Undoubtedly, the workforce is the heart and soul of any business. So, it becomes imperative to hire and retain skilled employees and maintain a positive work environment and culture within the organization. The employers who have invested in the best HR software have always been successful in staying competitive in terms of delivering excellent employee experiences and driving their business towards gaining better productivity and improved ROI.
Creating excellent employee experiences has always been the priority for successful and modern businesses. But, amid the Covid surge, several companies started paying more attention to the Employee Experience (EX).
The fact is that the employees' expectations have now transformed in terms of flexibility of work hours, work location, work-life balance, as well as financial and emotional support for their mental and physical well-being. Fulfilling these growing demands of the employees, retaining top talent, and at the same time ensuring the business profitability in this ongoing pandemic situation, has become challenging for employers.
Globally, businesses are not able to cope up with the rising standards in employees' expectations and with the setback in offering the best experiences to them - The great resignation movement is the biggest challenge currently faced by all employers around the world.
The pandemic has drastically changed the concept of employee experience forever. Thus the time is now for the employers to co-create, and align their EX strategies with the changing employees' needs as that can help them improve employee engagement and productivity, ultimately resulting in exponential business growth. Keeping the talent happier than ever before in terms of offering flexible working hours, extending better learning and growth opportunities, enhancing workplace facilities, to name a few, is the need of the hour.
Before we elaborate on the reasons why employee experience stands as the highest priority in 2022, let's gain some insights over the basics about EX and its impact on business productivity and revenue generation.
What is Employee Experience (EX)?
Employee Experience is everything that employees feel, learn, and perceive during their entire journey with the company - starting from applying for a job to their last working day. EX is the comprehensive set of the interactions and discussions that employees of a company have with their reporting managers, HRs, colleagues, owners, and everyone else they are associated with within the company. The type of delegated tasks, company policies & rules relating to holidays, incentives, workspaces, time flexibility, etc. - everything that an employee has to go through while at work contributes to the employee experience.
The term employee experience is often confused with employee engagement. To get clarity on employee experience, let's look at how it is different from employee engagement.
Difference Between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement
Key Components That Impact Employee Experience
Job Satisfaction - The employees should enjoy the tasks assigned to them and be satisfied with their job profile. Using the workforce's potential at an utmost level can help them learn from their jobs and create excellent employee experiences. Underutilizing the potential of employees can demotivate and demoralize them.
Work Environment - The employees should be happy within the work environment. All the employees should be fairly treated to establish a harmonious work environment. It must be ensured that the culture is politics-free and that none of the employees are being bullied due to discriminatory treatment.
HR Policies - Implementing employee-centric HR policies within the organization is very important. Allowing enough sick & casual leaves, hybrid & flexible work schedules, relaxing break timings, and more contributes to a proper work-life balance to a positive employee experience.
Management Decisions - Whether it is reshuffling the employees' tasks/work schedules, modifying the budget, or implementing a new strategy, the management decisions play a significant role in employee experience. Make sure your employees are a part of the crucial decision-making process to enhance employee experiences within the organization.
Hierarchy Structure - Implementing a simple hierarchical structure plays an essential role in enhancing the employee experience. An employee following a complicated hierarchy and being expected to report to several senior managers can lead to communication gaps and disputes within the teams, ultimately resulting in poor employee experience.
Growth Opportunities - Employees get frustrated when they are in a stagnant position for a long period. Providing growth opportunities in terms of financial appraisals and position upgrades is essential and one of the most significant aspects that can lead to excellent employee experience.
Leadership Practices - It is an old saying that "Leader is not a position but a responsibility." The leader's optimistic behavior and how they direct their subordinates impact employee experience to a great extent, even in critical situations.Ensuring that the leaders deal with their team members with patience and a positive attitude is the key to creating great employee experiences.
Health & Safety - In this pandemic era, the employees expect employers to support and create situations that lead to healthier lives. To keep employees healthy and safe, employers have created hybrid work environments and flexible schedules for their employees. It is also true that healthy and fit employees are likely to be happier and thus have proven to be highly productive for the companies.
So, these are the significant touchpoints that companies need to analyze to deliver excellent employee experience.
