Employee Experience - The Complete Guide
Employee experience is the subject of renewed attention as employers seek to attract and retain talent, and engage their employees as the job market enters a new and unprecedented era.
Employee experience takes a combination of management, technology and commitment to deliver a positive employee experience, especially across an enterprise.
Learn why employee experience is important, and how your organization can improve the employee experience to retain, attract and develop top talent.
What is Employee Experience?
The employee experience encompasses all aspects of the employee-employer relationship from recruitment and onboarding to exit. This includes perceptions, relationships, working conditions, interactions, work culture, and everything in between. The sum of these interactions, and how they’re managed, make up the employee journey. A positive employee experience is not about superficial perks, but about creating a work environment where employees are inspired and empowered to thrive.
— The Future Of Employee Experience
Employers must be willing to evolve and adapt, or risk losing talent to their more agile competitors. Millenial and Gen-Z workers have different expectations and motivations than their predecessors. Technology has transformed when, where, and how we get work done. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the job aspirations and priorities of millions of people in all industries.
Organizations that treat times of change as opportunities for improvement and focus on employee experience are positioned well. In the past, factors like customer satisfaction, employee retention, internal communications, engagement, and professional development, were handled as separate issues with seperate action plans.
Today, leading organizations are taking a more holistic approach based on the evidence that employee experience is a connecting tissue for business performance. With the pandemic serving as an accelerator, employee experience will be a driving force for organizational success going forward.
— What Is The Difference Between Employee Engagement And Employee Experience?
Employee engagement and employee experience are closely interrelated. While “employee experience” refers to all aspects of the employee-employer relationship, “engagement” reflects an employee’s level of motivation, connection, and dedication to their organization and their work. Engagement is one of the most important outcomes of employee experience. Employees who have a positive work experience are more likely to be engaged at their jobs. Those who have a poor employee experience are more likely to become disengaged. A simple way to frame the difference is employee experience initiatives are a necessary input for high employee engagement (the desired output).
— What Does An Employee Experience Manager Do?
The emergence of the employee experience manager (EXM) and chief experience officer (CXO) roles reflects the significance many organizations are placing on this aspect of their company. An employee experience management professional usually sits in the HR organization and focuses on improving the collective employee-employer relationship. This includes collecting, and analyzing employee feedback and related data, designing new processes, policies, or programs, and measuring their effectiveness. They have to work with other departments, such as internal communications and IT teams, make an impact and create the best employee experience possible.
LumApps, the Employee Experience Platform:
Why Focus on Improving Employee Experience?
A positive employee experience, which includes the digital employee experience and in-person interactions, is no longer a "nice to have." It is a crucial component of a successful business strategy. Organizations must invest in employee experience ideas to remain competitive.
The sudden disruption of daily life brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused a seismic shift in the world of work. Millions of people worldwide took the opportunity to reflect and reevaluate what they want from a job. Employees left their jobs in droves in search of better opportunities. The so-called Great Resignation inspired a newfound emphasis on employee experience in an effort to attract and retain talent, boost productivity and engagement, ultimately achieve better business outcomes. A positive employee experience is linked to numerous benefits including increased retention, motivation and productivity, better customer experiences, higher profits, and more.
Employee Retention & Attracting Talent
Attracting and retaining employees is one of the primary concerns for human resources departments today. Companies with a reputation as a great place to work have a competitive advantage when it comes to attracting and recruiting new employees. And, positive employee experiences produce more highly engaged employees who have greater job satisfaction. These employees are invested in their jobs, relate positively to their employers, and are much less likely to quit.
Improved Collaboration & Communication
Employees who have a positive experience at work and are highly engaged will collaborate with their colleagues more effectively and more often. A positive employee experience encourages knowledge sharing and connection between individuals and teams. Engaged employees take the initiative to collaborate with their peers and reach more innovative solutions. Communication is open, transparent and multidirectional. Employees have a voice among company leadership; they know what is expected of them; and they have the information they need to do their jobs well.
Improved Customer Experience
There is a direct link between employee experience and customer satisfaction. Companies with satisfied, supported, engaged employees deliver better customer service and relationships. They go the extra mile to anticipate customer needs and are proactive about solving problems. Companies that offer a superior employee experience doubled their customer satisfaction (industry-adjusted NPS), according to a study by MIT Sloan School of Management
Improved Culture and DEI
A positive employee experience is characterized by a sense of belonging, which factors into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Improving your employee experience requires an understanding of all of your employees’ diverse needs and challenges. It also requires companies to hold themselves accountable when it comes to hiring and promotion practices.
