Decoding employee experiences during pandemic through online employee reviews: insights to organizations

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to unearth various dimensions of employee experience (EX) and explore how pandemic impacted various EX factors using online employee reviews. The authors identify employee-discussed EX-factors and quantify the associated sentiments and importance.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper employs Latent Dirichlet Allocation on the online employee reviews to identify the key EX-factors. The authors probe sentiments and importance associated with key EX-factors using sentiment analysis, importance analysis, regression analysis and dominance analysis.

Findings

The result of topic modeling identifies 20 EX-factors that shape overall EX. While skill development plays a major role in shaping overall EX, employees perceived Salary and Growth as the most important EX-factor and expressed negative sentiments during the pandemic. Employee sentiments significantly influence overall EX.

Practical implications

When employees have extensive change experience, managers should consider various facets of EX to manage the smooth change and deliver a better EX. This research offers key EX-factors to be considered by managers while dealing with employees. Online employee reviews websites are recommended to include the identified key EX-factors to comprehend the holistic EX.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the growing literature on the employee experience as a concept by identifying various EX-factors. The authors expand the extant EX scales by identifying an inclusive and updated set of EX-factors.

Citation

Joshi, A., Sekar, S. and Das, S. (2024), "Decoding employee experiences during pandemic through online employee reviews: insights to organizations", Personnel Review, Vol. 53 No. 1, pp. 288-313. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2022-0478