José Luis Pascual Pedraza
Managing Partner Employee Experience
Lukkap – Madrid
Josefa Elisa López Gómez
Associate Professor
Carlos III University Madrid
Antonio Parrilla Martínez
Lieutenant Colonel Civil Guard
Technical secretary. Staff Command
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE: PEOPLE MANAGEMENT MODEL IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE: PEOPLE MANAGEMENT MODEL IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
Summary: 1.- INTRODUCTION. 1.1.- Purpose And Objectives. 1.2.- Justification. 1.3.- Characteristics of the current environment. 1.4.- Characteristics of the knowledge economy. 1.5.- From Customer Experience to Employee Experience. 1.6.- Employee Experience (EX) as a management model. 1.7.- Approach to possible EX-related elements in the Guardia Civil. 2.- Methodology. 2.1.- Purpose of the study. 2.2.- Hypothesis. 2.3.- Type of research and scope of study. 3.- Results. 4.- Conclusions and discussion. 5.- References.
Resumen: Nos encontramos inmersos en la denominada economía del conocimiento, provocada entre otros aspectos por las posibilidades que nos brinda la transformación digital y en este contexto económico existen dos parámetros fundamentales para la gestión de las organizaciones. El primero es el grado de digitalización de las actividades que se realizan, y el segundo es la consciencia de que el valor diferencial de estas compañías digitalizadas es el talento humano con el que puedan contar, y que podrá marcar la diferencia entre las organizaciones con éxito de las que no lo tendrán.
La importancia del talento en este entorno es clave y se ha convertido en un bien escaso que se tiene que cuidar, es por ello que la gestión de personas posee una gran criticidad dentro de las compañías, y el foco en la gestión se tiene que centrar en conseguir hacer real este valor diferencial que pueden aportar los individuos, escuchando sus necesidades y creando modelos de relación adaptados y coherentes con el ADN de las compañías. Para ello, ha surgido el modelo de Experiencia de Empleado.
Para conseguir obtener los resultados adecuados, las organizaciones tienen que adaptar sus modelos de gestión de personas ante la nueva realidad económica, creando modelos de gestión centrados en dotarlas del soporte adecuado, convirtiendo los empleados en clientes internos y haciéndoles vivir la mejor de las experiencias.
El objeto de este estudio es exponer -tanto conceptualmente como a través de datos concretos-, cómo el modelo de gestión centrado en la experiencia de empleado puede ayudar a conseguir los retos de nuestras organizaciones, tanto privadas, como públicas, en materia de gestión de personas.
En el marco de la Administración Pública y, más concretamente en la Guardia Civil, el modelo que aquí se propone puede aportar datos objetivos que faciliten información valiosa para la toma de decisiones en la gestión de personas.
Abstract: We are immersed in the so-called knowledge economy, caused among other aspects by the possibilities that digital transformation offers us and in this economic context there are two fundamental parameters for the management of organizations, the first is the degree of digitization of the activities that are carried out and the second is the awareness that the differential value of these digitized companies is the human talent they can count on and that can make the difference between successful organizations and those that will not.
The importance of talent in this environment is key and it has become a rare commodity that must be taken care of, which is why people management is highly critical within companies and the focus on management must be focused in making real this differential value that individuals can contribute, listening to their needs and creating relationship models that are adapted and consistent with the DNA of the companies. For this, the Employee Experience model has emerged.
In order to achieve adequate results, organizations have to adapt their people management models to the new economic reality, creating management models focused on providing them with adequate support, turning employees into internal customers and making them live the best of experiences.
The purpose of this article is to expose both conceptually and through concrete data how the management model focused on the employee experience can help meet the challenges of our organizations, both private and public, in terms of people management.
Within the framework of the Public Administration and, more specifically in the Civil Guard, the model proposed here can provide objective data that provide valuable information for decision-making in people management.
Palabras clave: Economía del Conocimiento, Modelo de gestión, People Analytics, Talento, Compromiso, Experiencia de Empleado, liderazgo, eNPS, Administración Pública, Guardia Civil.
Keywords: Knowledge Economy, Management model, People Analytics, Talent, Commitment, Employee Experience, leadership, eNPS, Public Administration, Civil Guard.
1.- INTRODUCTION
According to Peter Drucker, the most valuable asset in a 21st century institution, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, would be the knowledge of its employees and their productivity. (Peter Drucker, 1957. Cited in Cervi, P., 2021).
