The rise of the employee experience is the next topic human resources professionals should pay attention to and here’s why. Try this experiment. Go to LinkedIn and type in “Employee Experience” in the search bar. Last week I found:
- 1,850 people with “Employee Experience” in their title;
- 1,911 with “Employee Experience” in their profile;
- 2,220 jobs are available with the term “Employee Experience” in the title
- 3,890 results appear for LinkedIn posts with the term “Employee Experience”
- 6 groups with “Employee Experience” in the name- the most popular one has 879 members.
More and more HR professionals are changing their title to include this new term, and it seems to be senior HR leaders in reputable companies who are leading the way. Here are several examples:
- Donna Morris, EVP Customer and Employee Experience at Adobe
- Malcolm Berkley, Vice President, Global Employee Experience at UPS
- Angela Heyroth, Managing Director, Employee Experience at Charles Schwab
- Paul Davies, Employee Experience Leader at GE
- Ryan Miller, Senior Manager, HR Knowledge Management and Employee Experience at The Walt Disney Company
- Monika Fahlbusch, Chief Employee Experience Officer at BMC Software
- Shauna Cort, Employee Experience Program Manager at Tesla Motors
Is “Human Resources” old school?
When you think about it, “human resources” does sound like an antiquated and non-politically-correct term. Are employees really the company’s resources? “Human resources” is a corporate term to specify the different inputs needed for a company to produce a product or service. When viewed as a cog in the machine of corporate gains, “human resources” really doesn’t do an adequate job of describing employees. After all, companies are really made up of a group of people that produce value for customers. It’s your people that ultimately drive the company’s success.
“Employee experience” is trending
Google has a nifty tool to show how popular a term is on the search 
engine. Google Trends allows you to see the relative interest in a term over the past five years. If you do a search on Google Trends for the term “Employee Experience,” you will see a 140% increase in interest by comparing the average popularity value of 35 in 2011 to 85 towards the end of 2016.
Google’s description of “interest over time” is a little tricky. Google explains: “Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise, a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.”
If you compare interest in “Employee Engagement” you will see that “Employee Experience” has a ways to go to catch up. Nevertheless, the trend in interest for “Employee Experience” is still climbing.
What is the employee experience?
Simply put, the employee experience is the sum of the various perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organization in which they work. These perceptions drive how employees feel about their work and how much effort they put into their job. The employee experience determines how effective your company is at attracting, retaining, and engaging your workforce.
The employee experience revolution
Are we in the middle of a major shift in mindset when it comes to employees? I hope so. As the global economy grows and competition becomes more intense, the war for talent will only become harder. Attracting, retaining, and engaging top talent will be the key advantage successful companies use to win in this era, and it all starts with creating an amazing employee experience.
Question: If you are in HR, will you be replacing “human resources” with “employee experience” in your title? Did you do so already? Why?
This article originally appeared on the DecisionWise blog.