Smoother Digital Transformation
Focusing on improving your employee experience can lead to a smoother digital transformation. With an emphasis on employee experience, management can ensure that employees receive the training and support they need when adopting new technologies or processes. Tech solutions can be introduced to improve communication and information sharing, enable learning opportunities, and connect your workforce with company leadership in a digital environment.
Productivity
Employees who have a positive experience at work become more engaged, more motivated, and more involved in helping their organization reach its goals. Companies who invest in creating a positive employee experience ultimately reap a return on investment via increased performance, productivity, and profits.
Attract, Engage and Retain: The Employee Experience Advantage
In addition to ROI, employee experience measures help companies succeed at retention and recruiting.
Strategies to Improve Employee Experience
Here are some ways you can improve the employee experience strategy at your organization.
Create Effective Onboarding And Offboarding
The onboarding process is an extremely important moment in the employee journey. Onboarding creates a first impression about company culture, and can set new hires up for success - or not. The quality of the onboarding experience not only affects morale, but can have costly effects on new employee productivity during their first weeks and months. Develop an onboarding protocol that demonstrates your company’s investment in its people, and empowers new hires to be successful in their roles from day one. Provide new employees with necessary information from small details like where to park or make a cup of coffee, to useful information like an up-to-date company directory or organizational chart. But more importantly, don’t forget to help employees develop a sense of belonging and reinforce their strengths.
When you’re onboarding new hires, tell them *why* they were hired.
It gives folks a huge boost of confidence right when they need it.
It’s also a chance to positively reinforce a strength ID’d in interviews.— Jennifer Kim (next Recruiting Bootcamp June 29th!) (@jenistyping) May 29, 2019
Every company should do this, it’s stupid simple but powerful. https://t.co/o5HZPnI4r4
HR teams usually spend significant time and resources in a successful onboarding process, but may not pay as much attention to the offboarding process. This is a major missed opportunity. Exit interviews can lead to important insights about employee satisfaction and highlight actionable improvements to make for future hires. Taking the time to effectively offboard your employees can demonstrate a commitment to improvement that will shape the way your former employees speak about your organization after they’ve left.
Personalize Communication
Employees should feel seen and heard as individuals, not cogs in a machine. There are two sides to personalized communications, one happens at the management level while the other happens via technology.
At the management level, which is controlled by human interactions, personalization is about getting to know one another so information is relevant and helpful. This requires dedicated one-on-one time to encourage and remove roadblocks, while also holding each other accountable.
At the technological level, internal platforms must be set up to deliver the right messages to the right people. Communication systems must have the data structure in place to segment employees, and the ability to support employees across regions, devices and work environments.
Offer Growth Opportunities
Employees crave the ability to learn and grow within their organizations. The opportunity to grow within an organization is one of the top issues impacting employee experience. Investing in your employees’ growth and professional development is a powerful way to improve employee experience.
Business leaders can do this in several ways:
- Training and upskilling
- Tuition remission for continuing education or earning a certification
- Assigning stretch projects where employees work outside their current skill set or comfort zone
- Identifying opportunities for promotions or lateral mobility
- Mentorship and leadership development programs
Managers should focus on gaining a deep understanding of employee interests, talents, and goals, then use this information to inform a personalized professional development plan for each employee.
Facilitate Connection and Belonging
Positive employee experiences are built on effective communication among peers and between employees and managers. Connection and relationships also have a powerful impact on employee experience. Particularly for hybrid and remote employees, it is important to create opportunities for dialogue, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.
Employee experience communities by LumApps, based on department, region or interest, allow employees to connect in meaningful ways, including the ability to work more efficiently. Employees from all departments can ask and answer questions, share updates, access a hub of informational resources, and learn about each other and their company culture.
Enable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives
Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a key driver of your employee experience. Prioritize identifying and eliminating biases in your company. Give all employees an opportunity to make their voices heard. Build a diversity and inclusion strategy that focuses on attracting, retaining, and promoting talent from diverse backgrounds. Mentorship programs can be helpful in nurturing the development of a diverse workforce.
