Gone are the days of businesses not focusing on their turnover or trying to keep their good employees onside. Now, to retain the best talent, organizations have to step up to the plate and give their staff more than just a job. The focus is on employee experience more than ever before, particularly in the world of work-from-anywhere, as the digital workplace becomes the only workplace.
Employee experience is not a new term, and in the wake of a pandemic, it has become a major buzzword. While it may be getting a lot of traction, what does the phrase actually mean? Employee experience can be defined as the following:
"Employee experience encompasses all the interactions people have with the business in both the digital and physical workplace. From the first moment as a new hire to the transition to offboarding, the employee experience encapsulates everything, including day-to-day interactions with colleagues. The impact is the difference between employees wanting to work and needing to work."
Although it might feel like this concept came out of nowhere, employee experience has been an evolving theme for quite some time. According to author and futurist Jacob Morgan, there are four chapters in the development of employee experience.
#1. Utility
Decades ago, it was all about utility. Companies had jobs that needed to be done and people had bills they needed to pay, so they tried to fill those vacancies. Employees were given only the essential tools and resources that they needed to get their jobs done, and relationships were purely transactional.
#2. Productivity
Over time, savvy employers began to shift their approach to prioritize productivity. Everything was geared around improving output with very little thought given to making the workplace somewhere employees wanted to be. Managers started to care about the quality of workplace resources because they realized it could help them yield better results.
#3. Engagement
Off the back of this idea came the engagement stage. Organizations concentrated their attention on finding out what their employees cared about and how and why they work. They started shifting some of the focus away from their bottom-line pay-offs, and instead began considering what their organization could do to benefit their employees.
#4. Experience
As the final stage in this evolution, employee experience goes one step further. It is about creating a company that people want to work for. Experiential enterprises create an environment where people genuinely want to show up and contribute to their company’s success. Enterprises can only become experiential if they take the time to understand what their employees want and need.
There’s no doubt we’ve arrived at the age of employee experience. Every company touts their one-of-a-kind culture and compelling workplace environment. But what does it take to earn the “experiential” title?
Contrary to common belief, it’s not just about workplace perks or unlimited vacation days. Instead, the key to improving employee experience is listening to your workforce and creating an environment and culture that will unite and inspire.
Jacob Morgan notes that employee experience comes down to three components: physical, technological, and cultural. Based on an analysis of more than 250 global organizations, just 6% are creating employee experiences that address each of Morgan’s categories
The rise in remote work will of course impact the physical element of employee experience. However, experiential enterprises won’t overlook this component of their employee experience now that telecommuting has gone mainstream. Instead, these employers will leverage technological advancements and lean into their compelling cultures to ensure employees feel connected and supported, regardless of their physical location.
It’s not a coincidence that so many esteemed CEOs and thought leaders are emphasizing the value of employee experience. Particularly as enterprises refine their strategy to thrive in the new world of work, the employee experience has become a top priority. Experiential organizations benefit from engaged employees who will give their all, regardless of where they are based and the obstacles they may encounter. Some of the core benefits associated with improving employee experience include:
When your employees are happy and engaged, your consumers will take note. Inspired employees will go the extra mile to deliver unparalleled customer service and have the knowledge needed to answer any question that comes their way. The enterprises that invest most heavily in employee experience are twice as likely to be found in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Put simply, happy staff leads to happy customers.
Ultimately, good employee experience = more money. When your workforce is comprised of employees who are motivated and engaged, you can expect output levels and performance to skyrocket. Simultaneously, your organization will save on the costs associated with voluntary resignations because your employees will want to continue their journey with your enterprise. As a result, companies that invest in EX outperform those that don’t by 2x in terms of average profit.
Improve retention
In the US, businesses lose more than $1trillion annually to voluntary resignations. Sidestep the crippling effects of high turnover by ensuring your employees are truly happy. Not only can the costs of hiring, onboarding, and further training wreak havoc on your bottom line; they can also detract from your culture. Engaged employees are 87% less likely to resign than their counterparts working at organizations that aren’t experiential.
Take innovation to the next level
Engaged employees are your company’s most valuable assets. When you give your employees the tools they need to reach peak performance and create a culture that empowers everyone, you can expect next-level innovation to follow. In fact, the heaviest investors in EX are 28x more often listed among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies.
Attract top tier talent
Regardless of your size or sector, attracting top talent is a necessity. More than ever, companies are competing against each other to attract the best talent, and the battle is often won by whoever can offer the best employee experience. The enterprises that invest most heavily in employee experience are 4.4x more likely to be included in LinkedIn’s list of North America’s Most In-Demand Employers.
As the world of work rapidly changes, so do your employees’ needs and expectations. In the work-from-anywhere era, lavish office spaces and corporate happy hours just won't cut it anymore. Instead, the quality of your employees’ day-to-day experience depends on their satisfaction with workplace technology and their connection to your culture.