Every economic model our society has experienced has had an associated way to manage resources. For example, in the industrial model, management focused on the efficiency of the means of production, including labour, which allowed goods to be produced more efficiently, and which was managed as a part of this economic engine from a materialistic viewpoint.
Today we live in the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1998, cited in Alcoba and Mora, 2022). According to these authors, we have moved from an extractive economy to a product economy, then to a service economy and, finally, to an experience economy. Experience here is understood as the set of goods and services designed by companies to generate emotions that hold onto customers (Alcoba and Mora, 2022).
On the other hand, in the knowledge economy, digitalisation is the accelerator and people are the raw material. Whoever can count on those people who can make the most difference in their performance will be the ones who can generate the most value for their customers and, therefore, for their environment, generating wealth and distinction.
The importance of people in our organisations means that the management model has to adapt to employees' needs and challenges, at the same time that organisations have to modify current actions and practices in the management of human capital. Personnel or human resource departments are increasing their prominence and potential impact within organisations, provided that they can lead and demonstrate how the management of people can be used as a lever for differentiating their companies.
A number of studies have highlighted the difficulties organisations face in achieving high levels of employee engagement. In 2021, Gallup – referring to 2020 data – reported that 80% of employees said they were either disengaged or felt disconnected from their jobs and organisations (Gallup, 2021). In addition, the ADP Research Institute's Global Workplace Study 2020 (working from a sample of over 26,000 employees in different countries) found that only 14% of workers felt fully engaged (ADP, 2020).
It seems obvious that companies have difficulty in generating engagement from the individuals within their companies.
There are key aspects of employees' work life in their organisations that directly impact their experience. The better these aspects and their impact on engagement are understood, the more companies can prioritise on what would increase engagement rates and therefore the performance of the organisation itself.
We are, therefore, at a critical moment in the management of people in our organisations, in which the importance of individuals for results and their differentiation is combined with a large number of challenges emanating from the socio-economic environment.
All of this makes it all the more relevant to create a management model that tries to respond to the needs of both organisations and employees, creating relationship models in which the employee experience is the basis for achieving a clear mutual benefit.
The management model focused on the employee experience can serve as a guide for action, prioritising the actions to be carried out by actively listening to what employees say about their relationship with the company, and providing specific solutions for those areas in which the current response does not meet employee expectations.
1.1.- Purpose And Objectives
The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at the Employee Experience (hereafter, EX) model as a data-driven objective support to the current challenges faced by private and public organisations in the knowledge economy environment.
The aim is to present both a conceptual analysis and concrete data, with which to affirm that the EX model provides tangible results in the face of these challenges, helping to generate a relationship model with a real impact both for the organisations and for the individuals themselves.
1.2.- Justification
Because of both the importance of human capital in the knowledge economy and the challenges that the current environment causes for HR managers, it is necessary for companies to create management models with a strong quantitative foundation. Such models would help to resolve the employee-company relationship and do so from specific data that can allow them to have an analytical model with which to understand the employees' priorities, and the evolution of the main management indicators that are currently most important. Among those indicators we can find, the degree of commitment, the sense of bond, the desirability of change and the eNPS (employee net promoter score), i.e., how likely an employee would recommend that another work for the company.
1.3.- Characteristics of the current environment
The most common definition that has been used in recent years when referring to the current environment is VUCA. This concept emerged at the US Army War College during the Cold War, and continued to be used during the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall to explain the complexity of the geopolitical environment. This term entered the economic and business world during the 2007/2008 crisis; it has been used to express a world in which change and uncertainty are the constant (Alonso, M. 2022).
The VUCA concept is still used to explain our environment, as its four components are still relevant in most of the economic spheres in which our private and public organisations operate.
According to Bennett and Lemoine (2014), the four main aspects of the VUCA environment are explained by:
· Volatility: the needs, behavioural habits or demands of the different markets change at an increasingly rapid pace.
· Uncertainty: most factors that may occur cannot be predicted; long-term scenarios cannot be put forward without taking into account that, most probably, there will be variations to the previously defined roadmap.
· Complexity: this is closely linked to uncertainty and even a cause of it. Since there are so many parameters to take into account which can affect the cause-and-effect relationship, it is difficult to control all or most of them proactively.
· Ambiguity: there is a lack of clarity in understanding situations. Different aspects can be involved as well as the interpretation of reality, which can influence their perception.
This VUCA environment has been displaced by a new concept that asserts new features of the current situation, spurred by the COVID-19 health crisis. The current environment is called BANI, a concept created in 2016 by sociologist Jamais Cascio, in his article "Facing the age of Chaos" (Cascio, 2020).
