Dave Ulrich on Employee Experience: How Have Ideas Changed?

Employee Experience has moved beyond employee engagement surveys and workplace benefits. As expectations around work, leadership, culture, and technology continue to change, CHROs are rethinking what creates a meaningful employee experience.

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Is the traditional engagement model still relevant, and what should organisations do differently today? Dave Ulrich, widely known as the “Father of Modern HR,” shares his perspective on how the idea of Employee Experience is evolving and what CHROs should rethink.

Evolution of Ideas Related to Employee Experience

Over the decades, many concepts have evolved to track employee experience that matters to CHROs (see figure). Each row in the figure has a logic, vast literature, and actionable insights related to improving the employee experience.

This evolution continues with an additional fifth wave focused on hope. Hope is not a new concept and often draws on religious principles from Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hindu, and Islam. Hope has also been part of political promises, medical care, social movements, behavioral economics, and positive psychology. 

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Figure: Evolution of Ideas Related to Employee Experience

Drawing on this vast hope database, organizations with hope demonstrate six principles relevant to CHROs:

1. Transform the future. Hope emphasizes what can be with the ability to grow from but leave behind the past. Organizations articulate inspirational, future-focused strategies that deliver stakeholder value.
2. Are based in healthy relationships and conversations. Hope flourishes when people care for, serve, and hear one another. Organizations prosper through collaboration, relationships, and teamwork.
3. Ensure efficacy. Hope increases when current efforts lead to future positive outcomes. Organizational investments in human capability impact stakeholder outcomes.
4. Rely on realistic optimism. Hope focuses on what is right and possible, not merely desirable. Organizations set aspirational but doable goals.
5. Empower people. Hopeful people have better health, are more resilient, and live longer. Organizations help people become better.
6. Address personal needs. Hope serves individual needs in a pershonalized and scalable way. Organizations turn individual competencies into organization capabilities.

These principles become the assumptions of the “hopeful” employee experience (wave five in figure 4). When employees have more hope at work, they will have a more positive work experience that leads to increased stakeholder value.

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How do we create hope?

Turning these principles into actions requires practical, teachable skills. I have identified seven specific skills people in general and leaders in particular can master to turn principles into actions that increase hope. 

1. Practice self-compassion: Leaders who show compassion and curiosity for themselves and others help turn attention away from old mistakes and toward future possibilities to transform the future.
2. Find certainty amid uncertainty. Leaders bring certainty in uncertain conditions by having a clear point of view about the future, acting consistently on values, and empowering people with confidence that they can accomplish the tasks ahead (ensure efficacy).
3. Ponder meaning and purpose: Leaders who meld organization visions with individual aspirations have realistic optimism about the future. “Hope . . . is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense [or has meaning], regardless of how it turn out” (Vaclav Havel, playwright and first president of the Czech Republic).
4. Practice a growth mindset: You’re not failing; you’re learning. Leaders who help others grow empower them to accomplish ambitious goals.
5. Fix problems—not people. Leaders who focus on fixing problems more than people (address personal needs)  foster healthy relationships through teamwork and realistic optimism about what can be accomplished.
6. Increase influence. Leaders who influence others effectively personalize relationships to help others feel better about themselves and what they can accomplish (efficacy).
7. Start small, now. Leaders who start with small, simple, and doable actions, make progress now.

When business and HR leaders recognize, learn, and master these skills, they practice them in their personal lives and institutionalize them throughout the organization.