What is employee experience?
Employee experience is defined as the employee's holistic perception of their relationship with the organization for which they work. In other words, employee experience is the employee's perception of what it is like to be at work for a specific company or role within a company.
If that seems wordy or overly abstract, here's another way to look at it. Think of employee experience as the employee version of customer experience (CX). Just as CX is a way to bring customers into the company and keep them coming back, employee experience is a way to bring employees into the company and keep them coming back.
Employee experience can make all the difference in terms of employee engagement, retention, and productivity; it's not something to take lightly.
It's also something that employee experience managers should be thinking about constantly to keep employee engagement at its peak all the time. If you're a business leader, happy employees are the key to your success, so make your workplace experience one to be proud of!
Why is employee experience important?
A well-designed employee experience program will not give you a good name, it’ll also ensure that, to use a well-worn phrase, you prosper in everything you do. If well implemented, an employee experience program will improve:
- Engagement: If employees are happy, they’re not going to ‘zone-out’ at work: instead, they’ll be focused on what they’re supposed to be focused on their jobs. A stellar employee experience leads to some intense employee engagement.
- Retention: This is an easy one. If your company boasts a great employee experience, no one will be able to coax those employees away!
- Recruitment: Job seekers investigate prospective companies before they apply. If your company has a good employee experience program, it won’t be long before everyone on the world wide web knows all about it!
Benefits of employee experience
As you’ve just seen, employee experience raises the standard in any organization where it is properly implemented. Here’s a basic rundown of areas where you can expect improvement:
- It keeps your employees satisfied, giving them a platform to express themselves
- It improves employees' productivity
- It improves the turnover rate of the company
- It is cost and time-effective: the company will save all the time, energy, and money they would have spent looking for new employees.
- It improves customers satisfaction
- It encourages positive reviews and feedback
When it comes down to it, the benefits of a great employee experience are so extensive they could fill a book. Taking that kind of time off a busy schedule isn’t happening, but here’s another blog post that goes into the details of just improving your employee engagement!
Remote teams and employee experience
When you're working with the staff of your physical office, it's easy to think of ways to encourage a positive employee experience. Bring donuts one day, bagels another, and talk to an interior designer about redoing your office space to exude confident productivity.
You can even add a nap room, a gym, or buy each of your desk workers a balance ball in place of a chair. But what about if you are one of the many companies across the country that has gone virtual? Your employee will be buying his own donuts, and interior design suddenly is no longer your domain. What should you focus on when it seems like all the control is out of your hands?
Here are some things you should consider when you have an employee who isn't with you each day.
- Focus on employee appreciation: employee appreciation is more than a day of free pizza. Pamper your employee with both digital and physical rewards that say thank you for everything they do. Then go out of your way to highlight employee achievements: employee achievements, after all, are the lifeblood of employee engagement. If you've got an employee who hits the ground running each morning, make sure you shout about it.
- Make sure your employee is fully supported and has all the tools he or she to complete all remote work in an optimal manner. A company laptop and software licenses are only the beginning of this. Free access to coworking spaces can give a big boost to the digital employee experience, and snack and drink credits might take the place of those free donuts in the office and keep your employee working optimally as they put in the long hours. Why not take it further? Make some of your work meetings into staff lunches where everyone gets to meet virtually at their own favorite eating places, tabs on the company.
Employee development works remotely, too! If there are online courses that support the work your employees are doing for your company, offer them a free subscription! Better yet, let them learn on the company dime. Anything they learn will increase productivity at exactly one digital workplace your company!
Employee experience management
Let’s get technical: employee experience management is the management of employee experience. In a way, it is the actual optimization of employee experience making sure your employee’s journey through their workday goes as smoothly and efficiently as possible, with minimal fuss or wait time for anything or anyone. If you’ve got a five man company, employee satisfaction is fairly easy. Once you go into the hundreds, the employee experience framework gets complicated, and if you’ve got a company with thousands of employees? Time to put on your thinking cap.
