183 | What Is Employee Experience? How HR Can Actually Improve It

What exactly is employee experience? How is it different from workplace culture, employer brand or your employee value proposition? And what can you actually do to improve it? In this episode of HR Coffee Time, I’m joined by employee experience expert Chris Manning, People and Culture Portfolio Transformation Lead at Primark. Chris explains what employee experience really means and why it matters for organisations of every size. He shares practical ways to understand and measure the experience your employees are having, whether you work in a small organisation or a huge global business. We also explore how design thinking can help you move beyond simply listening to employees and start making meaningful improvements. Chris talks us through a practical onboarding example, showing how journey mapping can uncover friction, identify opportunities and help you design a better employee experience. And if you need to secure investment for your ideas, Chris shares practical advice on building the business case and getting the buy-in and budget you need. Whether employee experience is already part of your role, or it’s an area you’d like to learn more about, this episode is packed with practical ideas to help you get started. What You'll Learn What employee experience actually means How employee experience differs from workplace culture, employer brand and EVP Why employee experience matters in smaller organisations as well as large global businesses Practical ways to measure employee experience How to gather useful feedback across the employee lifecycle Why post-onboarding and offboarding can provide valuable insights How employee data can help create more personalised employee experiences How design thinking can help you improve employee experience The five stages of design thinking: empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test How to use journey mapping to improve an experience such as onboarding How to build a compelling business case for employee experience improvements How to combine qualitative and quantitative evidence to secure buy-in and budget Chapters [00:00] What is employee experience and why does it matter? [02:45] Meet Chris Manning [04:35] What employee experience really means [06:25] Employee experience vs workplace culture [07:10] Employee experience, employer brand and EVP [08:30] Why employee experience matters in smaller organisations too [10:40] How to measure employee experience [14:20] Using employee data to understand and personalise experiences [18:20] Moving from employee listening to employee experience design [19:40] Using journey mapping to improve onboarding [23:30] A free onboarding journey-mapping resource [25:25] What is design thinking? [26:50] The five stages of design thinking [29:45] How to get buy-in and budget for employee experience [33:30] Chris’s recommended resource [35:35] How to connect with Chris USEFUL LINKS Connect with Fay Wallis on LinkedIn Connect with Chris Manning on LinkedIn Read Chris’s article about employee experience inThe ELEVATE Hub magazine Download Chris’s free employee experience journey-mapping resource:brightskyhr.co.uk/resources Find out more aboutThe Essential HR Planner Learn more about Fay’s leadership programme –Inspiring HR Leadership Enjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One! Sign up for the free weekly HR Coffee Time email to be notified each time a new episode is released – and get free career tips, tools, and resources. Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee