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Give your HR the help they need. The help they get is the help your employees need and what your employees need is what the business need. Break the system, because your employees need you!
In the past year, I wrote about Employee Experience (EE) and why it is the change workplaces need. We have created an Employee Experience Design Framework and tested our theories with five companies for free. Yes, you missed it, sorry! A lot of work has been done changing, adjusting and sometimes throwing everything out we thought would work.
Our EE audits showed that organisations are more concerned about their systems than their users (employees). So we reverse-engineered everything and created a framework that allows organisations to design their EE with people in mind. It is not that difficult.
We broke EE into seven pillars (that's the basic level):
ATTRACT | HIRE | ONBOARD | MOTIVATE | PERFORM | DEVELOP | EXIT
Let's look at DEPART: Designing Experiences From The Candidate's Point of View.
Every section starts with a question: How Do You Want Employees To Feel About Their Departure? Guess what, HR and leaders find it very difficult to articulate it:-) It is not easy because we have never been taught to think that way. We have been taught to run processes.
Here are some of the questions our audit toolkit includes:
Do you know, what employees experience during and upon departure and what they think of the company? What is the treatment they experience when they resign? How do you measure it? What do they say?
Do you conduct exit interviews and use that data to improve employee experience across the seven areas? How does it work? What do they say and when do you conduct the interview? During the departure or after the final settlement?
Do you have an employee experience recovery strategy in place? How does it work?
Do you have an online reputation management platform for employees? How does it work? Do you ask them to share their experiences about working with you before they leave?
Do you have a talent database for departed employees? How does it work?
Do you have an alumni community? How does it work?
Do you measure your employee's satisfaction regards to their departure? What does the data say or suggest?
How you feel about your previous workplace is important. Are you a raving fan or curse every moment you spent there? The reason Employee Experience Design includes the possibility of building an alumni community is that those employees are your greatest source of talent in the future.
- They can come back
- They can be contracted for projects
- They can recommend you
Yet, the moment someone hands in the resignation we quickly forget about them and are busy singing the “We are family” to the person who is replacing them 🙄🙄🙄
I have seen terrible behaviours from managers and leaders when their employees resign. It is like they have some abandonment trauma and a piece of paper brings the worst out of them. The most common behaviour is that you become enemy #1 because you apparently, don't care about the company. What a weird logic!
I have seen managers holding back final settlements, treating people like a traitors, not letting people go by not giving back any extra hours or holidays during notice periods squeezing every second of work out of that person.
Start creating creating experience that would make the person feel "You know what, I am leaving but this is a great company and the people are cool."
What's happened to the mindset the customer service industry has taught us about "The guest may have complained but make sure they leave with good taste in their mouth"? Why don't we apply the same to our employees?
I love it when employers say "Don't burn the bridges". Well, how about you conduct yourself in a way that you don't burn bridges with your employees and they will cherish their memories with you? If you do this, if you get that mindset right, you will never face a talent shortage and you will never have to post another job advertisement.
In the last 7 articles, I have explained why HR must change. The system is broken, HR's purpose is vague, they are the least respected department in any organisation and they themselves struggle. Their predicament is complex starting with understanding what the hell is their role.
Well, their role is clear, start playing the symphony of the business because HR is out. In the grand symphony of business focuses—profit, customer, and employee—the latter often plays second fiddle. Organisations meticulously design everything for profit and customer satisfaction, but what about the neglected third wheel?
HR, that is your job, get to work.
PS: If you want the Employee Experience Design Framework message me. Or, if you know somebody who would like to redesign their employees' experiences and change the mindset that governs these old-school practices I would appreciate the connection. HR has changed, and we are here to help them because nobody is helping them let's be fair. We just all blame them.
