What is Employee Experience?
Do you want to learn more about employee experience? If so, this post is for you. We’ll walk you through the definition, its importance, and the newest employee experience strategies in 2024.
There are many factors that can lead you to success. Having low employee turnover rates and encouraging employee talent development in your company are two of them. That said, the employee experience is a vital factor you must pay attention to if you want your company to be on the track to success.
According to Deloitte University Press, 80% of the company executives interviewed said employee experience is very important. This is true, but what do we understand about employee experience? If you’re interested in learning via video, then watch below. Otherwise, skip ahead.
Let’s take a look at the definition.
What is Employee Experience?
Employee experience is what employees feel, face, and are subjected to in an organization during the employment relationship. It is a compound of experiences that start with the application process and ends the moment the employee leaves the company.
The overall employee experience encompasses all the aspects that interact with the employee in a direct or indirect way in an organization. For instance, the work environment, internal processes, workplace policies, technology, and more.
In addition, everything that has to do with the relationship between the employee, the organization, and other members of the staff is part of the employee experience.
Why is Employee Experience Important?
There are many aspects, processes, and variables that you have to take care of when it comes to managing a company. Finances, resources, planning, and clients are things business leaders think of as top priorities.
However, to make all the previous aspects possible in an efficient way, you will rely on your employees. Employees are the workforce that will keep your company operating and going. They are the most valuable asset your organization can have.
Therefore, making the experience that employees will have in your company a pleasant one is a top priority today. According to Deloitte University Press, the improvement of the employee experience in companies is a worldwide trend.
If you are not doing the necessary work to improve the employee experience framework in your company, you are falling behind in competition as well as in your human capital management. Not providing your employees with a satisfying experience means diving into an ocean where employee turnover is your worst enemy.
What are the Consequences of Bad Employee Experience?
Not providing your staff with a satisfying experience will have a negative impact on your company’s resources and finances due to:
- High employee turnover rates
- Lack of motivation
- Disengaged employees
- Lack of skills
- Not enough employee development
According to Hays, 50% of employees interviewed admitted they were looking for a new job due to bad company culture.
When the skilled employees are not having a pleasant experience at work, they will look for other jobs where they feel more comfortable. This will translate into high turnover rates in your company.
Having high turnover rates has a negative impact on a company’s resources since the costs of replacing employees are, in general, high.
Moreover, replacing employees too often will also affect the quality of the work since new employees need the training to complete tasks in an efficient manner.
In parallel, a poor employee experience will result in not fully-developed employees. This means that employees can’t reach their full potential. When this happens, completing the tasks and solving the challenges becomes a difficult goal to achieve.
To prevent all the previous issues from happening, you must have a strategy that allows you to provide employees with a positive experience in your organization.
How to Design Employee Experience Strategy in 2024?
As a manager, you need to develop a strategy that allows your employees to feel comfortable and happy in your organization. This way, they will think twice before quitting or trying their luck somewhere else.
This strategy needs to cover a set of aspects that every employee expects to experience during the employee lifecycle.
Even though the employee experience is holistic, the only way to improve it is by addressing specific points. This way, employees will perceive it as a whole.
The idea is that every point that you improve and optimize for your employees creates a better work environment.
In addition, you want to transmit the feeling that the tools and processes are optimized for employees to do their job without unnecessary complications.
1. Optimize Your Recruitment Process
Let’s start at the very beginning. The recruitment process, including the interviews and the application process per se, is the first part of the employee and customer experience.
Therefore, having a transparent, honest, and efficient recruitment process is important. Now, in order to do this, you should have an easy application process.
It is necessary that potential candidates perceive this process as not too complicated, and relevant. Also, avoid asking unnecessary questions at this point.
Then, you can have friendly job interviews that transmit transparency and a good work environment. You don’t want to lead candidates to think that your company is not a good place for them.
Also, you shouldn’t take too long to hire skilled people. According to HRCloud, on average, candidates are available only for 10 days before getting hired. This means that having a long recruitment process can result in the loss of potential talents for your company.
