Views: EX and IC are very different disciplines

Even though employee experience and internal communication are very different disciplines – as different as L&D is from payroll – increasingly, these roles are being lumped together. They shouldn’t be, writes Nicholas Wardle.

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According to Dr Kevin Ruck, PR Academy, IC is:

“Corporate level information provided to all employees and the concurrent provision of opportunities for all employees to have a say about important matters that is taken seriously by line managers and senior managers.”

At Brand Experiences, we say EX is:

“The entire relationship between employee and employer. It encompasses every interaction and touchpoint with the organisation and its stakeholders at every stage of the Employee Lifecycle.”

So, EX is the holistic term for all people-related activity within an organisation, whereas IC is the flow of information and exchanges and is a part of an employee’s experience. 

There’s little confusion surrounding the difference between customer experience and customer comms, so it’s somewhat baffling why there is between EX and IC.

Creating a positive EX 

To create a positive employee experience, leaders can start by recognising the impact that EX has on the bottom line – for this, you need the Employee Experience Opportunity Calculator to understand what’s currently being lost on productivity, unrealised revenue and sickness and turnover.

Once the business case is understood, then leaders should resource employee experience efforts. The great news is that most of the work can be done ‘from the people, for the people’ by existing employees. An EX Council should be formed to support efforts to create the EX strategy, then to shape the Employee Lifecycle, the Moments that Matter and Employee Journey Maps. 

The secret sauce to EX success is to understand what motivates employees and to leverage this to drive productivity, build resilience and boost wellbeing. For this, you need mojo.

Investing in EX is a win for employees, as they have a more enjoyable and fulfilling work life, businesses, as employees will be more productive, and customers, as they will be served by motivated and satisfied employees.

Nicholas Wardle, employee experience director, Brand Experiences

Wardle is an award-winning employee experience practitioner with over 15 years’ experience in the employee experience/comms/engagement space, both in the UK and in the Middle East. He has worked across many sectors, including: the arts, television, local government, retail, housing and care. Wardle is a fellow of the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC) and has given keynote speeches across three continents. His mantra is to ‘make the complex, simple’ and he believes that the employee experience should have parity with the customer experience. He is the co-author of the book: Monetising the Employee Experience.