The Myth of Employee Experience: From False Premises to Benevolent Subordination

Abstract

The concept of employee experience, developed by the management consulting industry to address the link between human resource management and firm profit, is fashionable among HRM professionals. In this ethnographic case study, we take a critical look at its evolution and show that it is based on two false premises: the false premise of perspectives and the false premise of relationships. We therefore question the underlying logic of employee experience and portray it as a myth. Given the lack of academic research on employee experience in general and critical research in particular, we make a contribution by introducing the notion of benevolent subordination. It describes how senior managers may frame HRM initiatives such as employee experience as well-intending and benevolent, obscuring their own subordinating acts and the adverse outcomes that these acts may bring about for the employees themselves.