The employee experience has a wide meaning, and it includes all interactions an employee has with an employer. Besides, it is one of the most valuable investments that a manager can make.
A healthy employee experience plan can improve an organization’s overall performance. In today’s market, companies cannot provide a great employee experience by just offering fundamental benefits like PTO and health insurance. They must go above and beyond and offer employees an outstanding experience in the workplace.
The employee experience majorly involves the culture, benefits, physical work environment, and tools the company provides for employee success, and it can also be related to revenue. In fact, as per the studies- companies with high employee engagement can draw in 2.5 times more revenue than companies with lower employee engagement levels.
What is an employee experience strategy?
Employee experience is the collection of every event and stage of an employee’s expedition in a company. It usually starts when employees apply for an open job position and continues until their resignation.
Employee experience strategy represents considering every phase of employees’ journey and determining moments, events, and interactions that employees have throughout their employment journey. Further, these moments ought to be prepared to match the employee’s beliefs, preferences, requirements, and encouragements.
To work with an employee experience strategy is one of the leading priorities for human resources and other professionals these days. Awareness of the advantages of providing a cheerful employee experience is crucial. Hence, many organizations are now accepting a strategic technique to design work experiences that employees will enjoy.
As per the global study by the research and advisory firm Gartner, in 2019, companies invested an average of $2,420 per person in efforts to improve the employee experience, and this number persists to rise.
Tips to develop a great employee experience strategy
If you are considering improving your talent acquisition efforts and increasing employee retention, use the below-mentioned tips to provide an excellent employee experience.
1. The company must show more empathy toward employees
Possibly the finest thing to do now begins from a place of empathy. When you look at the employee experience from their point of consideration, you will probably come up with impactful methods to engage them again.
In the words of Kathleen Quinn Votaw, CEO of TalenTrust- “Leading with empathy means understanding and accepting that people are not always operating at their very best.”
He further, offers these suggestions for all leaders.
- Be original: Take some additional steps to ask questions to display your care and affection. It will show your interest in making employees’ experiences better.
- Add a personal touch: Always communicate with a personal touch – precise employee praise, and honest concern for well-being – to build confidence and boost engagement.
- Take out time to connect: Give employees time and prospects to connect personally at least weekly. Also, ask them to develop ideas for better experiences during social time.
- Respect their boundaries: Don’t believe in everyone’s description of a great employee experience. Rather, find out where employees want to draw the line between life and work.
2. Encourage employees to share their feedback
One of the top-notch and effective ways to enhance employee experience is to welcome employee feedback. Employee feedback allows you to set a pleasant workplace. Listen to their experience with your organization. For this, you can conduct surveys, and let your employees be anonymous. This will assist you to gain insight into where your organization stands in terms of employee experience and identifying spots that must be reinforced.
Employee experience has a strong impact on every element of an organization, including retention, performance, productivity, work culture, financial success, and more. It’s important to induct an employee experience that enables your workers to feel valued and encourages them to work harder for your organization. Establish an optimistic employee experience and relish the numerous benefits that come with it!
3. Construct an amazing onboarding experience
Onboarding sets the first impression for employee experience. Thus, creating a fantastic onboarding procedure is the first thing you can do to make a positive impression on your incoming employees.
A positive onboarding experience allows new hires to understand the organizational culture and relate well with their peers. Poorly managed onboarding hurts employer branding and decreases employee motivation. For this, craft a strategy to ensure that new hires are trained properly for the organization, their peers, and their job duties. Keep everything ready before their joining, like documents, technology tools, employee handbooks, and much more. Make them feel that organizational policies and practices are strong and organized.
4. Provide growth and development chances
It is well-observed that employees are delighted with their experience in the organization when they are offered training and development possibilities to grow their careers. When employees learn that their organization permits them to reach their career goals, they will be encouraged to work hard. When executing training in your organization, be straightforward about goals and personalize the agenda according to employee choice. Explore some training strategy that fits your organization and its employee’s demands.
5. Create space for internal communication
Internal communication between teams results in a good atmosphere leading to higher productivity. This promotes a sense of community, motivates employees to work together for a common goal, and builds a cohesive company culture. When employees have an enriched sense of objective, they are more constructive and become brand ambassadors for your company. Internal communication helps maintain a connection with your employees and win their trust. Thus, they will never leave the organization.
Moreover, as the workforce becomes more dispersed, internal communication is more significant than ever. Using proper communication tools, such as Slack or Zoom, can help grow employee relationships and promote clear communication.
Conclusion
With all these tips, you can surely provide a wonderful employee experience to your workers. Along with these, you can provide them with remote opportunities, flexible working hours, health benefits, and a lot more in order to increase the sense of belonging to your employees.