Employee experience strategy: essential insights and tips
September 25, 2023
September 27, 2024
Are you putting enough effort and investment into creating a positive employee experience (EX)?
Establishing effective employee experience strategies is fundamental. It influences numerous vital aspects of a business. For example, it significantly contributes to workers’ engagement and talent retention. But a good or bad employee experience depends on various elements such as the company culture, the management style, workplace connection, the digital landscape, etc. While HR is usually in charge of assessing, planning, and implementing an efficient EX strategy, they aren’t the only ones responsible for its success.
This article gives you the keys to creating a positive work environment where your team members feel comfortable, empowered, aligned with their values, and motivated. Do you feel a bit lost and don’t know where to start to improve the employee experience in your company? Stay with us. We help you better understand where to focus your attention to foster the best practices that make people want to work with you, stick around, and thrive!
Why is developing employee experience strategies so important?
Employee satisfaction and well-being
Enabling a positive employee experience affects your workforce and how the workplace makes them feel. Are they satisfied with their job, the leadership style, the corporate values, the benefits, and so on? All these aspects directly affect your staff’s satisfaction and well-being. As happiness and productivity are deeply interconnected, developing and investing in creating an employee experience strategy is fundamental. Not only for your team members but also for the company’s success.
Productivity and engagement
People are more likely to be involved in what they are doing and try to deliver the best of their abilities when they have a positive work experience. Having an engaged workforce is the goal of every business. Improving EX (employee experience) is key to motivating your staff to meet your expectations and go the extra mile. Overall, happy team members are more engaged and, therefore, more productive.
Talent attraction and retention
When it comes to employee turnover, various factors push people to stay or leave a company. Although being paid is essential, a super appealing salary isn’t always the magnet for attracting or retaining workers. More and more people seek to find meaning in their jobs and care about their personal and professional well-being. These elements are becoming more critical than high remuneration and boosting talent attraction and retention. As we are about to see, these are among the core aspects of employee experience.
Business growth and success
All the benefits of improving employee experience mentioned above positively impact both your workforce and your company. We always remind you that your staff are the backbone of your organization. Happy and satisfied teams are engaged, productive, and loyal. These five ingredients are the perfect combo to develop a healthy and thriving business!
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What are the core aspects of employee experience?
Company’s culture
Organizational culture encompasses many aspects of your business, including your values, management style, compensation and benefits, etc. Corporate culture greatly attracts talent, boosts employee experience, and makes people want to stay. The best approach is obviously employee-centric. It implies you put your staff’s needs first and, therefore, increase your chances of creating a positive work environment, which is the second pillar of EX.
Work environment
Work environments are both physical and digital. They have a direct impact on how your coworkers feel at work. Same as the company’s culture, it needs to be people-centric and retranslate everything that matters to you and that you want to promote. Your office design, technologies, equipment, policies, etc.… All this is what creates the work environment. It must match your values and your employees’ expectations to foster a positive workplace experience.
Workplace connection
Workplace connection is also decisive for employee happiness, satisfaction, engagement, and experience. It doesn’t only imply that team members create a bond with the company but that they feel connected to their job and their colleagues, too. If workers are missing one of these three threads, the overall experience won’t be as positive as it could be.
Digital tools and technologies
Does your workforce have the equipment they need to do their job properly? Is your tech infrastructure future-proof, or does it still have much to catch up on? Technology is developing so fast that it can be hard to keep up. However, an outdated digital landscape can do more bad than good to your business and EX. Latest workplace technology, seamless integrations, mobile and availability, user-friendly interface, etc., are all key elements to consider in your employee experience strategy.
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What should you consider when creating an employee experience strategy?
Your workers’ expectations
Despite all your efforts to boost EX, you won’t get the results you hope for if your staff’s expectations aren’t met. Lately, workers from all industries have focused more on finding jobs that offer flexible work arrangements, learning and career opportunities, meaningful missions, and work-life balance. If your workforce is relatively young (born after 1981), we suggest our article about Millennials and Gen. Z in the workplace to discover how to answer their needs.
The resources your staff need
Do they have access to the workspaces and tools they need when coming to the office? Are they equipped with modern technology enabling asynchronous collaboration? Can they attend regular training to develop their skills and keep learning? All these are examples of resources you have to consider when willing to improve employee experience. Undoubtedly, providing your staff with the support they need also significantly boosts satisfaction and happiness at work.
Employee recognition and reward
Have you ever asked your workforce if they feel recognized for their job and what they provide to the company? Transparently telling team members that you are grateful for their work is fundamental. This doesn’t mean only saying thank you during your monthly one-to-one meetings. It should be addressed regularly. Not taking your workforce for granted is crucial. Appreciation and reward boost motivation, foster a positive work atmosphere, and contribute to employee mental health.
Transparent and effective communication
Poor communication doesn’t only affect your staff’s productivity but also how they feel at work. It is a core aspect of employee experience. Blurry expectations, unclear rules, inappropriate tools, and a lack of communication create frustration, conflicts, and dissatisfaction. Moreover, it can lead to isolation and employee burnout. All situations you definitely don’t want to be in.
DEI initiatives
DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in the workplace should be at the center stage of all businesses. All your workers need to feel welcome and represented in their work environment. This means that diversity is a strength, equity is a norm, and inclusion is a must. Social injustice and discrimination at work are no longer tolerable. Ensuring everyone understands and applies DEI is a crucial rule to guarantee a positive employee experience.
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How do you implement your employee experience strategy successfully?
Determine your main bottlenecks
What do your staff complain the most about? What always comes back in the results of your employee satisfaction questionnaires? Where are your weaknesses among the core aspects of an employee experience strategy mentioned above? Analyzing data is crucial at this step. Once you’ve determined your major bottlenecks, find solutions to improve these areas and implement them in your plan.
Create an employee journey map
Like establishing a customer journey map, employee journey mapping helps you detail the path of interactions of your workers regarding your company from the recruitment process until their exit. It allows you to determine their needs and plan ahead your actions to add value to their work while fostering a great employee experience. From onboarding to training and career opportunities, every step of their journey by your side should be reflected.
Make sure everyone is on the same page
HR can put all the efforts they want into designing employee experience strategies. Still, it won’t improve if the rest of the company doesn’t understand and follow their guidelines (and vice versa). In other words, EX doesn’t only depend on HR. It is everyone’s responsibility. For example, improving employee experience can be challenging if leaders ignore the psychological effects of micromanagement practices or if some employees create a toxic workplace atmosphere.
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Ask for feedback regularly
Willing to improve workers’ experience without asking them what could make them feel better and more engaged at work is counterproductive. The most relevant way to succeed with your EX strategy is to get the information at the source. This can be done during one-to-one meetings, through an anonymous feedback platform, or with employee satisfaction questionnaires.
Define your goals and measure progress with OKRs
When implementing a new strategy, establishing goals ahead and keeping track of progress over time is essential. You need to do this with your employee experience strategy. For example, classic EX KPIs include retention, engagement, and turnover rates. Satisfaction surveys and data analytics should give you a clear idea of your evolution. According to the results, you might want to adjust your strategy throughout the way or continue with the initial plan.
Overall, improving employee experience is all about adopting a people-centric approach. Not only does focusing on your teams’ needs and well-being boost EX, but it also has a massive impact on your business growth. Your workforce is the backbone of your organization. Keeping them happy and engaged is key to your success, so developing a compelling employee experience strategy is fundamental. We hope these insights and tips help you understand what matters better and how to implement the best practices.
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