Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies
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CAHRS Working Group
Consumer–Driven HR and Employee
Engagement: Rethinking Technology,
Workspace Design and the Role of HR
Hosted by General Electric
Boston | March 28, 2017
Participating
Organizations:
Boehringer Ingelheim
Bristol Myers-Squibb
Boeing
Bridgestone
Caterpillar
Cornell University
General Electric
JPMorgan Chase
Johnson & Johnson
Merck
Nissan
Procter & Gamble
Stanley Black & Decker
Key Takeaways:
It's cri cal to get senior leaders on board to support the larger changes that may
be necessary to reimagine drive enhancements to the employee experience.
HR leaders should think about how to use tools/techniques like process consul ng
or design thinking to iden fy cri cal aspects of the employee experience to work
on that will substan ally impact employee a rac on, engagement, and reten on
and improve resul ng business outcomes.
Be sure to think about segmen ng the workforce, as the underlying drivers or
barriers to an enhanced employee experience may differ across employee groups
(job types, genera ons, loca ons), so HR leaders need to think about how to
create greater flexibility while also keeping costs reasonable. This could lead to
the focus on personas — pure customiza on to every individual is likely to be too
costly to maintain.
As the HR func on rethinks the employee experience it is important to remember
that front‐line managers and supervisors play a cri cal role in shaping the
employee experience.
Key Challenge: Gaining Trac on With Senior Leadership
While leaders in the func on understand the importance of reshaping and reimagining
the employee experience in order to a ract, engage, and retain younger employees,
digital and technical talent, etc., these issues may be less readily clear to senior line
leadership. At the same me, the support and involvement of these senior line leaders
may be cri cal to the success of efforts to drive new employee experience outcomes.
Ge ng senior leaders to understand the need to drive be er employee experience
across the organiza on may be challenging, as they are isolated with a very different
experience than employees in the rest of the organiza on. This isola on could limit
their understanding or sense of urgency for reshaping the employee experience across
different employee groups. Further, these leaders may be inclined towards solu ons
that favor efficiency over customiza on. This is par cularly problema c when there is
an unevenness of experience across employee groups or where one‐size‐fits‐all
solu ons lead to diminished rather than enhanced employee experiences.
CAHRS Working Group
Consumer–Driven HR and Employee Engagement: Rethinking
Technology, Workspace Design and the Role of HR
Page 2
Par cipants noted that there are several ways that they are looking to build awareness and support among line
leaders. First, several par cipants noted how they were using data and HR analy cs to build a business case based
on being able to demonstrate the impact of turnover, unfilled jobs, lower engagement, etc. on business outcomes.
Other par cipants discussed the idea of reverse mentoring as a way to expose senior leaders to challenges or
nega ves of the employee experience in lower levels or different sites in the organiza on.
New Organizing Strategy For Managing the Employee Experience
Employee a tudes about work and careers has shi ed drama cally over the last decade or more and employees no
longer expect to have a career in a single company. Many employees — par cularly Millennials and digital talent –
see careers through a lens of managing a series of experiences that build the skills, capabili es, and personal brand
that enable an enriched personal career and increasing job security by keeping themselves relevant. This new
approach means that employees are on the lookout for new experiences both within and outside their current
organiza ons. While typically associated with Millennial employees, these work a tude changes actually probably
started to emerge with Genera on X employees and have certainly been enhanced as employees have felt the
impact of layoffs, downsizings, or restructurings either directly or to family members and friends.
In response to these new work a tudes, many of the par cipants in the room noted that they have responded by
rethinking their company approach to careers and the employee experience. The major shi is around helping
employees to iden fy a series of experiences that enrich their overall learning, skills/capabili es, and exposure.
Many noted that they are looking to help employees more readily iden fy, understand, and pursue/choose the right
next internal opportunity and that these may come in the form of short term projects, lateral moves, addi onal tasks
or assignments added to current roles, or ver cal promo ons. In addi on, some of the par cipants noted that they
are also looking to both help employees think about how to navigate external experiences and to think about
employee career progression more fluidly by building stronger alumni networks that foster “boomerang” career
paths in which employees may leave to gain experiences at other organiza ons and later return more ready to take
on new or higher level roles.
Following this philosophy, several of the par cipants noted that their companies are looking to a ract new talent
and start with a focus on how to create the first great experience that leads employees to want to pursue a second
experience, third experience, etc. within the company. This philosophy would seem to lead to a different overarching
strategy for managing and cra ing the employee experience rather than the tradi onal viewpoint on careers.
Focus on Clarity on What’s Important and Segmenta on of Solu ons
During our discussion, par cipants iden fied that one key aspect to this new line of thinking is really to iden fy the
moments that ma er when it comes to how employees feel about the organiza on. There are lots of different HR
prac ces and aspects of work that could nega vely impact the employee experience and resul ng experience, but
not all of them are equally important for how to a ract, engage, and retain key talent. An important first step is for
HR leaders to really iden fy the cri cal process, ac vi es, HR prac ces, or aspects of work that seem to be the
biggest barriers. It is important to narrow in on specific issues that nega vely impact current or prospec ve
employee experiences so that you can dig deeper to understand root causes, brainstorm poten al solu ons,
experiment with altera ve solu ons, and iden fy the best fi ng solu on.
