Enhancing phygital employee experience in high-involvement professional service organizations

Purpose This paper aims to explore how the employee experience (EX) is shaped and managed during phygital transformation in high-involvement professional services. It investigates how the integration of phygital services impacts employees’ experiences across cognitive, conative, affective, social and spiritual dimensions and well-being. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research design was used, gathering rich empirical data from two distinct contexts: entrepreneurial strength and conditioning coaches and a large public medical education institution. This comparative approach allowed for an in-depth analysis of the EX across different organizational structures. Findings The study identifies a suite of essential “phygital competencies,” including digital literacy, data fluency, problem-solving and cross-channel orchestration, adaptability and resilience and tech-enabled empathy, required for success. It reveals a critical “implementation gap” where poor execution of the “implementation” managerial step triggers employee frustration and reveals skill gaps, negatively cascading across the EX. A key differentiator is spiritual alignment; employees maintain resilience when technology is clearly linked to a higher purpose but resist when this connection is obscured. Originality/value This paper provides an empirically grounded extension of the EX framework, introducing the novel concept of “phygital competencies.” It offers a nuanced, context-specific phygital EX matrix for managers, demonstrating that successful strategy must differ between agile, purpose-driven enterprises and large, structured institutions to effectively support employee well-being and performance.