2020 changed the Employee Experience forever. As we look towards the future, emerging trends will see astute leaders shift business focus from employee engagement to Employee Experience.
The solution to many business problems starts and ends with its people. To attract and retain great employees, your organisation needs to provide a superior Employee Experience through an attractive employee value proposition (EVP). To achieve this, you need a new strategy.
Employee Experience strategy relies on developing a deep understanding of your company culture, investing back in your people, and delivering on the promises made in your employee value proposition.
Employee Experience Defined
Employee Experience encompasses everything an employee does, sees, hears, learns, and feels at each stage of the employee lifecycle. It’s the employee’s perceptions of their journey through all the touchpoints within your organisation, from the time someone sees your job advertisement to when they exit your organisation.
It’s about the moments that matter in an employee’s day, their year, and their career.
The experience your people have at work is vital for company success. Employee Experiences and their perceptions are linked with all aspects of your company. If an employee perceives their experience as great, they tend to complete their work in an efficient and effective manner, contribute to a positive, happy culture and serve customers better. This can increase operational agility and reduce cost to serve.
The ROI for companies with a great Employee Experience lies in obtaining a measurable impact to the bottom line and outperforming the competition.
Employees as Customers
Companies are adopting a strategy of treating their employees like customers as they evolve their employee value propositions to meet the changing needs, wants, and expectations of their employees. The continued trend of expectation transfer indicates employees expect the same, seamless personalised experience at work, that the organisation offers to customers; they’re a person, not an employee number.
Next level Employee Experience looks and feels a lot like the experience of being a customer.
Developing new, highly valued Employee Experiences requires a holistic approach to reshape and rethink your employee’s future experience.
Benefits of a Great Employee Experience
A well-designed Employee Experience strategy has numerous business benefits.
Lower absenteeism: Happy employees have statistically lower rates of absenteeism. Disengaged and unhappy employees are more likely to be absent from work, negatively impacting profitability and company culture.
Increased quality of work: Happiness levels of employees have a positive influence on work standards more than skillsets, according to Shawn Achor, Harvard University Psychologist and happiness expert.
Engaged, productive employees: High employee engagement has a positive impact on company culture. Employees are more productive, sell more which increases revenue and profit. They also tend to have longer tenure and positively champion their company as a great place to work. Disengaged employees negatively impact productivity and erode profitability.
Improved Customer Experience: The Employee Experience impacts all aspects of the business, particularly the customer experience. Industry sentiment is that CX is a direct result of EX, backed by numerous studies that show a direct link between EX and CX, and revenue growth.
Essential actions when designing an Employee Experience Strategy
Employee Experience is an active strategy. Companies need to define then deliberately design the Employee Experience, not just monitor it through annual surveys.
Leaders hold the key to shaping the Employee Experience; A growth mindset to create a great employee strategy.
To design a great Employee Experience strategy:
1. listen to your people at each stage of the employee lifecycle,
2. use the insights from collecting regular employee feedback
3. identify what matters most to them, and
4. create personalised experiences.
Adapting Employee Experience in a Hybrid Workforce
Employee perceptions of their experience can impact the adoption of new policies, hybrid work approaches, change initiatives, and business transformation. Leaders need to strengthen their programs to support changing ways of working under a new operating model.
By continuously listening to your employees your organisation will gain a deeper understanding of what your employees are experiencing as they work in a hybrid workforce. Learning what employees need and expect in order to be set up for success at work has led many organisations to discover that they need to introduce new listening programs, or evolve existing ones.
An element critical for success in this pursuit will be the action you take from the feedback you receive. Tangible leadership action, and the resulting change in the work experience, can be a major way your employees can experience their voice being heard and valued.
How you design your hybrid workplaces, and technologically enabled workplaces,
depends on your business and your own peoples’ preferences. However, building and maintaining company culture, communication, and supporting employees in their wellbeing will remain essential inclusions in the design of a great Employee Experience.
One more thing…
Employee Experience is more important in a post-pandemic business landscape than ever before. By focusing on improving your current Employee Experience and developing a strategy for your ideal future Employee Experience, your company will benefit from healthy, happy, productive employees and as a result, satisfied customers.
Designing a great experience for your employees is equally as important as it is for your customers.
Did you enjoy this article? I sure hope you did! Over the coming weeks I’ll be continuing this series on Employee Experience Essentials, so stay tuned for future articles.
And if you’re looking for help in taking your Employee Experience up a notch with the help of a creative, innovative, and science-obsessed team, let’s have a chat about how I and the team at Pragmatic Thinking can assist.