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This conceptual review paper aims to extend the human resource (HR) management literature by introducing a holistic employee experience (EMX) framework to conceptualize the relationship between EMX entities and employee well-being. Thus, the EMX framework stimulates future research in HR and organizational studies by incorporating a transformative impact of experiences designed by organizations on the overall well-being of their employees.

The paper draws on the customer experience literature in the marketing literature and reviews the existing conceptualizations of the EMX construct in HR management studies, along with other disciplines through an extensive and in-depth analysis of the academic and business literature that examines EMX.

The EMX framework provides a comprehensive outlook on the relationship between EMX and well-being, where the latter is considered both a driving force and an outcome of the overall EMX. EMX is a multilevel model offering a big-picture view of how the three entities – personal, social and cultural – of the organization referring to different levels of the EMX can affect employees' well-being in terms of their functional, emotional, hedonic and eudaimonic needs.

The EMX framework utilizes a richer definition of the EMX and highlights the need for research that bridges other disciplines and paradigms outside of and within HR management. This research develops the understanding of each component of the EMX framework with the ultimate goal of moving the field towards the EMX approach. This research identifies some unanswered questions related to a new management tool that enhances employee well-being, improves the delivered customer experience and contributes in making the current body of knowledge on the EMX more organized. The analysis of the different issues addressed by the literature suggests avenues for future research.

The paper contributes to the HR literature and the emerging research on the EMX by presenting a comprehensive framework that incorporates a holistic understanding of the concept in the HR field. The paper offers scholars and organizations that struggle with engaging employees, a modern and practical perspective – one that helps organizations develop an in-depth understanding of today's workplaces in a globalized context to implement successful and engaging customer and EMXs.

This article overviews some key contributions to service research from the organizational behavior/human resource management (OB/HRM) discipline with its strong focus on the role of employees. This focus complements the Marketing discipline’s heavy emphasis on customers, largely true of service research, overall.

Ten OB/HRM frameworks/perspectives are applied to analyzing the roles of people (with a focus on employees and modest consideration of customers as “partial” employees who co-create value) in a service organization context. Also, commentary is offered on how the frameworks relate to six key themes in contemporary service research and/or practice. The article concludes with five reflections on the role and status of employees in service research—past, present and future.

Employee roles in evolving service contexts; participation role readiness of both employees and customers; role stress in participating customers; an employee “empowered state of mind”; an emphasis on internal service quality; “strong” HRM systems link individual HRM practices to firm performance; service-profit chain with links to well-being of employees and customers; a sociotechnical system theory lens on organizational frontlines (OF); service climate as an exemplar of interdisciplinary research; emotional labor in both employees and customers; the Human Experience (HX); specification of employee experience (EX).

Service remains very much about people who still guide organizational design, develop service strategy, place new service technologies and even still serve customers. Also, a people and organization-based competitive advantage is tough to copy, thus possessing sustainability, unlike with imitable technology.

Because new-age technologies are gaining a broader interest among service scholars and practitioners, it is critical to identify these technologies and examine the roles they play. The examination needs to be conducted to design engaging customer and service experiences in new phygital settings that connect physical and digital environments. This review article aims to provide researchers with a new comprehensive and integrative extended reality technology (ERT) framework. The framework serves as the basis for an all-inclusive view of ERT types in order to explore the different types of technology used to design phygital customer and service experiences.

This article reviews prior works on the role technology plays in terms of customer experiences across various fields of research, including consumer, marketing and service literature. Adopting an experiential and phygital perspective as well as considering a consumer standpoint, this article defines the scope of the ERT framework by identifying categories of new-age technologies and their effects related to the design of phygital customer and service experiences.

The ERT framework proposed in this article offers directions for future research by adopting an experiential approach to technologies in order to categorize additional technological devices, platforms and tools that can be considered in the design of phygital experiences following several extension processes. These processes can enhance the cognitive, social, sensory and contextual dimensions of the phygital experience and thus create a continuum in terms of customer value from physical to digital settings and vice versa.

Companies and service providers may benefit from a new, comprehensive, focused framework that assembles different types of technology. The technologies can be utilized to design engaging customer and service experiences that deliver customer value from physical to digital spaces and inversely.

No prior works have proposed a comprehensive ERT framework for service research following an experiential perspective and a consumer view of the experience occurring in a new setting: phygital. By embracing the ERT framework provided in this article, future service scholars can examine the dynamics and types of technologies that can positively or negatively affect the design of consumption and service experiences in phygital settings.

This paper aims to present a novel framework for an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Employee Experience Management (EXM) platform that addresses strategic HR concerns such as employee engagement, personal and professional development and job satisfaction.

This paper conducted a comprehensive study of the applications of AI technology in HR management and workforce development between 2020 and 2023. The study results were then contextualized in the context of EXM to identify an innovative employee-centered framework.

