How HR Leaders Can Support New Employee Experience Transformations

The best way to describe the current workforce and human resources landscape right now is ‘change is the only constant,’ especially in areas like the employee experience (EX) and innovation around the hybrid workforce, which were dramatically upended by the pandemic. Let’s dive into how HR leaders can successfully support the new HR landscape and adapt to new EX-transformations.

Conquering the New Age of Collaboration and Culture

Over the past two years, we’ve seen a forced change in how we work, collaborate and build company culture as we all continue to rework our remote routines. As the world continues to change externally, leaders must realize these changes impact employees internally, both in their work lives and personal lives, and not always for the best. The aim now is to redefine what collaboration means in terms of the relationship between employees and human resources, which has grown immensely and become more important daily. 

This new intimate level of internal collaboration and HR’s increased reliance on employee data has allowed for a different kind of company culture to be built. Welcoming cross-department collaborations with HR at the helm has allowed numerous organizations the ability to create stronger internal alignment. One of the best ways I’ve seen organizations nurture and conquer their employee-HR relationship is through ‘pulse check’ surveys. These are a great way to get a sense of employee sentiment quickly and regularly and serve as a streamlined method for pulling greater organizational trends. 

Encouraging more dialogue throughout departments is also helping organizations to understand how to optimize behaviors and embrace inclusion thoughtfully. As we deal with the 4.5 million U.S. workforce resigningOpens a new window this past November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it has become more important for HR teams to push these conversations deeper to retain talent and make new employees feel welcome and included in the existing company culture. The number of new hires and growth shifts have given all HR leaders, including myself, the opportunity to focus time, resources and newer HR technologies on creating new cultural foundations built to sustain the rapid transformation of the employee experience. 

Getting Comfortable With the Term Hybrid — Forever

Even though the hybrid workforce has grown to be second nature to many, there are still daily pandemic shifts that have led to well-thought-out and detailed return-to-office (RTO) plans going up in smoke. To come out on top and maintain a united and decisive front, HR leaders need to be supportive and communicative in ways that may not be familiar or comfortable. Many new employees in any given organization, such as Gen Zers graduating from college, have never experienced an in-person office culture, according to a Skynova studyOpens a new window . But many have and miss the water bubbler conversations and human connections that come with in-person office life. The biggest challenge for people leaders has been crossing the cultural bridge between the two groups and the overarching communication methods that need to be introduced to support a remote work environment for a slew of different employee types. This is where cross-department and team dialogues between HR and employees come in and can make a huge impact. 

Building a new ‘hybrid’ culture foundation takes time and failure. Testing different solutions based on collective employee feedback is a great first step, but only the beginning. Testing out a ‘no internal meetings on Fridays’ rule or encouraging virtual meet-ups may work for your organization, but not for all. A practice I’ve found helpful is implementing accessibility initiatives for meetings to make them more accessible and inclusive for all team members, whether they can join the meeting or not, based on busy schedules, personal obligations or global locations. By recording all calls, creating detailed agendas and circulating action items and notes post-meeting, organizations can digitally recreate meetings so that all teams can access them no matter the situation. 

See More: HR Teams Can Survive and Thrive in a Remote-Only or Hybrid Work Environment

Employee Experience Feedback and the C-suite Finally Unite

HR teams and the c-suite must master the continuous feedback loop to ensure there’s an opportunity for every employee to express their feelings and thoughts. This, in turn, allows for HR teams to pivot quickly if something isn’t working and can ultimately result in fewer burnt-out or unhappy employees. Utilizing technologies that can give employees an avenue to share reactions and feelings in near-real-time and translating the data toward practices put into place by HR teams and the c-suite alike is a great place to start. For example, leveraging and encouraging the use of closely integrated employee communication tools like Yammer, Microsoft Teams, or Slack can rid employees of unnecessary meetings and allow for quick communications between team members without the hassle of sending formal emails because, yes, email fatigue is real!

An essential element remote work has allowed for is the introduction of hybrid work technologies that create a more approachable c-suite. Leadership has never been closer to their employees or HR and IT teams. The breaking down of department silos has been one of the greatest outcomes of the hybrid work system and has given leadership new visibility to employees they’ve never had before. The newfound transparency the c-suite is embracing also enables them to take on a larger role in their organization’s talent retention efforts. When employees feel they are closer to their leaders and feel they can connect with them regularly, they tend to express feedback that could be the key to retention. If an employee drops a hint to their CFO or CEO in a casual setting meeting or via a chat channel, leadership can then internalize these points and collaborate on a new level to make their employee’s experience better than ever. 

Since remote work is here to stay for the foreseeable future, it has never been more important for HR leaders to pave a permanent way forward alongside the industry overhaul. There will still be new adaptions to react to in the coming months and years. However, these organizational pointers will remain true — progress the employee-HR relationship by checking in on employee sentiment, continuously redefine what collaboration means to your business, encourage new dialogues and new technologies, empathize with new remote-only talent (know your audience!) and work to bridge employee feedback with c-suite understanding and action.

How are you supporting the new HR landscape and adapt to new employee experience transformations? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

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