Cascio explained that the health crisis has made it clear that the social and, as a consequence, the economic environment can be destroyed or completely changed without any prior warning signs. Cascio (2020) replaced the acronym VUCA with BANI, stating that the current environment can be defined by:
· Brittle: any market, sector or company can always be on the edge of the abyss, so it is necessary to manage resilience and take nothing for granted.
· Anxious: the feeling associated with the previous concept, because if the environment is brittle, it can have an emotional impact.
· Nonlinear: this builds on the concept of ambiguity that was already part of VUCA, as the same results cannot now be assumed to be repeated – even on the basis of the same concepts as previously experienced – making it very complex to design long-term plans or very rigid strategies.
· Incomprehensible: this often results in a lack of capacity to respond proactively to changes in the environment, which has a high emotional impact on people.
In this social context, employees may show behaviours that were not common years ago, which is why companies need to respond to new challenges, and achieve a higher level of commitment and motivation in their employees.
1.4.- Characteristics of the knowledge economy
When talking about the socio-economic model of the 21st century, one has to talk about the term "knowledge", because just as the industrial revolution caused a great deal of changes in the socio-economic model of the 20th century, the revolution of the 21st century has been caused by the use of technologies and, fundamentally, the internet.
The maximum use of data and the ease of global information and knowledge brought about by the use of the internet has created a new social model called the "Information Society" or, "Knowledge Society" (Bell, D. 1976). Bell was the first to introduce this term to warn that knowledge would be the central structure of the new economy, generating the development of the economic model centred on this concept, which was called the "Knowledge Economy" (Bell, D. 1976), or "Network Economy" (Castells, M. 1999).
The knowledge economy refers to a new economic model driven by the use of ICT (information technologies) in different economic activities, both from the perspective of the development of the services or products themselves and in their consumption. Thanks to the democratisation of the internet, a hyper-connected society has been generated through multiple electronic devices and, therefore, a new economy.
According to the World Bank (Derek, H., Chen, C. & Dahlman C. J., 2006), to understand whether the economic model of a region or country is far from or close to the knowledge model, there are four fundamental pillars.
· Economic incentives and institutional framework: The prioritisation and drive of a government or state can be key to accelerating an economic model.
· Modern and adequate infrastructure: Specifically those focused on technology. It is key for the development of this economic model to have the largest possible population with access to these infrastructures, and it is important not to create groups "excluded" from this access.
· Quality of human capital: This pillar includes both the education of individuals and the quality of education systems, as well as the skills currently possessed by employees. A country must have the right people to succeed in developing an economic model of differentiating value.
· Effective and developed innovation system: There should be a clear commitment on the part of all the social groups with influence in the development of the system to promote quality innovation, encourage high-level research, create public-private partnerships, eliminate barriers to the creation of innovative companies or for the development of patents, offer scholarships for doctoral and other research. The aim is to make innovation a fundamental pillar of the economy, with the results of the former clearly influencing the latter.
In order to understand whether a country or a region is competitive, indicators focusing on this added value promoted by the knowledge economy are assessed. Among the most renowned indices is the "Global Competitiveness Index" developed by the World Economic Forum, which identifies the degree of economic competitiveness among different countries. It shows the great importance of intangibles linked to knowledge.
Therefore, countries that really want to be protagonists in this economic cycle will have to take into account that, together with the digitalisation of the economy, it is essential to pay special attention to human capital, both in its training and in its management and development, as specialised talent has become a luxury good for which we compete at a global level. The management of human capital at the national and organisational level is a key challenge. It is essential to have management models that combine the power of the analytics and big data that digitalisation opens the door to. Based on this employee-focused information, current management models can be redefined, and human capital itself can be placed at the centre of the model: "from the employee to the employee".
1.5.- From Customer Experience to Employee Experience.
Currently, the increased power of the consumer has determined the evolution of customer management models, which have gone from more transactional approaches focused on the purchase of the product or service, to the most current ones, based on the generation of solid relationships based on a positive shopping experience, the latter being the objective that determines the origin of the customer experience (Schmitt, 2010).
Since 2015, organisations have greatly driven the application of experience models to customer management. A study conducted by Gartner (2015) shows how 89% of the companies analysed will compete in the coming years, mainly to achieve a better customer experience. To achieve this competitiveness based on offering a positive and differentiated customer experience, it was proposed that companies would need, above all, to improve the level of employee engagement, as it is largely employees who determine excellent customer service and a positive experience with the company (Gartner, 2015).
