In December 2018 we launched a little something that’s really going to help companies measure and manage employee experience and engagement. It’s quite exciting. It’s definitely comprehensive. But before we get into it, a bit of background on why it was so necessary.

A little history of the employee survey industry

In engineering terms, a black box is a device defined only by its input and output; you don’t need to know what’s going on inside it.

This is how the employee survey industry has historically worked. You put in a long list of employee questions, and out of it you get a PowerPoint presentation for key executives.

The industry sells the idea that the employee survey black box is full of secret proprietary knowledge. Employers should only be interested in the input and the output, not in the process that generates one from the other.

“If we keep asking employers to solve problems, we perpetuate a system that always lets employees down. When do we say that it’s up to employees to own their EX, and that the best companies will listen?” – Laurie Ruettimann

We created the Employee Experience Genome Project to crack open the black box

We set out to uncover the science of measuring employee experience and engagement. To unlock a more transparent, more productive workplace. And to make that science easy to understand and use – for all leaders, line managers and workers.

This project has been a real labor of love, with research, framework and question set development taking most of 2018. We’re already coming up with refinements based on practitioner feedback. This is a living, evolving framework for measuring and understanding all the elements of employee experience, and we’d really like to hear your ideas on it.

So get your copy of the Employee Experience Genome Project and tell us what you think!