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Imagine this: No standards, yet you're trying to build a thriving culture. No structure, but you're frantically designing employee experiences, hoping they'll stick.
Now imagine being in HR and having clear, actionable standards that guide your design, measurement, and improvement of employees' experiences every day. Because great experiences don't happen by accident. Standards create consistency. Standards create impact. With the right standards in place, your employee experience isn’t just a hope; it’s a strategy.
During my last meetings this year, I presented our Employee Experience Standards to three senior HR leaders, and they all reacted similarly: “I want that!” “Why have nobody ever given these to us?”
Imagine you're the Head of HR, equipped with a dynamic dashboard that tracks every function of your department. With 117 precise standards focused on employee experience only within talent attraction, you’re not just monitoring performance—you’re transforming it.
Imagine having a clear structure, knowing what your HR functions are up to regarding performance and how their particular areas impact employees’ experiences that you are so desperate to fix.
Now, stop imagining. This is real.
There is no magic to good HR! It is a combination of knowledge, skills, expertise, experience, clear standards, and measuring the impact of everything you do and continuously adjusting them.
Now look at that list and tell me what’s missing. Of course, it depends on the place but standards are certainly an area everywhere I go and that’s why I used to say that a bunch of drunk on a night out in Soho is more organised than HR worldwide.
That’s why corporate culture and employee experiences are all over the place. No standards? You get chaos. No consistency? You get a mess. No quality? Well, forget about a great culture—you’re basically running a circus.
This year, I implemented these standards at two organizations, and the results are already speaking for themselves. HR employees finally know what they’re working towards and how to get there. Senior HR can track their teams, and senior leadership can keep an eye on HR. Metrics like employee satisfaction, retention, and more are being monitored continuously—and the signs are promising. Next year, once the full data rolls in, I’ll have even more to share!
But once again, this is not new! NatWest, ING, and other big labels have been designing employee experiences for years, with fantastic financial and satisfaction outcomes.
HR is unnecessarily burning itself out when all they need is standards. Without standards how do we know:- that we attract the right talent?- that we hire the right people?- that our onboarding prepares people to do their job?- that our performance management system works?- that the organisation has the right environment and talent to achieve its business goals?- which part of the employee life cycle is responsible for our turnover?
We have no answer to any of these questions, any more…..
Change starts with measurement, just like when you want to lose weight. Funnily enough, people are more scared of the scale than the work ahead of them. Step on that scale, measure where you are (HR standard audit) and move forward with clear standards. Everything is simple in life we just overcomplicate things.
If you want to learn more about the standards and the audit let us know.
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