5 Learnings About the Post-Covid Employee Experience

You can’t blame Gartner for this, but who would have thought that their timely and insightful CHRO Quarterly article on the Five Myths About the Modern Employee Experience would be overtaken by a global pandemic?

Gartner, like Gallup, is highly respected for how they collect, analyze, and disseminate data. In other words, you can trust their findings. That means that no matter the subject, what they have to say is something you will probably get great insight out of.

But here’s the $64,000 question: Given how workplaces everywhere have been battered by the current economic crisis, how much research and analysis gathered BC (Before Covid-19) will be applicable AC (After Covid-19)?

5 Learnings About the Post-Covid Employee Experience

We’ll get to that shortly, but first, here are Gartner’s “Five Myths About the Employee Experience.” This is a trimmed down version – and you should check out their article for more details – but see how they resonate with you and your organization:

1. Myth: What Employees Want from Their Experience Has Fundamentally Changed.
   Reality: What Employees Want Has Not Changed Significantly.
   Gartner’s analysis: “Employees’ top five attraction drivers have remained the same since 2013 … HR leaders should use data to carefully evaluate employees’ true expectations and preferences rather than relying on assumptions.”
2. Myth: Employees Will Not Tolerate a Poor Experience.
   Reality: Employees’ Tolerance Is Higher Than HR Leaders Think.
   Gartner’s analysis: Half of employees “say they are likely to stay at the organization as long as the positives outweigh the negatives. … Rather than aiming to please all employees, HR leaders should ensure the positive experiences outweigh the negative ones through targeted, high-quality improvements.”
3. Myth: Managers Should Be Responsible for Delivering the Experience.
   Reality: Most Employees Should, and Should Want To, Own More.
   Gartner’s analysis: “Employees know better than their managers what they are looking for. … HR leaders should encourage employees to personalize their day-to-day experience by identifying opportunities to give them more information and choices.”
4. Myth: Responding Faster to Employee Feedback is Better.
   Reality: Responding Faster Is Not Always Better.
   Gartner’s analysis: “Letting experiences “sink in” allows HR leaders to worry less about responding to negative feedback in real time and focus instead on the salient moments that matter most to employees.”
5. Myth: Engagement Is the Best Measure of Employee Experience.
   Reality: Engagement Is Only a Partial Measure.
   Gartner’s analysis: “The relationship between engagement and employee experience is unclear … HR leaders should build a holistic perspective of the employee experience by adding additional measurements such as employee productivity, Net Promoter Scores and satisfaction.”

This too shall pass

Here is our view: We are going to find that having a great employee experience will matter more than ever before.

We don’t buy the notion that research collected BC will be meaningless in an AC world. Nobody knows how long it will take to get through government lockdowns and social distancing, but what we do know is that we WILL get through the current coronavirus-generated angst at some point down the road.

Smart, forward-thinking companies know that focusing on the employee experience will matter even more in a post-Pandemic world. In other words, the quality of your employee experience will be a critical way to differentiate your organization as businesses everywhere scramble to get going and gain traction again in a post-coronavirus workplace.

Gartner believes that too, and their final thought makes this perfectly clear: “HR leaders should focus on what matters most to employees instead of reacting to individual experiences. The modern employee experience is about trusting employees and enabling their resilience. That’s (liberating) freeing for HR and employees themselves.”