How does one apply metrics to an experience to determine if it's good or bad? It all depends on the premises underlying the metrics: One person may think it's bonkers to pay $35 for steak frites at a local bistro when you could buy five Big Macs for the same price and have five takeout meals instead of one, while another person could think that it's bananas to eat a Big Mac once, much less five times, but happily open their wallets for that one plate of $35 steak frites.
So it goes with the metrics that underlie employee experience – do we really know the premises behind some employee experience metrics? And are workplace strategists making sure that everyone understands the direct relationship between the metrics and future management initiatives? For example, it's one thing to survey employees on their satisfaction level, but if the numbers tick down toward discontent and workplace leaders don't openly address that they've seen the numbers and they have a plan to mitigate the source(s) of dissatisfaction, then all that will happen will be a group of disengaged employees who won't bother giving good feedback because they know nothing is going to be done.
Another question that employee experience metrics raises: Does improvement in a specific metric mean the employee experience is actually getting better? A lot of employee experience platforms try to measure both employee engagement and employee productivity – there's research suggesting the former can impact the latter – but it might be time for strategists to ask themselves what the optimal outcome for improved productivity might be. Is it giving employees even more work? Or is it rethinking how we're measuring work outcome and moving employee well-being up on the list of metrics to assess?
Last October, Metrigy's Robin Gareiss wrote a great piece pointing out that the rise of GenAI-powered assistants will prompt workplaces to confront the question of what to do with newly-efficient employees' time.
And that's one of the things I'll be talking about tomorrow on the final day of Enterprise Connect 2024. In the panel discussion I'm moderating, "Where Is Technology Taking the Employee Experience?," a group of experts will tackle questions like:
We'll be meeting in the Sun A room at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 28. Please slot this session into your schedule -- and come up afterward to say hello. And if you're still mulling over whether to attend, you can learn more about our conference options here.
