What is Employee Experience?
You’re probably familiar with the term “customer experience” if you are plugged into the world of business. Most marketing and sales strategies in today’s market focus on the “customer experience” and how to make sure that the customer has a positive journey to get to their product. They build branding strategies around the customer’s experience The customer is always important, but what if your employees are unhappy? How do your employees affect your business’ branding? Do you think that a customer will post about how beautiful an office is when the receptionist blew them off? Negative posts from customers on social media can strongly impact the public’s perception of your company. You only need to look at United Airline’s recent experience to see evidence of that. But what does this mean for your company? How should your company handle their employees and the power they have over your brand? Simple, success starts inside your own building with the culture your business has established.
Employee experience all comes down to your company’s culture. If your employees feel underappreciated, unheard, or repressed, they are not going to reflect in a positive way on your business’ brand. If you want to improve your bottom line, focus first on improving the happiness of your employees. That goes beyond buying a ping-pong table or having more company picnics. Talk to your employees, organize more small group discussions, and take their ideas and criticisms to heart when considering the future of your company.
When you have happy, engaged employees, they will sell your brand effectively and organically. Your numbers will prove it.
What Ideas that Get in the Way of Positive Employee Experience?
- Salary is everything. Yes, you pay your employees to do their job, but money is hardly the only thing people care about in their careers. If you want them to care about your brand and reflect positively on it, you need to care about them first.
- Employees will leave in less than a year, so why bother? If you work to create a strong, positive company culture, your employees will stay longer. Maybe it will be less than 5 years, but the longer each employee stays, the better it is for your bottom line.
- Change is tough and slow. Improving a company’s culture doesn’t happen overnight. Making your business a place where your employees thrive and feel appreciated is something that takes time and commitment. With businesses push for immediate results and profits, this long term strategy can seem daunting and pointless. Believe in these changes and create a business culture that make your employees happy. Your shareholders will thank you.
There are plenty of reasons to consider focusing on your company’s employee experience. Just thinking about change isn’t enough, however. Businesses need to know how to go about making these changes and building a culture that their employees enjoy. Here are a few options to get your company started when considering how to get employees more engaged and improve the quality of the workplace environment.
How Can Companies Improve Employee Experience?
Develop Strong Company Values
As discussed in the TalentCulture podcast Reprogram Employee Experience, developing strong community values within your company is key to improving your employee experience. Everyone is used to seeing value posters around their office and hearing in staff meetings the company’s set of values, but, for many companies, that can be where the importance of values ends. Instead of choosing values that sound nice and leaving them as empty promises to employees and customers, commit to integrating those values into your company’s culture. Decide which values suit your company and build a strategy on how to actualize them into your workplace. Your employees identify with your company and integrate it into their own self-identity. The stronger your values are, and the more evident they are in your business interactions, the happier your employees will be to identify with them. We explored this idea in our article How to Attract and Retain Millennial Talent and I would suggest checking it out if you are interested in this topic of the role of company values in keeping your employees longer and making them happier.
'
Employee Experience Mapping
Just like the idea of customer experience mapping, employee experience mapping is all about following each employee’s journey with the company, from the first interactions before being hired to the moment they leave the company. By carefully detailing and examining each step of an employee’s relationship with the company you can find out the weakest points and which areas need improvement. Then, you will be able to develop a strategy to target and improve those moments within an employee’s career for the benefit of the company’s culture and overall employee experience. Use your marketing and sales strategies for gaining customers, targeted instead to your employees. Work to improve their connection to and perception of the company to get the success your company needs.
By putting the effort into your employee satisfaction and retention strategies that you use in your sales and marketing strategies, you will be able to create a work culture that speaks for itself. Your efforts will begin to naturally and organically build the brand your marketing team has been trying to artificially create. People will post on social media about how wonderful their interactions were with your employees, giving your company the reputation you want. Building your brand through these natural connections will give you the credibility and sales numbers that you desire. Don’t underestimate the power of your employees and their role in your company’s success.
This infographic was crafted with love by Officevibe, the platform that helps you to be a better leader and make your employees happy.
