Employee experience has become crucial because companies are dealing with employee turnover that may be driven because of employees being worn out and overworked, thus making them consider other options.
By treating these needs and sentiments carefully at such a key time, organizations may provide outstanding employee experiences (EX).
Providing excellent EX needs a radical readjustment apart from a conventional top-down methodology and toward one based on the principles of design thinking.
Essentially, it is not just lip service.
Moreover, this change enables a business to prioritize its employees by learning how they see their employee journeys, responding to those views, and then providing targeted interventions that concentrate on crucial employee-related aspects to leverage performance and productivity.
By doing this, businesses may become more innovative, team-oriented, and dedicated to designing engaging experiences.
According to the McKinsey Employee Experience survey, 2020, people who say they had a favorable employee experience are 16 times more engaged than those who said the opposite. Also, the former are eight times more likely to keep working within the same company.
In this article, we examine how businesses may put an emphasis on the employee experience to attract and keep the top talent while also generating value and keeping a competitive edge.
Leveraging Employee Experience For The ‘New Possible’
The future of work will involve more remote labor, an increase in e-commerce and digital payments, and the further adoption of automation and artificial intelligence, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report (AI).
Millions of people around the world, many of them face an increasing skills shortage and other difficulties, and there will be significant workforce changes. Additionally, labor will be characterized in terms of abilities more and more.
In the meantime, the pandemic has made a variety of workplace reforms that we refer to as the ‘new possible.’: A model replacing the conventional workplace hierarchy with more degrees of connection, adaptability, and responsiveness.
With this strategy, businesses collaborate with their workforce to design individualized, real-world, and inspiring experiences that boost employee, team, and business performance.
Employee experience considers what people appreciate in the wider definition, understanding how different proposals appeal to different people depending on their personality types, life stages, and other circumstances.
Importantly, contrary to popular belief, getting paid more money may no longer be the most compelling option.
Instead, workers need a strong sense of control. That is the ability to shape results that matter to them, along with a solid sense of identity and belonging. In other words, having autonomy in and regarding one’s employment.
According to WorkTrends 2016, IBM/Globoforce Employee Experience Index Study, different social, work, and organizational experiences are responsible for the majority of the difference in how positively or negatively employees regard their relationship with their employer.
The greatest talent may be attracted, inspired, and retained by organizations that establish an EX model that is both individualized and backed by digital experiences that increase flexibility.
EX is central to how businesses differentiate themselves in a world where so many individuals are reassessing their reasons for working and where they work.
It makes sense then to believe that employees will go above and beyond when their journey is headed towards the right direction.
Read: Employee Experience Management – Top Goals
Using A Methodical Approach To Employee Experience
Design thinking is a helpful framework for leaders to use to help them learn what means most to their people by putting them at the heart of the problem-solving equation.
The same way of thinking that has changed customer service over the past decade has been applied internally to inquire about the workforce.
Employee experience metrics are one of the several necessary conditions for an EX initiative to be successful.
Commitment to understanding the talent requirements and pain points of present employees, as well as the emotional backdrop of their life and career paths, is also essential.
Last but not least, these factors ought to be made possible by digital technologies that enable people to concentrate on the more interesting and creative elements of their jobs.
The development of new working practices can be supported by the following three processes, which include building a cross-functional competence to carry out effective EX:
1) Set a baseline and improve upon it in step one
Top officials from all departments must unite for this initial stage to be successful, and the entire organization must participate.
It begins with a transparent, open assessment of the present demands of the workforce, backed by data as well as tools and evaluations established on organizational science.
More generally, it calls on leaders to explain the value at stake and define the direction and scope of aim for EX. This, subsequently, ensures that a business has a clear understanding of the main idea it is pursuing rather than just a blurry concept of how to boost performance through a one-and-done solution.
One organization, for instance, wants to concentrate on the impact on customers and financial performance.
Looking at the organization as a whole, the company may select leaders in both areas and create an employee experience strategy to change how these people go through significant points like onboarding and their early leadership roles.
The organization may then be able to hire and retain more people, thanks to this effort, who excelled in these positions.
2) Track down and alter employees’ journey
The “find, design, and deliver” cycle of design thinking requires a thorough comprehension of a specific employee journey across a relevant period of time. That cycle is typically shorter for product and customer service journeys than it is for employee journeys. Also, it only applies to their core elements.
For instance, compared to a standard product journey, the onboarding process for a role may take up to a year to complete. But other than that, the procedure is strikingly similar.
Companies must master the two following design components in order to adopt a successful EX model:
a) Personas
EX designers, like their counterparts in the product and service industries, assess employee experiences by creating clearly defined persons to map out key events.
Personas are tools that may be used to reimagine the experience in areas that employees feel are lacking. Also, they are predicated on data-driven depictions of imagined people.
They portray the individuality of each employee, including their age, background, level, and tenure, along with their position within the company and the needs, attitudes, and behaviors that are unique to them.