Enable Meaningful and Purposeful Work
Particularly among millennial and Gen-Z employees, a sense of purpose and meaning is important for job satisfaction. Find out what your employees care about, and help them find ways to incorporate their passions into their careers. This could be corporate social responsibility efforts such as sustainability goals or local causes. It could be as simple as clear communication about the ways in which their contributions matter to the company’s mission and goals.
Purpose at Work – Time for HR to Act
Using Purpose to Transform the Workplace
Invest in Employee Wellness
Workers in all industries are suffering from burnout and mental health challenges that can leave them isolated, disengaged, and at risk for attrition. According to Harvard Business School research, work-related stress is responsible for $190 billion in healthcare costs and an estimated $300 billion in losses from absenteeism, low productivity, and turnover. Employers can improve their employee experience and take a proactive role in supporting their employees’ well being.
There are several methods for applying employee wellness:
- Allowing flexible work hours, especially for new parents
- Encouraging team members to unplug during off-hours, especially vacations
- Providing health-related benefits like gym memberships and competitive healthcare
- Free mental health screenings
Overall, employees should strive to build a healthy workplace culture free from hostility, discrimination, and unrealistic pressures to prevent work related stress and burnout as well.
Offer Flexibility
Flexibility and autonomy are two of the most important aspects of a career choice for the modern worker. According to LumApps and CMSWire research, flexibility is one of the top things employers could offer to entice employees to stay — 44% of employees across geographic regions would consider staying if given more flexible working arrangements or the option to work from home.
The myth of remote work causing productivity drops has been busted year after year. Giving employees the autonomy to decide when and where they get their work done can enhance the employee experience.
Enable Employee Listening
Improving the employee experience begins with understanding the needs of your workforce. Employers who actively seek and respond to employee feedback will be positioned to make meaningful improvements to their employee experience. And, employees who feel seen and heard will be more likely to remain engaged. Seek feedback with focus groups, face-to-face conversations, and employee experience surveys.
Surveys should be given frequently and at key moments in the employee journey, such as after an onboarding or training session, after a scheduled performance review, after a company-wide town hall meeting, etc.
→ Read more: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Employee Experience Strategy
How to Measure Employee Experience?
You won’t know how effective your employee experience improvement strategy is unless it is measurable. Employee experience is a vast and multifaceted concept. As such, you will need to gather data from multiple sources to establish benchmarks and truly understand which aspects of employee experience need most improvement. However you measure employee experience, it is crucial that you use that data to make continuous improvements as part of an ongoing process.
Employee Surveys
Employee surveys can be a valuable source of information about the experience of your employees. Use a combination of different types of surveys to capture the most data and glean the most powerful insights. Surveys should be given at various points in the employee journey: after onboarding, at an exit interview, and frequently throughout an employee’s tenure. Annual surveys can help you gather big-picture feedback about the state of your workforce and long-term trends, while shorter, more specific pulse surveys can help you identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
HR Data
Human resources data can be a powerful source of information about your employee experience. Information regarding recruiting, retention, hiring, firing, absenteeism, workforce composition, compensation, promotions and more can tell a story about the employee experience at your company.
Attract, Engage and Retain: The Employee Experience Advantage
Read this white paper created by HR Dive and LumApps to get insights from enterprise leaders and a better understanding of employee experience components and strategy
Technology Adoption and Effectiveness
Technology can contribute to a positive employee experience and smart working in meaningful ways. The right tech tools can help your employees do their jobs with greater ease and efficiency, and allow them to connect with one another and the information they need to succeed. Using a solution such as an employee experience platform enables workers to connect with each other and gives employers insights into the health of your employee experience.
If your workforce is reluctant to engage with a digital platform, it signals that the platform - or the level of training and support provided when implementing the new technology - is not meeting users’ needs.
Employee Experience FAQ
The employee experience is the journey an employee takes with their employer. It includes the employee’s attitude, interactions, milestones and overall relationship with their employer. Companies that invest in employee experience initiatives and technology are able to improve employee engagement and positively impact their company culture.
- Reduces employee turnover.
- Productivity increases.
- Absenteeism levels drop.
- Company attracts higher quality candidates.
Companies looking to improve the employee experience should invest in employee experience technology. These investments enable employees to do their best work which benefits the overall employee experience. Employees are able to effectively communicate, share knowledge and find purpose at work with employee experience technology.
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