Employee experience is a term that has been gaining in popularity in recent years. But what exactly is employee experience? And why is it important?
Employee experience is the sum total of all the interactions an employee has with their employer. From onboarding to offboarding, every interaction an employee has can contribute to their overall experience. And why is it important? Because a positive employee experience can lead to higher productivity, lower turnover rates, and a more positive company culture.
What Is It For?
Employee experience is a great way to show employees that you care about them and their happiness. In order to get the most benefit from an employee, you have to put forth effort into making it a positive experience. Just imagine how much harder your best employees would work if they knew how valued they were by everyone at your company. Additionally, negative experiences can often lead to unhappiness or worse, turnover. Employee retention is a huge issue in today’s workforce.
According to Gallup, almost 70% of people are not engaged at work. An investment in employee experience is one of the most important factors in keeping your employees happy and improving their productivity.
Feedback
The best way for companies to see how they’re doing when it comes to the quality of their employee experiences is by having effective feedback loops. Employees should be given opportunities throughout the year (whether formal or informal) to give feedback, suggestions, and ideas. This will improve the quality of an employee’s experience because it shows that their opinions matter and they have a voice.
In addition to giving feedback from the employees, companies should also seek out ways to get feedback from customers or clients. These two perspectives can really give you a clear picture of what your employees’ experiences are like from the outside looking in. You should check out these employee experience tips if you want to work on improving. In many cases, there is a disconnect between how customers view things and how employees experience them. Regularly seeking out feedback can close this gap and make for a better business overall.
Employee Onboarding
When it comes to creating a positive employee experience, onboarding is one of the most important steps in keeping an engaged workforce. An effective new hire process has the potential to turn a new employee into an evangelist for your company. Because let’s face it, who better to spread the word about how great your company is than someone who just joined? If you can impress them during their onboarding experience, they’ll want to brag about what a great place it is to work.
Onboarding doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming either. It should start with some kind of welcome email from HR and/or their manager, suggesting resources for learning more about the company (for example intranet sites). A video of the most popular or newest employees describing why they like working at the company can go a long way towards making newcomers feel welcome.
A checklist that covers everything they need to know, from IT requirements and dress code to benefits information can also be helpful. This ensures that nothing is forgotten about as they’re getting adjusted to their new gig.
Offboarding Employees
Just as it’s important to take care of your employees while they’re onboarding, it’s also crucial that you do not forget about them once they’ve been there a little while. Offboarding is often overlooked but provides an opportunity for another chance at impressing your employees and scoring some loyalty points. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy; just welcoming them back and letting them know the next steps should be easy enough. Perhaps offering a review or space for feedback would also make this process easier for both parties involved since we all know change isn’t always fun.
Offboarding is an important part of the employee experience. If you don’t do anything special to say goodbye when they leave, you’re likely to lose them for good. Not only that, but if there are problems during their time at work that was never resolved–say a disagreement over pay–they may feel like they weren’t listened to and decide not to come back after all.
Offboarding should be about more than just saying goodbye; it should also involve giving feedback and offering suggestions for improving their situation in the future so they’ll want to stay.
Employee experience is all about making employees feel valued and respected. It takes effort to make employees happy and keep them invested in their jobs and the company as a whole, but it’s well worth it because employee retention makes for a better business. And that means everyone wins!