If you’re anywhere beyond the five-man mark, the employee experience management system you choose will likely be a software solution. While there are manual ways to track employee experience, there are many benefits to using employee experience management software.
Employee experience software
Think of employee experience software as your friendly employee experience management robot, with a seriously intense amount of processing power at your service. Instead of having to spend hours and hours trying to scour employee surveys for information, you’ll get it all in a neat, easy-to-read report that will tell you not only what is wrong but how likely your employees are to recommend working at your company or even purchase from your company.
You'll even get to play around with theoretical employee experience improvements, and get data on what results you should expect to see if you implement various measures. Is adding a chocolate fountain next to the restrooms going to lead to a more exciting work environment and increase your employee happiness quotient? Likely thing. Does a cost/benefit analysis recommend you put one in tomorrow? That's where it gets more complicated.
Many employee experience management software platforms have employee recognition modules built right in. Isn’t it nice to have all your employee achievement needs handled by one company? Not only is employee experience management software great for employee appreciation, it makes it easy for you to focus on employee development and the driving force behind the entire concept: your staff.
Think of employee experience software as your friendly employee experience management robot, with a seriously intense amount of processing power at your service. Instead of having to spend hours and hours trying to scour employee surveys for information on how to get a better employee experience, you’ll get it all in a neat, easy-to-read report that will tell you not only what is wrong but how likely your employees are to recommend working at your company or even purchase from your company. You'll even get to play around with theoretical employee experience improvements, and get data on what results you should expect to see if you implement various measures. Actionable insights on that lead to a strong employee experience? Yes, please.
Many employee experience management software platforms have employee recognition modules built right in. Isn’t it nice to have all your employee achievement needs handled by one company? The overall employee experience is tied into your employee journey from the onboarding process through each and every worker success. Not only is employee experience management software great for employee appreciation, it makes it easy for you to focus on the employee experience journey and the driving force behind the entire concept: your staff.
Employee experience strategy
That's what your employee experience strategy is about: doing what it takes to make sure your staff is optimally engaged, optimally supported, and entirely appreciated. Based on employee experience software reports, you'll be able to see what employee experience improvements need to be made and how your employee's morale will skyrocket after you make them. The employee experience strategy should never be a one-size fits all proposition it should always be tailored to your company culture specifically. After all, you're nothing like the next company up and no one knows that better than you yourself!
If you're stuck, though, there's one place you can go to find out what you need to know: an employee experience survey.
Employee experience survey
An employee experience survey is just what it sounds like it's an employee survey you give your employees to elucidate all their secret (and not so secret) workplace desires. Want to know if they'd rather have Monet on the wall or Picasso? Ask them! Want to know which employee experience improvements they would like implemented first? They're the experts! Do they think you should fire your employee experience manager? Well, maybe don't ask that one.
Just kidding, you can totally ask it. If someone wants their duties in life expanded to include employee experience management software assessment and evaluation, well, what a lucky employee they are!
Employee experience tools
Just like employee experience software, employee experience tools can be used to advantage by almost anyone, regardless of size or organizational culture, or location. Sure, employee experience might be super intense when you have thousands of employees working for you in multiple time zones and eight different countries, but employee experience management software can take your employee experience to the next level.
While we're here, let me fit in a plug for my favorite employee experience tool, a super easy-to-implement free Slack app called Matter. This nifty app allows your employees to give each other constructive feedback and kudos all day long, and everyone knows that an appreciated employee is an engaged employee, and one who sings praises of his or her company's employee experience all day long! Seriously, you want to try it and, unlike some of the other employee experience software you'll be looking at, this one will cost you absolutely nothing.
Conclusion
The employee experience is a philosophy, a mindset, and a choice.
You can choose to be that company that falls behind the curve in employee experience or you can use employee recognition software, employee appreciation tools (and maybe even a nap room) to keep your employees talking about how awesome it is to work for your company. The choice is yours, which do you want?
If you've read this far, I think I know which choice you made. And I'm here for the free donuts!
