There is No ‘Back to Normal‘
The 2023 State of the Work Experience Report
By Ken Oehler, Ph.D.
Senior Partner, Head of People Science
The post-pandemic world of work has been anything but a smooth transition back to normal. Economic, political, social and technological changes continue to evolve in new ways at a breakneck pace.
This new context shapes the experience of work today. Inflation, rising interest rates and recession fears have put downward pressure on job security and the buying power of one’s wages. Political polarization has created cynicism, skepticism about leadership and barriers to trusted relationships. AI in the workplace has unlocked possibilities for value and, simultaneously, concerns for privacy and human redundancy. Facing a life-threatening pandemic and two years of remote work has brought physical and mental health to the forefront and caused many to reassess what’s really important to them in work and life. Remote work during the pandemic created new employee expectations and new norms about distributed teams.
There's no return to normal when the pre-pandemic context and rules of work are gone. (And, we really should question if returning to old ways of working would be a return to optimal experience and effectiveness). Work is moving forward. And yet, the debate over return-to-office vs remote work rages on. Many company leaders have rightfully been focusing on stabilization and a return to productivity and growth. Unfortunately, the goodwill from empathetic actions early in the pandemic has evaporated as companies have laid off employees and required a return to the office. These actions send a message to employees that they are expendable, not trusted, and that management may not even understand how work is now done. It seems that there is a disconnect between management and employees where productivity and a human-centric employee experience are at odds.
This report aims to shed light on the current state of the work experience, the challenges and opportunities for redesigning an “Epic,” whole-person experience that benefits both companies and people. Data insights are from RADICL’s research on employee data collected in Q2 2023 in partnership with QuestionPro, from over one thousand full-time U.S. employees from companies with 1,000-50,000+ employees across a range of industries.
What is an Epic Work Experience?
When we ask people to describe the experience that would best fit their needs, they talk about “exciting, meaningful” work (Reason); “empowered, productive, fulfilling” work (Accomplishment); and “goal-clarity, challenge, and management” (Direction). People also talk a lot about “appreciated, valued, rewarding, flexibility, stress-free, family, life, time” (Identity); “supportive, caring, collaborative, teamwork and trust” (Connection); and “growth, opportunity and advancement” (Learning).
This type of Epic work experience is not easy, lazy, or watching Netflix while working from home. An Epic experience is a productive, impactful experience. People want to eliminate the friction, sharp edges and toxicity in work that sap their energy and dehumanize their experience. Along with delivering productive, meaningful value to the company, people are asking for reciprocal and regenerative value where they are seen, heard, understood, appreciated, developed and rewarded, not just as employees but as people.
Our research indicates that the majority of people experience at least one of the critical elements of an Epic Work Experience, but only 21% of people have a completely Epic experience with all of these elements (i.e., Reason, Accomplishment, Direction, Identity, Connection and Learning). For about half of employees who have a moderate to negative work experience, their words are visceral and they are loud and clear. These employees describe having a “stressful, frustrating, boring, exhausting, soul-crushing” experience. This is a problem for people and should be a huge wake-up call for leaders that it is time to focus more on what people need.
An Epic work experience is ultimately about meaning, clarity and connection. Too many people (8 out of 10) do not have this, and it’s negatively impacting people and business outcomes. Meaning is about Identity, Impact and Growth; Clarity is confidence in Objectives, Alignment and Trajectory; Connection is about Trust, Belonging and Shared Success. These outcomes are important for people and they should be important for business leaders.
Why an Epic Work Experience Matters
People with an Epic work experience have 5X the rate of retention and 4X the rate of engagement vs people with a toxic or pressure-cooker experience. This epic work experience also results in 2X the level of productivity vs a destructive, toxic, or purposeless experience. We don’t see the really spectacular results, where 90% of people or higher say they are productive, engaged and want to stay, until all elements of the Reason, Accomplishment, Direction, Identity, Connection and Learning are at high levels. We also see a connection between work experience and business performance where growth and profitability are 2X as likely for people with an Epic experience vs others.
Call to Action
Create Holistic People Strategies that Empower Meaning, Clarity and Connection for People
Our driver analysis shows that no single intervention has a lot of impact (the #1 driver has only 8% impact). Collectively all the drivers have a significant impact on the work experience. And, the drivers span People, Places, Programs, Process and Products. Yet most people interventions happen one-at-a-time, with siloed design and delivery aimed at what the business wants to get out of people (e.g., attraction, retention and engagement). - and clearly it's not working. It’s time to step back with a new strategy aimed at holistically delivering what people need.
Integrate HR, Technology, Operations and Real Estate for How Work Really Happens
Employee experience efforts have failed because they are fragmented, inside-out efforts about HR Service Center Operations, HR Technology or Lifecycle Listening. Employees don’t care that HR, Real Estate, Operations and Technology are in separate silos with separate plans and budgets. Our driver analysis shows that we can predict a high degree of variance (63%) in the work experience – but also that doing so requires all of these functions coming together to holistically imagine, design and deliver the experience people need.
