Employee Experience and Employer Brand
By Redaktion techport.ai, HR-Beratung · Last updated on
The careers page shows bright offices, flat hierarchies and a team on first-name terms. The first day of work reveals a laptop that isn't there, a manager on holiday, and an onboarding process consisting of a folder. The disparity between the two is not a communication issue. It is a design problem.
Employee Experience means consciously designing the most important moments in working life: application, offer, first day, first feedback, promotion, parental leave, return, departure. The employer brand is the promise. The experience is whether it is delivered.
How you can tell
- Reviews on employer portals praise colleagues but criticise processes.
- Terminations are increasing in the first year and around parental leave periods.
- There is a mission statement, but no one can say how it manifests in the holiday request process.
- Employee surveys reveal the same three problem areas every year.
Why this happens
Most moments that shape employees are processes: contract dispatch, equipment issue, feedback meeting, return-to-work discussion. These processes belong to different departments, run on different systems, and have never been viewed as a coherent experience. HR sees its part, IT sees its own, and the manager sees theirs. No one sees what the individual employee actually experiences.
Our approach
- Select moments. We identify with you the eight to twelve moments that determine whether employees stay or leave. For this, we use exit reasons, survey data, and discussions with employees from various departments.
- Capture current experience. For each moment, we document what actually happens: which steps, which systems, which waiting times, which senders. The result is usually sobering and very specific.
- Design desired experience. We redesign the moment, define responsibilities, timeframes, and system support, and check whether the employer brand promise is incorporated.
- Measure. Each designed moment receives brief feedback from those affected, automated from the HR system. This shows you whether the design is effective before the next annual survey.
What you gain
- The employer brand becomes credible because it aligns with everyday reality.
- Early attrition decreases because the initial months are no longer left to chance.
- HR, IT, and managers work on the same moments instead of separate processes.
From our projects
When we record the current experiences with companies, the first day of work is almost always the moment with the largest gap between promise and reality, and almost always the cause lies in media discontinuities between HR and IT, not in a lack of effort. The second observation: feedback on individual moments, automated after two weeks, provides more actionable insights than any annual survey.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't this just a new word for employee satisfaction?
Satisfaction is the outcome. Experience is the design of the processes that lead to this outcome. The difference is evident in the work: satisfaction is measured, experience is built.
What role does software play in this?
A significant one. Many poor moments arise from media discontinuities: the contract arrives by post, equipment is ordered via email, feedback is in an Excel file. A seamless process within the HR system removes the friction that employees perceive as disinterest.
Let's talk about Employee Experience and Employer Brand
In a thirty-minute first call we clarify where your biggest lever is and whether we are the right partner for it.
Further reading
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