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10 Benefits of Employee Experience for Business

Employee experience is a subject that many people are discussing now. They are wondering what it is and how it can benefit their companies. As always, business owners are looking for something that can make their company stand out from the competition, attract the best talent, and grow due to increased customer sales and satisfaction. Employee experience benefits your business in all these ways. Are you ready to learn about these advantages? Continue reading to learn more.

What is Employee Experience?

Business owners have already embraced the idea of providing good customer service. They know that treating their customers well and ensuring that their needs are met has a direct impact on their bottom line.

Recently, companies have shifted their focus to include investing in their employees as well. Spending time and money on employee experience is a priority for many companies and it has become a priority due to several trends that have come to the forefront due to changes in the market. These changes are as follows:

Businesses need to attract and retain top talent in the face of a smaller pool of available candidates.
Once hired, the company needs to engage the new hires so that they can perform at a high level quickly.
Businesses are expected to invest in employees’ overall well-being, since it has an impact on their work and home life.

Employee experience includes all the interactions between an employee and the employer throughout their relationship. It includes everything that occurs from the first time a candidate meets with a hiring manager through the entire hiring process and the first few days of work, all the way through to the end of the employment relationship.

The employee experience management also includes the exit interview (if the company conducts them) and how the company handles winding up the employer/employee relationship, such as:

Making arrangements for pickup or mailing of the final paycheck
Discussing options for continuation of health benefits
Ensuring all equipment is returned to the company
Confirming that any employee identification cards, passes, or keys are turned in

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10 Employee Experience Benefits for Business

What are the benefits of a good employee experience? If employees are engaged in their work, they are active participants in what the company is doing. They don’t have the attitude that what they are doing during work hours is simply “putting in time” to collect their pay. Instead, they are interested in doing their work well and even thinking of ways they can improve how they perform their duties on the job. A highly engaged workforce offers several benefits to an employer.

1. A good employee experience means lower turnover rates

High turnover rates are something you will want to avoid in your business. They lower morale among remaining employees, they are expensive, and they have a negative impact on customer service. You want to attract the best, most highly qualified people to your company. That is a given. When you invest the time and effort to find talented candidates, you want to make sure that you can attract them and keep them at your company by ensuring that they feel they are doing work that is challenging and rewarding. Otherwise, they are more likely to move on if they don’t feel engaged.

In a worst-case scenario, the top talent may find an opportunity elsewhere and may take other employees with them. Your business will be faced with the expensive, time-consuming task of filling several positions at once. Customer service satisfaction and employee experience levels may both fall.

2. Your company will attract higher-quality candidates

Before a candidate ever applies for a position with your company, they have likely researched it thoroughly using online and offline sources. A prospective employee may even reach out to current and former workers to learn all they can about the company and its policies.

The candidate may be wondering about what the daily work environment is like and how invested the company is in offering a great employee experience. All these factors go into the mix when someone is looking at joining a new company.

Prospective employees will check out resources like LinkedIn, as well as social media sites to find out who is talking about the company to try to get an insider’s view of what it’s “really” like to work there.

3. Employees collaborate better and more often

Employees who are excited about their work will be interested in sharing their knowledge with others in the company. Instead of seeing other workers as competition, they work together as colleagues. This shift in attitude is an important one, since it allows workers in the company to share ideas informally when they happen to meet while getting coffee or having lunch.

This type of informal knowledge sharing makes workers much more comfortable when attending meetings when ideas are being discussed. Managers understand that there will be some employees who feel comfortable speaking up right away with their ideas, and others like more time to consider the topic being discussed before contributing their thoughts. The latter may decide to contribute by e-mail, text, or through the company Intranet.

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4. Communication improves between management and employees

Employees want to know exactly what they are responsible for when they come to work. One of their major complaints is that too many large companies get bogged down in bureaucracy. They schedule far too many meetings and have too many approval processes for getting anything done.