This paper presents a novel framework comprising three essential elements: advanced sentiment analytics, context-sensitive career crafting and augmented mentorship. These elements are introduced with the purpose of enhancing the employee experience by leveraging AI technology to provide personalized support.

This paper presents possibilities and priorities in designing the next generation of EXM platforms. Furthermore, this paper offers criteria for evaluating and selecting emerging EXM technologies to guide organizations in adopting future EXM platforms.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what (service) experience is and examine it using three distinct perspectives: customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and human experience (HX).

The present conceptualization blends the marketing and organizational behavior/human resources management (OB/HRM) disciplines to clarify and reflect over the meaning of (service) experience. The marketing discipline illuminates the concept of CX, whereas the OB/HRM discipline illuminates the concept of EX. The concept of HX, which transcends CX and EX, is examined in light of its recent development in service research. For each of the three concepts, key themes are identified, and future research directions are proposed.

Because the goal that individuals seek to achieve depends on the role they are enacting, each of the three perspectives on experience (CX, EX and HX) should have a different focal point. CX requires to focus on the process of solving customer goals. EX necessitates to think in terms of organizational context and job content that support employees. Finally, the focus of HX should be on well-being via enhanced gratification, and reduced violation, of basic human needs.

This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on (service) experience and simultaneously addresses CX, EX and HX in order to reconcile the different perspectives on experience in service research.

Recently, leading scholars suggested that firms should align strategic and tactical human resource management efforts to cope with growing turnover rates, and that the human resource management field should broaden its scope by embracing the views of all stakeholders. In this research paper, the authors aim to present a study inquiring about the influence of the implementation of an employee experience strategy on employee loyalty and the effect of employee loyalty on customer loyalty in a firm operating in the service sector.

The authors used longitudinal data collected yearly from 2020 to 2022. Overall, 766 employees participated in the longitudinal study. The authors also analyzed cross-sectional data from 166 employees and their customers.

The study’s results suggest that implementing an employee experience strategy increases employee loyalty. The study’s findings also indicate that organizations implementing such a human resource management strategy reach employee and customer loyalty.

There is a lack of evidence about the positive effect of the alignment of an employee experience strategy and tactics on different organizational stakeholders. This study provides insights for scholars and practitioners willing to use the employee and customer experience framework to positively impact organizations.

AI-based chatbots are revamping employee communication in organizations. This paper examines the adoption of AI-based employee experience chatbots by employees.

The proposed model is developed using behavioral reasoning theory and empirically validated by surveying 1,130 employees and data was analyzed with PLS-SEM.

This research presents the “reasons for” and “reasons against” for the acceptance of AI-based employee experience chatbots. The “reasons for” are – personalization, interactivity, perceived intelligence and perceived anthropomorphism and the “reasons against” are perceived risk, language barrier and technological anxiety. It is found that “reasons for” have a positive association with attitude and adoption intention and “reasons against” have a negative association. Employees' values for openness to change are positively associated with “reasons for” and do not affect attitude and “reasons against”.

This is the first study exploring employees' attitude and adoption intention toward AI-based EEX chatbots using behavioral reasoning theory.

The paper redefines workplace spirituality (WS/WPS) by transcending the existential vacuum (in psychiatric terms a sense of lack of meaning of human existence and thus of work), leading to the development of workplace creativity, productivity and satisfaction, targeting operational profitability and organizational optimization.

Spirituality is analyzed philosophically, following the Nietzschean definition in response to Schopenhauer’s primordial suffering. Philosophical syncretism yields a viable organizational culture change model of spiritualizing the workplace. For this purpose, specific techniques are proposed which are combined with those already applied to various large companies and organizations.

Spirituality in the workplace acts as a catalyst for developing beneficial qualities by increasing employee job satisfaction, organizational efficiency and business profitability, when equally responding to stakeholders’ needs.

The suggested change model holistically fosters organizational, operational, individual and collective effectiveness through work place spirituality redefined.

For the first time spirituality in the workplace is discussed under a brand new perspective, resulting in an interdisciplinary emerging model, contributing to the field by providing guidance to academics and practitioners to its auspicious implementation through organizational culture change.

Internal employees of firms are a reliable source of information for potential job seekers. However, few studies have focused on why internal employees actively recommend their firms. Based on the social exchange theory, this study aims to construct a chain mediation model using perceived challenge stress and employee experience as mediators to explore how leadership empowerment behavior affects employee referrals.

Bootstrap repeated sampling analysis was conducted on a sample of 307 employees collected through two-time points.

Leadership empowerment behavior is positively related to employee referrals; perceived challenge stress and employee experience mediate the effect of leadership empowerment behavior on employee referrals, respectively; in addition, perceived challenge stress and employee experience play a chain mediating role between leadership empowerment behavior and employee referrals.

The findings can help provide insight into the drivers of employee referrals and can effectively guide organization reputation management.