Ray L. Perry Consulting

5 Ways to Improve Employee Experience

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Employee experience is everything that happens to an employee from the time they are hired to the time they leave the company. It encompasses the entire employment journey from the moment an employee joins until their last working day.

We can summarize employee experience based on four crucial stages in the employee lifecycle:

  1. Recruitment is an opportunity for companies to present their culture and build trust with potential employees. How the application process goes largely affects the experience as a whole.
  2. Onboarding: Here, the candidate gets inducted into the organization. They they gain an understanding of what the job will be like while working on it. The more seamless the onboarding process is, the better the new employee’s experience will be.
  3. The candidate is responsible for the company’s growth and development. They have now become a part of the culture. How employees feel on a daily basis, how they get along with co-workers, and their potential for advancement and learning affect their overall experience with the company.
  4. The term “exit” refers to employees leaving the company until their exit interview.

Employee experience includes everything an employee learns and feels while at work. Giving out a handsome paycheck is not the only thing businesses should focus on. It is more than that.

Employees want to contribute to their organization’s success. Many people want to feel like their work is valuable and that it contributes to something larger than themselves.

Core Components of Employee Experience

The day-to-day interactions that a worker has with others shapes their experiences in the workplace. Managers need to focus on more than just one component to attract and keep the top performers. The components include:

Company Culture

The culture of a company is something that connects everyone associated with it.

Working for a company is defined as having a set job within that company and working regular hours. This usually means working from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, although some jobs may have slightly different hours. The way you manage your company affects not only how well your employees do their jobs, but also how motivated they are to do them.

Company culture is important for creating a positive employee experience. The company’s culture has a big impact on how employees feel about their work and their place of employment. A key factor in employee satisfaction, motivation, and engagement is ___

Physical Work Environment

The second component is the workplace environment. The workplace experience of an employee is greatly influenced by the company culture.

If an employee feels uncomfortable or is having difficulty at work, it is not a good sign. Leaders need to focus on making the work environment better.

An suggestion would be to host employee surveys more often. Surveys can help you figure out what issues your customers are having and keep track of your successes.

The work environment is no longer just office spaces. Millions of professionals are now working from home. You can plan to help them improve their work experience.

Workplace Technology

The world of technology has changed a lot since the days of typewriters. Now we have touchscreen computers and other devices. The internet plays a big role in the business world.

The internet has changed the ways businesses communicate. Employees can now work remotely. The work culture has been transformed to be more efficient.

Workplaces today are very different than they were in the past, largely due to technology. It is imperative for their productivity. If employees lack access to the necessary tools for their job, they will not be able to contribute as much. This impacts their overall experience working for you.

Employee Experience Vs. Employee Engagement

Although they are related, employee experience and employee engagement are two distinct entities. Employee experience is about how employees feel about their work and their workplace, while employee engagement is about how employees feel about their work and their employer.

Although they are related terms, they are distinct in nature.

Employee Experience and Employee Engagement are not the same. Let’s clarify.

The experience of employees is the cause, while employee engagement is the result.

The employee experience is what a company does to encourage employee engagement. If you want your employees to do a good job, you need to treat them well. If you want to improve employee engagement, you need to improve their experience.

The experience of employees is something that comes from the bottom up, while employee engagement is something that comes from the top down.

A good employee experience will take into account all the needs of the employee. It’s about making their workdays better. The company will give employees what they need in terms of tools, technology, and work environment. Coworkers and other people the employee interact with have a big impact on their experience at the job.

Leaders want employees who are engaged in their work. They want employees to be more involved, more committed. They want employees to feel valued so that they will work harder in the long term.

The difference between employee experience and employee engagement is that employee experience focuses on the worker, while employee engagement focuses on the workplace.

Employee experience is an employee-oriented way of thinking. Employee engagement is not only about the business, the workplace, and its overall productivity, but it is also about the employee’s commitment to the organization and its goals.

Employee experience depicts how employees feel about the company. Its strategy focuses on the employee lifecycle. An excellent EX includes being transparent, using technology, being recognized, having collaboration opportunities, and being diverse. These will all lead to the workforce becoming more engaged in their work.

Employee experience and employee engagement both matter. It is important for leaders to create a good experience and to keep people engaged.

Impact of Employee Experience on Customer Experience

  • Engaged employees provide better and hassle-free customer service.
  • They are most often enthusiastic and confident, so they want to solve customer issues.
  • Engaged employees bring positive energy to customer interaction. They listen and attend to customers’ concerns, be more respectful, and treat them well.
  • It decreases unhappy customers, improves service ratings and positive feedback.
  • If customers are happy with your services, they are more likely to become loyal customers.
  • A company that prioritizes its employees creates a positive brand value.

The Gallup organization reports that a mere 32% of employees are actively engaged in their work. This means that the great majority of employees are not putting forth their best effort because they are disengaged. Motivated and enthusiastic employees are only part of what makes a company successful. Companies also need to hold up their end of the deal by providing a good work environment, compensation, and opportunities for growth. To keep employees committed, you must invest in them.

