You may have heard the term “employee experience” thrown around a lot over the past few years. What exactly does it mean? Employee experience is essentially the concept of creating an environment for employees that mirrors that of a company’s customer experience. The goal is to recruit and retain top talent by facilitating a holistic working experience for employees that caters to their personal, professional and social values.
According to Gallup’s 2016 State of the American Workplace report, as many as 51 percent of employees are searching for new jobs at any given time. This means it’s more important than ever to keep a pulse on employees’ state of happiness and fulfillment within your company. To create a successful employee experience, there are three main areas to focus on: show your people you put them first, incorporate the latest digital technologies into the workplace, and create a meaningful work environment. Let’s dive into some ways you can start molding a more purposeful employee experience for your team:
1. Put your people first
The first and probably most important step to facilitating an employee experience that will increase your team’s loyalty to your company is creating a human-centered workplace. This is something that obviously won’t happen overnight; instead, it develops over time as the mentality of upper management shifts. Invest more in continuing education options for your employees. Create more opportunities to hand out rewards and look for advancement opportunities. Make it a priority to earn your employees’ trust in company leadership through transparency, honesty and inspiration.
2. Provide the latest digital technologies
Another important component of creating an employee experience that will help your team feel more connected to your company is incorporating the right digital technology tools into their workflow. The key to remember here is that the tools should focus more heavily on catering to employee needs vs purely fulfilling business requirements. That being said, there are apps and platforms that are mutually beneficial to employees and their employer alike. Productivity and organizational tools like Basecamp, Slack and Trello work well for this. For improved employee engagement, there are pulse survey tools that help management regularly tap into how employees are feeling about their overall work experience. Providing employees with wellbeing apps – like Limeaid – is another way to show you care about your team beyond their work-related contributions to the company.
3. Make employee work and workspaces meaningful
Last, but certainly not least, creating a meaningful work experience for employees goes a long way in terms of how they perceive their relationship to your company. Be mindful about providing employees with opportunities to work autonomously so they can learn by doing, to take on responsibilities that will push them to grow, and to work on teams that will give them mentorship and empowerment to contribute. These options show you value a working experience for your employees that goes beyond a heads-down mentality of churning out results. Creating a physical workspace that caters to employee needs goes hand-in-hand with providing them with meaningful work assignments. Make your office environment inviting with art on the walls, access to multiple workspaces and amenities like complimentary snacks and beverages.
While it may seem like a simple concept, the employee experience trend is about more than whether or not an employee is happy at work. Applying a “customer experience” mentality to employees shows you care about your employees’ overall wellbeing and their relationship to your company. While it may take some time and effort to make this shift, being mindful and taking steps toward a more positive employee experience pays off big time for everyone involved.
What are some ways you are working on your company’s employee experience? Tweet us and share!
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