2. Ask for Your Employees’ Feedback
A satisfying employee experience is about showing employees how their contributions are taken into consideration. It is also about improving all the aspects that are not working well and optimizing processes for the better business performance management of the company.
To that end, you can have employees’ surveys and encourage them to use the suggestion box. However, not that these suggestion boxes only work when the suggestions are taken into consideration. Business and hr leaders should conduct employee surveys so they know how engaged employees are, and how satisfied they are with the company culture and their role.
3. Provide Employees With Development Opportunities
A big part of what a positive employee experience encompasses is how much room employees have to grow in your company.
According to ClearCompany, 76% of employees think they don’t have enough opportunities for career growth. This means that the majority of employees in America are not satisfied with their jobs regarding this aspect.
In order to ensure employee satisfaction, HR professionals develop a strategy that allows them to grow within your organization. The basic aspects of this strategy should cover:
- Mentoring and coaching
- Training
- Additional courses
- Cross-department training
- Only by designing a strategy that includes these basic aspects can you make sure your employees are satisfied with the career path your company has to offer.
4. Give Employees the Recognition They Deserve
Giving employee feedback is key. According to a TinyPulse study, 58% of employees claimed that they needed more recognition from their managers. When employees feel valued and appreciated, the levels of employee engagement increase. This means that turnover rates will stay low.
There are many ways in which you can recognize your staff for their achievements and efforts. Some of the easiest ways to do so are:
- Recognize employees publicly
- Give rewards based on achievements
- Include employees on your website
- Be flexible and understanding
These are just some employee appreciation ideas you can put into action to recognize your employees for the work they do.
If you’re interested in learning more about employee recognition, check out our HR Certification Courses.
5. Offer Support to Pay Off Student Debt
Student debt is a major problem among the active workforce in America today. A majority of people in the US have student debt in 2021. Owing thousands of dollars can be a reason for lack of motivation since paying it off can seem daunting.
However, there are ways you can offer your employees a hand and alleviate their concerns when it comes to student debt.
One way of doing this is by joining a student loan payment platform as an employer so you can offer this as an employee benefit.
Some of the characteristics of top platforms are:
- Mobile-first user experience
- Simple and secure setup process
- It’s scalable throughout the organization
- Intuitive dashboards and analytics
- Real-time notifications of payments
- Custom ROI Calculator
6. Keep Communication Channels Open
Having clear communication with your staff is vital. When communication doesn’t happen with regularity and employees are left aside, the employee engagement levels decrease.
Running a company is much like leading a sports team. Every player contributes to the victory from their specific positions, and all the positions are important.
When communication fails, the team can’t function as such and thus the target of customer satisfaction fails. A divided team seldom lasts long, which in the case of a company, translates into employee turnover.
Communication problems can become a tangible issue when employees’ suggestions and feedback are not dealt with in a proper way. According to QualtricsReport, only 30% of Americans feel their feedback is taken into consideration by their managers.
You can go on with the option of conducting surveys when it comes to the planning and design of your employees’ experience strategy. The only way to design an effective strategy is by knowing which specific points employees are not comfortable with.
What kind of questions do you need to ask your employees to know this? Let’s take a look.
Employee Experience Survey Questions
You need to ask every set of questions at the correct moment. The first set, a general understanding of the company, should be asked during the first three months.
You should ask the employment engagement set of questions during the first year. This is also a good moment to ask the third set of questions.
The final set, the exit interview, has to be asked the moment the employee hands over their resignation letter.
Conclusion
It is clear that a negative employee experience can have a negative impact on your company, and a positive employee experience leads to success.
By understanding all the implications it has and devising the right strategy, you can make sure the experience your staff will go through is a positive one.
This way, you will build a solid team that is motivated and engaged to keep giving their best at work. Don’t fall behind and start to develop your employee experience strategy today.
If you are new to Human Resources and are looking to break into an HR role, we recommend taking our HR Certification Courses, where you will learn how to build your skillset in human resources, build your human resources network, craft a great HR resume, and create a successful job search strategy.