Yohn (2016) highlighted the importance of the relationship between customer experience and employee experience, providing data that showed positive correlations between the two and which, according to the author, demonstrated the need to offer a good experience to employees first, so that they could then offer it to customers. The same author proposed that the same fundamentals and effective tools in customer experience management should be applied to employee experience management. This argument was shared by some of the main EX models, and would influence their conceptual development (Morgan, 2017; Mayllet and Wride, 2017; Mazor et al., 2017).
In 2017, Forbes magazine reflected on the importance of EX in achieving customer experience goals, as well as the evolving demands of employees, who want to be understood and treated in a personalised way and have better experiences with their companies. The magazine declared 2018 as the year of the employee experience, which was a decisive impetus for the development of both theoretical models of EX and its application in companies (Forbes, 2017).
1.6.- Employee Experience (EX) as a management model
EX models emerged less than a decade ago, so many of the assumptions and benefits of a model that considers employees as internal customers have yet to be proven.
A challenge shared by most of the world's companies, whether public or private, is to keep their employees engaged and motivated.
According to Garton and Mankins (2015), the Bain company was able to demonstrate – in a 2015 study of 300 senior executives worldwide, the results of which were published in the Harvard Business Review (2015) – that the difference in performance between a dissatisfied person and an engaged person was 73%. The performance of a dissatisfied person was 29% lower than that of a satisfied person, whose performance, in turn, was 44% lower than an engaged person's performance.
The main factors that have driven the EX model have been, on the one hand, the rise of customer experience management models that highlight the leading role of the employee in customer satisfaction and loyalty, and require greater commitment on their part to offer an experience to others (Yohn, 2016); and, on the other hand, the need perceived by some authors that the employee-company relationship should evolve, to adapt to new needs derived from the socio-economic and labour changes that have arisen in recent years, and to achieve better results (Morgan, 2017; Plaskof, 2017; IBM and Globoforce, 2016).
Maylett and Wride (2017) define the EX model as: "The sum of the perceptions that employees have in their interactions with the companies in which they work." Extending this term, we come to the definition set out by Pascual (2021): "EX is a management model that starts from the employee to reach the employee. It is based on the creation of a diagnosis that helps to understand what employees experience and feel in their relationship with the company, in order to be able to act in an agile and proactive way from the quantitative and qualitative information obtained".
Since EX is considered a management model for this relationship between employees and organisations, it must be built on an analysis that continuously measures changes in the model's main indicators.
For Pascual (2023), the objective is to move from managing a transactional model – a relationship focused on providing employees with benefits/salary for their working time, considering them a "human" resource – to creating a model focused on managing a relationship in which the important thing is to understand what the parties (employees and organisations) are looking for, create the foundations of a model that makes this relationship real, constantly understands the needs of both, and form actions to continue meeting the expectations of this interaction.
The main tool for EX management is the Employee Journey, which covers the main moments in the relationship between employees and the company, from the moment an employee wants to be part of the organisation to the moment he or she leaves. Its aim is to understand what employees experience and feel at these crucial moments. Maylett and Wride (2017) include, in addition to perceptions, employee expectations as a key aspect of understanding EX, because the difference between what we expect to experience or feel and what we actually experience or feel makes a difference that can have an impact on indicators such as engagement or motivation.
By analysing the employee experience from the employee's own experience, we get them to indicate the main priorities, helping organisations to prioritise and focus efforts on those aspects that will have the greatest impact on improving EX.
Another key point of the EX model is the pairing between the measurement to listen and understand and the subsequent action, focusing on what is really key (Hernanz and Pascual, 2022). This turns the EX model into an analytical system or People Analytics, which provides a management roadmap at both the macro level (corporate level) and the micro level (units, teams, specific characteristics of a group). This system provides both the human resources department and the managers themselves with a continuous scorecard in which they can understand the evolution of the EX and the actions to be prioritised in order to continue improving the EX, as well as its impact on key indicators: engagement, loyalty, absenteeism, the desirability of entering or leaving, or any other that helps to solve the challenge of each organisation.
1.7.- Approach to possible EX-related elements in the Guardia Civil
The Guardia Civil is a public security force that is military in nature and national in scope. It is part of the security forces of the Spanish State. It is a living organisation, which is nourished by the same social fabric as companies and other organisations. In addition to its specific features, it faces the integration of new, increasingly diverse people with different cultures and origins, different social contexts and different educational, family and age profiles. This wealth undoubtedly brings added value to the institution, favouring its growth and evolution hand in hand with the society it emanates from and serves. Moreover, if it pays attention to this diversity and knows how to manage the talent that it undoubtedly harbours, creativity and innovation can be boosted (Guardia Civil Personnel Division, 2023).
