Employee experience design (EED or EXD) is the application ofexperience design in order to intentionally designHR products, services, events, and organizational environments with a focus on the quality of the employeeexperience whilst providing relevant solutions for an organization.
EED can be described as the "intentional design of the active or passive use of HR products or services",[1] and employee experiences in general, that affect employees' emotional reaction and therefore their particular behaviors and loyalty.[2]
The underlying assumption is that best (customer/employee) relationships are emotional in nature and achieved when companies succeed in not only satisfying certain needs (e.g. compensation), but also making interactions pleasurable.[2][3]
The goal is to yield bettercustomer experience through increasedemployee engagement and employeeempowerment.[4] Following Krippendorf, EED focuses on creating meaningful and sense-making opportunities for engagement,[5] and addressing aspirational[4] and fundamental psychological needs of an employee, such as autonomy, competence and relatedness.[6]
Related todesign strategy, EED is a participatory systems approach to workplace improvements that applies methods and principles ofexperience design, such asdesign thinking,co-creation andempathic design[1] and new digital tools and technologies. It also uses tools and techniques that are typical tocustomer experience management andservice design, e.g. employee experience journey mapping[7] ortouchpoint analysis.
Primary design object is the employee experience, which – when successful – an employee finds unique, memorable and sustainable over time, would want to repeat and build upon, and enthusiastically promotes via word of mouth.[3] It is suspected to encourage loyalty by creating an emotional connection through engaging, compelling, and consistent context.[2] The categories for employee experience design context are products, processes, artefacts, content, space and interactions.[1]
While employee experience design is beneficial to create positive customer experiences, it is also beneficial for non-customer-facing roles.
Many elements can make up a successful employee experience, including office environment, reward and benefits, flexible working and casual dress policies.
Human resource management, operating across hierarchies and departments, plays a central role in design, distribution and delivery of EED. As co-creation is an important design principle, it is a shared task and joint responsibility of leadership, HR professionals and employees.[1] Following the logic of theservice-profit chain, beneficiaries are also customers, as the recipients of improved service quality and the organization itself through increased profits.[8]