Family experience, the new yardstick of employee experience
Employees today seek a ‘family experience’ from their work life. An experience that is like a family, for a family and with the family. An experience that is above and beyond the artificial ‘welcome to the so and so family’ statement often used to address new joiners on their first day.
Enterprises were working relentlessly to provide their employees with a ‘customer grade’ experience. Work-life changed its course leaving employees constrained to their homes and work invading every household. The door that separated work time and family time disappeared overnight. Life became a single whole.
The Generation-R mindset evolved, and people’s priorities got realigned. Things that matter to employees and customers suddenly changed. Ergonomically designed workplaces, travel experiences, benefits and gadgets etc. all lost their relevance.
If there were loyalty points issues to working members for the time they spent with family at home, the global workforce could have redeemed their accumulations to buy the whole galaxy. Never ever in the history of the corporate world, employees have spent so much time with their families and never ever work personalities, culture and styles have been on visible to the families. Peoples vulnerabilities and fears have been exposed, their challenges and struggles are understood much better by the families and they are feeling much more comfortable and authentic. The world has become far more open and direct.
Hypocrisies of the business world driving mindless performance will not sustain long.
Employees today seek a ‘family experience’ from their work life. An experience that is like a family, for a family and with the family. An experience that is above and beyond the artificial ‘welcome to the so and so family’ statement often used to address new joiners on their first day.
Like a family, the employee today needs an open and dependable workplace where s/he can explore newer ways of delivering work, thereby generating creativity and innovation for the workplace. S/he wants to be authentic, open and expressive. S/he expects to be understood, accepted and appreciated for what s/he does, in spite of any flaws or shortcomings. Family life of every employee today is blatantly visible to the whole work world and there is no room for any projection – of styles, values or capabilities. Leaders and organizations must, therefore, be ruthlessly authentic now. The biggest pandemic of the corporate world today is the misalignment between their stated values and what really guides their day to day decisions and behaviours. For e.g. a very large global organizations, while talking about employee centricity, trust and compassion in their stated values, ruthlessly fired people during a pandemic. That’s not dependable, trustworthy or family like. Organizations must become like large closely-knit families working towards the betterment of all and in the process create economic success and not the other way around.
For the family: Work expectations, processes and enablers must be set as if they are being set for a family member and not an employee. Cumbersome processes based on the arcane ideas of mistrust, inequality, hierarchy, limited empowerment and limited transparency will not help organizations create the right kind of employee experience. Roles, job descriptions, benefits and total reward must be rooted in a genuine intent of creating prosperous life of a family and not just realize the highest greater return on investment of employee CTC. Like in a family, the employee must have more freedom to choose what, where, when and how much s/he wants to do. Gig work opportunities and flexible working frameworks akin to a family must now be provided to the employees for the best in class experience.
With the family, lastly every decision the organization makes that impacts its employees, customers or the world at large must be rooted on the fundamental fact that world is one big family or what Indians call ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’. Therefore, at the strategy level organizations need to be much more socially and environmentally responsible, and at the tactical level, there is a need to work with employees’ families and the associated challenges. Giving facilities that directly impact the family-like education support to children, hardware/software and other resources for the family could be newer areas to explore. An organization that I know of has recently announced a package to provide home tuitions to the children of the employees.
Ironical as it may sound, Technology seems the only way organizations can create the ‘family experience’ that the employees are seeking. From the need to be understood, heard, taken care or even reprimanded when required, technology can be that family guardian who is there when needed and in whichever format needed. Flexibility, Authority, Meaning, Intuition, Learning. and technology enablers that always say Yes to employee expectations are the ingredients that help organizations create an employee experience that is a family experience.
