Until now, the main focus for Human Resources departments and staff has been the attraction of new talent to join the company. Due to several reasons - including hybrid work, turnover, workforce satisfaction, and other factors - Employee Experience has gained protagonism and it is now part of the Chief Human Resources Officer and team agenda. It makes no sense to hire the right talent with a fantastic cultural fit and over-the-top skills if we can not keep them happy, motivated, and engaged during the lifecycle. Keep reading the article to find out why your organization should be taking care of Employee Experience.
First thing first, what is Employee Experience?
Employee Experience is usually known as EX and the concept understands the experience of the employees capturing what happens while interacting with your organization. It goes above what happens at the early stages of the relationship - e.g. recruiting - as it keeps going during the entire employee lifecycle and all processes included, even offboarding. It also means that is not only the interaction with the peers or other departments but also with the platforms and elements of work.
Let's stop for a while in the last stages of the employee journey and why you should be focusing attention over there. We live in a connected work, LinkedIn has given us the power of connecting and interacting with people from all over the world working in ours or other industries. As I did, candidates evaluating to join a company are asking for references and this is something you cannot control. What you - as a CHRO - can do is to keep a nice and complete EX journey that enables your employees to share why is great working for you. Your job is to keep people happy and engaged, once you did that, employees will speak for themselves no matter which stage of the journey they are in.
In the image below we can find the different stages of the EX Journey and some examples of the processes including in every stop.
- Imaged based on model developed by enEvolución y Buljan & Partners -
As you can see, the reach is much wider than usually assumed. I encourage you - as a CHRO - and your team to take this as an opportunity to visualize your current situation and design where do you want to go. There are as many tools and strategies as you can imagine, and the use of them relies on your organizational values and culture. Your company needs to start somewhere, it doesn't matter the headcount or the location, just do the thing. A good, easy, and almost zero cost way to start is by analyzing the six following points:
Wellbeing: Physical, Mental, Emotional, Financial.
Connection: Diversion and Inclusion, Interest groups, Team cohesion, and Communication.
Focus: Time and resources to perform core activities.
Empowerment: Company resources and portals, ability to self-manage processes, and independence.
Growth: Learning and Coaching, Talent and Performance Development.
Purpose: Your WHY.
Once you gather all this information you can start acting. It is good to know the processes that are part of each phase, so below find some examples of things you can do after your analysis phase:
Find:
Improve/Create candidate journey and experience.
Deliver transparency and agility.
Enter:
Complete onboarding including work and job elements but also a warm welcome include everyone relevant (boss, colleagues, receptionist, IT, HR, Payroll, etc.).
Grow:
Focus on Learning.
Review your career path, successions plans, and employee development processes. Set realistic expectations on growth opportunities.
Keep an eye on team relationships.
Strengthen:
Enable the feedback culture.
Be aware of work-life balance.
Change:
Encourage career changes or department mobility.
Every employee is different, design a tailored EX.
Leave:
Be aware of what you communicate and how you do it.
Why you should be taking care of your EX journey
Build culture
By delivering a good EX, you are building a culture that is more likely to be productive and to stay glued. While bad EX impacts directly in employee engagement and turnover.
Give your employees a bunch of reasons to stay.
Create company branding
Position your company as a top one in your industry based on how well you treat your workforce.
Let your team members be your marketing agents.
Enable professional growth
When delivering a good reason to stay, and a great place to work, you are more likely to keep your crew happy and engaged. A highly engaged workforce will be seeking adventures and challenges, and you should be there to provide and support them.
Give them wings to fly.
Improve customer experience
A happy employee will definitely have a great relationship with customers, and team members. Boosting your EX is an excellent idea not only for internal purposes but also for your core business.
Everyone matters and everyone is involved.
Create engagement
Engaged employees are excited and happy to perform their job, and prepared to give 100%. Engagement leads to creativity and creativity brings amazing ideas to the workplace.
If you are happy, the sky is the limit.
Promote well-being
Some employees invest + 40 hours a week with colleagues and customers, being able to exchange in a safe and healthy environment is one of the top gifts you can provide to them. It is also your responsibility.
Health matters.
Takeaways
Analyze your current situation.
Measure, what is not measured cannot be improved.
Keep it real and achievable.
During the times we are living and the permanent changes we are facing it is important to know that keeping everyone constantly happy is difficult if not impossible. Your main focus should be on making people as happy as possible in the workplace, giving them reasons to stay in an open and safe space to share and grow.