Four steps in building and measuring your people experience

Culture · Jun 14, 2017

As a People practitioner, I believe that people are the core of any team and company. People are the driving force behind a great product and experience. People are what makes things happen. 

As we work in an experience focused world, we talk a lot about putting the Customer First and creating awesome customer experiences. While I am not in a customer facing role, I am in a people facing role. I asked myself “is there really a difference between the Customer Experience and the People Experience?”. The only difference I could come up with, is that my customer isn’t the consumer of the product but the team that builds it. So why not approach the People Experience the same way we approach our Customer facing experiences by using data to help us constantly improve? Here are a few steps we took as we embarked on this journey:

1. Start with the end-to-end people journey. 

Like anything, it’s good to start with the big picture. Get a clear(ish) understanding of what you are trying to do end-to-end before diving deep.  We started by mapping out our People Experience and Employee Life cycle (pictured below). 

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  • Candidate experience - sourcing & hiring: Everything related to company brand, recruiting and the hiring process. The candidate experience is the first impression of your team culture. It’s where you have the opportunity let external talent meet your team and find out what your team values.

  • Employee experience - onboarding, retaining and growing: Everything a person is exposed to when they are working for you. Starting with how they are onboarded into your team, engagement levels, belonging, recognition and how they develop and grow through their careers. 

  • Alumni experience - offboarding: Ensure the exit of your former team member is positive so they can remain an engaged part of your community?

2. Focus! Determine where you want to start and what to measure.

By mapping out the full journey, we can see what we need to work on at a high level. Now, we’re ready to drill down. We can look at the outcomes we are driving and prioritize one experience to focus on. 

We all know attracting tech talent is a common challenge. So as we develop and build out our People Experience at TELUS Digital, the Candidate experience is where we are focusing. We are looking to build our analytics capabilities to help us become more strategic and deliberate about how we hire and recruit talent. 

Some metrics that can be used to measure the impact of your Candidate Experience include:

  • % of qualified candidates applying - are you attracting quality talent?

  • Days to offer - are you acting quickly enough?

  • Offer acceptance rate - are you a desired place of work?

  • Candidate sentiment - how was your candidate’s experience?

3. Collect, clean and analyse your data.

The most important part of making data informed solutions is the quality of your data. For People Analytics it’s no different. If your data is inaccurate or incomplete, you won’t be able to make effective and quality decisions nor effectively set targets and track your performance over time. We’ll never know if we’re making the right impact in the right areas of the journey. We’ll incorrectly estimate our candidates’ experience and be at risk for missing impactful improvements.

4. Bring it all together and track it over time.

Once you’ve mapped your metrics to the appropriate parts of the People Experience, you can bring it all together to set aggregate targets to measure the overall performance and value of your People Experience. After you collect enough data and track the metrics for long enough, you can start to identify leading indicators and correlate your people data to your business performance. 

In the short-term, you can use the data you collect to help prioritize your People Experience, find out where you should focus and what programs or enhancements will have the most impact. You’ll also gain deeper insights into your annual engagement results and be able to make impactful improvements to your programs throughout the year.

Authored by:
Veronica Van
Veronica Van
Manager, TELUS Standards & Resources
Veronica supports the team behind The HUB and Brand Resource Centre at TELUS Digital. She's passionate about employee experience, culture and creating a continuous learning environment.