Employee experience management goes beyond conventional approaches to improving the relationship individuals have with their place of work. It’s highly strategic and influences specific touchpoints throughout the entire employee journey.
An employee experience manager is responsible for building and maintaining a positive work environment and culture. They will likely play a role in the onboarding process and also advise on organisational optimisations that promote a more productive and engaged workforce. Often, they use a suite of tools to measure important people metrics that reveal the different attitudes employees hold towards the company.
Every business operates differently, so each will have a unique way of managing employee experience. For instance, a tech startup may already use a range of digital tools and need help in understanding which are most valuable to their teams. On the other hand, an established retail firm may have an extensive benefits package but lack the systems to collect meaningful employee feedback.
If you want to improve your current management of employee experience, our helpful guide will explain what excellent employee experience management looks like and how to formulate an effective employee experience management strategy.
Employee experience management is a discipline that requires a range of skills and resources. While experience managers develop specific technical and analytical capabilities over time with training, it’s important they’re adept at speaking to their colleagues with empathy. After all, how can anyone deliver the best employee experience possible when they can’t communicate effectively with others?
In order to develop a robust employee experience management strategy, an organisation must first analyse their employee lifecycle. Understanding what attracted people to their business and the circumstances that prompted their departure is important, as it could reveal pain points that need addressing. For example, did someone reveal in an exit interview they resigned due to burnout? If so, an organisation may want to focus on improving processes relating to workload and wellbeing.
Similar to customer experience management, employee experience management aims to improve the perception of a company’s brand and values. However, instead of focussing on the external brand, the intention is to build a strong internal brand that employees are proud to work for.
Many businesses want to nurture an emotional connection with their people as they recognise engaged employees are just as valuable as customers. Because multiple factors can influence an employees’ wellbeing throughout the day, it’s important they experience enough positive encounters that keep their morale high.
Introducing a comprehensive benefits package with a range of perks and discounts is one way to show your teams you care and want to save them money on the things they enjoy. Additionally, employee experience management software that encourages reward and recognition is a really effective method of boosting employee engagement. It demonstrates your teams are integral to business success.
When you take steps to improve and enhance employee experience you will attract the best talent in your industry.
In fact, salary alone is often not the most important factor when attracting a person to a job or company. Employee experience plays a far more significant role than people realise, and any organisation that understands this has a competitive advantage.
Moreover, a well-managed employee experience strategy produces additional advantages, which include:
People resign from their roles for all sorts of reasons outside of their employer's control, including retirement or relocation. In most cases though, employee experience plays a significant role in a person’s decision to move on to another business.
When business leaders are serious about delivering a consistent positive employee experience, they will often extend their employee lifecycle and retain talent.
For example, staff members are unlikely to look elsewhere if other companies can’t match their existing benefits package or haven't introduced flexible working policies.
Happy employees are highly motivated, productive, and loyal. When people experience exceptional employee experiences they feel more fulfilled in their role and are willing to go the extra mile.
In addition, companies who prioritise employee experience frequently see stronger and faster revenue growth in comparison with those who don’t.
Choosing an all-in-one employee experience platform is one of the most cost-effective solutions to improve your employees’ wellbeing. Having one overarching system in place means you can invest in your company and employees at the same time, which results in better business outcomes.
Employee experience and culture share a close connection. Defining your mission, values, and vision transforms your people into brand ambassadors who will speak fondly of where they work to friends and family. In fact, 88% of employees in a Deloitte survey believe that workplace culture is a significant factor in business success.
Creating a healthy workplace culture begins with recognising your employees’ achievements and celebrating personal milestones. A comprehensive employee engagement platform will usually have features that help your colleagues congratulate each other when they go above and beyond in their roles. Furthermore, engagement apps or software may also include dashboards and reporting functions, making it easier for you to visualise who receives the most recognition.
Data that relates to recognition and reward is particularly useful in performance management processes, such as annual reviews. Team leaders can use recognition reports to help them make objective decisions about pay increases and promotions.
Introducing a bespoke approach to employee experience management will help you increase employee engagement and build a happier workforce.
People’s priorities and motivations change along their employee journey and what appeals to new joiners may be different to long-term members of staff. Therefore, it’s important you can see what benefits and perks they use most, so you’re investing in the best experience possible.