In this diversity of profiles and disparate life projects that are integrated here, there is a common denominator: the enthusiasm and commitment of the first days in this organisation. The corporate challenge is undoubtedly to maintain that exciting experience of the early days, knowing how to evolve it over the course of a professional career that can move along a very wide range of options.
In order to foster this career development in an optimal way, it is necessary that there is an institutional accompaniment to the professional demands of the staff, responding to their needs and showing sensitivity and empathy for their life projects. In this way, the injection of career development policies will naturally occur, respond to their expectations, and achieve a synergy aimed at maintaining the commitment and the stirring work of public service.
To this end, the link between management and the managed, between the Guardia Civil and the guards, must be focused on establishing a relationship in the broad sense with all that this implies, and not just a simple transactional agreement whereby a service is only rendered for remuneration. To this end, one of the elements required for any successful relationship is that there is fluid two-way communication between the parties.
Everything seems to indicate that the changing and accelerating reality has also reached an organisation such as the Guardia Civil. Beyond the acronyms used to describe the current context more or less accurately, there is a sense of bewilderment, confusion, uncertainty, volatility, etc., which calls for the exploitation of concepts such as collaboration, commitment and communication to drive the success of today's work teams (Guardia Civil Personnel Division, 2023).
Today's global environment and social context have evolved significantly, and the speed at which these changes are occurring has increased exponentially. Organisations need to be up to speed, undertake a modernisation that will enable them to interpret the way events are happening now and provide some guidelines to respond to the fast pace of life that undoubtedly impacts performance and even health. The current environment suggests the emergence of much more uncertainty at a dizzying pace: where plans crumble, priorities wobble and nothing is permanent; where speed, agility, adaptability, conversational intelligence and resilience take centre stage in the leader's skill-set; and, where concepts such as empowerment and cooperation emerge and must be embraced by teams.
According to the Guardia Civil Personnel Division (2023), from an objective point of view, some examples can be given of what is happening in the Guardia Civil, which leads to questions being asked today that were not asked some time ago, as these situations did not exist.
In the career promotion framework, the percentage of lieutenant colonels who have indicated their wish to make use of one of the possibilities to postpone their promotion for work-life balancing purposes has increased from 8.8% in 2021 to 19% in 2022, rising to 24% in 2023.[1] In the case of commanders who forgo promotion to the higher job, the figures are equally significant and, although they do not show such a significant growth, they already show a clear trend to delay promotion, from 16.6% in 2021 to 21.7% in 2023. This is a far cry from the ratios seen for promotions to other positions, such as sergeant major, where only 30% of first sergeants who have the option of promotion express a desire to do so, and with a greater presence of those who do so on a permanent basis (Guardia Civil Personnel Division, 2023).
Looking at these figures, a number of questions can be asked: What motivates someone to give up a promotion? Do they do it as a temporary measure to balance their work and personal lives at the best moment before the foreseeable change of destination, or with the aim of seeking family and professional stability? How do they experience it? As a failure or as an opportunity? How do they feel when they analyse the professional path that lies ahead? Does it affect their level of commitment and satisfaction?
Therefore, can the organisation do anything to adapt the new situation to new professional expectations? Is this behaviour a consequence of an action that the organisation itself is promoting? Is it exogenous?
Other examples come from the increasing turnover of staff in the central body, who are interested in applying for assignments in units which, for example, encourage and facilitate working from home. This is a service delivery mode that, as has been the case in other organisations, has had a significant impact on the force since the COVID-19 pandemic. Is the convenience of working from home valued more highly than the complexity of job performance? Should it be encouraged at all levels? Would increasing staff pay ensure greater talent retention? And how is job comfort prioritised over other factors such as pay or workload/complexity?
The corporal and private grade includes trainees with different levels of education, such as doctors, secondary school graduates, or students with extensive military experience, alongside others who have never worn a uniform, and members in their 40s with families to support as well as young people in their 20s with no family ties. How do they experience career development options? What are the priorities of each group? When do they plateau or reach a moment of routine in each case? And could we be on the verge of an outflow of personnel or a flight of talent whose professional expectations are frustrated? (Guardia Civil Personnel Division, 2023).
Many of these questions could be answered by EX's management model, as it takes the pulse of employees' experiences at different points in their careers.
2.- MethodologY
The employee experience has to help answer the main personnel challenges. It must always start from listening (to the employee), moving onto understanding priorities and enabling high-impact, highly efficient actions.
