Companies with “EX Factor” treat employees like customers, infusing a sense of purpose into the experience. Seventy-six percent of executives agree that organizations need to dramatically re-engineer the experiences that bring people and technology together in a more human-centric manner. Co-creating experiences with employees based on their increasingly liquid expectations completes the EX play and creates a greater sense of brand loyalty within the workforce. Eighty-one percent of HR leaders have already rolled out or are piloting various technologies to improve the employee experience. Those that successfully activate a purpose-led EX create a community of valuable brand stakeholders all working together to shape the next era of engagement and competitiveness.

Of course, treating employees like customers to deliver high-value experiences is easier said than done. It’s difficult to provide differentiated EX when skills or tools exist outside of single functions. And 93 percent of companies note their very existence is jeopardized by operating models that can’t keep pace. COVID-19 has accelerated the need to self-disrupt and reorient teams to be more flexible and resilient, leveraging an expanded talent and technology ecosystem. By reimagining HR, finance, IT, and Global Business Services (GBS) into employee services, companies eliminate functional silos and reset cost structures to self-fund and deliver EX at scale.

Developing new, highly-valued employee experiences does not necessarily require more investment. One way to get more EX for less is to leverage the organization’s existing GBS organization to accelerate speed to value when it comes to crafting employee experiences at scale. GBS creates the agility needed to adapt to shifting needs for both employee and employer, repositioning the functional teams and experts (sourced from liquid talent pools within and outside of the organization) to leverage tools (automated onboarding, digital assistants, employee and manager self-service) that drive greater user experience, workforce productivity, and issue resolution. And consider this: as technology ecosystems mature, automation and artificial intelligence initiatives scale operational cost benefits by up to 30 percent and improve time-to-market from 3x to 10x.

Winning the war on talent means pumping up your EX factor. Here are three ways to start:

When all is said and done, boosting the employee experience isn’t just about attraction and retention. Although for star performers, those are more important than ever. EX is all about ROI. Companies with highly-engaged workforces see a measurable bottom-line impact, significantly outperforming their peers and making their organizations stand out during a time of disruption.