Grouping all of your teams’ benefits and discounts together in an app makes your offering both easily accessible and trackable. When all of your people are using the same platform, reporting features help you understand what discounts and benefits are most popular.
A successful employee experience strategy brings people together so they’re in greater alignment with business goals. This not only increases team collaboration but also helps your employees understand why their work is important and how it contributes to company success.
Ensuring all of your teams receive key updates, including news and company achievements, is vital for making everyone feel included and that they’re working towards the same goal.
Often, employee experience programs come with communication features that let you share company-wide comms to everyone in a single app. This takes the pressure off team leaders to cascade information and means all employees have access to important updates from one centralised system.
Not many businesses realise that a person’s employee experience with them begins long before they’ve applied for a role.
A range of job sites include detailed reviews and ratings of many companies, so it’s important your employees are happy — both when they’re with you and when they move on.
Before developing an employee experience strategy, keep in mind that your initiatives must put people first.
However, sometimes this is easier said than done. For example, you may find that your idea for a new Learning and Development (L&D) experience will actually consume too much of your employees’ time and add to their daily pressures. This is especially the case if they’re already receiving a lot of compulsory training.
With that in mind, we’ve created a step by step guide on how to develop a robust employee experience strategy for a happier and more productive workforce.
The most important step in developing a new employee experience strategy is to survey your teams, so you understand what they value. After receiving initial feedback, we suggest holding a few town halls.
Town halls are excellent environments for encouraging your employees to share their thoughts and take a more active role in strategy development. Sometimes you gain greater insight from these interactive sessions than surveys, as they’re more engaging.
After speaking with your teams and gathering their feedback, it’s best to divide their employee experiences into three environments: culture, technology and physical workspace. Each one of these environments acts as a specific touchpoint along your employees’ journey and significantly affects their day-to-day experiences of your organisation.
Categorising feedback into these environments will highlight where you excel at delivering an exceptional employee experience, in addition to revealing pain points that require your attention. For instance, while you may receive positive feedback on culture, your teams may also report that their systems are outdated and that they need better equipment. Therefore, your focus should be on improving their physical workspace.
Human Resource (HR) leaders and recruitment directors are the most obvious people to include in your employee experience strategy. They will be familiar with measuring and interpreting people metrics and will also have a better understanding of HR processes, such as onboarding and performance management.
However, it’s important not to forget other department leaders, as they will provide valuable insight that represents the people in their teams. After all, an employee experience strategy has to apply to your whole business, not just a few select departments.
So you’ve collected employee feedback and gained the backing of senior leaders. What do you do next?
We recommend setting goals at this point, as this will help you budget for any new resources you want to introduce, such as employee engagement software.
Furthermore, any goals relating to increasing employee engagement should tie into wider business targets. This creates a more holistic experience and encourages better communication. It also embeds your strategy deeper into the company culture.
Employee experience is cyclical in nature, so it’s important you can measure and continuously develop your strategy. Comparing operational data with experiential data will reveal relationships between what is happening within your organisation and how it affects your teams.
Let’s say you survey your teams every month and are comparing wellbeing app usage with how they feel. You may notice that after introducing a more comprehensive digital wellbeing program, your teams are using the app more often and are reporting feeling happier or more relaxed.
This suggests that investing in this resource was a great idea as it’s contributing meaningfully to your employees’ lives.
Every organisation should treat employee experience like customer experience, and understand that job satisfaction is just as important as customer satisfaction. While a lot of company time, energy, and resource goes into improving the customer journey, it's also important not to lose sight of the employee journey.
Investing in a digital employee experience platform that has a range of perks and discounts shows that you see employees as individuals and want to add value to their lives. Additionally, the right platform can have a significant impact on how easily your teams can access company comms and other benefits, which will improve their day-to-day experiences.
When managing employee experience, any platform you choose must promote reward and recognition, which brings us to Perkbox. Using perkbox you can promote stronger relationships between your teams as they can send small personalised messages of recognition to one another — regardless of where they are working from. What's more, managers can attach reward points to each recognition they send, which incentivises performance.
If you want to enhance your employee experience management with an all-in-one digital solution, we can help.
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