Employee Experience. Is there any bigger buzzword today in the world of employee relations? And, apparently, there is a vast need to improve employee experience. You need new systems, programs, meetings, and perhaps to hire someone that can coordinate it all.
But, isn’t that just a fancy word for asking, “Do you like your job?”
We can talk about the experience, and it makes it sound like we need to run amusement parks for your employees. We don’t. Having snacks, a gaming room, and the ever-popular napping pods can make things fun and exciting and may help with recruiting. However, if your managers don’t know how to manage, your vacation policies prevent people from actually using their time off, and you retaliate against people who use FMLA, all the free Cheetos in the world won’t fix that employee experience.
To keep reading click here: Employee Experience – What Does That Really Mean?
I was working in a privately held tech software firm. My boss (the wife of a ‘valued’ employee) was hired solely for that reason). A parallel marketing boss was similarly hired. Neither boss had any job-related experience and they chose to learn nothing. Every outside vendor shunned these managers and refused any project. You could not complain as the marketing boss and HR fully supported these fake bosses. My boss eventually did herself in. In a writing training class, the teacher said, “Only if you understand the technology well enough to do a complete rewrite should you dare to do edits.” My boss thought cosmetic grammar fixing was “editing.” Teacher disagreed. Final indignity? My boss had mastered the skill of plagiarism. She would slam paragraphs (unedited for context or time or even topic). She thought taking paragraphs from several employees was good enough. That was my employee experience: lousy boss and no path of recourse.