A persona might, for instance, be based on the position of a nurse professional in a medical system. So, this person may have a great work ethic but is exhausted from constantly working after the pandemic started.
Despite their (the nurse practitioner’s) best efforts, they are unable to support their team as they would like to. Furthermore, they need some time to recharge so that they can train and encourage their coworkers, who also happen to be burned out.
Working closely with employees, EX designers may incorporate such observations into a persona and create cases or situations in which redesigning employee journeys is most beneficial.
b) Moments worthwhile to employees
Support for staff in positions like nurse practitioner could come in the form of paid holidays, flexibility, well-being assistance, and additional chances for team participation.
EX designers can define moments that matter to their employees once they have created personas in close collaboration with the employees themselves.
These moments in an employee’s service life are pivot points. And if thoughtfully planned, they can significantly improve the experience. Additionally, they also help identify problems that can also be solved through them.
What matters to employees will differ depending on the company, but in the majority of organizations, they also fall into the same, broadly common set of employee journeys.
Companies can utilize surveys or other data to find strategies that would allow employees to collect safely more frequently since people who have been working remotely for more than a year may have been feeling isolated ever since.
Employees may worry that they are wasting opportunities for job progress if they haven’t been in the office, for instance.
And companies can respond by increasing the frequency of interactions between employees and their managers and setting up a chat channel to inform staff members of new opportunities across the entire organization.
Depending on personas and the environment of the company, journeys and moments worthy to employees, in specific, differ greatly. Therefore, it is essential to collaborate with employees to pinpoint these instances and the associated pain areas.
Employee participation in persona definition strengthens, what you call, the ‘human touch’ components of the job and contributes to significant impact.
Using focused design sessions and prototyping in a specific industry or function for quick feedback and adjustment, colleagues who have had these experiences can help create prototype solutions.
Taking into account how technology and tools are fundamentally altering what work means to people is an important aspect of building these prototype solutions.
Virtual focus groups, quick prototyping, and digital portals in place of paper filing are all strategies that let individuals concentrate on more interesting work tasks.
Then, to measure impact and promote continuous development, businesses might develop a set of KPIs to evaluate and track customer happiness over time.
Excellence in employee experience can also be distinguished from good intentions by a dedication to fact-based analysis.
You may enhance EX digitally using the relevant technological capabilities.
In this regard, the key events that affect performance and satisfaction can be prioritized, and behavioral employee avatars can also be established.
Employees may be directed and encouraged in real-time as they go through annual performance reviews, significant position changes, or other life events using context-specific personalization.
In addition to using digital tools, including a virtual avatar, to provide real-time, individualized feedback to employees, your company may also employ virtual reality to heighten empathy during yearly performance assessments.
3) Get the entire organization ready for an EX change
The last phase is to put tools in place that enable the business to grow EX, which can happen through better measurement, data, and systems after identifying personas and moments that matter.
Although HR is a key partner in this, managers and employees are given the skills and resources they need to alter their experience. And organizations can evaluate the financial impact of operating model changes by linking them to company performance.
What to conclude?
Any company, regardless of industry or location, can develop a unique EX strategy by first identifying its objectives and how EX contributes to the company’s commercial effect.
You should also avoid taking a hard and fast approach to employee experiences by combining thorough analytics with personalization, creating the right personas, and emphasizing the moments that matter and resonate with the workforce.
Successful EX also maintains a balance between top-down direction and allowing people to shape their own futures in addition to these essentials.
Remember that everyone is on board, including a combination made up of the departments of accounting, administration, and information technology, among others. And these teams have been involved in transition management and execution from the beginning.
Finally, data is the foundation of how organizations continuously assess the impact and adjust their course as necessary.
People are deliberating carefully about why and where they work now more than ever. So, it is not supposed for the best employee experience to become yet another organizational procedure.
Employee experience entails identifying critical moments in an employee’s journey and enhancing them with positivity, fulfillment, and even joy. By doing this, businesses may draw in the best talent, push employees to succeed, and strengthen employee loyalty.
In turn, inevitably, a productive EX culture is developed that fosters growth and competitive advantages.
To conclude, it’s past time to pay more attention to the workforce. Businesses can take advantage of this opportunity to do and be more for their employees as well as for their stakeholders and customers.
Using BRAVO for Employee Experience
BRAVO is a platform for employee rewards and recognition.
However, it has such a broad range of capabilities that it greatly improves your employee experience program. Additionally, it provides support for the long-term growth of your employee experience plan.
Its main purpose is to reward the employee for their hard work and keep them in the proper direction. But utilizing it also results in increased staff satisfaction, pleasure, and productivity, all of which eventually support your EX strategy.
A robust approach to the employee experience can be developed by keeping in mind that aspects like work motivation, employee satisfaction, and engagement are all crucial to developing a better employee experience.
To conclude, BRAVO will surely help you improve your employee experience program by recognizing and appreciating the effort and contribution of your workforce.
To learn more about this, you can schedule a free demo for any time and day that works for you.
