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Identifying and attracting talent has always been a competitive sport for enterprises, more so for the ones that seek a pristine position for themselves. Very often we would see surveys going around about Company A being a better workplace than Company B. And, each time such news hit the stands, social media would be abuzz with largely polarised views.
One segment felt an affinity towards Company A while those that have experienced it would air a completely opposite view. No surprises that employee experience cannot really be quantified as to each her own. Even if one were to draw parameters based on certain standards, it is tough to imagine that they would be uniform across all kinds of behaviour patterns and beliefs.
It looks like research is proving what we always believed to be true. Employee experience is just a load of bunkum because it doesn’t really harmonize what companies want it to mean and the actual meaning that employees ascribe to it. And it is precisely because they have such diverse views on the topic that company culture itself gets diluted.
A report published on INC quotes a research from Topia, an HR tech company specializing in managing distributed workforces and global talent mobility, to suggest that often HR believes that their employees are happier than they actually are. The new survey titled “Adapt or Lose the War for Talent: Why Your Employee Experience Needs an Upgrade,” conducted by Method Research, is the basis of their findings.
The survey polled a sample size of 1,000 full-time staffers aged between 18 and 64 working for large enterprises in the United States and the United Kingdom. This is what the report said:
- Just about 17% of the respondents felt that their company had an exceptional rating for employee experience. And employees were twice as likely to rate their company poorly compared to those on the HR team, which suggests a major disconnect in perception versus reality within an organization.
- The HR feels more pressure than employees to hide their true feelings, especially in the wake of diversity and inclusion becoming a critical topic of conversation in the workplace and a crucial factor for employee experience. But, 25% of those surveyed do not feel all that comfortable bringing their authentic selves to the workplace, fearing if colleagues knew more about them, it could harm their career growth. In the case of HR, this number is up to 44% as they feel the need to keep personal beliefs private.
- Employees feel they’re involved in HR-related tasks than they need to and a whopping 58% claim this is so in their case. They claim that they spend an average of 30 minutes longer than necessary per day on these tasks. The survey says this results in about $8.1 billion in productivity losses across the US and UK.
- More than 25% of HR professionals felt that the value of office perks such as “amazing” office space, great cafe, good gyms etc. were important to employees, as against 16% of the general employees. In fact, this aspect came last in the terms of what the staffers felt resulted in a great employee experience.
For employees the number one definition of great employee experience was being trusted and empowered to do their job with little supervision (over 63%), but only half the HR professionals felt that this could be true.
Looks like the HR myth that all employee experience was about a great looking office, good food, regular offsites and picnics etc. just got busted. The survey says that employees craved for genuine workplace relationships that made them feel secure and valued.
All the rest is bunkum! We hope the HR professionals are tuned in to the new era workforce.
