Employee experience can make or break a company.
This means that 33% of employers are considering implementing employee experience mandates at the c-suite level.
Employees are a company’s biggest asset. With the unprecedented changes in the workplace, business leaders are realizing that employee engagement initiatives and company culture initiatives are no longer effective.
Focusing on only a few, narrow aspects of work life is not enough to recruit, keep, and develop high-quality talent. Companies will only be successful if they start taking a more all-inclusive approach and focus on the entire experience of their employees.
Almost all companies (91%) admit that employee experience is important to them, but few are actually doing anything to improve it.
Companies know EX is important. The aim is to provide the best possible employee experience. Designing a positive employee experience from start to finish is difficult, especially for remote organizations that face unique communication challenges and have less direct control over employee work environments.
This guide is designed to help you have a great experience whether you’re working remotely or in person. EX, or employee experience, is becoming increasingly important for companies as they seek to retain employees and improve productivity. Here, we explore why EX is so important, how top companies are addressing it, and how you can invest in and improve the employee experience within your own organization.
What is employee experience?
The name “employee experience” sums it up pretty neatly. It’s as intuitive as it sounds.
The employee experience is everything that employees come into contact with, have to deal with, and see while they are working. This encompasses all aspects of the job that are physical, technological, or interpersonal.
This means that the employee experience starts from the very beginning, when they are first hired, and goes all the way until the end, when they leave the company. Everything that happens in between is also part of the employee experience. There are many traditional methods for creating happier and more fulfilled employees, such as employee engagement. Experience for employees is more than just a single project.
To create a company EX that is intentionally designed, you need to do more than just implement popular work policies and programs. If you want your company to be more effective, you need to start with a commitment to improve every aspect of the way it operates. This includes everything from how well your team communicates with each other, to the types of software and tools you use for work.
It takes a lot of effort to change how employees feel about their work Making improvements to the employee experience is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort to change how employees feel about their work. But it’s benefits are worth all the extra effort.
Why employee experience is so important
The employee experience is something that will happen regardless of whether you manage it or not. The experience of an employee is determined by their working environment, which can include factors such as the type of mouse they use, their supervisor’s management style, or the collaboration tools used by their company.
Even though you can’t control everything about the employee experience, there are still things you can do to improve it.
There are plenty of things about your EX that you can control. It’s important to be intentional about managing the employee experience, because if you’re not, it will tend to be negative. Nobody wants that to happen, especially you and your leadership team.
A negative employee experience has a ripple effect that touches on just about every aspect of business:
- About one fourth of employees who are new to an organization leave within the first year. This can be partly blamed on a bad employee experience.
- A subpar onboarding experience is something that 88% of organizations have in common, according to some experts.
- 60% of employees say employee well-being improves employee retention.
- The majority of employees believe that their well-being has a positive effect on productivity and financial results.
- High employee engagement directly leads to increased company earnings. Companies who have employees that are engaged in their work earn 147% more per share than companies without engaged employees.
- Lack of employee engagement costs businesses between $450 billion and $550 billion each year.
A positive employee experience has a lot of good effects on a business’ success. Willis Towers Watson’s research shows that the best companies invest in creating a great employee experience. They get a higher return on investment from this than they do from offering competitive salaries.
The study found that the 30 highest-performing companies in the world excel in five areas:
- Inspiration
- Drive
- Trust
- Growth
- Market focus
The following factors were rated as having four to six times more impact than fair pay: ____.
Companies simply can’t afford to neglect EX. If an employee’s experience is poorly designed, it will cause problems throughout their employment.
Here are some of the essential needs of employees:
The need for an ideal work-life balance
Working too much is no longer seen as a sign of dedication and a motivator to earn more money. Employees now have different hobbies that they want to pursue and spend quality time with their loved ones. An employee’s work-life balance is an important consideration when applying for a job with an organization.
More and more professionals are finding that they need thisgraduate-level education. Even before the Covid situation, employees had started realizing the possibility of working from home, and organizations were convinced that it would not affect their productivity in any way. However, the recent outbreak of the virus has made it essential for people to work from home to prevent the spread of the disease. Many jobs in the Information Technology field can be done remotely by logging into work from any location. This allows employees to work according to their convenience.
The need to collaborate in a virtual workplace
As employees started working remotely, organizations started becoming more interested in virtual workplaces. They provide a way for employees to stay connected with their colleagues and senior management while working remotely.
Employees need to work in an office-like atmosphere where they can interact with their team in real-time, even though they’re working from their homes. Since many employees are now working remotely, there is a need for online collaborative platforms like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
The need for personalized employee support
Employees need support whenever they have issues while working, whether they are working remotely or out of a physical workplace. Instead of depending on traditional service desks that would churn out generic information, employees today need a faster and more personalized alternative to get their queries resolved. Improved employee support directly leads to improved employee experience.