As a management model, the EX has to give us answers through a quantitative analysis that provides concrete certainties. The objective is to understand the causes that provoke certain realities in organisations, in order to have clear levers for action to meet these challenges.
In addition to helping to manage the current relationship, EX models have the ability to predict certain employee behaviours, which will help organisations to proactively respond to these potential employee needs or consequences.
A quantitative methodology has been used for this study, based on the information compiled by the consultancy firm Lukkap in its 2021 market study (benchmark) on employee experiences in Spain, as well as other specific analyses in different companies carried out between 2021 and 2022. This will allow us to verify how this model can help manage challenges similar to those appearing in the Guardia Civil at this time.
2.1.- Purpose of the study
The main objective of the study is to understand the causes that may explain why an employee may or may not be engaged in their work, focusing the analysis on those elements that have the greatest impact on their commitment, and to understand how, through an EX-focused analytical model, changes in the environment can change an employee's commitment, and to adapt our responses so as to increase our impact in an efficient, agile way.
2.2.- Hypothesis
The data obtained from the Employee Experience Management model provides useful information, not only to identify elements that impact the motivation and commitment of people in organisations (with leadership as a key lever) but also to predict future preferences in the employee experience.
2.3.- Type of research and scope of study
In order to prove the hypothesis put forward, the conclusions of different studies, carried out in 2021 and 2022 by the consultancy firm Lukkap among private companies in Spain which presented challenges similar to those currently faced by the Guardia Civil, will be presented.
The first of the aspects to be analysed are the reasons why an employee may or may not be engaged with his or her organisation, and for this the results of the IMEX - Employee Experience Measurement Index 2021, carried out by the consultancy Lukkap, will be used.
2021 EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE IN SPAIN SURVEY
|
Universe |
Current employees of private companies |
|
Scope |
Spain |
|
Sample size |
5,030 responses |
|
Sample selection |
Percentage of participation per participating company |
|
Survey type |
Survey sent electronically – email. |
The survey sought to understand both the experience (events) and the perceptions linked to the experience of employees in the main moments of their relationship with their organisations.
In the case of IMEX 2021, ten relationship moments were studied and elimination questions were used so that respondents would only answer on their actual experiences. Thus, for example, only those who indicated that they had been working in their companies for less than a year responded to onboarding questions.
Figure 1.
Relationship Moments - Employee Journey in IMEX 2021. Source: Lukkap
Two types of scales were used. Each moment of the relationship had questions on experience centred on events, where the person would answer "YES, I have experienced it" or "NO, I have not experienced it". The result was expressed as the percentage of employees who had experienced the event in question, and subtracting (up to 100%) those who had not experienced the event.
Also for each moment, the aim was to understand the emotional or subjective impact of the experience, which was done through questions of perceptions, based on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest level and 10 being the highest The responses obtained were averaged, giving the average subjective perception of each event.
Lastly, the survey included so-called "consequence" questions that sought to understand how employees assessed their decisions or their relationship with the company, which might allow us to understand the correlation between the degree of experience and these consequences. Among these questions were:
Table 1. Final consequence questions in IMEX 2021. Source: Lukkap
Within this study, it is possible to understand the main levers that lead to the engagement or disengagement of different employees in organisations.
The second aspect to be analysed is the impact of leadership on employee engagement, which is, a priori, a key element in the employee experience. To test this impact, the results of the EX study carried out in 2022 for a company in the Spanish financial-insurance sector will be used.
COMPANY X EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE SURVEY
|
Universe |
Company employees |
|
Scope |
Spain |
|
Sample size |
1,153 responses |
|
Sample selection |
69% of total staff |
|
Survey type |
Survey sent electronically – email. |
After the employees answered questions related to their experience and perception of the main moments of their relationship with their company, they answered, among others, the question on the quality of their manager. This question was used to understand the impact of the leader on the EX and, therefore, on engagement, bond and desirability of leaving.
|
LEADERSHIP_INDICATOR |
In general, I rate my manager's leadership skills at... |
Employees rated the skills on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is the lowest rating and 10 is the highest, which would give the manager's eNPS indicator.
3.- Results
To answer "what makes an employee engaged or disengaged?", the information on the eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) from the IMEX 2021 will be used; it is obtained by analysing the results of employees answering the question: Would you recommend your organisation as a place to work to your friends and family?
Employees answer using a frequency scale from 0 to 10, and the final result comes from subtracting all employees who answered between 0 and 6 (called "detractors") from those who answered between 9 and 10 (called "promoters"), the final result being the employees' degree of eNPS or degree of recommendation.
