HR is getting a new name - People Experience
Since the great resignation and the global movement towards remote/hybrid workforces, the future of work is changing rapidly.
94% of leaders say that reimagining employee experience is a top priority
HR teams at top companies have started to rename and envision their organization’s values.
For example, In 2022 the entire HR team at Chargebee(unicorn startup) renamed their org from HR to People Experience
From the outset, this might just seem like wordplay but in reality, there is an underlying shift in the core philosophy of how companies think about their employees.
The term ‘Human Resources' has a rather crude sense to it - especially in 2022.
Why?
Because in today’s corporate culture of open office plans, flat hierarchies, and DEI initiatives-- there is an underlying value.
That employees are not seen as mere resources but as people.
This shift is caused by human-centered design which is taking the HR world by storm and is giving it a new name
Human-Centered Design is all about…
- Starting with empathy aiming to reduce the complexity and friction that real people experience in their day-to-day lives
- …in other words, consider your audience not just as mere Resources, but as actual people with emotions and feelings
- Understanding that empathy and experimentation lay the path for success
71 percent of companies say human-centered design thinking has improved the working culture.
As a result of this shift towards human-centered design, companies are thinking about employee experience as a journey that starts from the moment someone looks at your careers page to the moment they leave your organization.
This holistic employee journey is made up of key “moments that matter”
These are high inflection moments in the employee journey that notably impact the employee experience and engagement.
Moments that matter are related to emotionally charged events in people's professional or personal lives - eg: onboarding, parental/medical leave.
Gallup reported that over 56% of HR leaders are planning to experiment with a Moments that matter approach.
But only 16% can implement experiments leveraging a moments that matter approach.
This number is changing rapidly thanks to innovation from startups.
For example, let’s take the first day in a new role. With the recent shift towards remote and hybrid workforces, many new joiners are going thru this crucial experience right from their homes.
It can be super bland and unengaging when new employees are stuck at a boring zoom meeting. We've all been through such meetings.
They miss out on the bonding and camaraderie that is fostered by in-person interactions.
So companies are starting to adopt new tools to radically reimagine these moments.
Let’s look at 3 companies that are innovating to empower remote companies to create engaging experiences
Weve. co - this video-based saas product helps companies run collaborative games like Pictionary, and ice breakers. Companies can rent rooms and run icebreaker sessions.
Withconfetti.com - This company helps companies run large group events led by a game facilitator such as jeopardy, werewolf, one lie, and two truth, etc.
Trymystery.com - This company creates team bonding through facilitator-led sessions where employees can learn new fun skills together such as mochi ice cream classes, calligraphy, or origami classes
The advent of these platforms shows us that companies are prioritizing the employee experience first.
In other words, HR is about company centricity, and People Experience is about employee centricity. And these differences represent an overall shift in business from a culture of compliance to a culture of employee-centricity.