How Firms Can Enhance Employee Experience?

Employee experience (EX) has been around for a long time and has been gaining momentum in recent years. Its definition keeps on changing from era to era. So, what does it mean in this 21st century?

Employee experience today is the sum of an employee’s interactions with their company. A good employee experience can help employees feel valued, happy, and fulfilled in their job. It can also help them feel like they are part of something greater than themselves or that they are being looked after.

Firms have plenty of reasons to slide this topic under the spotlight. Read on!

Why Does Employee Experience Matter?

Employee experience is becoming a key differentiator for businesses. As the economy continues to strengthen, job seekers and employees have more choices over where they work. These seekers and employees look for meaning and purpose at work and wish to understand how their job aligns with the company’s mission. They also desire clear communication from their supervisors about their roles and responsibilities, their performance expectations, and advancement opportunities within the company. 

A firm facing decline in EX may also face high attrition rates in response. Due to the high attrition, the employee churn rate becomes challenging for businesses of any size; however, smaller firms may encounter additional difficulties as they tend to have fewer resources who can assist with onboarding individuals. Even if your firm doesn’t fall into this category, you’ll still want to create an environment that makes happy employees eager to come back every day.

Inclusivity through Stronger Teams and Feedback

My 20+ years of experience as an ex-employee and CEO speaks more strongly about implementing programs and initiatives to ensure a positive EX. One of the best initiatives could include sensitivity training, mentoring programs, and diversity initiatives. Smart employers expand these programs to build a culture of inclusion where there’s room for engagement, growth, and productivity. They do this by encouraging employees to socialize with each other and become a part of fostering collaboration among teams. Another way to create a culture of inclusion is by ensuring that all employees feel welcome at work regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or any other factors that may make someone feel excluded. To do this, start off by making your code of conduct more inclusive, hiring a diverse workforce, and setting up mentoring programs where senior management can mentor employees who are underrepresented in the company. 

Once you succeed in establishing support teams, and a strong ethical code of conduct, foster

a culture of continuous feedback. Giving employees the chance to provide insights on how the company can grow and receive feedback on how they can improve as individuals is essential to creating a culture of engagement. It can be given during one-on-one meetings with a manager, in an employee survey, or even in daily one-on-one meetings where employees provide their peers with feedback on how they can improve. The more actively contributing employees feel to the company, and the more positive feedback they receive, the more likely they are to stay with the company for a long time.

Correlating Engagement to Spike Up the Retention Rate

If you think that inclusivity and belongingness may shoot up the retention rate, there’s still room for improvement. After building inclusivity in the firm, it’s time to head towards the next step, retention. In order to do so, a firm needs to make sure to provide them career advancements and opportunities. A firm can generate engagement among its employees which is possible when they are offered the best growth opportunities within the company. There is one aspect that you need to consider: career pathing. Inside this concept, I prioritized the lattice growth path where the focus is on broadening the knowledge and expertise of the employees. It’s a horizontal move that doesn’t always focus on jo band or positions, rather it widens the skill set of an employee through multiple training and reskilling. Once a firm succeeds in doing so, its employees feel ready to climb the growth ladder and bid for their desired position. Seeing the firms supporting their professional growth builds trust in the employees’ minds towards the support of the firm. Undoubtedly, this inculcates engagement. 

Continuing this Thought

When it comes down to it, your employees want the same things that you want: to make an impact, to feel like they are making a difference, and to feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. While the employee experience is something all companies are trying to improve, it isn’t something that can happen overnight. Hence, it is imperative that firms realize that the employee experience is a journey, more than a destination. If you want to improve the employee experience, start by taking a look at your company’s culture. Once you know where you stand, you can start working towards creating a better employee experience.