In the past year, we have seen a dramatic shift in the power dynamics between employee and employer as a result of a global skills shortage and talent crunch, increasing burnout in workers, and The Great Reshuffle. Coming off the back of a pandemic, these factors have unleashed a perfect storm of workplace model disruption.

As organizations navigate the talent and skills challenges with a great sense of urgency, it comes as no surprise that employee experience and people are now consistently top of mind among business leaders and decision-makers. From employee benefits and policies to remuneration and working arrangements, companies are sparing no expense to retain and hire people in today’s highly competitive talent market. However, are companies really walking the talk when they proclaim the likes of ‘work from anywhere’, ‘work flexibly’ and ‘people first’?

From our latest Future of Work research of 2,100 business leaders globally, we found that while many companies profess to have a people-centric culture, few have even begun the groundwork. For instance: While 98% of employers claim to have taken steps toward an improved employee experience (EX), over half of them have not enabled flexible ways of working to empower their people with the choice to work when, how, and where they want.

The future of work is people-first
To design, implement and truly embrace a people-first model requires an organization and its leaders from business, HR and IT to look at work holistically – addressing the platform (technology), place, processes (operations), and people (culture) dimensions. Put together, this creates an organization’s Workplace Experience (WX). And the benefits of a people-centric approach to WX are real and tangible.

In the Philippines, for example, a lack of learning and development opportunities was hampering Music Tribe’s ability to retain and grow talent. Their solution? A dedicated employee experience (EX) platform - built using Microsoft Viva Learning - that created an ecosystem for upskilling, knowledge sharing, and workflow optimisation. In just a month, over 40% of their employees were actively consuming content and expanding their skill base.

Successes like these are indicative of a larger shift in employee expectations. Today’s employees are happiest when the workplace offers an intuitive, consumer-like experience. This expectation extends to every facet of their workday, from communicating and collaborating to learning and wellbeing.

Within organizations that take the time to design and implement a WX program, the results have been unquestionable: productivity, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and revenues have all grown by an average of 6% in the last 12 months, indicating mean potential revenue growth of nearly $1 billion.

Emerge as a WX pioneer
Our findings further suggest that employers that drive a positive and successful WX do so by taking a multi-pronged approach:

1. Holistic WX thinking: Creating a nexus of IT, HR, and business stakeholders to chart out a WX strategy is essential. This helps organizations better align employee experience with productivity goals, business outcomes, and tech capabilities.
2. Persona-based EX programs: A workforce is rarely homogenous in terms of its needs. Tailoring EX initiatives to deliver positive ‘moments that matter’ across a variety of employee aspirations, desires, and expectations means adopting a segmented and persona-driven approach to various employee groups.
3. Data-driven experiences: Having a system in place to develop WX metrics, capture data and translate that information into WX insights is critical. Not only does it help accurately address long and short-term employee needs, but it also paves the way to a consistent workplace culture across the organisation.

Download our research report today and get in touch with us for your Future of Work Assessment.