For decades, companies have talked about the importance of employee engagement. It’s become a familiar term in leadership circles, HR seminars, and corporate mission statements. Yet the truth is, employee engagement often has been misunderstood. When you step back and examine it, you realize something important: Employee engagement is neither a true strategy nor a definitive result. It is simply an activity, and like any activity, it can be good or bad.
In my early career, I experienced both sides of this. I once worked for a boss who constantly engaged with me, but in a toxic, bullying way that made my work experience miserable. On the other hand, I’ve worked for incredible leaders who engaged me in respectful, supportive ways that helped me grow both personally and professionally. Both were examples of employee engagement, but the quality of the engagement made all the difference. What determined the outcome wasn’t the engagement itself, but rather the culture behind it.
This is where most organizations fall short. They treat engagement as an outcome to pursue when it’s actually a byproduct of something far more important: the Human Experience (HX) inside the enterprise. Engagement doesn’t create culture. Culture creates engagement.
The Shift from Engagement to Human Experience Innovation (HXI)
Today’s best leaders and organizations are beginning to understand this difference. They realize that in order to foster meaningful engagement, they need to focus on how employees actually experience their work. This approach requires more than annual employee satisfaction surveys or teambuilding exercises. It demands a strategic, intentional design of what I call Human Experience Innovation (HXI).
Every organization exists inside an experiential ecosystem, a system that includes employees, customers, vendors, and partners, all of whom interact with the organization in human ways. Leading organizations recognize that employees are not simply economic participants. Today’s workforce, especially younger generations, want more. They want to believe in the mission of the organization. They want their work to serve a greater purpose. They want to grow, develop, and collaborate in ways that use their unique talents to make an impact.
Lessons from “Happy Work”
While writing my book, “Happy Work,” I uncovered a simple but overlooked truth, and that is the only engagement worth having with an employee is positive engagement. That may sound obvious, but many organizations still focus only on the economic transaction of employment, ignoring the deeper experiential value they can deliver.
Employees experience their organizations through a set of emotional lenses I call employee personas. These personas capture both what employees Love about their work and what they Hate—in other words, the things they find frustrating or damaging. When leaders understand these Love and Hate Points, they can systematically design work environments that increase job satisfaction and presenteeism, improve productivity, and create a far higher return on human capital through major improvements and experiential value.
Designing Human Experience Value: The 5 Touch Points
To move beyond basic engagement and create extraordinary experiences, organizations need to map the full employee journey. In my research and work with global organizations, I have identified five critical touch points that shape the employee experience:
-
The Pre-Touch Moment
Before an employee ever sets foot in the organization, they form opinions based on social reviews, your Website, word of mouth, and your employer brand. They are quietly asking themselves, “Could I feel at home here?”
-
The Onboarding Touch Point
Onboarding shapes future engagement more than almost any other moment. Some research suggests that up to 80 percent of an employee’s long-term feelings about an organization are formed during onboarding. This is the time to deeply understand your new hire and begin crafting tailored experiences that fit their persona.
-
The Core Work Life Touch Point
This is where employees live their day-to-day experience. Here, organizations must foster opportunities for collaboration, creativity, and ideation. When employees feel empowered to co-create better work environments, they become deeply invested in the success of the enterprise.
-
The Last Touch Point (Daily Exit)
This often is overlooked, but it is critically important. The experience employees have as they end each workday can reinforce their satisfaction and sense of accomplishment or leave them emotionally drained.
-
The In-Touch Moment (Ongoing Connection)
Beyond the formal workday, organizations must maintain authentic ongoing communication that reminds employees how their work contributes to a greater mission. Internal communications, recognition, and meaningful dialogue are essential here.
From Surveys to Collaborative Ideation
Traditional HR surveys only scratch the surface of how employees truly feel. In fact, even the best surveys provide little or no meaningful insights—and can even provide erroneous insights that when acted upon can be very detrimental. The best organizations today move beyond these static instruments by actively involving employees in collaborative ideation sessions. One of the most effective tools I use in my own work is the Employee Happiness Hackathon, a structured process that allows employees to voice both their frustrations and their creative solutions. These sessions produce extraordinary insights that quickly lead to happiness innovations with real business impact. The insights from the hackathon can immediately be applied into your overarching HXI strategy and in the development of personal success plans for every employee. This approach may sound simple and straightforward, but the power of co-creating better work experiences, and satisfaction with employees can’t be overstated.
The power of this approach lies in its ability to uncover the unexpected. Employees are not simply telling management what is wrong; they are helping to design what is possible. Over time, organizations can develop customized employee growth strategies that align each individual’s work life with their personal aspirations and strengths.
A Formula for Enterprise Happiness and Growth
The formula is straightforward:
Human Experience Strategy + Positive Engagement =
Enterprise Happiness, Productivity, Retention, and Revenue Growth
Organizations that embrace human experience innovation will not only outperform their competitors, they will create workplaces where employees thrive. Engagement is important, but it is only the visible outcome of a much deeper strategy that focuses on how people actually feel about their work, every day, at every touch point.
Tips to Keep in Mind
- Begin by identifying the key employee personas within your organization and map their experience across the five touch points.
- Facilitate collaborative ideation sessions, such as employee happiness hackathons, to gather authentic insights directly from your team.
- Use these insights to not only design targeted human experience innovations but also to create individualized personal growth plans for each employee, aligned to what they love and want to improve in their work experience.
This tailored approach will strengthen engagement, improve retention, and drive meaningful enterprise impact.
In a world of hyper-complexity and chaotic change, this shift is no longer optional. The organizations that master human experience innovation will become the organizations that win.