From catching up with colleagues to collaborating with third-party partners, virtually every interaction your employees have is powered by digital tools. As the center of your digital workplace, your employee experience platform holds the key to creating a single pane of glass experience that will improve both employee satisfaction and productivity. You can leverage your intranet to enhance employee experience by considering the following steps:
Achieve peak productivity
Your employees want digital tools that will take their work to the next level. More than a third of workers note that their greatest motivator for adopting new technology is the promise of improved output levels. An intranet with a robust integrations framework makes it easy to bring separate systems together into one, intuitive user experience. This single pane of glass view to the digital ecosystem eliminates the need for constant platform switching, empowering your employees to reach peak productivity.
Encourage users to speak up
If you want to encourage your employees to start speaking their minds and sharing their insights, look no further than your EXP. Prioritizing employee feedback is key to enhancing workplace experience and your intranet’s two-way comms channels serve as an ideal medium. Start by leveraging your intranet to launch pulse surveys that measure employee sentiment. Take feedback efforts one step further with discussion forums and suggestion boxes that will amplify voices from across your organization.
Recreate the office water cooler
With office happy hours and traditional team-building activities on hold, your employees are looking for new ways to connect with their colleagues. By taking advantage of social networking capabilities, your employee experience platform can fulfill the role that your office water cooler once played. @mentioning, #hashtags, and commenting will encourage your users to build relationships with their coworkers across the globe.
Launch impactful initiatives
Now that you know your employees prioritize purpose, what can you do to make sure their work feels meaningful? Your EXP can serve as the launchpad for corporate giveback schemes and volunteer initiatives that will unite your workforce around a common cause. Build buzz and drive participation by announcing upcoming events and highlighting different opportunities for employees to get involved and make an impact. Use social networking capabilities to spark conversations about what your organization stands for and how you can continue to serve your community.
Give employees the recognition they deserve
Everyone is eager to be recognized for a job well done, yet only 1 in 3 employees note that they have received praise during the last week. Since in-office celebrations may not be feasible, recognition efforts need a revamp to resonate in the work-from-home age. Turn to your EXP to launch a recognition scheme that will highlight your organization’s difference makers. Award badges and kudos for employees who embody your organization’s values and create a series of blogs to recognize internal ambassadors.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to remote work revealed big gaps in many organizations' digital offerings. As leaders look to the future, a new generation of employee engagement technology is poised to play a crucial role in connecting dispersed workforces and strengthening corporate culture.
Employee experience platforms, or EXPs, have emerged as an evolution of the intranet that takes the principles of a communications platform and builds on them to tackle a broader array of employee experience challenges.
"At its core, an employee experience platform (or EXP) is a software platform that lets you treat your employees like customers. In the same way that your business leverages every advancement in technology to connect with your customers, an EXP engages your employees and enables them to be more effective in their job with advanced communications, networking, and knowledge-sharing experiences."
As this technology becomes more prevalent, some may wonder exactly what sets an EXP apart from a traditional intranet. Although their development has been a natural progression, EXPs are characterized by several innovations that promise to enhance engagement in the digital age. These defining features include:
#1. Consumer-grade communications experiences
EXPs recreate the kind of targeted communications that many employees have grown accustomed to in their personal lives. Instead of mass messaging, your EXP provides a user experience that is highly targeted, relevant, and incorporates a diverse array of media and touchpoints to deliver updates that are consistent and engaging.
#2. Social experiences built around connection
While social experiences are far from new to the intranet space, the EXP takes surface-level 'liking' and commenting one step further. Your EXP recreates the natural ideas exchange that would have traditionally taken place in the office, transposing it into a digital location where your people can use technology to advance their capabilities.
Your employees will also have the opportunity to build their own digital identity by leveraging your EXP. Through rich-user profiles and responsive people directories, employees can begin to develop digital networks and internal communities that cross physical borders.
#3. Centralizing knowledge with integrated search
Your users now expect a Google-like experience from every app and website they interact with. An EXP delivers on your employees' expectations for relevant knowledge on-demand by providing a sophisticated search experience that is easy to use and connects to all of your knowledge repositories, creating a single source of truth. To do this effectively, your EXP must integrate with the many other systems you use to store and manage information, from SharePoint to Salesforce.
#4. Single pane of glass experiences
As the digital landscape becomes more complex, your workers don't have time to waste locating and accessing disparate tools. Instead of constant platform-switching, your EXP provides a single pane of glass experience to maximize both user satisfaction and efficiency. To achieve this vision of a single entry to all of your business systems, it's crucial that your chosen EXP has an integrations framework that allows it to interact with your wider digital toolset.
#5. Limitless accessibility
At its most basic level, your EXP is meant to unite every employee in a single, shared digital space. Therefore, it must work as well for frontline workers accessing from a mobile app as it is for your desk-based users. Your EXP should be mobile responsive and enable consistent digital experiences across any device to engage and unite your entire workforce.
Employee experience will be the differentiating factor that sets tomorrow’s leading enterprises apart. If you’re hoping to leverage next-generation technology to take employee experience to the next level, check out our guides or get in touch with our digital workplace experts for more information on how an employee experience intranet platform can underpin a superior engagement strategy.
Reinvent your intranet for the employee experience era.
