Employee experience: The ultimate guide

A positive employee experience can make all the difference between success and failure for your business. Read on as we tackle what exactly the employee experience is, the benefits of a positive employee experience and some tips on how to create the best possible environment for your employees to succeed.

The Basics

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Writing for Bonfyre, a workplace culture platform, Matt Stople defines employee experience in the following way: “Employee experience (which is often shortened to just “EX”) is an emerging business function focused on tracing how employees think and feel during every single touchpoint of their journey through the company. EX emerged as a direct response to a similar function you might have heard of: customer experience (or CX). CX is currently the most sophisticated means of understanding an organization’s customers. Leveraging modern analytical techniques like journey mapping and audience segmentation, organizations seek to intimately understand and optimize the base consumer experience…”

A quick internet search will generate quite a bit of data and advice regarding EX, so it can be overwhelming. We’ve researched for you and found that Aaron Kinne, senior writer at Workhuman, a cloud-based human capital management software solutions company, provide a helpful explanation:

“In a seminal global research study, The Employee Experience Index, IBM Smarter Workforce Institute and Workhuman® defines the employee experience as: “A set of perceptions that employees have about their experiences at work in response to their interactions with the organization.” It goes on to note that employee experience is “a positive and powerful – and ultimately human – experience, in which employees are able to invest more of their whole selves into the workplace.” More encompassing and holistic than engagement, employee experience looks at and leverages the components that foster a positive workplace experience and long-term success. It helps define the role leaders and managers play in creating a positive experience for employees. And it reveals how leaders can make their organization more relational – rather than simply transactional…”

Stages of Employee Experience

Oftentimes, employee experience is looked at in stages.

Qualtrics, an experience management company, breaks employee experience into the 5 following stages. 

1. Recruitment
2. Onboarding
3. Development
4. Retention
5. Exits

Positive Employee Experience Benefits

The benefits of a positive employee experience are far reaching. We are sharing some facts and statistics we found during our research regarding these benefits, which we believe will provide insight into how much of a positive impact a good employee experience can have on your company.

Unily, a cloud intranet software company, shares the following statistic regarding employee experience: “According to the 2018 Talent Trends Report, 51% of ​employers planned to boost their spending on employee initiatives in 2019 and a significant percentage of this investment will go into technology.”

Additionally, Unily compiled a list of 5 reasons why employee experience matters and we are sharing that list below:

1. Good employee experience reduces employee turnover
2. Happy (engaged) employees are more productive (and innovative)
3. The better the employee experience, the better talent you attract (and keep)
4. Good employee experience equals better customer experience
5. Good employee experience leads to bigger profits

Sapling, a people operations platform, published an article on its website entitled, “8 Stats to Persuade Your Team that Employee Experience Matters,” and we are sharing the 8 stats below:

1. Increased happiness leads to increased performance.

•  Happy employees are up to 20% more productive at work.

2. Actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. between $450 billion to $550 billionper year.
3. If you think your work culture is “just fine”, think again

• 64% of employees feel they do not have a strong work culture.

4. Financial incentives aren’t enough to foster satisfied employees

• Employee satisfaction at Google rose by 37% as a result of employee support initiatives.

5. Unhappiness leads to absence

• Unhappy employees take 15 more sick days each year than the average worker.

6. Engaged employees increase profit

• Companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share.

7. Your physical office environment can create a more effective workforce

• Employees who have a choice in when, where, and how they work have higher levels of satisfaction, innovation, and job performance.

8. Your employees’ minds will work significantly better if they’re happy

• Research shows that the brain works better as a result of happiness.

Improvement Strategies

If you are considering investing time and money into EX for the first time, or looking to better your existing EX efforts, there are many different ways in which  you can work to improve the employee experience at your company.

Swati Baruah, content marketing specialist at Vantage Circle,  a company that connects corporate employees with service providers allowing a mutually beneficial relationship, compiled 11 strategies to provide a meaningful experience to employees. We are sharing her list with you below:

1. Easy Application Process
2. Interviewing Tools and Processes
3. Effective Onboarding Programs
4. Physical Environment
5. Assign Mentors
6. Employee Surveys & Feedback
7. Performance Reviews
8. Robust Internal Communication
9. Acknowledgment & Appreciation
10. Team Building Activities
11. Exit Interviews

Diana Kaemingk, contributor to the Qualtrics blog, an American experience management software company, has also put together a very helpful list of “10 ways to improve employee experience at your company.” We are providing her list below:

1. Utilize Employee Journey Mapping
2. Improve Internal Communication
3. Design a great onboarding experience
4. Implement stay interviews
5. Invest in employee wellness
6. Use employee benefit surveys
7. Act on employee feedback
8. Offer career development programs
9. Share customer feedback with your employees
10. Provide manager training

Smartway2 is a workplace scheduling system that helps enable peak performance from employees. Using Smartway2 is easy and can help to pave the way towards a “culture of innovation.”