02/01/2020

Keep your employees by creating a better employee experience

There are various reasons for employees to leave a company – but it is a fact that when they leave, the workload intensifies for their colleagues, and both productivity and morale can decrease. Therefore, we here present you with tips on how to keep your employees, simply by creating a better employee experience!

We all know that customer experience is important. But as our world becomes increasingly influenced by the digital transformation, the focus has shifted to the talent in the company.

As more companies realize that their most important assets are their employees, the employee experience (EX) has become a new buzzword. Employee experience is about what a company does to make current employees feel appreciated, respected, and seen – every day.

It is only in recent years that this has become part of the recruiting discussion. Employees demand more from their employers today, so focusing on their experience is something all HR departments should do to stand out in today’s crowded market.

What is the employee experience (EX)?

For many years, company success has been all about creating a pleasant customer experience (CX). While this is still important, we’ve seen a shift towards the employee experience. This holds all interactions that an employee has with your business; from the initial contact to when they leave the company.

For the sake of simplicity, the employee experience can be divided into three separate environments, a model created by Jacob Morgan.

Cultural Environment

The culture environment is how corporate culture is experienced by the company's employees. How it is perceived is individual, and can be described in various ways. A company can represent certain values and use certain practices, but that is not the same thing as how the employees feel when they’re at work. How is the mood in the lunchroom? How is the energy level, and how does the boss communicate with employees?

Physical Environment

If the cultural environment is what is perceived and what you feel at a workplace, the physical environment is what is physically there. What you’re able to see and touch – the actual persons in the building, the kitchen, the desks. How do you feel about the design in the bathroom? Can you concentrate on your work in the open office space?

Technological Environment

The technological environment is crucial for everyday tasks – like a wifi connection or computer software. What does it look like, and how does it work? Is the Wifi connection unstable? Is the software you use to communicate with your team outdated? A lot of frustration can be caused by unsatisfying technical solutions, and can also lead to an ineffective work environment.

So, to be able to enhance the EX, you need to figure out what your employee experience looks like. How do your employees feel about these three separate environments, and how can you improve them? If you want to create the best possible employee experience – all these pillars should be fulfilled.

Why the employee experience is so important

It can increase employee engagement

The employee experience is a great way to improve employee engagement. If people enjoy working at your company because of these three pillars mentioned above, they will be more engaged in their work as well.

It can attract more talent and avoid retention

In many areas, it’s getting harder for employers to acquire and retain talent.

Popular candidates have a lot going on and are usually hard to get. In addition, people don’t usually stay at the same company for long, which makes it more troublesome for the HR team.

To live up to the candidates' high expectations, the EX can be the factor that makes a popular candidate choose your company over another or the factor that makes a great employee stay for longer. By offering ways to advance within the company, or the flexibility of working remote, this can become a reality. Flexibility is a big part of the employee experience and something that can make or break a recruitment process.

5 ways to create a better employee experience

Employee experience is something you constantly need to work on – but to get a head start, use these steps to improve your current EX.

1. Set up goals

Since EX can bring an increased level of talents, a decreased level of leaving talents, and better employee engagement that results in company growth – your company should invest in this. But in order to get the proper financing, you need a business case to clearly state how the company will benefit from a better EX.

2. Map out and plan the EX

Map out what the employee journey looks like at your company today, from an interview to retirement, or when they leave the company. What works well, and what needs to be improved? What would be the ideal employee experience at your company? When you’ve got that figured out, make a strategic plan on how to get there.

3. Remember that the first day is crucial

The first day for a new employee is the first real interaction he or she has with your company – apart from the interview and any previous contact during the recruitment process. Make sure you’ve got this day planned as carefully as possible – it can be very problematic if the first experience is negative.

Let the front desk know that a new colleague will show up this day, and let the employee know who to turn to when they arrive. Also, make sure that you have an onboarding process set up, and that someone will be in charge of introducing the new employee to the other staff, and makes them feel welcome!

4. Create experiences your staff wants

Paychecks, benefits and other hard facts were previously the most common reason for employees to stay working for a company. Today it looks a bit different. Being able to work remote or feeling secure at the company are more common reasons for employees to stay with a company.

5. Measure the whole process

To make sure that your new and improved EX is fruitful, you need to measure and evaluate your results. Use the goals you’ve established and track them by a certain metric to see how it is performing. Decide if your different processes are performed as easy as they should – and if they aren’t, what can you do to improve them?