August 24, 2024
Since the pandemic, the side effects of intense work hours, such as—poor eating habits, heart problems, trouble sleeping, mental health issues— have come under more major scrutiny. In fact, a study in the UK found that around 828,000 employees suffer from work-related stress every year.
While most leaders acknowledge the trend towards poor health and express commitment for employee well-being, the data tells a different story: only 13% of employees feel positive about their work environment. And this is not necessarily due to a lack of willingness from business and HR leaders.
Often, companies struggle with developing an effective employee experience strategy or managing it post-implementation.
This guide will walk you through what employee experience management is, how it promotes a positive work culture in your business, and the best practices to successfully implement it in your organisation's strategy.
To begin, let's first understand the employee experience. Employee experience is the emotion felt by employees when they come into contact with your business— no matter what stage of the job process they are in.
Employee experience management, on the other hand, is the practice of overseeing all aspects of an employee's journey within the organisation—from recruitment to retention—to improve employee experience. To put it simply, it is about creating an experience where employees feel welcomed, appreciated, understood, heard, happy, and respected.
It’s important to keep in mind that it’s through your employees that customer loyalty is built. Moreover, it is the efforts of employees that drive the delivery of products and services. Thus, having a positive employee experience can result in improved productivity, a better customer experience, and higher revenue growth.
Striving to create meaningful experiences that —include perks, benefits, pay, and recognition— can encourage productivity among employees. For example, when your employees receive open, constructive feedback and recognition for their achievements, they are more likely to be productive and motivated to achieve high performance levels.
In fact, research from McKinsey found that people who have positive employee experiences are 16 times more likely to be engaged with the organisation than those with negative experiences. Moreover, they are eight times more likely to exhibit loyalty and desire to remain with the company.
Workplace stress can lead to all sorts of unhealthy habits and problems that can impact your employees' both physical and mental health. When you implement effective employee management that includes regular check-ins with employees, gym and wellness program memberships, and flexibility of walking meetings, you can address these stressors early.
Employees who feel they are taken care of will be more relaxed and will have more energy to give to their friends and family members, which ultimately will help them feel better about themselves and lead a productive day every day.
Losing employees can have an enormous impact on your finances. Research by SHRM found that it costs 50–60 percent of an employee’s annual salary to replace them.
And that makes sense. Because when you are planning to hire a new member, you need to consider the cost of hiring a new person as well as training the new hire until they are Proficient.
By developing an effective employee management strategy you can engage your employees long term and drive loyalty — basically mitigating the cost of new hire.
There are plenty of employee experience management best practices available in the market; however, some might work better than others. Review and pick the ones that feel right for your business, and get started with implementation:
Setting up your goals and objectives before creating an employee management process will help you understand and prioritise what you need to focus on. This can also give you some pieces of information to get started with.
To define your objectives, you can ask yourself some questions, such as:
By mapping out the complete employee journey stages, you can develop a more effective management system. This involves thoroughly defining every action and experiences employees will engage at each stage.
A typical employee journey consists of five stages and each stage has its own initiatives:
In the attract stage, prospective applicants learn about the job from your website, colleagues, social media channels, or job circular boards.
From a business perspective, the main goal here is to attract higher-quality candidates who also meet your business needs.
An easy way you can do this is by creating a clear job description. Use simple, specific, and easy-to-understand words to describe the job's requirements.
Also, try to avoid industry jargon as much as possible, as it can make the job description harder to read.
Some other initiatives you can take, include:
In the recruitment stage, you should have all your applications in, and are ready to evaluate and interview your candidates. Your goal here should be to not only bring the right people to the team but also to provide an excellent candidate experience.
This could mean putting the candidate at ease with a bit of small talk and starting by outlining the steps you are going to take and when you are hoping to make the appointment.
Also, give the candidate an opportunity to ask questions as you go along with the interview. This will facilitate connection and transparency in the process.
An excellent candidate experience may result in improved brand advocacy from the candidate, regardless of them joining your company or not.
In the onboarding stage, the HR manager, or direct reporting manager, introduces the new hire to the company. The significance of this step is not only to provide information about tools, teams, or company culture but also to make the new hire feel welcomed and valued.
You can start the onboarding process by conducting an orientation program. Orientation programs are basically a way of introducing new employees to their roles and company policies.
To design a well-structured orientation program, consider questions like:
Based on the information, develop resources that make them productive and efficient. This resource can include: organisational history, bios of leaders, department-specific FAQs, and so on.
Some other ideas to improve the onboarding process include:
Retention is one of the key stages in the employee lifecycle. In this stage, you need to ensure your employees are satisfied with their work and don't have the desire to quit their job.
It's important to plan this stage strategically, as employees who have been working with your company for a while might start to feel like they are being taken for granted and there is no growth in their day-to-day assignments
The best way to do this is by implementing a rewards and recognition program. This program acknowledges employees' efforts in ways that matter to them, such as health benefits, financial perks, or team recognition.
Along with a rewards and recognition program, you can offer employees the freedom to choose their own working setting—whether it's remote, on-site, or hybrid. By allowing employees to select their work location based on their personal and family needs, you can boost employee morale and empower them to advance their skills at their own pace.
Development and retention stages go hand-in-hand. You want to keep your employees engaged while at the same time provide opportunities for growth to keep them engaged.
When your employees are successfully onboarded, provide them with opportunities to learn, develop, and reach their maximum potential at work.
In this stage, you can introduce several forms of training programs, such as internal training, cross-functional training, external qualification, mentorship programs, and so on.
If we take a closer look at some training programs, for example, the cross-functional training program, it can provide employees a chance to broaden their skill set and understand different parts of the business, which in turn improves their focus on the brand.
Another thing you can offer is mentorship programs. In these programs, you will pair the employee with a mentor who can guide their career development.
Through all these opportunities, you ultimately want to create a culture that makes your employees feel appreciated and that you want to help them achieve their career aspirations.
Your employees need to know you value them as much as you value your customers. One way to show this is by investing in their professional development.
Start by identifying the skills they have and the skills they need to stay on top of their professions. Then, communicate the results of the analysis and the specific skills they need to develop to achieve their goal.
Make sure to provide any resources your employee asks for to accomplish this target. This can include investing in online courses or MOOCs that allow employees to learn on their own time and from anywhere they want. Or in-house training programs offered by business managers or third-party instructors
Additionally, provide them with opportunities to reinforce their learning through assignments and tasks. This will demonstrate your support for their success and your commitment to helping them become the best versions of themselves.
You’ll never get an accurate picture of how the experience strategy is working if you don’t listen to what your colleagues have to say. Which means, having a feedback mechanism in your strategy is essential if you plan to improve the employee experience over time.
You can receive your employees feedback in two ways: in person or through technology.
Not to mention, it is easy to analyse large amounts of feedback data through these technologies. Managers can identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement by examining the responses.
You may have resources available that can make the training process seamless, but your employees might not be able to access them. Things like password protection and no-access documents can hamper the workflow and frustrate the employees. So make sure that your employee has all the resources they need to succeed in the job.
You can use tools like AI knowledge bases to share internal resources.These tools can automatically collect, store, and organise company support data in a central repository. The use of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms in these systems, then process the inputs, optimise search results, and recommend more accurate content over time.
Create experiences with your employees, not for them. Be as transparent as possible, and ask for feedback through surveys and in-person discussions. This way you encourage employees to bring out the best in the teams and lift the overall performance of the organisation.
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