Reframing competitive employee experience

Adapt the employee experience to the new shape of work and rapidly evolving employee expectations. 
It’s time to reframe the employee experience
Employee experience was already a trending topic before the pandemic.

However, the pandemic caused people to rethink their priorities and has brought organisations and people closer together. The three over-arching aspects of employee experience — employee expectations, the environment and moments that occur in an employee’s journey — have not changed, but the pandemic brought new questions into focus:

  • How to make flex working work
  • How to hire, onboard and manage/coach employees with a dispersed or virtual workplace
  • How to work, collaborate and communicate in distributed or virtual networks
  • How to move from offering well-being policies to actively partnering with employees in their health and wellness
  • How to create a frictionless digital work environment to ensure new technology supports work rather than hindering it — and that people enjoy interacting with the technology
Managing the employee experience just got more nuanced. In an increasingly employee-centric market and a world offering highly personalised experiences, more and more people want to tailor their own work and craft schedules that work for them.

People no longer want to work for a company; they want to work with them. This signals an urgent need to differentiate the employee experience to attract and retain top talent — 85% of companies are co-creating employee experiences with their people (GTT 2022).

Co-creation is an important aspect as employees’ work-related needs and desires vary based on their:

  • Gender
  • Generation
  • Job level
  • Caregiving status

And their needs and experience are not constant; shifting as different parts of an employee’s life change — work, personal, financial, and health and well-being. Considering the whole person and dynamically adjusting to employee needs requires a strategic yet nuanced approach. It also requires gaining actionable insights on an ongoing basis, at the right time. This is just one key dimension to building a stronger workforce and a human-centred, technology-enabled, consumer-grade employee experience.

The employee experience rests between environmental factors such as culture, people and leaders, programmes and processes, work, and technology AND events such as life events, career events, and organisation events.

How can you create a personalised employee experience that people crave?

High-performing employees want their employee experience to be:

  • Enriching
  • Efficient
  • Embracing
  • Empathetic

But a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Having a robust strategy and governance framework, employee listening and data insights, capabilities and communications, and digital tools in place to support a personalised employee-experience will be key. Doing this can create a competitive advantage. Our research shows that agile companies are twice as likely to say they have made great inroads in creating, and continue to experiment with, a positive employee experience (Global Talent Trends 2022) — one that is aligned with the employee value proposition and digital transformation ambitions.

Mercer can help you create a personalised, technology-enabled and consumer-grade employee experience with:

  • Employee listening
  • Employee value proposition strategy 
  • total rewards assessment and design (including rewards, benefits and wellness)
  • Employee communications
  • Flexible working strategies
  • Design-thinking workshops
  • Technology implementation
  • Persona and journey mapping
  • Organisational culture assessments

How far along are you in shaping a compelling and personalised employee experience? Mercer can support you in understanding your employees’ needs and drive positive business outcomes by:

We work with you to build compelling employee value propositions and strategic employee listening programmes that combine deep knowledge, expertise and effective methodologies with data and agile technology.

More than just data, dashboards and reports — we deliver integrative analytics and insights for action and align them to your people strategy.

Our dynamic design-thinking strategies empower leaders, managers and human resources (HR) to drive positive change.

We work with you to develop a roadmap that integrates existing and new value-adding initiatives.

Why use Mercer’s employee experience solutions?

Our experts have the tools, deep knowledge and experience to evolve your employee experience strategy and your supporting engagement, employee value proposition, total rewards and communications programmes. Combining Mercer’s deep research with the latest insights from the science of employee engagement and communications, our experts help craft and deliver strategic programmes and roadmaps that enhance the employee experience and drive improved performance.

We offer advisory capabilities and technologies that span all aspects of the employee experience. Our global reach includes 130 countries, 80 languages and a wide network of local consultants.

  • Employee experience design
    We use design thinking methods combined with insights drawn from quantitative and qualitative data to define and shape solutions to better meet your peoples’ needs and bring out the best in them. 
  • Employee listening
    We capture people insights with tailored solutions, from our annual census and pulse surveys to continuous listening, digital focus groups and preference research.
  • Employee communication
    Mercer’s employee communications solutions help companies make meaningful connections with employees about their careers, benefits and well-being — wherever they are, on any device.
  • Employee value proposition
    We support clients design differentiated employee value propositions to attract and retain talent.
  • Flexible working
    Mercer has proven experience in helping organisations create flexible working strategies to transition from fixed to hybrid structures.
  • Diversity, equity and inclusion solution
    Mercer partners with clients to grapple with issues of fairness, from fair pay to the way talent is managed. 
  • Talent strategy
    Mercer’s talent strategy solutions help companies make best-in-class decisions to attract, retain, and grow talent. 
A fundamental change in people’s values is underpinning a structural shift in the labour market. Organisations now have a moment of profound opportunity to pick up the tools of empathy honed during the pandemic — and carve a new way of partnering that is more relatable and, ultimately, more sustainable.
Kate Bravery

Global Leader of Advisory Solutions & Insights, Mercer

Introducing our employee experience team

Get in touch with our employee experience team