Employee experience is front and center in discussions around talent right now. Workplaces globally are acknowledging that there is a need for agility as well as change as they navigate the realities of an ongoing hybrid work environment. 

To break down the nuances, and focus on the opportunity presented by artificial intelligence, Jordan Mullins sat down with Manisha Singh, the executive partner for talent transformation at IBM. 

How to Provide a Better Employee Experience – And Why That is So Important Today

Tackling the core issue up front, Manisha talks about how many businesses still focus on profitability at the cost of talent. 

A 3-step framework for rethinking employee experience

First, the solution lies in embracing employee experience as a strategic intent, she says. “I would like business leaders to see it as their responsibility towards the business to grow and build competitive talent. To build a nurturing environment that can harness each human's potential to build a sustainable index; not for ESG, not for sustainability, but truly for the successful reinvention and survival of their business.” 

Second, although many organizations have embarked on journeys of co-creation with their talent, and they are talking about designing frictionless experiences, there's a critical element that many are leaving behind," says Manisha. "This is enabling employee agency and employee autonomy. There is power in co-crafting and challenging the old practices to create something better. Businesses would do well to enable more employee empowerment and autonomy. This puts a fresh spin on design thinking.”

Third, is continuous listening, engaging, acting and communicating. Manisha points out that there is an obvious parallel in the way we have handled customer experience in many large organizations: “When you are interacting with lots of people in an organization and designing meaningful experiences, you need to embrace the inherent discomfort that comes from soliciting input. Just as in the way we deal with customers and have started to define those experiences, it's critical for brand success to define employee experiences – to see it as a necessary effort going forward.”

What does a nurturing, supportive environment look like in practice for employees? And where does technology fit in?

At its center, nurturing employees is all about providing them with the space they need to grow and prosper in an organization. “Because every person is unique, using a profile or assessment like Emergenetics can help a leader throughout the nurturing process. A nurturing and supportive environment really allows you to be anything, anywhere, anytime. This requires technology, however,” explains Manisha, “which has always been a point of friction.”

If you look at the history of the industrial era, you’ll see that there have always been newspaper articles complaining that ‘machines are taking over human jobs.’ This happened when automobiles came in; and we saw similar headlines when automation came in. Now, it's a whole new scare-mongering around AI taking our jobs!”

“These transitions happened, and will continue to happen. And yet, humans continue to be involved. It’s our role as businesses to create the environments that facilitate progress,” Manisha says.   

How can organizations design better employee roles that consider individual skills + artificial intelligence?

According to Manisha: “I think we need to unbundle our job descriptions. We need to look at the work value chain. If you’re moving from go-to-market physical sales to platform sales, how is the work shifting? And then, for each job, you need to unbundle in terms of skills. 

Consider what skills are needed and make these available through an AI platform. Then you have that ‘golden thread’ connecting all your processes and talent. From hiring, to growing, to paying for skills, to promoting for skills and to rewarding for skills. That creates the sought-after culture of employees helping reinvent the business.” 

If you like the audio medium, and would like to hear a detailed interview that dives much further into the subject of employee experience and the use of artificial intelligence in particular, listen to the SSONext podcast with Jordan Mullins and Manisha Singh on iTunes or Spotify.