Employee Experience Journey Automation for Employee Onboarding

"Employee Experience" is the Future of Work

As the dust settles and companies navigate the post-pandemic workplace, employee experience is fast becoming the way forward. This is a chance for HR leaders to get ahead of the industry trend and make the most of it, as fighting turnover and attracting top talent is a top concern for CEOs in most industries.

We have entered what Josh Bersin calls the "human era" of HR. After years of focusing on systems, processes, and compliance, the focus is now shifting to people. Companies are realizing that to succeed in this new reality, they must put the employee experience at the center.

Historically, HR has evolved through several phases: from a purely utilitarian approach where employees were seen as resources, to a productivity focus, then engagement, and now to an experience-centered model. This evolution reflects a shift from extrinsic motivation – "employees work because they need a job" – to intrinsic motivation rooted in meaning and purpose.

Employee Experience: The Future of HR Tech

Employee experience is so new, at least as a market segment of HR Tech, that it's still included under engagement in most reports. Leading global HR Analyst Josh Bersin explained it best, claiming the new center of gravity within HR tech has shifted, and that Employee Experience and Talent Intelligence Systems are now even more important.

Bersin explained that while Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms remain a necessity, the value-add for enterprise companies has shifted. The workplace requires a more mature and dynamic HCM model capable of versatility. These needs are best satisfied with specialized HR tech that integrates with existing HCM platforms.

Bersin has historically argued that HR tech must evolve to meet the modern worker's expectations. In an age where consumers expect personalized experiences in everything from Netflix to Amazon, it is natural that employees also expect a personalized experience in the workplace.

• More than 80% of the global HR tech market revenue is generated by HCM platforms
• The market share of HCM is slowly losing ground as the engagement and connectivity segment continues to grow
• Engagement and connectivity is on track to nearly double its market share growth within HR Tech by 2025
• This segment is predicted to be the fastest growing market segment, seriously outpacing the stagnating recruitment process category

Bersin explains that HCM was built on an industrial model adopted from Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems. The problem is that solutions like Workday and SuccessFactors were not designed for people – who constantly grow and change. Companies are now adopting layering tools on top of the HCM for engagement, assessment, learning and development, and experience automation.

What Employee Experience Is In Practice

The concept of employee experience (also referred to as EX) has evolved from an obscure topic in academic journals to an increasingly popular subject among HR professionals. HR is moving from being a cost center and compliance-driven to being a strategic key stakeholder ensuring companies can attract, engage, and retain top talent.

The evolution from a utilitarian approach to an experience-based approach also reflects the shift in what drives employee motivation. Traditionally, HR focused on extrinsic motivators like salary, benefits, and job security. Now, leading organizations recognize that intrinsic motivation – meaning, autonomy, mastery, and belonging – are the strongest drivers of engagement and loyalty.

Preppio's Talya Bauer, Ph.D., was the first researcher in this field over 20 years ago. She coined the 4 C's of onboarding, which later became the 5 C's and now the 6 C's of onboarding, establishing well-known best practices. Bauer's research has shown that adding Connection, Confidence, Culture, Clarification, and Check back to compliance helps reduce turnover, get new hires up to productivity faster, increase employee engagement, and help with eNPS and employer branding.

Bauer's framework transformed onboarding from a purely administrative process into a strategic opportunity to shape the employee experience. By going beyond compliance to include connection, confidence, culture, clarification, and check-back, organizations can create an onboarding experience that sets new hires up for long-term success.

The best HR teams spend considerable time doing this work. With employee experience automation software, HR teams can follow up on each new hire, their manager, and team members while saving time by using personalized workflows that coordinate and orchestrate communications between the company, new hires, and managers at scale.

Consumer Experience Mirrors Employee Experience

Employee experience is often compared to consumer or customer experience in concept and practice. Similarities include:

• Employee personas are developed similarly to customer personas
• Company (or employer) brand is recognized as a key aspect of attracting customers (or employees)
• Personalization for both customers and employees helps the company connect and increase engagement
• Journey maps are created to enhance experience and understand customer or employee lifecycle

Just as customer experience has revolutionized marketing and sales, employee experience is revolutionizing HR. The best companies treat their employees with the same care and attention that they treat their customers.

This parallel is especially clear in onboarding. Just as a great customer experience begins with the first touchpoint, a great employee experience begins before the first day of work – in the preboarding phase.

Employee Experience Automation Software as a Must

Josh Bersin shared in his 2019 article a great example of how employee experience workflow automation can help drive experience and modernize HR while saving money. He paraphrased Diane Gherson, CHRO of IBM: Over the last seven years, IBM has reduced HR spending by almost 40% through automation, intelligent systems, chatbots, and more predictive applications.

When thinking of employee experience, one likely imagines connection, one-on-one communications, personalization, and quality over quantity. Yet automation can support this through strategic planning. For enterprise companies, human-centric automation is the only feasible way to connect with hundreds or thousands of employees.

The key is the format of the communication. SMS and chat messages feel personal and immediate. When a new hire receives a welcome message via SMS from their new manager, it feels like a genuine, human gesture – even if it is automated. This is the power of human-centric automation.

Short, relevant messages delivered via SMS or chat platforms like MS Teams and Slack have significantly higher open and response rates than traditional emails. Employees are accustomed to communicating via messaging in their personal lives, and this familiarity transfers to the workplace.

The answer is human-centric automation. With strategic planning, human-centric workflow automation is created based on employee personas. Examples include:

• New hires receive a welcome video from the CEO via automated SMS
• Direct supervisors show they care by checking in regularly through automatic nudges and coaching from chatbots in MSTeams, Slack, or Workplace by Meta
• Buddy programs run smoothly as gamified experiences where buddies receive praise for helping new hires
• New hires receive welcome packages and tool access without fail at the right time through automation coordinating with IT

How To Shift Your Focus To Employee Experience: Next Steps

The chances are likely that your company already has an HCM in place. The good news is that incorporating technology for employee experience automation is straightforward if you know what to look for.

Look for solutions that integrate with your existing HCM platform and enable you to build personalized workflows for different employee personas. The solution should support multiple communication channels, including SMS, chat platforms like MS Teams and Slack, and email.

Most importantly, the solution must be human-centric. Automation for the sake of automation does not add value. Automation that creates genuine human connection and personalized experiences – that is the future of HR.

Employee experience automation is not just a tool – it is a mindset. It is about putting people first, and using technology to scale the human connection that is so critical for engagement, productivity, and loyalty.