Break Through Silos and Design Together
With 8 out of 10 missing one or more critical elements of an Epic experience, employee needs are not being met. Take a design thinking approach to solve for people’s Meaning, Clarity and Connection at work. This approach entails iterative design, co-created with people, based on needs along a journey in a way that gathers input with fast feedback loops. A cross-functional design would mean treating individual functional interventions like features of a much larger “product” design (e.g., manager skills, office design, process, technology would all be features of an experience co-created with employees — not four stand-alone interventions rolled out to employees).
Build Leaders that Lead Differently
46% don’t think senior leaders are trustworthy and 37% aren’t confident in the decisions they are making. Place leaders and managers in roles based on the skills to deliver meaning, clarity and connection. Too often leaders are placed with an over-rotation on technical skills and ability to independently get things done. Leaders and managers that can inspire, empower, connect and regenerate people will have outsized value to organizations, teams and people vs directive experts.
Remove the Sharp Edges
Employee comments and suggestions indicate three significant pain points with pay, process and people that are impeding people’s energy and effectiveness. People say they are undervalued, exhausted and frustrated. The best experience interventions in the world will fail if baseline needs of fairness, value, ability to get work done and psychological safety are threatened.
Fix Pay Gaps
Higher/Fair pay is the #1 overall suggestion from people. In the context of inflation and higher interest rates, real wages have been damaged even without any change. Pay inequity is a top reason for turnover. Address gaps in pay relative to market, internal comparisons and relative to change in real wages (particularly for the lowest paid workers).
Clarify and Empower How Work Gets Done
46% say there is loose or no process discipline where they work. 25% of suggestions had to do with restructuring and process efficiency to unlock value. Inefficiency and friction frustrates meaning and wastes time that people want for themselves. Lack of planning and coordination across teams and functions is not empowerment, agile or “scrappy” - it’s chaos and people don’t like it or thrive in this environment. Prioritization based on customer needs is the #2 driver of a great work experience. Clarifying the direction with employees - not providing freedom to solve unclear problems - is a critical part of empowerment.
Address Toxicity Aggressively at the Source
Finally, people are fed up with toxicity - 19% of suggestions are about people creating a more caring, appreciative environment, and many are calling for toxic leaders and people to be fired! Quiet quitting, loud quitting, bare minimum Mondays, rage applying, lazy girl jobs are all popular work trends that are emblematic of people pushing back on toxic environments and readjusting the value exchange. The source of toxicity could be leaders, unrealistic expectations, programs that don’t set people up for success, or deeply dysfunctional cultures. Whatever the source, understand and address it quickly as it is destroying value.
Redesign Places, Processes and Technology for Fluid Team Effectiveness
Many organizations are forcing people back into an office with layouts, technology and processes that don’t support distributed work. Getting everyone back in offices isn’t the answer, but we haven’t figured out distributed work yet either. 73% want hybrid or remote work but only 31% have the schedule they want. At the same time, 87% say there is room for improvement with cross-functional and distributed team decision speed, collaboration and impact.
Set an In-Office Policy Based on the Work
72% of people have an in-office requirement, yet only 19% work on an entirely co-located team. Most people need to and want to come into the office at least some of the time. Some people may need to be in an office all of the time. Most people do not. Blanket RTO mandates scream “I don’t trust you” and “I don’t really care about you or your family.” Set policy/standards/routines for distributed teams to meet in offices when in-person collaboration and/or social connection is needed.
Reallocate and Optimize Spend across Real Estate, Technology, Process and Travel
Remote work creates an opportunity to reduce footprint and reallocate some savings on layout, technology and travel budgets that better meet needs for energy, focus and collaboration. If people are going to come into an office, it needs to support the work needed to be done.
Examining the top drivers of office effectiveness reveals that 55% is impacted by using space to get the right balance of energy and focus by ensuring that spaces are neither too crowded or too empty but also ensuring there are spaces to get focus work done. Conference rooms and technology designed to support hybrid teams accounts for another 23% of office effectiveness.
Design for Hybrid Connection, Collaboration & Focus
80% say the office doesn’t support intended culture and connection outcomes. The office now competes with the home office as a place to focus, and commute times are barriers to get people to come in. Focus work may be best achieved at home, so people need private areas that are at least as good as their home office, if they will want to come in at all. Further, 66% of people work on distributed or cross-functional teams - if these people come in only to get on Zoom calls and get little in-person connection and collaboration, one really needs to question what the office is for. Cross-functional collaboration, hybrid processes, technology to support hybrid teams and office design that supports the work to be done collectively account for 14% of creating a great work experience.
The office should be designed with spaces, sound, technology, processes for teams that can collaborate effectively across boundaries whether virtually or in-person.
Invest in Regeneration
Boring. Stressful. Micromanaged. Exhausting. Unappreciated.
