategy to make sure the information you ask is and will be relevant to your organization.

There is a tendency for organizations to jump headlong into technology, but technology alone won’t deliver a satisfying employee experience.

 

Conclusion

Improving the employee experience requires an overarching strategy that goes beyond individual HR functions. Indeed, the biggest challenge is to create a full picture of your employees as well as creating a seamless experience across channels. This requires different HR units to work hand in hand and breaking down the silos that have been part of HR forever.

These collaborative efforts also include investing in a cross-functional data monetization strategy for the employees’ and organizational benefit and being able to fully leverage the power of predictive HR analytics.

Although this may feel daunting, it will become an increasingly important strategy if you want to personalize the employee experience, make investments profitable and demonstrate the true strategic potential of HR.

This article is the second in a series. Other articles I've published on LinkedIn:

Why HR Analytics is Critical to Employee Experience Success

Why Data-Driven Employee Experience Should Include a Continuous Listening Strategy

Sam Rédelé

Freelance | Data Program Management & AI/Data Product Owner

6y

Great input Laura Stevens, PhD on continuous performance feedback and employee experience for #inTheSpotlight: the war on talent, on 23/5 with Intuo CEO Tim Clauwaert

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