How to elevate employee experience within your organization?
Organizations need to start adopting best practices to ensure that their employees are engaged and motivated to work in order to improve the employee experience.
Here are some of the most important ways in which you can elevate employee experience within your organization:
Make the most of online collaborative platforms
Since the pandemic started in 2020, organizations have been struggling because of reduced demand and lack of resources. Since physical workplaces have been shutting down, working from home is the only alternative that has been feasible to keep businesses running.
The benefits of online collaborative platforms such as Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams are becoming more and more apparent as more and more organizations adopt them. These platforms have given employees a virtual workplace with the ability to work together smoothly.
If you want your employees to be more engaged at work, you should use collaborative platforms that they will be interested in. This could mean using employee service desks, conducting workshops and webinars, or just sharing documents across the organization.
Provide a great onboarding experience to your employees
During the first few months of working for an organization, it is always critical for the employee. The organization is responsible for making new employees look forward to their journey ahead through onboarding.
Digital employee service desks that use AI can automate the onboarding process for HR departments. This includes sending personalized emails to new hires welcoming them to the organization. One should highlight the departmental objectives and the company’s expectations for employee experience while working there. If you want your employees’ experience to be positive from the start, make sure you put an emphasis on the onboarding process.
Conduct stay interviews
Exit interviews provide you with the reasons an employee is leaving your organization, but they cannot help you make the employee stay. In other words, stay interviews give you insight into what your employees are dealing with and how to keep them from leaving the company. Keep in communication with your employees to understand their issues and take care of them efficiently.
Automate employee support
Today’s employees need to be able to quickly get answers to their questions without letting their work suffer.
The traditional service desks should be replaced with modern AI help desks in order to completely automate employee support. These platforms use AI chatbots that interact with your employees and provide them with a personalized solution in a matter of seconds. These chatbots use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand the employee’s problem and provide a solution. Virtual assistants can make it easier for your employees to use the ticketing system.
Additionally, AI-powered employee service desks can be used to allow employees to train themselves in specific skills.
Pay attention to the physical and mental well-being of your employees.
A company has a duty to take care of the physical and emotional well-being of its staff. It is important to invest in plans and programs that will help to keep your employees physically fit and mentally well. The company should hold workshops on mental health for employees and include interacting with therapists to help them understand how their work affects mental health.
Share customer feedback with your employees
Your employees’ processes ultimately affect the services you provide to your customers. You should share customer feedback with your employees so they are aware of how they are doing. While feedback that points out areas of improvement will help them understand what needs to change, feedback that highlights what they’re doing well will make them feel confident about their abilities and potential contribution to the organization’s success.
5 essential video types to boost employee experience
1. New-hire videos
The hiring process is laden with documents and paperwork. The transition to remote work has impacted the process severely. It can be difficult to feel as though you know your coworkers well after only exchanging a few brief messages with them on Slack.
You can introduce a new team member by creating a welcome video or series of videos. This will put faces to all the names for everyone. We’ve seen great results by doing it that way at Biteable.
2. Policy videos
Company policies are important. It’s important that you have all your policies written down in a document. Although the information is factual and unbiased, it is presented in a very dull way; making it difficult for anyone to read through all the company policies and remember everything.
Videos that explain policies are easier to understand and remember. Videos can make company policies more fun and enjoyable to learn about. Videos are a great way to quickly reference a specific policy later on.
3. Training videos
One way to help your employees improve their skills is to cover the cost of their third-party training and certifications. Companies also have a lot of experienced people who could create training videos to share their knowledge.
When you delegate tasks, it helps to create a knowledge-sharing environment and eases the workload of your most valued team members. An additional benefit of this approach is that it makes your organization more adaptable to employee turnover and allows things to continue running smoothly even when key personnel are absent due to illness or vacation.
4. Core company info
A company’s history, unfortunately, isn’t a particularly exciting read. A static value is a word on a page that does not move or change.
It is more probable that employees will watch a series of short, entertaining videos that provide context to the company culture, values, and history. Include videos in your onboarding package that explain the company’s history, values, and vision.
5. Company reports and end-of-year progress
If employees never see the difference they make, they will never feel like they are impactful or helping the company succeed.
Quarterly and annual reports help employees see how their hard work has been beneficial. I find watching reports more enjoyable than reading them.
Never take employee experience for granted. You should always make sure that your employees are happy and motivated, whether you need to improve your internal communication structure, take honest feedback, or resort to automated software platforms.
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