For many companies, creating a great employee experience is still just about presenting cake on birthdays, offering extra incentives, or providing maternal/paternal leaves. Employers need to understand that in this pandemic era, employee experience is more than just giving away handsome paychecks and extra holidays. Now, modern and ambitious employees value work-life balance, personal growth, purpose, and meaning of their jobs, and at the same time, they expect flexibility in terms of when and from where they work.
So, besides salary, what are those critical aspects, if taken care of, that can lead to creating positive employee experiences, especially in this pandemic era? The below image talks about those critical aspects that can drive positive employee experiences within an organization.
EX is critical because it impacts the entire journey of the employees to a greater extent. Let's look at the impact of employee experience at every stage of the employees' journey with the organization.
How Does EX Impact Every Stage of the Employees' Journey?
There are eight stages of the employee life cycle. Let's look at how EX can be co-created in each step of the employees' journey with the organization.
Attract - This is the first stage of the employees' journey when candidates get introduced to the company. In this phase of EX, brand recognition plays an important role. Having a positive social media presence and good company reviews from your past employees becomes essential to attract skilled talent and move them towards the hiring process.
Recruit - At this stage of the employees' journey, ensuring that the recruitment process is as quick and straightforward as possible becomes vital. Making your candidates wait long until the interviewer attends them can create a wrong impression about your company. In the current times, when the interviews are being conducted online through skype and Zoom calls, it becomes critical to have the best technology in place for hiring the right people without any obstacles.
Onboard - Developing a positive and welcoming environment becomes highly significant to providing a warm onboarding experience to the newly hired employees. In a hybrid work setup, sometimes it is not possible to welcome the employees with flowers and cards, which is usually done to make the onboarding process a pleasant one for the employees. In this scenario, strong and clear communication, and getting a small gift as a token of appreciation delivered can help improve EX.
Induction - Proper knowledge transfer process and educating the new employees with HR & company policies and compliance issues is highly significant to avoid errors and future conflicts within the workforce.
Engage - The HR professionals need to figure out the aspects that please and engage their employees with the company. It requires implementation of planning cultural and sports activities for the employees, reward them for their outstanding achievements, and ensure they are being taken care of in terms of finance, health, and career development. To get the best results at this stage, HR professionals conduct one-to-one meetings, get surveys filled up as that helps them analyze what makes the employees happy and based on that implement policies and conduct activities.
Develop - This stage in the employee lifecycle goes parallelly with the engaging stage. Keeping the employees entertained and happy is important. But, at the same time, thinking about their development and personal growth also becomes the employer's responsibility. Organizing training for the employees and providing them growth opportunities is a crucial part of EX.
Retain - Retaining your organization's top talent is significant to achieving predetermined goals and staying competitive. Increased employee turnover can also be a financial loss for the company. Thus, implementing effective employee retention programs is a major step towards improved EX and is also significant to ensuring the sustainability and growth of your business.
Exit - Though it is never fun to lose a talented employee, it is always beneficial to relieve them with high-end gratification and dignity. In terms of employee experience, this stage is as important as the first stage - attracting. During this period, the employees leaving might not be advantageous for the company in any way, but it is important to get good reviews from them to attract new candidates to join the company.
According to the 2021 Will Towers Watson Global Survey 92% of employers cited EX as an important priority for their organizations over the next three years, up from 52% of employers that indicated EX was essential before the pandemic.
(Source: Will Towers Watson Global Survey)
Implementing effective EX strategies is vital because cheerful and contended employees ultimately drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is also true that only happy employees can keep customers happy. Especially during this pandemic, many companies realized that their employees took the initiative to learn new technologies required to assist customers from their homes instead of sitting idle and waiting for the offices to open.
How Do Great Employee Experiences Lead to Excellent Customer Experiences?
The more employees are satisfied with the company processes and facilities, the better services they will likely deliver to the customers. When the employees get better experiences, they are enthusiastic about solving customer queries, which can directly impact building brand reputation and staying ahead of the competitors. Let's look at how EX has benefitted CX from the perspective of both employers and employees.