Par cipants frequently noted that the idea of one‐size fits all solu ons really don’t fit with the organizing strategy for
the employee experience as needs, challenges, expecta ons differ across employee groups. Following principles of
design thinking, many companies are moving to the idea of developing solu ons around different personas where
the personas are intended to group employees into a few itera ons of solu ons to a broader issue based on what
people do, career levels, life stages, or other categories where there are substan al differences across employees in
CAHRS Working Group
Consumer–Driven HR and Employee Engagement: Rethinking
Technology, Workspace Design and the Role of HR
Page 3
terms of expecta ons, needs, etc. The outcome of segmenta on is to build solu ons that fit the needs of these
different employee groups rather than to build one solu on that doesn’t really sa sfy anyone or to a empt to build
different solu ons for every individual.
Across the course of the day, par cipants noted that one solu on to create flexibility and be responsive to different
needs and create more customiza on is to iden fy unique groups of employees or perspec ve employees and to
create unique solu ons around these different groups (personas). For example, applicants/job candidates may look for
unique informa on based on their past experience level (e.g., new college graduate, experienced hire) and providing
different background informa on across each of these different personas can help candidates understand how they
would fit into the organiza on, unique opportuni es open to them, and help them feel that they have received
informa on or messages that are a fit to their needs and expecta ons. It is important to both create op ons across HR
programs and ac vi es so that employees have the opportunity to uniquely shape the right experiences, but HR must
also enable these employees to navigate the range of op ons that are available based on segmented needs or
backgrounds.
Role of Frontline Leaders/Managers
Many of the par cipants noted that it is important to remember that employees’ feelings about work, the
organiza on, and resul ng engagement are strongly impacted by their interac ons and rela onship with their
frontline supervisors. Through their ability to provide feedback and coaching, remove barriers, create line of sight to
strategy and business outcomes, involve employees and increase their sense of contribu on, etc., leaders/managers
touch most aspects of work that impact how employees experience the organiza on and work. Therefore, it is cri cal
for organiza ons to ensure that frontline managers are more skilled and capable to be leaders rather than just
technicians of managerial tasks. The group spent a good deal of me talking about interven ons to improve the
capabili es of frontline leaders to be coaches, career counselors, mo vators, and connectors to the larger mission and
purpose of the organiza on or business unit. Ideas that were shared included:
1. Crea ng affinity groups or co‐mentoring groups within a loca on for managers and supervisors to learn
from one another;
2. Crea ng scripts and/or conversa on paths to help new managers learn how to have coaching and career
mentoring conversa ons with their employees;
3. Providing managers and supervisors sugges ons on what to talk to employees about at different mes of
the year based on performance management cycles or different conversa ons to have with employees
based on different personas that have been iden fied (e.g., matching conversa ons to different needs
based on career stage, me in role, poten al);
4. Crea ng blended training programs that share ps, strategies, and techniques with opportuni es for role
plays or cases to prac ce and get feedback; and
5. Providing clarified defini ons of what it means to be a people leader – what is expected in terms of
behaviors and providing examples of what good leadership looks like in terms of coaching, mentoring,
inclusion, etc.
Examples of Rethinking the Employee Experience

Mul ple par cipants noted that the increased complexity of developmental and growth opportuni es (lateral and
project work opportuni es in addi onal to ver cal promo ons) was making it difficult for established employees
to understand how to navigate careers and internal labor market opportuni es and was o en a source of
frustra on that could lead to disengagement and turnover. In response, these organiza ons have looked to use
CAHRS Working Group
Consumer–Driven HR and Employee Engagement: Rethinking
Technology, Workspace Design and the Role of HR
Page 4
technology to (1) push career and developmental assignment opportuni es to employees based on completed
employee profiles, (2) enable ar ficial intelligence and algorithms to help employees iden fy and compare
opportuni es and to match them with a coach, and (3) to create informa on boards or matching sites that help
employees navigate internal markets for projects, assignments, and tasks that can help them build new skills and
experiences.

Mul ple par cipants provided examples of how their organiza ons are using machine learning, algorithms, or
ar ficial intelligence to help employees navigate op ons or to push poten al opportuni es to those employees.
Over the course of the day, it was clear that technology and ar ficial intelligence is a cri cal resource for
increasing the customiza on of HR delivery, helping employees more effec vely access informa on that is
essen al for the jobs and naviga ng careers, providing personalized informa on that enables choice in HR
offerings, etc. Further, use of technology may help enhance the personaliza on of the employee experience
while simultaneously keeping down costs as algorithms and ar ficial intelligence is more scalable and repeatable
than trying to accomplish these same ac vi es through a shared services call center. However, there are a few
key issues to keep in mind when thinking about increasing the use of technology and ar ficial intelligence.
Bringing in the voice of the employee. Companies need to make sure that they develop and follow a balanced
approach to how they understand the “voice of the customer” – given the diversity in companies across lots of
dimensions (e.g., genera ons, gender, na onality, job type or level). Companies need to make sure that they are
ge ng a well‐balanced sense of the needs and barriers for all of the different popula ons of employees in the
company and aren’t oversampling the loudest voices. At the same me, we need to be careful to not burn out
employees on exercises of providing insights, co‐designing solu ons, etc. as we need to be mindful that they are also
working full me jobs.
Openness of sharing the data with employees is cri cal for employees to know what is already being done, what
issues have already been iden fied, what opportuni es exist, who is working on which problems, etc. Sharing
increases employees' percep ons that par cipa on in ac vi es related to data collec on or idea genera on is
mutually beneficial for themselves, other employees in the organiza on, and the organiza on itself.
Possible points of me to include voice and input of employees include:
· Iden fica on of key processes or prac ces to address,
· Brainstorming,
· Prototyping, and
· Evalua on and enhancement.
Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies
Connect | Educate | Achieve
This Summary Report was prepared by Chris Collins for
use by participants of the Consumer-Driven HR and
Employee Engagement: Rethinking Technology,
Workspace Design and the Role of HR Working Group.
The Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS)
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