Most companies today understand the importance of customer experience. They spent a lot of time and money ensuring that their websites, apps and call centers are geared towards providing a seamless customer-centric experience.
But many still don’t understand the importance of giving the employees who deliver these experiences the same benefits. Too often, employees are left to work on old technology, using unintuitive software, following inefficient processes.
Why the disconnect?
It might be because, while investing in the customer experience has a clear ROI – it leads to an increase in revenue – investing in employees is more difficult to justify. For example, it’s nearly impossible to quantify the ROI of your new collaboration software.
But research by Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience Advantage, suggests that there’s a link between employee engagement and customer engagement.
Experiential organizations are more profitable
Morgan found that organizations that invested most heavily in employee experience were:
- Included 11.5 times as often in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work
- Listed 4.4 times as often in LinkedIn’s list of North America’s Most In-Demand Employers
- 28 times more often listed among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies
- Listed 2.1 times as often on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies
- Twice as often found in the American Customer Satisfaction Index
He reports that “experiential organizations had more than 4 times the average profit and more than 2 times the average revenue. They were also almost 25% smaller, which suggests higher levels of productivity and innovation.”
Experiential organizations are more likely to win the war for talent
As we get deeper into the fourth industrial revolution, most industries (especially technology) are facing a shortage of skilled workers. Research by SAPnews found that only 17% of organizations have personnel with the skills necessary for successful digital transformation. They found that 73% of business executives lack the technology skills necessary to develop a digital transformation strategy.
It’s no surprise that attracting and retaining skilled employees is the number 1 challenge facing most companies today. McKinsey & Co found that 82% of Fortune 500 executives don’t believe that their company attracts highly talented people, and 93% don’t believe that their company is able to retain high performers.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, just 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their work. And 50% of new hires are looking for a better job within their first year – costing the US economy over $550 billion dollars every year.
Are you ready for the consumerization of HR?
LinkedIn and Glassdoor mean that skilled candidates are now able to “preview” potential employers before choosing the one that offers the best employee experience.
We have already seen how the consumerization of IT affected business – now it’s HR’s turn. Are you ready?