1. Take advantage of technology and software

Many people see digital adoption within a company as a competitive advantage. No one wants to start their dream job to only find out the company isn’t as good as they thought. Without the right resources, it becomes very difficult to do any job.

You can improve employee experience by giving them the right tools for the job. It’s a common misconception that adding more technology to your employees’ days will decrease productivity. When you invest in ways to reduce the amount of work your employees have to do, it shows that you value them and their time.

The work environment is changing and employees want a stronger sense of control. In a study conducted by PWC with over 12,000 participants, it was found that 90% of leaders believe they are choosing tech options with their people in mind, but only 53% of employees see it that way. Employees believe that the technology and software being chosen for them is not done in a way that shows understanding or expertise. We all know that when an employee cannot do their job efficiently, the employee experience will deteriorate.

2. Set the precedent of trust

Trust is a central part of all human relationships. It can be difficult to build a strong connection with your employees in the workplace without it.

Now imagine a work culture where employees trust their leaders. Can people really show up to work every day ready to be passionate about their company? The trust between an employer and employee is essential to a positive work experience and can greatly affect employee productivity.

This means that it is important to be trustworthy yourself if you want other people to trust you. Managers are expected to give honest feedback, provide helpful guidance, and be supportive of their employees. There is a tendency for trust to be given to those in positions of power from the beginning, however, this isn’t always reciprocated to junior employees. If you trust your employees, you are giving them the opportunity to grow and be independent.

An increasing number of businesses are coming to see trust as the key to giving employees more freedom. By becoming independent, employees gain more confidence in their ability, find satisfaction in their work, and eventually become responsible for projects that are beneficial to the company. In many organizations, executives expect that leadership can come from all levels, not just from the top management.

3. Make room for your employees to grow

The workplace learning and development looks very different from how it was 30 years ago. Employees are looking for learning opportunities that fit their learning styles and goals instead of attending long, required lectures.

If you make personal and professional development a priority in your company, it can have a positive impact on productivity and retention. As technology advances, new opportunities for personal and professional development become available. The opportunities afforded by online learning have led to an increase in funding for such solutions. Although online learning tools cannot fully replace face-to-face learning, they do offer many benefits.

Upgrading your skills isn’t just a matter of getting a new certification, it’s also about having the right attitude and creating the right habits to match. Letting employees choose their own learning routes can improve their confidence and self-reliance, but managers should still offer guidance so workers know where to focus their growth.

In your one-on-one meetings with your employees , be sure to ask them about their interests in learning and development. This will give you a better idea of how to cater to their needs and help them grow within the company. It can be beneficial to know what motivates your employees so that you can connect with them on a personal and professional level.

4. Create the right career path

Career development has changed significantly over the years. In the past, people would follow a similar career path to those before them. They would do the same type of work and put in the same amount of time, slowly working their way up the career ladder. The average worker is no longer content to wait years for a promotion. With the advent of the internet, they can find new opportunities relatively easily.

A lifetime of working for one company is no longer the norm, and as the negative connotation of frequently changing jobs has decreased, employees are more comfortable doing it. A CareerBuilder survey found that 45% of college graduates will stay in a job for fewer than two years, and by age 35, 25% of workers will have held five jobs or more. If employees are unhappy with their career development opportunities at a company, they will likely leave to find a new job with a higher salary.

What can a company do to keep its employees?

As a people manager, you must be aware that your employees are constantly assessing their careers. As a manager, it is your responsibility to give your team the information they need, give feedback, and keep them motivated throughout the development process. Instead of having employees focus on one specific role, help them grow their skills by giving them the right kind of feedback.

5. Focus on collaboration

Working together can help everyone on a team succeed, and has been shown to lead to success.

Before a company can focus on collaboration, it must look at how its employees communicate with one another. Effective communication is the key to a successful collaboration. Gossip and negative speech can break down the trust and motivation in a workplace.

The only way to fix this work environment is to communicate better with honesty and tactful feedback. The quality of our day-to-day lives can be determined by our relationships, and honest feedback and open communication will help to improve these relationships. The foundations for collaboration can be set through these relationships based on trust.

The Slack survey found that good collaboration is simply the ease of communication. Many companies have difficulty communicating clearly, making it difficult to cooperate toward a shared goal. In a negative work environment, it is unlikely that employees will be able to solve this problem, no matter how many seminars they attend.

Your team members need to work together to make your workspace more enjoyable and productive. You also need to create a psychological safe space for everyone. Psychological safety is essential for strong professional relationships and refers to the belief that taking interpersonal risks will not lead to negative consequences in one’s environment. When teams feel comfortable being vulnerable with their teammates and communicating openly, collaboration becomes natural and easy.

At the end of the day, most people want to work together, but they may not know how or feel like they have the authority to do so. Managers, finding the solution begins with you. Schedule regular check-ins with your employees to discuss their challenges and work with them to break the cycle of working in silos if you see it happening.

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