People are what make a company. Without the employee experience, there is no company.
All organizations need to build a thriving employee experience. Your day-to-day operations, to benefits and policies and everything in between, need to be employee-minded. The experience you build for your employees directly impacts their productivity, creativity and efficiency. In fact, 92% of HR Leaders set the employee experience as a top priority In 2021.
So what exactly is the employee experience?
Some people define the employee experience as the different aspects of employment that an employee can face while working at your company. In reality, many different aspects make up the employee experience, this is all dependent on how you want to make your company stand out. People often see their employee experience as a journey within their organization.
As an employer, it is your responsibility to build the employee experience that your employees will talk about and remember when working for your company. With this in mind, concepts such as employee engagement, work culture, and the benefits provided to employees are just some of the aspects that make up the idea of employee experience.
In layman s terms – what do you want your employees to experience at your company? What are the experiences you want them to remember for life? Whether they work for your company for 2 years or 12 years, what about your company do you want to stand out in their mind? This simple question gets more and more complex the more you think about it. Your employees are much more than replaceable 9-5 assets that can be swapped without a care in the world. They are a living and breathing part of your company.
With this in mind, the question should more so be – how can I give my employees the best employee experience possible?
Employee Experience #1 – Improve Onboarding with an Employee Handbook
Every second since the start of your company, your organization is growing. With growth comes the added need of new team members with new skill sets looking to make their impact and boost your growth even further. Knowing this, would you say you re giving your new hires the best onboarding employee experience possible? The likelihood is no!
Onboarding new hires is a difficult process, as it takes a large amount of time and effort to settle in a new hire to perform to their highest potential. For many companies, this process is not always met with success as many employees say that their onboarding process could have been executed much more effectively. In fact, a study done by Gallup in 2017 found that only 12% of employees are convinced that their companies have good onboarding programs for new hires, and 88% of employees think that there is too much to improve in the onboarding programs of their companies.
Here at AirMason, we focus on delivering the best possible online employee handbook built with the employee experience in mind. Trusted by the world s top companies, our mission is to help organizations provide employees with an easy to find and easy to use solution to improving onboarding and growing employee experience. Curious about how our employee handbooks make onboarding stress-free? Book a free demo with us today and see the difference AirMason makes.
Employee Experience #2 – A Growing Need for Employee Benefits
In 2022, employees have begun to request benefits at a higher rate than ever seen before. Ranging from health insurance to flexible work schedules and everything in between, one of the key driving factors for job seekers to join a company is the potential work benefits offered to them. A study by MetLife found that 59% of employees say that health and wellness benefits are important for increasing loyalty to their employer.
Within the concept of employee experience, benefits have risen to high priority when it comes to how employees value their own time at a company. It s clear that an employer who offers employees a wide variety of benefits improves the organization s employee experience and productivity drastically, versus an employer who does not see the importance of prioritizing benefits.
In section four of our recent blog post, Best Employee Handbook for Small Business Checklist, we touch on some of the best and most common benefits that employees search for when considering an organization. It s essential to document your employee policies as best as possible for workers to be aware of all that is available to them. Aflac recently found that the percentage of employees aware of all benefits available to them has decreased year by year.
To avoid this, consider using AirMason to document all benefits available to employees in an easy-to-reach online employee handbook – guaranteeing your employees don t miss a single opportunity and a growing employee experience.
Employee Experience #3 – Building a Positive Company Culture
Can you describe your company culture easily? How about your employees? Would these two descriptions match up well? Commonly, company culture can be perceived very differently from an employer’s point of view versus the employees that experience the culture first hand.
It s important to keep in mind how a company s culture can impact employee experience. For example, a company culture focusing on crunch and hard-to-reach deadlines with little opportunity for employees to rest may not even be seen as a problem from an employers perspective. However, only choosing to see results and not the way the company achieves those results could heavily result in a negative employee experience.
Dysfunctional company culture is one of the driving forces behind employees searching for new employment opportunities. A study done by Built In finds that 47% of active job seekers cite company culture as their driving reason for looking for work.
Positive company culture can be showcased in many different ways, but respecting employees and their needs is the very first step towards building a positive work environment. By building a positive company culture, your employee experience will boost meteoric growth resulting in engaged and inventive employees.
Employee Experience #4 – Remote Work and Flexible Work Schedules
The vast majority of your employees, they are measured by the results that they bring to the organization. This, combined with the surge of remote work and flexible work solutions needed in response to the pandemic, has resulted in a need to refocus the value of hourly work that each employee brings.
What that means is that employees shouldn t need to be confined to a physical office space or to a set working schedule, and neither should the employee experience. Especially when they re able to produce the same or even better results from an alternative work solution. Business Wire found that the emergence of remote work solutions caused a large increase in productivity, almost 50% productivity growth was observed!
For employees evaluating their experience in a workplace, an environment that allows them to manage their own work schedule often leads to a spike in productivity for companies. An employee benefits greatly from an employee experience and culture in which they feel trusted by an employer who supports their desire to work in a more non-traditional method.
You wouldn t want to feel as though someone is breathing down your neck to get your work done when you re confident you can do it yourself – so why put that on your employees? A workplace that thrives on mutual respect between employer and employee is crucial for a thriving employee experience.
Employee Experience #5 – Learning and Growth Opportunities
Would you say that your employees have opportunities to grow and develop in your organization? Or have the opportunity to learn new skills that would greatly benefit them both now and in the future? For employees considering their overall experience at a workplace, these benefits and opportunities are pivotal to their decision-making.
A study conducted by Lorman found that 74% of workers are willing to learn new skills or re-train to remain employable. With this in mind, modern employees are consistently looking for ways to grow their current skillset and make their value to a company known. For these employees, this is seen as one of the main methods for them to grow and enter into a new position of higher status, or to become a key competitive contender in their field.
The concept of training and learning new skills needs to be heavily supported by employers. The desire for employees to improve remains ever-growing and is a fundamental process in nurturing the concept of the employee experience. In addition to learning new skills and developing current workers, it is also important to look at the structure of your organization. Exploring if there is potential for current low to mid-level employees to move up into higher-level positions will only benefit how you look in the eyes of your employees.
LinkedIn recently conducted a study on the importance of providing promotions for employees and the impact that has on employee experience. They found that after three years, someone who was promoted has a 70% chance of still working at their company. While in comparison, someone who has not been promoted has only a 45% chance of staying at that company after three years. Investing in your employees and what they have to offer now will only benefit your company s growth and reputation in the long run.
Employee Experience #6 – Well-being and Mental Health
Are your employees mental health and well-being one of your top priorities? When was the last time you ve stopped to consider how your employees are doing in this monumental shift to remote work and a global shutdown? For many employees, experiencing a largely negative shift in their mental health compared to before the pandemic has become the norm.
According to a Forbes article, half of the survey respondents cite that their sleep patterns have been interrupted due to COVID-19, and 45% say they feel less healthy mentally while working from home. For employees, a deterioration of their mental health and well-being will without question result in a sharp decline in their overall employee experience and, as result, productivity.
As an employer, it is your responsibility to consider the mental health of your employees. Implementing various plans of action towards improving the overall well-being of your employees and creating a positive work atmosphere will do wonders for your company. In this past article of ours, we touch on many different mental health policies and benefits that workplaces can easily administer to make a world of difference for their employees and overall improve their employee experience.
Your employee experience is what drives your company. The time to focus on it is now.
Every employer wants to build the best possible employee experience for their employees, however, putting this into action can be incredibly difficult. Overall, to build a fantastic employee experience, you need to truly focus on ways to improve all aspects of your employees’ working experience. You have to think – what would you want out of your own company if you were an employee there?
