HUMAN CAPITAL AS AN ASSET: Employee experience PAGE 26 AN ACCOUNTING FRAMEWORK FOR THE NEW WORLD OF WORK A FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN CAPITAL ACCOUNTING Employers looking for ways to connect their people with purpose and apply a broad In addition, an employee experience model can be used to organize non-survey approach to the value from human capital are tapping into the employee experience metrics into a common framing. For example, in Willis Towers Watson’s EX model, they create for workers. For example, Willis Towers Watson has developed an measures can be mapped to the purpose, people, work and reward quadrants to evidence-based model of employee experience (“EX”), which identifies the most create a supplemental EX scorecard. Example measures include social media ratings important experience factors across different levels of maturity and has established of leadership effectiveness for purpose, manager retention rates for people, safety 25 incident rates or defect rates for work, and pay equity measures for reward. In this that employee experience is predictive of business performance . way, employee experience can be visualized and tracked over time by organizing in The model, developed from organizational surveys of workers, focuses on experiences novel ways measures already in common use in companies today. of connection with company purpose and colleagues, and contribution to work and consequent rewards. Companies with more effective, high-performance employee experience outperform their peers for top-line growth, bottom-line profitability and return High-performance employee experience model to shareholders. In other words, an employee experience diagnostic is predictive of 26 whether an organization will underperform or outperform its peers . At its core, employee experience is a metric that captures employee sentiment and reports on the quality of specific experiences at work. For example, the Willis WORK Towers Watson model is put together using an all-employee survey methodology PURPOSE that asks workers to respond to a limited number of questions, using standard five- A strong sense of purpose Doing great work in a point response scales. Specific concepts related to connection and contribution are thriving organization embedded throughout those questions to enable organizations to separate strengths from opportunities and improve experience. Results are provided through a heat EX map report showing total favourable opinion scores for each concept versus a high- performance profile. Areas for improvement can then be translated into root causes CONNECTION CONTRIBUTION and actionable steps to remedy them. Although employee survey scores and in particular engagement scores are often publicly announced, comparability is lacking. The survey categories, items and response scales of employee surveys should be reported more consistently, such PEOPLE REWARD as those proposed here. Data is usually gathered through established processes and technology already in use for this purpose. Tracking and consistently reporting Connection with great Growth and reward employee experience through a standard model enables employers to understand people and leaders opportunities in return the health of their employee sentiment in comparison to that of a high-performing company. This process also provides boards and executives with a means of ensuring accountability and transparency regarding the health of employee sentiment. Figure 2 — Source: Willis Towers Watson