Why Employee Experience Matters
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
In the corporate world, we hear a lot about customer experience and often live by tropes such as "the customer is always right" or "the customer's perception is your reality." While customer experience is vital to the strength of your organization, it’s equally important to focus on employee experience. So, why do we keep seeing a discrepancy here?
In addition, those that do see employee experience as foundational to business performance, aren’t always getting it right either. We often see organizations take a blanket approach to building up employees, when it should be personalized.
We, as humans, have different passions, learning styles, and interests. As such, every employee is unique and has different needs. This diversity is important: a diverse workforce leads to innovation and allows organizations to evolve. So it should be fostered.
As an entrepreneur, manager, executive, or HR professional, you have the opportunity to challenge the status quo at each step of the employee's lifecycle to optimize their experiences and create a safe, inclusive, reputable and consistent workplace. But what does this look like in practice?
Understanding the employee experience
Before we take a closer look at what it means to create good employee experiences, let’s discuss what employee experience means. To us, employee experience encompasses everything an employee feels while working at an organization, and how well set up they are to do their job effectively.
Looking at this simplistically, generating positive employee experiences ultimately leads to a successful organization. This is because an employee's "positive energy [...] contributes to a business's bottom line" as "employees who feel comfortable, welcome, accommodated, and empowered return this positive energy into the work they do, the interactions they share, and the company culture." When we talk about the bottom line, we don’t just mean increasing profit — we’re talking about building the financial capability to be a purpose-driven organization that attracts the best possible employees.
Meanwhile, if an employee has a negative experience, they will be less likely to recommend this organization to others and impact the cohesion, productivity, and efficiency of a workplace. These negative experiences can also trickle down to how the business interacts with customers, impacting the organization’s reputation from an external perspective as well.
To ensure your organization can enhance its employee experience, it’s necessary to break down the stages of an employee's time with your organization to humanize and personalize the process at each step of the journey.
Addressing each part of the employee journey
Employee experiences can be analyzed by looking at the five different stages of an employee lifecycle; that being:
Recruitment
Onboarding
Development
Retention
Exit
At each of these points, organizations have an opportunity to positively or negatively impact how an employee feels and experiences the organization. It all starts with recruitment. Since this is the first impression that a potential employee will have of a company, organizations need to consider what it feels like to go through their recruitment process and remember that it's a two-way street. They're assessing the candidate, but the candidate is also considering them. Furthermore, since many seek employment for positions on websites like Glassdoor, Indeed or Linkedin, company reviews can attract quality prospective employees. As such, employee experience is vital from the get-go of this process.
The next stage is onboarding, which refers to integrating your employee into the systems in place at the company and introducing the employee to the expectations of their role. This is when organizations can start to evaluate their "organization's priorities, specifically what things need to be done and how." The positive onboarding process allows the employee to channel the initial enthusiasm they have for their new job into a more meaningful, long-term connection to the organization. A positive onboarding experience ensures that employees are aware of their role’s priorities, duties, and purpose and are willing and eager to succeed in their roles. A negative onboarding experience can do the opposite. It can make employees unsure of their roles and expectations, making them less likely to be successful and willing to foster a long-term connection to the organization.
Development and retention are ongoing processes that ensure employee productivity, fulfillment, and development. Forbes states, "an employer who doesn't focus on learning will lose out — in performance, engagement and retention.” For example, LinkedIn's 2018 Workforce Learning Report states that "93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers." As such, development and retention go hand-in-hand to show your employees that you are invested in their future and success. If organizations fail to focus on integrating learning into employee experience, they will not be able to "enable employees to maintain an upward trajectory despite staying in one position."
The exit is another important touchpoint. Employees that are able to leave on their own terms and maintain good relationships with their colleagues are more likely to recommend that organization to people in their network. Word of mouth is important, especially when recruitment can be expensive — both in terms of time and money.
Case in point
To conclude, we can look at Canadian software company Vidyard for a quick example of an organization succeeding in building positive employee experiences that they can then use as part of their recruitment marketing efforts.
On their career page, they have a video of current employees talking about how they found out about the company, how they recognized their values within the organization, what encouraged them to join the team, and what they have learned from the experience. They exude joy, they show their commitment to the individuals and the team, and they speak to how Vidyard is helping them further their career. By centering the employee experience in this promotional video, the company gives a genuine taste of what others might experience if they themselves join.
Need help defining what a good employee experience looks like? We’d love to help. Get in touch.
