Defining Employee Experience
Every employee wants to have a great day at work. Generally, they all want to belong to a company where they can be themselves and contribute to the company's overall strategy and success.
An essential but often overlooked question for a business is, how can they provide the best employee experience?
There is no standard definition of ‘Employee Experience’. Just as there is no one way to run a business, there is no blueprint for creating a culture, building a team, or the success of a business, but there are guides that highlight best practices or previous successful transformation projects.
Despite all the uncertainty around the definition of employee experience, organisations and business leaders want to create the best experience for their employees and lead that experience in practice.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted ways of working, and businesses have had to react quickly. Organisations have had to be open to change and adopt new practices. These circumstances have supercharged existing topics of conversation and highlight areas such as productivity, work-life balance, engagement and wellbeing. These are also essential factors to consider in the overall employee experience.
How people express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally reflects how they are as an individual. How they demonstrate these behaviours in the working environment and interact with their role can make them either ideal employees or inhibitors to the business. With this in mind, business leaders should be aware that how the business presents itself to the individual employee during any interaction will affect any subsequent positive or negative engagement from their employees.
Employee experience goes beyond motivation and simple job satisfaction. Employees who have good quality jobs, great work environments, and are managed well will not only be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. They are also more likely to demonstrate higher productivity, build better products or services, and show greater levels of innovation.
This is nothing new and certainly not rocket science in the world of business. The mutual gains view of motivation and people management lies at the heart of employee experience, which has become increasingly mainstream in management thinking.
Having a positive employee experience is evidently good for workers and great for businesses. For employees, it is having their needs and wants to be fulfilled on a social and psychological level. For organisations, if these employee needs are fulfilled, there are transparent positive relationships between employee experience and other business metrics such as customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, staff retention efficiency and health and safety performance.
Assessing and Measuring Employee Experience
Gathering employee data traditionally through surveys can show what drives or hinders commitment or motivation. A businesses pathway to employee engagement maturity will vary in action and length, from start to end. This will be different from one business to another; therefore, the earlier statement about why employee experience varies between businesses is true.
Many medium-sized and large businesses conduct regular employee surveys to assess the employee experience in the workplace. It is essential that employers give their employees psychological safety through influential channels to voice their concerns and aspirations and that employers listen carefully to their responses.
Over the last decade, a growing focus on employee experience has been key in getting progressive people management practices onto organisations agendas. It has become part of management practice, aligned to measured, strategic targets and which shows progression within an organisation.
With the digital age of today being more prevalent than ever due to advances in communication, collaboration, and efficiencies of productivity, businesses need to understand how workplace technology can positively impact people management, working relationships, and the overall culture of the organisation.
The tools now entering the market are there to support organisations in navigating the field of employee experience. One such tool now available is Microsoft Viva. This is connecting businesses in new, more intelligent ways.
The intrinsic relationship of workplace technology and employee experience can be leveraged to improve productivity, job quality, connections across the business, and developing staff and well-being, creating a great place to work.
For further information on the employee experience, and how CPS can support you on this journey, contact us today
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