Executives and managers need to find out how employees regularly communicate with each other. If they prefer the company intranet, then sending a mass e-mail is not the best way to make announcements or send any other type of message.

Managers and team leaders should let employees know they have an open-door policy if they have any questions or concerns. The employees should feel supported by their managers and team leaders to help them succeed on the job.

5. Employees are more productive

It’s not difficult to understand why employees who are happy and engaged in their work would be more productive. They want to do their work well and are interested in finding ways to perform their duties better.

A company intranet is a highly effective way for employees to collaborate in real-time. They can ask questions about projects they are working on within their department or with other departments, and anyone in their workgroup can answer. This employee intranet allows the worker to post the question and then continue on with their work.

The company intranet is also a good place for storing information accessible to employees working on projects. This information can include reports, white papers, manuals, etc. If workers are spending less time looking for the information they need, they will be more productive.

6. Increased customer satisfaction

Employee engagement can lead to better customer service. This is because engaged employees create a much better experience for customers. After all, they are more invested in the company’s products and services.

They are more likely to listen to what the customer is saying when they are sharing that they have a problem they want to solve. The engaged employee is more likely to work with the customer to find creative solutions to the issue the customer is facing, whether it is finding the right product, answering general questions, or dealing with a return or a billing issue. According to a study conducted by The Temkin Group, 79% of companies with engaged employees were able to provide “significantly better customer service” than those who did not.

7. Employees more focused on contributing to company success

In a work environment where employee engagement is encouraged, workers feel as though their contribution to the company is important. When their work is appreciated, they are much more likely to suggest ideas to managers and executives that will improve the company.

When employees are not engaged, they don’t suggest ideas that will improve the company. They may not believe that anyone will listen to them, much less put any of their ideas into effect. At any rate, the disengaged employees focus on simply getting through each day and not doing very much to help the company improve and grow.

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8. Companies become more attractive to millennials

Millennials are more interested in accumulating experiences than getting bogged down with “stuff”. Their values are reflected in their career choices. Why should a business owner be invested in making their company attractive to millennial job candidates? According to the LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report, this generation will make up 75% of the workforce by the year 2025.

The candidate pool will be significantly made up of a group of people who are focused on having a work-life blend. (Instead of dividing up the different aspects of their life into sections, they want to have them blend without having to sacrifice one over the other.) Someone who fits this description wants to find a company to work for where they can enjoy a great employee experience where they feel recognized, supported, and cared about on a personal level.

9. Employee experience survey results will be more accurate

Good companies will conduct an employee experience survey to determine how employees feel about the organization. The company also wants to measure its employees’ commitment and passion for their work within the organization to determine whether there is more it can do to keep employees engaged. Without accurate survey results, the business can’t make good decisions around this matter.

The company must follow up on the results of the employee surveys. Otherwise, the employees will wonder why they took the time to fill them out. This is part of creating a strong employee experience within the company.

10. Return on Investment (ROI) increases

Frankly, you can’t afford to have disengaged employees in your company. According to a Gallup Poll, actively disengaged workers cost the United States $450-$550 billion per year. These are workers who are so unhappy in their employment situation that their discontent pulls down the morale of the rest of the team.

They make their frustration known to anyone and everyone they come into contact with, and their attitude is contagious. With the right coaching, some of them may be able to change the way they feel about work. They may need some extra support to do their work well that they aren’t currently getting from you as their employer.

When you invest in an employee experience strategy to produce a high degree of employee engagement, your profitability increases by approximately 22%, shrinkage levels decrease by 28%, and share prices go up (source).

If a company were to implement the employee experience examples listed above, it would be successful at creating a work environment where employees would be engaged and contributing to the best of their ability. The company and the employees would both benefit accordingly.

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What is employee experience?

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.

Why is Employee Experience Important?

Reduces employee turnover.
Productivity increases.
Absenteeism levels drop.
Company attracts higher quality candidates.

➝ See all benefits of employee experience

How to significantly improve employee experience?

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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