Employee Experience FAQs
With the hybrid workplace being the new norm, making sure people have good employee experiences is even more important.
Here’s a breakdown of frequently asked questions about what employee experience means and what you can do help retain your best workers.
What does employee experience really mean?
From the moment you receive a cv from a potential employee, right through to ensuring long-term employees are cared for, the employee experience journey has begun. Ensuring the wellbeing of employees, including their job role, work environment and who they report to are positive. Not everyone can be happy all the time, but if you are aware of any short comings, it’s easier to fix them.
“The employee experience is the journey an employee takes with your organization. It includes every interaction that happens along the employee life cycle, plus the experiences that involve an employee's role, workspace, manager and wellbeing.”
Gallup
The difference between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement
Employee experience is how the base level is organized and employee engagement is how well the base line experience succeeds. The employee experience is like an outer shell from start to finish and employee engagement is what happens inside that shell. Are you producing pearls? Or are you creating rotten oysters with your employee experiences?
How can I improve the employee experience in my workplace?
Creating great employee experiences starts before you even hire a new employee. To begin with it’s a good idea to look at your hiring process, onboarding mechanisms and the continued employee success programs.
What are potential employees thinking when they take a look at your company? Perhaps even more importantly, what are your current employees thinking in relation to the employee experience within your company?
Employee retention is by far the better route to take and ensuring your current workers are satisfied, content and are given opportunities for growth is much easier than finding new people to take their place.
But we don’t have an employee success program?
There are basic principles you can put to use when planning your employee experience strategy.
Employee experience planning guide
| Listen | Conversations and research |
| Review | Analyze and plan |
| Commit | Actions speak louder than words |
| Measure | Analyze and report |
| Repeat | Regular check-ins and adjustments |
Tips to create memorable employee experiences
Listen to your employees and Managers
Make sure communication channels are open and are being used
Provide support on an emotional level and a workplace level
Make sure the leadership team is in sync with regular employees
Find ways to instill trust from leadership downwards
Provide two-way feedback opportunities
Make sure employees feel they are needed and that the work they do is important
Hold team building activities
Provide opportunities for employees to socialize, for example a drinks night or a dinner in a nice restaurant. It’s important not to skimp on these events, so employees feel valued. It is better to hold social events every two months and do them well, than have cheap events every week.
Never forget that happy employees can help grow your business, as they can become advocates for your company. Spreading the good word through their personal branding.
Provide workshops for employees to help them improve. A great way to do this is by holding personal branding workshops, so they can improve their reach on social media. LiveTiles held one such workshop with resounding success. We noticed an increase in employee engagement on our social platforms and grew our social following after holding the workshops
There are many templates you can find online to formulate a success program. Or you can use software that is integrated with your digital workplace to automate the process.
An integral part of creating a great employee experience is asking employees how they are going not only at work but at home.
State your company values clearly before you even start looking for potential employees
By sharing your company values loud and clear, people will know a little more about the kind of company they might be working for. It also helps to remind longer term employees who they are working for and what is expected of them.
Having your company evaluated on external human resources sites, is a great way for potential employees and current employees to get a feel for the culture within a company.
It is important that people are living your company values on a daily basis. Having a disconnect with your values and the people you have employed is a sure fire way to lose talent within your company.
If you have employees that you feel are not living your company values, it is important to think about ways and hold conversations to see how that can be improved.
Assign internal cultural ambassadors within your company
Find people who are passionate about your company and give them a voice. A thriving company culture will help with employee retention and make sure the right people are working not only together but increase the overall company goals at the same time.
It can be a voluntary position or one that is included within your HR department. If you can’t find anyone, or are not sure about how to proceed, it is possible to hire an external provider who specializes in corporate events and employee experiences.
Holding internal events that are fun but also enable your employees to share their knowledge is a great way to improve workplace wellbeing. It can also put a jovial spin on more serious topics by opening up a dialogue between employees who might not get to talk to each other on a daily basis.
Get your company listed on employee satisfaction platforms
You can start by creating a profile or asking employees to create profiles on the various employee satisfaction platforms found online. This not only helps new potential employees gauge whether they would be a good fit for your company, but is a great exercise in PR.
Get your onboarding up to scratch
Onboarding goes for new employees and those that have been there for a while. New processes and team members often mean processes are changed. are sure existing employees know what’s happening within the business and how things would like to be handled. For new employees, a simple welcome gift and introduction to the team, works wonders for morale.
Having someone from your HR department or culture committee send a welcome email, letting them know about upcoming events and giving them a contact person, is another great way to help with onboarding.
Create a platform where people can give and receive feedback
Using a digital platform that employees can access to give and receive feedback, enables an open communication channel. You can make it anonymous or note the employees name for reference. It is important that the feedback channel is open and non-judgmental, to make sure employees will actually use it.
From apps, to online surveys to in-person meetings, giving and receiving feedback is paramount to company success. Quite often, yearly reviews are on-sided and can be quite a stressful experience for employees. Holding regular meetings to discuss roles and responsibilities can benefit both employees and managers in the long term.
It can also show gaps in how management is handling the wellbeing of employees. Having someone from HR involved in the meetings can add an extra care layer and keep HR abreast of what is happening. It also gives HR an opportunity to meet and greet employees and see the true management style of those involved.
Holding monthly or bi-weekly meetings with employees to see how they are feeling and if there is anything that can be done to improve their work environment, what jobs they are doing and ask them generally how they are feeling. You could also reach out to employees who are isolated, or whom you get on well with, saying a quick hello and that you’re thinking of them.
Create an employee experience checklist
To get started, create a simple employee experience checklist that you can run through to make sure you’re creating experiences that employees actually benefit from.
Afterwards, you can build on your employee experience strategy.
Good luck and reach out if you’d like to know more about how you can create a winning employee strategy.