Finally, why is EX (Employee Experience) so crucial in this pandemic era? Let's outline the top reasons that make employee experience important in 2022 and even after that.
Top 5 Reasons Why Employee Experience (EX) is Important for the Businesses in 2022
Ensures Employee Retention
The employees having good experience with the employers are likely to stay longer. For organizations, employee retention is critical to enhance productivity and, at the same time, improve the working culture. High employee turnover can lead to higher recruitment costs, loss of productivity, and mismanagement. In these uncertain times, it has become challenging to find the skills equivalent to the employee who has left the organization creating a vacuum and adversely impacting the business profitability. Thus, to retain skilled and competent employees within the organization, it becomes necessary to deliver exceptional, positive, and personalized EX (Employee Experience) and maintain a healthy work culture.
Improves Productivity
Happy employees deliver better results and stay true to the company. The best workplace culture is one that appreciates and values its employees. The employees that are cared for and constantly appreciated & rewarded for their hard work & achievements enable organizations to outperform their competitors. Therefore, it becomes the companies' responsibility to implement employee-friendly HR policies that include flexible work timings, allow hybrid working, provide medical compensations, and more that can help them cope with the pandemic situation. This will help employees maintain their work-life balance, take care of their health, and work with zeal and enthusiasm.
Enhances Job Satisfaction
Employees with a positive experience are likely to proactively participate in different tasks besides their key job roles. Instead of putting in the efforts half-heartedly, the employees will take up new responsibilities and help the company achieve goals. The employees who are dissatisfied with their job profiles are likely to change the companies, which can increase staff turnover, ultimately leading to financial and productivity loss for the company. Thus, to avoid such situations, the employers can implement the best EX strategies that include surveys and feedback forms, helping them understand better which type of jobs keep employees satisfied and motivated and delegate them the tasks accordingly.
Builds Stronger Relationships
A positive company culture brings the workforce together with common objectives and goals. Better employee experiences within the workplace enhance the employees' relationships with their peers, managers, and employers. In this pandemic era, most employees follow a work-from-home or hybrid working culture. Thus, building stronger relationships with peers and managers becomes challenging for the employees. The right communication channels can foster stronger relationships and help employees overcome the challenges of working together, even if not physically together under one roof.
Improves ROI
Better employee experiences lead to enhanced productivity and, at the same time, help companies to attract and retain top talent. Employee experience is beyond other business metrics like sales performance and conversions. It is all about how employers treat their employees and the respect, loyalty, and hard work they get in return, enabling the companies to grow and make profits. This pandemic taught employers that employee experience matters and can generate more ROI than other investments.
Contradicting the above reasons, many HR leaders might have come across the question - "How can we invest in employee experience when survival has become critical in this never-ending pandemic era?" Recessions come and go, Pandemics come and go, and companies need to be prepared for the future. The only thing that holds with you is the result of keeping your talents happy.
Future of Employee Experience (EX)
So, what lies ahead for employee experience in 2022 and beyond? To deliver compelling employee experiences, the companies need to understand and work on the below-mentioned aspects -
- The leaders need to be equipped with the right technology to cope with drastically transformed employees' expectations.
- The right culture needs to be implemented to thrive in hybrid work environments.
- The HR policies need to include compassion, humanity, an unbiased attitude, and a sense of belonging.
- The employees' mental health, well-being, and safety should be the priority in terms of financial compensations and liberal loan repayment facilities.
As per Employee Experience Trends Report 2022, the below-mentioned are some key areas that employers require to focus on in 2022 while designing their EX strategies to positively impact their employees and get ahead of the curve.
(Source: Employee Experience Trends Report 2022)
Thus, the time is now to figure out what will work for your employees, and invest in new technologies that help you to improve the engagement of your employees, enable their growth and development with your company, calibrate expectations, create an experience vision to ensure employees well-being, and at the same time retain your corporate social responsibility.
Finally, the best way for the organizations to thrive in 2022 and beyond is to strategize their EX effectively and invest in modern Human Resource solutions that empower their digital workspaces to experience growth in key metrics like performance management and employee engagement, eventually leading to exponential growth in terms of ROI and global expansion.
