Table of Contents
Takeaways:
- The employee experience begins at the first interview and carries through their entire journey with your company.
- An employee’s experience is informed by their relationship to their work, team, and the organization.
- Building an employee experience strategy requires extensive feedback from your team.
What Is Employee Experience?
Employee experience is about how your team perceives their journey at your company, from the welcome email to the exit interview. A human-focused strategy enhances these interactions, which has become especially important with the shift to remote and hybrid work models, where team bonding has become more difficult. Simply put, great employee experiences motivate teams, regardless of their work setting.
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Why Is Employee Experience Important?
Implementing an employee experience strategy benefits your employees and your bottom line. A positive employee experience can lead to more engaged, connected team members and enhanced productivity.
It’s also essential for boosting employee retention. In a fluctuating labor market where frequent job hopping has become common, positive experiences motivate employees to stick with your company, reducing your cost per hire.
Investing in employee experience enhances your reputation among potential hires and customers. With social media, employees can easily share their workplace experiences online. By consistently prioritizing employee experience, your organization can boost your employer branding.
Employee Experience Components
The employee experience is multifaceted and can be broken down into several key components.
Work Experience
How does the employee feel about their day-to-day responsibilities? Are there opportunities for growth and flexibility when appropriate? These factors can significantly affect an employee’s productivity and satisfaction at work.
Social Experience
Relationships, socialization, and allyship in the workplace are key components of the employee experience. Collaborative and supportive relationships can help employees thrive at work. Focusing on the social aspect of the employee experience can be particularly useful for remote or hybrid teams, as it can help address some of the challenges of working in different locations.
Broader company culture also informs an employee’s experience at work. Feeling welcomed and accepted right from the onboarding process can help your team members reach their full potential more quickly. Continued recognition and appreciation from supervisors also contribute to a healthy company culture.
Organizational Experience
An employee’s relationship with the organization will also affect their experience. This starts with providing employees with the technology and other resources to work efficiently. For teams that work together in person, safe and comfortable physical office spaces also contribute to the employee experience.
Alignment between an employee’s personal values and their employer’s mission also contributes to a positive work experience. This can help employees feel part of something bigger and create intrinsic motivation.
Stages of the Employee Experience
The employee experience starts when a candidate applies for a position and moves through the hiring process. Once hired, many opportunities exist to facilitate a positive experience through onboarding, ongoing engagement, and career development. Even when an employee leaves, your organization can offer a positive exit experience by facilitating feedback in an exit interview.
How to Create an Employee Experience Strategy
Creating an employee experience strategy starts with data. This includes hard data regarding employee performance and qualitative feedback from your team members. Feedback can come from formal surveys, exit interviews, and informal conversations with team members.
This information can help you identify what aspects of your current employee experience are working well and potential areas for improvement. Identify key touchpoints in the employee journey to focus on.
These touchpoints will vary between companies based on your specific operations. Possible touchpoints to focus on include:
- Initial onboarding
- Performance reviews
- Mentorship opportunities
- Ongoing training and development
- Company social events
- Promotion or role transition
- Exit interviews
These key moments will form the core of your employee experience strategy. You can optimize these points based on feedback from your current team members and data you’ve collected via employee surveys for a more positive employee experience.
Depending on your company’s size, it may be beneficial to hire an employee experience consultant or even a full-time Chief Experience Officer to take responsibility for your strategy.
How to Continuously Improve Your Employee Experience
A great employee experience isn’t static—it can evolve as your company grows and employee expectations shift. Here are steps we recommend to improve your employee experience continuously.
Set Specific Goals
One challenge you may encounter while creating an employee engagement strategy is deciding what to focus on. To keep your employee experience strategy focused, set goals based on the areas that could benefit most from improvement.
The more specific and measurable your goals are, the easier they will be to track. For example, you might set a goal of increasing access to mentorship for your employees or reducing the cost of hiring with improved retention. Over time, you can track the number of employees who voluntarily participate in mentorship opportunities and assess their satisfaction to measure success.
Continue to Seek Feedback
Your employees have unique perspectives on your organization, and collecting them frequently can give you a more holistic view of the employee experience. Additionally, requesting feedback from your team members shows that you value them and can help them feel appreciated.
Prioritize Employee Well-Being
Employee experience extends beyond the workplace. Supporting your employees’ lives and interests outside of work is a way to create a positive employee experience.
For many companies, this looks like offering hybrid work arrangements or flexible schedules. However, if flexible work arrangements aren’t an option in your industry, there are still ways you can support your team’s work-life balance and provide a strong employer value proposition. For example, you can offer competitive PTO options and other attractive benefits that allow your employees to thrive outside of work.
Invest in New Technology
The right technology can significantly improve the employee experience. Implementing new technology often leads to more efficiency and productivity at work. It can also make stressful tasks less daunting and create a more enjoyable work experience.
As you develop your employee experience strategy, explore new technology options relevant to your industry. For example, many companies are exploring AI technology to speed up repetitive tasks. Ask for employees’ technology preferences as part of the decision-making process.
Wize Words
By focusing on employee experience, your organization shows that you value the human behind the employee. Small details, like a warm welcome during onboarding or flexible scheduling in an emergency, can make a big difference in your employees’ perception of your company.
Since your employees are some of your most important ambassadors, investing in the employee experience can boost your reputation and productivity.
Frequently Asked Questions
HR handles many important aspects of the employee experience, including onboarding, collecting feedback, and conducting exit interviews. However, they aren’t the only party creating a great employee experience. Supervisors and C-suite members also have plenty to contribute, especially when building strong relationships and supporting employees.
The employee life cycle is the journey from an employee’s initial application to your organization to their exit. Sometimes, the life cycle can start with recruiting or other candidate outreach. Once the employee has been hired, they pass through several key stages in the life cycle, including onboarding, development, and retention.
Employee experience is a broad concept that encompasses an employee’s entire journey with your organization, including their relationships, workflow, compensation, and more. Employee engagement is a team member’s motivation at work and connection to their company. These two concepts are inherently connected, as a positive employee experience can help boost employee engagement levels.
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