Qualtrics’ chief workplace psychologist on why the employee-employer relationship is broken, and who pays the price

Benjamin Granger is the chief workplace psychologist at cloud-based experience management platform Qualtrics, where he leads the intersection between employee and customer experience. He’s set to speak at HR Brew’s upcoming summit, Talent 2030 Collective: Recruit, Retain, Repeat, on April 21 about how workforce analytics can better support employee development and performance. Before then, we had a chance to catch up with him about the “employment situationship,” and why onboarding is one of the worst places to cut corners.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

If you zoom out, what’s the biggest shift happening in the talent landscape right now that HR leaders can’t afford to ignore?

The “Employment Situationship” is an arrangement that has real stakes but in which neither employees nor employers fully commit to each other. For a long time, the employee-employer relationship was built on loyalty and reciprocity. But today, we’re seeing many organizations move toward transactional work models (gig work, contractor work, part-time work) and underinvest in their new hires, part-time workers, and customer-facing workers. Meanwhile, employees are stacking jobs, moonlighting, and putting away savings because they realize the stakes and worry they’re viewed as dispensable.

Being part of a group where loyalty and reciprocity don’t exist is cognitively foreign to humans. And naturally, this situationship is manifesting in poor psychological outcomes for employees that will eventually begin to damage the customer experience, since the most impacted employees are precisely those delivering the customer experience.

Where do you see organizations falling short today when it comes to hiring, development, or retention?

Our latest global workforce study, spanning 33,000+ workers across 24 countries and major industries, found a precipitous year-over-year drop in the new-hire experience. This represents a continuation of a disturbing trend we’ve observed over the last few years: that the onboarding and new hire experiences are falling far short of employees’ expectations.

Given what we know about the importance of first impressions, onboarding is one of the worst experiences organizations can drop the ball on.

In a separate study coming soon, only around a third of executives said they are increasing their investments in talent and skills development. Ironically, these same executives say talent shortages and skills gaps pose the greatest risk to their ability to compete effectively by 2030.

AI is showing up everywhere in the employee journey right now. Where do you think it’s actually adding value, and where is it being overhyped or misused?

On the positive side, employee usage of AI is increasing and new Qualtrics data shows 37% of employees believe AI helps them do things they couldn’t before—expanding their capabilities. An even larger percentage point out that AI helps them improve work quality. On the other hand, when we study unsuccessful AI implementations, one of the common themes are broad tools (with many potential uses) that are rolled out with little enablement or guardrails. Employees appreciate and willingly use AI tools with clear guidance, guardrails, and specifics purposes that they see personal benefits in.

There is also danger in employees offloading essential thought work to AI or relying on AI to make judgements, especially about decisions that require human empathy and context. In our research, we find consumers saying much the same, that replacing highly emotional experiences with non-human agents (such as customer service) often turns consumers off and erodes trust.

What’s one thing HR leaders can start doing differently tomorrow to build stronger, more resilient teams?

Build cross-functional relationships and become TRUE business partners. AI is commoditizing knowledge, but trust among people in an organization is not something that can be offloaded to technology. This is a pivotal moment for HR, a function that has long fought for a seat at the strategy table, and the door is now wide open. But this will require HR leaders to build deep personal relationships with their business partners, understand their goals and the metrics they’re driving, and proactively offer insights that can help them. This not only builds trust but kickstarts a virtuous cycle of reciprocity.

When you think about talent in 2030, what do you hope organizations have finally figured out?

That the ultimate battleground for talent (and consumers) is the experience organizations create. This requires a dual focus on emerging technologies AND real human connection and trust. In the future, every organization will leverage intelligent technologies with similar capabilities. The laggards will be those companies that focus on automation and efficiency at the expense of the experiences they create for employees and customers AND those that neglect to invest in emerging technologies. The leaders and winners in 2030 will be those that invest in both!