Employee experience design
Employee experience design (EED or EXD) is the application of experience design in order to intentionally design HR products, services, events, and organizational environments with a focus on the quality of the employee experience whilst providing relevant solutions for an organization.
Overview
[edit]EED can be described as the "intentional design of the active or passive use of HR products or services",[1] and employee experiences in general, that affect employees' emotional reaction and therefore their particular behaviors and loyalty.[2]
The underlying assumption is that best (customer/employee) relationships are emotional in nature and achieved when companies succeed in not only satisfying certain needs (e.g. compensation), but also making interactions pleasurable.[2][3]
The goal is to yield better customer experience through increased employee engagement and employee empowerment.[4] Following Krippendorf, EED focuses on creating meaningful and sense-making opportunities for engagement,[5] and addressing aspirational [4] and fundamental psychological needs of an employee, such as autonomy, competence and relatedness.[6]
Methods
[edit]Related to design strategy, EED is a participatory systems approach to workplace improvements that applies methods and principles of experience design, such as design thinking, co-creation and empathic design[1] and new digital tools and technologies. It also uses tools and techniques that are typical to customer experience management and service design, e.g. employee experience journey mapping[7] or touchpoint analysis.
Primary design object is the employee experience, which – when successful – an employee finds unique, memorable and sustainable over time, would want to repeat and build upon, and enthusiastically promotes via word of mouth.[3] It is suspected to encourage loyalty by creating an emotional connection through engaging, compelling, and consistent context.[2] The categories for employee experience design context are products, processes, artefacts, content, space and interactions.[1]
While employee experience design is beneficial to create positive customer experiences, it is also beneficial for non-customer-facing roles.
Many elements can make up a successful employee experience, including office environment, reward and benefits, flexible working and casual dress policies.
Stakeholders
[edit]Human resource management, operating across hierarchies and departments, plays a central role in design, distribution and delivery of EED. As co-creation is an important design principle, it is a shared task and joint responsibility of leadership, HR professionals and employees.[1] Following the logic of the service-profit chain, beneficiaries are also customers, as the recipients of improved service quality and the organization itself through increased profits.[8]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Menzel-Black, C. & Völkl, C. (2014). "Nach Bedarf designt". Personalmagazin. doi:10.13140/2.1.3054.4001.
- ^ a b c Pullman, M. E. & Gross, M. A. (2014). "Ability of Experience Design Elements to Elicit Emotions and Loyalty Behaviors". Decision Sciences. 35 (3): 551–578. doi:10.1111/j.0011-7315.2004.02611.x.
- ^ a b Pine, J. & Gilmore, J. (1998). "The Experience Economy". Harvard Business Review. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
- ^ a b Ramaswamy, V. (2009). "Leading the transformation to co-creation of value". Strategy & Leadership. 37 (2): 32–37. doi:10.1108/10878570910941208.
- ^ Krippendorff, K. (1989). "On the essential contexts of artifacts or on the proposition that" design is making sense (of things)". Design Issues. 5 (2): 9–39. doi:10.2307/1511512. JSTOR 1511512.
- ^ Sheldon, K. M.; Elliot, A. J.; Kim, Y. & Kasser, T. (2001). "What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 80 (2): 325–39. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.455.2278. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.2.325. PMID 11220449.
- ^ Oracle Human Capital Management (2014). "An Employee Centric Approach To HR – Employee Experience Journey Mapping (EXJM)" (PDF).
- ^ Heskett, J. L. & Schlesinger, L. A. (1994). "Putting the service-profit chain to work" (PDF). Harvard Business Review. 72 (2): 164–174. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-01-22. Retrieved 2014-11-03.