These are the top words the majority of people use to describe their work experience - people are depleted. 19% of the impact on an Epic work experience comes through performance management, learning opportunities and team composition that build and align needed skills. Performance management that helps people build needed skills (not rating performance and determining pay) is the #1 driver of an Epic work experience. Wellness benefits, Leadership Trust, having an empowering manager and a caring team account for 22% of Epic work experience.
Make Wellbeing Part of Your Cultural Beliefs, Decisions and Behaviors
Ensure health, resilience and wellbeing are valued, modeled and rewarded by leaders and people. This is more important than just offering benefits that are focused on “getting well.” Staying well is energizing, less draining and less costly than trying to get well.
Integrate Skills Needed for the Future into Lifecycle Moments
Programs across planning, hiring, onboarding, management, rewards, promotion are important. Ensuring leaders, managers and peers know and support needed skill development in others is more important.
Make Developing Relevant Skills Through Connections Part of Your Cultural Beliefs, Decisions and Behaviors
70/20/10 learning model holds that individuals gain 70% of knowledge and skills through on-the-job experiences, 20% from working with others and 10% through formal training/events. 90% of learning is experiential through people and processes - not online learning or HR programs. A shared belief in the responsibility to “make people better” is a good place to start.
Design Integrative Technology to Enable People Along Their Individual Work Journey
People are on their own work journey with their own personal context across a variety of work settings. Our research found over 450 unique experience profiles that may exist across individuals within a company. Lower employee experience levels were found in people that are single, no kids, individual work, people managers, or if you are in a company with declining revenue or market share. Higher experiences tend to be found in C-suite executives, and IT and sales professions. We found no significant differences in experience by gender, tenure, company size or generation.
Optimize Tech Spend for Better Experiences
When it comes to work technology, many employers could stand to do a little less. Only 3% of suggestions in our survey were about technology products/features. When people did mention technology, the most frequent requests were for tools to be quick, easy, and streamlined. Customization is also critical as meaning, clarity and connection may look different in each person’s work journey.
People don’t need/want more apps. So remove redundancy, low use/low satisfaction apps and ensure new EX tech solutions fill the gaps between social, collaboration, listening and skills products in the flow of work, in a highly personalized way.
Adopt Integrated Design for Meaning, Clarity and Connection
Design for the meaning, clarity and connection people need in the flow of work. Not more work. Stop implementing AI and snazzy technology in search of a problem that just adds to the fragmented, chaotic pile-up of 80+ people-facing apps.
Fragmented delivery is partially to blame for feelings of chaos, frustration and disconnect. This is also why tech apps alone - or any single intervention like getting everyone back to the office - will fail.
Deliver Insights, Action & Impact
Push insights, connections and guidance to empower people on their work journey where and when they need it, wherever they go. The external context and people’s needs will constantly change. Wherever they are in that journey, people will need to gather insights about their context and themselves, to push ideas forward to the people that need them, to accelerate trusted connections, and to build new skills in order to navigate, adjust and have meaningful impact.
Meaning, Clarity and Connection Create the Energy for an Epic Work Journey
We have to look forward. There is no other way. The context and work itself have changed. We have weathered a global pandemic, political polarization increases, technology opportunities and risks are accelerating, teams are distributed, trust in leaders is breaking down, demographics are shifting. Right now, too many people are frustrated, stressed, exhausted, or just bored. The Employee Experience is not what it could be for the majority of people. By and large, employee experience efforts have lost sight of “the employee” and failed to deliver a great, holistic, integrated “experience” for people.
An Epic Work Experience is filled with meaning, clarity and connection for people and creates a virtuous cycle between people and companies. Work Experience is more than a moment in time…it is a longitudinal collection of “moments that matter” that create an individual’s work journey. Success requires putting employees in the driver’s seat in employee experience design. EX still lives too much in a company’s siloed, “inside-out” design.
Imagine if we jumped from “inside-out to employees”, past “outside-in for employees”, and straight to “(co)create with people” to empower people on their own work journey? A person’s work journey could remain uninformed, isolated, accidental and suboptimal; or it can be informed, guided, connected, regenerative and intentional across changing contexts, jobs, companies and time.
It could be Epic!
Methodology
Responses were collected in partnership with QuestionPro from over 1,000 full-time U.S. employees representative of industry, level, role, tenure, age, generation. We identified the top predictors of the Epic experience index across People, Programs, Process, Places and Products (5Ps) using Relative Weights Analysis (RWA) and supplemented these data with qualitative employee experience descriptions and suggestions on what should be done to deliver their needed employee experience.
Questions focused on Engagement, Retention, Productivity and Experience, as well as the drivers of an Epic Experience:
People (Leaders, Managers, Teams)
Programs (Pay, Benefits, Performance, L&D)
Processes (Hybrid, Planning, Agile, Cross-functional collaboration)
Places (RTO policy, actual/preferred time in office, office design, home office, team locations)
Products (people facing apps and technology)
