Imagine working for an organisation where employees are more likely to be critical of their organisation than to promote it!
In many organisations across a number of UK business sectors, such as Energy/Utilities, Retail and Healthcare, this is indeed the case for many employees. Even more worryingly, many employers also have this view.
Identifying Promoters, Passives and Detractors
We recently carried out surveys with a representative sample of UK employers and employees, using employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). This enabled us to segment respondents into three groups, ‘Promoters,’ ‘Passives’ and ‘Detractors,’ after measuring their willingness to promote their organisation as an employer
Among employees and employers, only 22% would recommend their organisation as a great place to work (Promoters). Worryingly though, 36% of employees were critics of their organisation (Detractors), compared to 30% of employers who believed their employees were in this category. This gave an eNPS score of -14 for employees and -8 for employers.
These results present a pretty damning indictment of the current levels of employment experience in the UK, even though the largest proportion are ‘fence sitting’ respondents (Passives). This group comprises 42% of employees and 48% of employers. So there is hope, but only if employers know how to ‘shake the fence’ and bring these Passives down on the right side of it.
We have produced a report from our research called “The pursuit of Promoters: improving the employment experience.” This provides a detailed breakdown and analysis of the survey results, examining the key factors that influence the level of advocacy for an organisation. The report also looks at the differences between Promoters, Passives and Detractors, providing excellent insights on the employment experience in the UK.
Moving to employee experience
The research also highlights a fundamental and uncomfortable issue that we are going to need to face. Our traditional employment models, propositions and policies may not be fit for purpose in a rapidly changing society. Social, demographic, economic, political and consumer changes are impacting the world of employment.
Where, historically, people have been consumers and buyers of products and services in a very transactional way, they are now much more focused on experiencing something much more interactive and engaging. It means that products and services are being rethought, redesigned and relaunched to meet customers’ principles, preferences, beliefs and desires.
People want to engage with organisations that they trust to be ethical, open and transparent. They are attracted to organisations that are interested in them and who want to engage with them. This is what defines a great experience.
This focus on ‘experience’ also extends into employment. The days of a one employer ‘job for life’ career have long disappeared. Loyalty only now works when it is profitable for both the employer and employee.
A good employer and employee relationship is crucial; it is no longer simply a transactional arrangement. Employment has evolved from being satisfaction focused to engagement driven and is now becoming experience designed and managed. This is exactly what happened with consumers, but the employment experience is playing catch up.
Purpose, values and behaviours
To deliver the best employment experience, organisations need to think about employees as people, customers and stakeholders, not just as workers. They need to design and deliver employment propositions based around what is most relevant and important to the people who work there. This involves adopting segmentation techniques close to those used in customer research and insight; similar to what we have used in our research.
It’s an approach that can identify the key characteristics of employees in the Promoter, Passive and Detractor groups, thereby enabling employers to better understand what drives their views, experiences and performance.
We can no longer make assumptions that these characteristics are solely influenced by limited demographic identifiers such as age, gender and length of service. We must also consider other factors, including reasons for working, preferred type of employer, having meaningful work, ability to create value, financial situation and disposable income, number of dependents, caring responsibilities, living in a socially deprived area and the length/cost of commuting.
Many people are quite happy to change jobs and employers so that they can find the experience that suits them best, in the same way that they change who they shop with. This makes winning their hearts and minds a real challenge for employers.
Changes in employment
In recent times we have also seen the rise of the gig economy and self-employment, especially among those who want greater choice over the types of work they want to do, when they want to work and where they want to work from. This is supported by technology to provide greater workforce agility and it has a knock on effect for the size and quality of the traditional organisational employment market, by reducing the available talent pool.
Organisations have had to respond to changing consumer needs, behaviours and experience requirements by reviewing, changing and enhancing their customer proposition. Competitors and new players to the market are doing this and failure to adapt to these changes risks longer term loyalty, business success and future sustainability.
As an example, for Retail in recent years there have been significant changes and new innovations impacting the sector. These include the continued growth of Amazon and low cost supermarkets, food retailers introducing smaller convenience format stores in response to the expanding ‘food to go’ market and the growing popularity and flexibility of on-line shopping. It also includes the hyper-personalisation of marketing to customers and the use of technology for research purposes in order to better understand consumers’ needs and wants.
So what have been the major innovations in employment models, proposition and policy in the past few years in response to changing employee needs? Most of them have been mandatory changes resulting from employment legislation, such as gender pay reporting. Internally developed initiatives tend to respond to specific problems identified in an organisation, such as a poor talent pipeline, or the high turnover of regretted leavers.
There is limited evidence of the use of people metrics, analysis and insight to inform genuine strategic workforce planning or proposition development. This is needed to future proof employment in a way that delivers a long term sustainable and successful future for the organisation, alongside a great employment experience.
How is the business model changing? What does it need to do to be successful? What role will technology play in the delivery of work? What skills and capabilities are required in the future? Where will future talent come from and will it be a build or buy model? Will the employment model be a mix of fully employed vs contractors? What will that mix be and will the employment experience feel different for both?
The role of HR in business strategy
To achieve this, HR will need to be more strategic as a genuine business partner and stretch its boundaries of engagement, insight and influence. HR needs to be bold because, as Henry Ford said, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Increasing the number and proportion of Promoters can only be achieved by knowing what motivates them and how to get the best out of them. If this requires making improvements that are more innovative and radical than before, then this is a price worth paying.
