We ve talked at length about the fact that, at the end of the crisis, telecommuting was favored by around 85% of employees and 85% of HR managers. In other words, almost everyone!

And it looks as though the "extraordinary" ways of working that were put in place during the period of confinement will not be forgotten, but will be perpetuated. New management methods, new ways of interacting as a team - the business world has taken a leap of several years evolution in just 3 months.

And what emerges from all this is that employees have acquired a taste for autonomy: fewer time constraints, less controlling managers, a focus on results rather than presenteeism...

And to integrate this new need (or demand?) for autonomy, Human Resources departments are going to have to work hard to transform working life accordingly. All these areas of action are part of what we call the "employee experience".

And when it comes to this HR policy, the 2020 roadmap is definitely going to have to be turned upside down to take these concerns into account.

‍

The new priority for HR departments

‍

On January 29, 2020, Forbes headlined one of its articles "2020, the year of the employee experience".The employee experience is a very recent approach for HR departments. In fact, the "Baromètre National de l Expérience Collaborateur" has only been in existence for 3 years.

And yet, it is already a major preoccupation, with 35% of companies declaring that they have implemented it. And yes, in the "old" world, the subject had already become one of the HR priorities at the start of the year!

‍

What is the employee experience?

‍

But what is employee experience? The term, of course, is derived from the customer experience beloved of sales departments and the user experience of web designers. And it s an HR marketing and employer branding concept.

It refers to the whole experience of an employee s life in the company, from the moment they send in their application to the recruitment department to the moment they leave. Integration (the famous "onboarding"), the quality of the workstation, working conditions, management methods, career development... It s a wide-ranging question, since, if we wanted to be exact, we d have to include the quality of the coffee an employee drinks throughout his or her time with the company!

All the more reason to understand why HR departments have taken this issue head-on in recent years.

‍

What s the point of an employee experience policy?

‍

To attract and retain the best talent, you have to look after the living conditions and feelings of your employees... In a world where opinions circulate freely on the web, the slightest faux-pas can be damaging...

According to the Baromètre National de l Expérience Collaborateur 2020, the main expectations of HR departments when implementing this approach are to :

- Strengthen employee commitment (77%),

- Improve overall organizational performance (56%),

- Make the company more attractive (42%),

- Improve employees quality of life at work (36%).

And HR marketing means segmenting audiences... A good employee experience policy will therefore need to address managers, employees in contact with customers, seniors, high-potential employees, etc. in different ways. In other words, there will be almost as many answers as there are employees.

‍

Meeting the experience expectations of all employees

‍

And the implementation and constant improvement of such an approach has also become fundamental because employee mindsets have evolved. We now know that baby-boomers, millennials (who will represent 75% of employees by 2025) and Generation Z (who are starting to enter the job market) will not have the same expectations.

For example, for the younger generation, giving meaning to their work has become essential. In fact, 57% of them are prepared to accept a job that pays poorly but is meaningful. Does my work have a visible impact on society and the environment, or is it just a "bullshit job"? The new craze for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and its central place in HR policies attests to this.

‍

How HR Tech will support this new need for autonomy

‍

But as a member of Lab-RH, we couldn t fail to mention how digitalization, and especially the services of HRtech start-ups, will enable companies to make this new desire for autonomy possible.

First of all,in terms of day-to-day work tools. The confinement and telecommuting that has accompanied it, is the victory of Slack, Trello, Zoom on a daily basis... often forgotten, Corporate Social Networks, those big machines that ultimately seduce far less than lighter, simpler and more collaborative solutions! And... easy to use from anywhere, without complex prior configurations from the IT department...

Secondly, this employee experience, the meaning of which seems so vague, can be defined as closely as possible and supported by existing technical solutions. We ve already talked about these start-ups, which help HR departments to ask their employees about their feelings, answer their questions, integrate them into corporate strategy, reinforce social cohesion within teams, measure their satisfaction, and so on.

Secondly, HR management as a whole is facilitated by the technical solutions provided by HR Tech. Time management, scheduling, automation of HR services...

At Stairwage, for example, we re helping to eliminate the taboo step that prevents many employees from requesting an advance payment: submitting an advance payment request form to human resources. In its place, we enable employees to initiate the transfer of the sum directly from the application.

And this automation, this elimination of intermediaries, is set to significantly improve the employee experience and... the need for autonomy.

There can be no doubt, then, that HR departments will have to review the "Employee Experience 2020" roadmaps they skilfully prepared at the start of the year, in the light of the health and economic crises.

Action plans, recommendations, memos to the CEO... will probably have to be modified in depth, as we have achieved an ellipse in time, as gigantic as it is unpredictable!

So it s up to Human Resources departments to integrate this new fundamental fact, which is called autonomy, and which can no longer be ignored.