The first result is that the eNPS rating obtained in 2021 was 16.4, a positive figure since more employees were promoters (40.1%) than detractors (23.7%).
.
Table 2. Distribution of eNPS - IMEX 2021. Source: Lukkap
The eNPS is an indicator that correlates directly with the rest of the engagement and motivation indicators, since the more the organisation is recommended, the greater the satisfaction, the greater the attachment, or the lower the desire to leave the company.
Table 3. Leading indicators by eNPS group. IMEX2021. Source: Lukkap
Although there are organisations where there is not a high turnover rate, it is important to understand the experience of employees who, when asked this question, say that they would leave if they could. Understanding the causes behind this statement will help to have a proactive model to anticipate the demotivation that lies behind this statement.
Figure 2. Experience curve by promoter and detractor groups – IMEX 2021. Source: Lukkap
And what differences are there in the EX for an employee to be a promoter or to become a detractor? As can be seen in the previous graph, the EX curve shows that the detractors experience all the relationship moments worse, which explains their loss of commitment, highlighting the moment of career development, with the key being the management of expectations with regard to this moment among employees.
It is essential that companies work on individualised support based on where the employees find themselves in their career, and that the manager or personnel division supports them based on their own needs if the manager wants to increase the degree of commitment from employees.
Table 4. Elements of the Experience with the greatest impact on the professional development moment - IMEX 2021. Source: Lukkap
Individualisation is key to the management of the whole experience, but at the moment of development it is even more important. Not all employees are looking for the same thing, and you have to understand what their needs are and where they are personally at that time to adapt to them.
It has been shown that career development is one of the main drivers for employees to stay or not stay with their companies.
To improve the employee experience and prevent employees from falling into a routine devoid of challenges, managerial support needs to be boosted (60% feel that they are not receiving it), training adapted to employee growth needs has to be reinforced(only 52% feel that they are receiving it), and more emotional support through improved transparency and closeness to employees should be provided. All of the above has the aim of improving perceptions such as the support given, or the feeling of being part of an exciting project – both of which are below 6 out of 10 – and, fundamentally, adapting the pace of development and growth to what people need.
Another key aspect of all organisations, public or private, is the impact of managers on the experience of the employees in their team. Organisations are made up of different teams and not all managers obtain the same results, but how can we understand who does well and who does badly and, above all, what impact does this quality of management have on the experience?
The EX management model presents concrete analytics regarding the manager's impact on the experience of the teams and for understanding the consequences, such as motivation or differential commitment of the teams.
The following example focuses on the analysis of a company in the Spanish financial-insurance sector, consisting of about 1,600 employees, carried out in 2022. The goal was to understand the main challenges to improving the Employee Experience and, among them, the impact of the leadership. To this end, the employees, in addition to responding to their experience during the main moments of their relationship with the company, rated the quality of their manager on a scale of 0 to 10.
The results of the correlation between the experience of the employees and the experience curve of three groups are shown below:
- Those who scored their managers between 9 and 10, rating the manager as a "great leader";
- Those who scored their managers between 8 and 7, rating the manager as a "leader"; and
- Those who scored
their managers between 0 and 6, rating them as "managers".
Figure 3. Experience curve as a function of the manager's assessment. Source: Lukkap
Not only is there a significant difference in experience in terms of the assessment of management quality, but it impacts on all EX management indicators. We can conclude that managers have a direct impact on the engagement of their teams.
Table 5. How the assessment of managers impacts the main indicators. Source: Lukkap
As demonstrated in this paper, the EX model not only tries to explain the causes, but also to provide guidelines for action to improve outcomes. To this end, fundamental events were identified that managers should work on in their position so as to impact the EX of their teams.
Table 6. Key events
and perceptions for the assessment of managers. Source: Lukkap
It can be concluded that personalised communication, setting specific milestones to be achieved, giving autonomy and trust to their teams and being accessible and taking time to provide them with feedback on how to improve are what primarily determines a manger's rating.
From a quantitative approach, in addition to explaining the causes of engagement, the EX management model has a predictive approach. It allows one to understand and anticipate the variation in circumstances that can affect the engagement itself according to changes in the BANI environment.
In the following example, in a retail company with more than 3,000 employees, we wanted to understand the impact on what causes employees to become engaged or disengaged. The analyses were conducted before and during the 2020 health crisis. Decision trees were created to understand the causes of engagement prior to the crisis in 2018 and 2019, and in 2020, in the midst of the crisis.
