When you have so many tasks on your to-do list, it can be hard to consider the big picture. However, as a leader in your company, one of your greatest responsibilities is to ponder the big picture. One thing to consider, especially when preparing for a new year, is the overall employee experience at the company. As we’ll discuss, this overarching idea is integrated into all areas of the company and greatly affects its overall success.
What is Employee Experience?
This big-picture idea begins as soon as a prospective candidate applies for a job. The employee experience continues throughout every stage of the time at the company, and even as they depart.
- Attract: Prospective candidates learn about the company and can become advocates whether or not they end up joining the team.
- Onboard: The critical stage of when an employee is trained and settles into a role at a company.
- Engage: This is when employees learn more about your company and what it stands for, hopefully inspiring motivation, commitment, and connection.
- Develop: When employees receive feedback and the tools to grow their skills, they’re able to become more successful in their roles.
- Perform: Employees should be evaluated on their performance and recognized for their achievements regularly. Reviews of roles, compensation, and growth opportunities are extremely important in contributing to the employee experience.
- Exit: When an employee chooses to depart the company, asking them to fill out an exit survey shows the company’s concern with employee experience. It can also lead to improving the employee experience.
- Alumni: Even when an employee leaves the company, if they had a positive experience overall, they will continue to feel positive about the company and may speak highly of it to others.
Factors that shape employee experience include:
- Salary and benefits
- Company culture
- Employee recognition and development
- Manager relations
- Growth opportunities
- Company mission, vision, values, and policies
- Inclusion and equity
- Office space
As you can see, your employees are impacted by nearly everything they encounter during their life cycle at the company. While this might seem a bit overwhelming, overarching values and strategies can really help a company consider the employee experience on all levels.
Why is Employee Experience Important?
An exceptional employee experience would mean high satisfaction and low turnover. From boosting employee engagement, productivity, and profitability, the successes a company can achieve when their employees enjoy an excellent experience are quite meaningful.
Higher Engagement
When trying to build employee engagement, it comes down to the employees’ relationships with the company. Employees who feel that they’re engaged with a company value the work they do, feel recognized and appreciated for their contributions and align with a company’s values. Greater engagement leads to a greater sense of loyalty, and they’ll spread their feelings of positivity.
Successful Recruiting
Job seekers are sophisticated and have a plethora of information at their fingertips. When they are looking for a job opportunity, they are likely to do research on a company before even agreeing to much more than one interview. Employees who have exceptional experiences at their company are more likely to sing their praises on sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, or any other connection who might want to hear.
Increased Productivity
It goes without saying that happy employees do more work. They are more efficient and productive thanks to an overall greater satisfaction at their job.
Reduced Turnover
In recent years, employee turnover has become much more common and happens much more quickly than in previous years. While some of this can be attributed to societal and cultural changes, the most prominent reason for employee turnover is poor employee experience.
As we mentioned above, employee experience includes quite a lot of factors. However, these are the main areas that may affect employee turnover:
- Onboarding
- Inclusion
- Growth opportunities
- Role expectations
Increased Profitability
When employee experience ranks higher, companies achieve greater customer satisfaction and innovation, which can, of course, positively impact profitability.
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