Companies today cannot get away with only offering standard benefits to their employees. They need to go beyond that to ensure a higher employee retention ratio. The first thing that makes employees more engaged is a great experience in the workplace.
Employee experience refers to all of the associations that employees have with a company. This is crucial for the overall success of your organization.
A recent study shows that companies with higher employee experience are 21% more profitable than ones with the low employee experience.
If you want to know more about employee experience and how to make it great, keep reading!
What is employee experience?
Employee experience defines what people observe and encounter during their job tenure at an organization. It includes factors like work culture, benefits, ethics, grievance handling processes, and tools available for employees’ success.
Most companies across the globe consider employees to be their greatest assets besides the customers, and therefore they invest considerably in employee experience, also known as EX.
Following are the benefits of employee experience:
👉 Lower absenteeism ratio: A poor work culture affects the employees, productivity, and finances of a company, and also makes employees more likely to be absent from the workplace. On the other hand, a healthy workplace has 41% lower absenteeism.
👉 Better quality work: A happy mind boosts creativity and skills, and thus a positive EX improves the quality of work.
👉 More productive employees: Because a better EX improves productivity by making employees more engaged at the workplace, it benefits the company in the long run.
👉 Improved customer experience: Employee experience impacts customer experience directly. A happy employee is likely to interact better with customers. In turn, customers get better insights into products or services and all the support they need from a company.
Besides knowing the definition and benefits of employee experience, you must also know how to improve it.
How to make the employee experience great
The following are some simple tips to improve employee retention and experience:
1. Leverage employee journey mapping
An employee journey map records various stages employees go through during their tenure at work. You can analyze this map to better understand their pain points and expectations. This will help bridge the gap between the current and desired situation.
For better results, you can also conduct employee engagement surveys to find the common issues and the personal experiences that they face in the workplace.
2. Listen to employees
You will realize what encourages or motivates your employees only when listening to them. Similarly, you also need to know what demotivates and discourages them to improve the employee experience. It will give you insight into their day-to-day experience, and help you resolve their issues.
3. Keep channels open for communication
Just listening to your employees is not sufficient. Ensuring open lines of communication is equally as important. Provide feedback and, in turn, ask for their feedback for you. It will make employees realize that they are connected. At the same time, you also need to be unbiased and put yourself in their shoes to address their work problems.
You also need to assure them that their opinions and suggestions matter.
4. Focus on employee wellness
Happy and healthy employees incur lower healthcare costs; that helps you save money and time. Thus, you need to introduce programs that promote physical, mental and spiritual wellness.
It will keep employees well-rested, active, and productive at work. Some ideas are periodic health check-ups, paid vacation, sick leave, an office gym, paid parental leave, or healthy snacks to make the employee experience great.
5. Incorporate stay interviews
Exit interviews are indeed valuable. However, it does not help much to retain an employee that is about to leave. On the contrary, stay interviews are a great chance for managers to communicate with employees about their perspectives and interests.
Besides helping build trust, stay interviews also improve internal talent pipelines and facilitate your company’s growth.
ALSO READ: Rewards and Recognition are Important for Remote Workforces
6. Take employee feedback seriously
Several companies make employees fill out feedback forms or participate in surveys but do not act on them. It causes a loss of trust on the employees’ part, and perhaps they will stop giving feedback. However, if they know that they are heard and their opinions will be considered, their experience will improve.
You can also designate a person who will work on the feedback and make necessary changes wherever possible.
7. Offer career-oriented programs
Employees will stay in your company if they know there is a scope for career development. With the correct programs, you can train your employees to enhance their leadership skills.
Besides, a long-term career plan once a year also fares well for your employee experience.
If you are struggling to improve employee experience, turn to Ovation, an employee rewards and recognition platform. We will help you hire top talents of the industry and improve employee experience with increased engagement.
Consult us to build the right rewards and recognition system for your workplace!