In order to create a predictive model, an algorithm was developed which, through a decision tree, created three scenarios that explained the main variables by which an employee could be a promoter, neutral or detractor, in other words, it gave the guidelines behind the eNPS.
The Accuracy of
the algorithm was high and improved in 2020, so the conclusions can be
considered highly representative.
Table 7. Representativeness of the eNPS decision tree. Source: Lukkap
The
algorithm showed that in 2018 and 2019, what was really key to employee
engagement in this company was pride in belonging, having career plans, the
departure of colleagues was well coordinated and unimpeded, the company's
communication was always based on
its values, and they felt supported at important personal moments.
Figure 4. Relevance for eNPS in 2018 and 2019; Decision tree results. Source: Lukkap
In 2020, as a
consequence of the abrupt change in the environment and in employees'
priorities, the decision tree explained what the company had to work on to
further increase employee engagement in an agile and proactive way. That year,
the primary cause of commitment was the understanding of the personal moment,
followed by pride of belonging – although with considerably less weight –
together with two new aspects, such as physical security or the feeling of fairness
in their variable remuneration. The latter two aspects did not appear in the
analysis prior to the health crisis. These data allowed the company to
reinforce the aspects that were impacting engagement at the time.
Figure 5. Relevance for eNPS in 2020; Decision tree results. Source: Lukkap
Resulting from this analysis are decision trees created from an algorithm that accounts for the different preferences in the experience, and which mark three paths for employees to be promoters, neutrals or detractors.
Figure 6. Decision
tree from algorithms. Source: Lukkap
In view of the results, we can confirm the hypothesis that the data obtained by the Employee Experience Management model provides useful information, not only for identifying elements that impact the motivation and engagement of people in organisations (with the impact of leadership as a key lever) but also for predicting future preferences in the experience of employees. It therefore allows us to understand and anticipate behaviour, which facilitates agile decision making with greater impact within companies.
4.- Conclusions and discussion
Nowadays, an organisation such as the Guardia Civil, like many other private and public organisations, does not have rigorous knowledge of how to respond to specific behaviours of its personnel which, a few years ago, did not occur. Likewise, future behaviour and experiences cannot be reliably predicted. The EX model makes it easy to take the first steps: listening, then understanding, followed by acting.
The traditional HR model has been based on thinking about solutions, acting, understanding the impact and rethinking solutions. The employee experience-centred model focuses first on listening to understand and then acting.
Looking toward the future, the potential of this model would be applicable to different processes in personnel management. The richness of the data analysis that can be extrapolated from the correlations of the variables that come into play, together with experiences and life moments, can enable the institution to adapt career promotions, in its multiple typologies, according to the personal and professional situation of each employee, or to adapt it to their needs, so that it does not have a negative impact on their degree of commitment.
In the field of leadership – where a multitude of actions remains to be explored – the model would make it possible to systematically identify which leaders are at the head of satisfied and motivated teams. This could, for example, enrich the perspective of management by knowing the level of satisfaction and commitment of their subordinates.
Within the framework of planning, trends of attachment or disaffection to certain training actions or career projections could be identified, so that the offer can be adapted to the target group of employees who are at an optimal point in time. Similarly, levers for action could be identified for certain employees at times of stagnation or professional routine, for example by proposing new areas or professional activities.
The applicability of the EX model is therefore considered viable for an organisation such as the Guardia Civil, which has more than eighty thousand people across two thousand citizen service points, whose needs and motivations would be hard to identify. This model could provide answers to some questions, allowing the identification of the causes behind certain behaviours and attitudes. Only on the basis of real and accurate diagnoses will it be possible to activate levers of action to manage talent in an objective manner.
Some of the answers that could be obtained by applying an EX model adapted to public sector workers, and more specifically to the Guardia Civil, could be aligned with:
- Understanding the causes behind certain staff reactions (resignations, demotivation in some units, excessive turnover, etc.).
- Increasing staff motivation by trying to improve the way they perceive moments that they identify as relevant.
- Positively impacting absenteeism, increasing commitment and motivation.
- Understanding what happens to high potentials or talented staff, and reducing their demotivation (analyse how they experience certain moments and act when the experience is negative).
- Identifying what kind of managers are behind high-performing teams or successful units.
- Understanding how certain groups of employees experience certain moments or professional periods: managers or commanders VS privates/subordinates, ...
Despite the benefits of the model described above, it must be admitted that its introduction to the public sector, and more specifically to the Guardia Civil, requires a profound process of adaptation and moulding in order to make it fit within the statutory framework and current reality.
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