Employee experience is the sum of all the interactions that happen during the employee lifecycle. An employee’s role, work environment, workplace culture, leaders, and how their leaders demonstrate a commitment to their growth, success, and well-being are all part of the employee experience journey.
When an organization provides a positive employee experience, they see improvements in customer satisfaction, greater innovation, and 25% higher profits than organizations that do not provide a positive employee experience.
As we continue to learn more about the significant role employee experience plays in the long-term success of organizations and how it impacts a number of factors, from recruitment to retention, organizations are starting to pay more attention to how they manage the employee experience.
What we are learning is that to achieve the positive business outcomes we seek and to ensure we are providing the necessary working conditions for our teams to achieve these outcomes, we have to find ways to increase the positive influences on the employee experience.
There are many different strategies organizations can pursue that can improve the employee experience. Putting the ping-pong tables, snacks, on-site gyms, and other perks aside, let’s focus on a few that can be real game changers in any organization.
To increase the employee experience and enhance it in positive ways, leaders should focus on the following strategies:
- Maintain effective communication
- Create a feedback system
- Offer flexibility
- Provide opportunities for growth
- Foster a positive work environment
This article will look at strategies organizations can implement to increase and boost the employee experience.
1. Maintain Effective Communication
Effective communication can have a powerful impact on employee experience because it plays such an essential role in trust-building, supports transparency, and helps leaders both better understand employee needs and communicate goals to employees.
Leaders communicate information about the company’s culture, clearly articulating and modeling the organization’s core values, mission, and vision. Communicative leaders build consensus around a shared vision and inspire their teams to work according to this shared vision.
Because of this, leaders set the tone for strong communication by being approachable and open to suggestions. Clearly communicating goals, objectives, and expectations provides the clarity all employees need to do their jobs well and with self-confidence.
For communication to be most effective it should be honest and respectful. It should also be a two-way street. Leaders should be skilled at receiving communications from employees and responding to them in a timely manner, and in a way that makes them feel truly heard.
2. Create a Feedback System
Feedback is crucial for positively shaping the employee experience. It is a central component of effective communication and supports open, supportive, and trusting working relationships between leaders and employees, provides clarity on short- and long-term goals, and shows employees that leadership is invested in their growth.
Good feedback is constructive, compassionate, specific, focused, timely, and presented in a positive tone. When done well, good feedback provides an actionable and solutions-oriented framework that guides employees toward desired behaviors.
For feedback to be effective, whether it’s a critique or praise of an employee’s contribution, it should specifically tie into a larger overall goal, rather than being generic, and should outline a course of action.
Employees can benefit greatly from frequent feedback from their leaders. They can also provide useful feedback to leadership. Establishing a culture of feedback in your organization can lead to greater employee satisfaction and an improvement mindset, both of which contribute to a positive employee experience.
3. Offer Flexibility
Flexibility has many benefits in the workplace, including a good work/life balance, more creativity, better customer service, and improved loyalty. For many of today’s workers, flexibility is a must-have for a positive employee experience.
Flexibility became increasingly important over the course of the pandemic. Lack of flexibility was one of the drivers of The Great Resignation. Flexibility is an essential leadership skill, now more than ever. Leaders who know how to be flexible with their employees and offer them flexibility to improve their employee experience will have a considerable advantage over leaders who don’t.
As commutes have grown longer and remote and hybrid work options have become not only more popular but more doable, offering your employees more flexibility in their work schedules, like providing a remote option and giving your employees the tools to work with more autonomy are great ways to help employees meet their needs and improve their well-being.
This can work out well for both employers and employees. By giving workers the autonomy and flexibility they need to thrive in both their personal and professional lives, you are forging strong, trust-based relationships with your employees and, at the same time, encouraging employees to be accountable and take ownership of their roles.
4. Provide Opportunities for Growth
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that a lack of opportunities for advancement was among the top reasons US workers quit their jobs last year. The survey also found that those who quit and are now employed elsewhere are more likely than not to say their current job has more opportunities for advancement.
To feel motivated in their roles, employees need to be able to grow and develop their skills, build new knowledge, and see a clear path to advancement. Growth can help employees feel more confident in their abilities, more committed to the vision, and more engaged with their work.
To keep employees motivated to perform well and committed enough to the organization to stay, you have to demonstrate that you are committed enough to them to invest in them. Creating a clear path to growth, development, and advancement for employees shows employees that you want them to succeed. When they feel that you care about and encourage their growth and give them the means to grow, it can do wonders for motivation and performance.
In-person and online training, cross-training, tuition reimbursement, professional organization participation, and career pathing are just a few ways leaders can help their team members grow and support a positive employee experience.
5. Foster a Positive Work Environment
Maintaining a positive work environment that is conducive to collaboration is crucial for preventing cultures from turning toxic and for creating a positive employee experience.
Toxic situations can involve harassment, microaggressions, unequal treatment of employees, or behaviors from senior management that devalue others and make them feel expendable. Toxic employees can submarine their co-workers, sabotage projects, hinder teamwork, drive top performers away, and poison culture.
Top leadership can ensure organizational culture stays true to a company’s mission, vision, and values by addressing toxic situations as soon as they arise so they don’t impact morale or cause irreparable damage to the positive culture leaders and their teams have worked to create.
Confronting and addressing issues effectively keeps working environments harmonious and helps leaders build trust with team members, so don’t shy away from dealing with conflict when it arises.
Matt Tenney has been working to help organizations develop leaders who improve employee engagement and performance since 2012. He is the author of three leadership books, including the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed book Inspire Greatness: How to Motivate Employees with a Simple, Repeatable, Scalable Process.
Matt’s ideas have been featured in major media outlets and his clients include numerous national associations and Fortune 500 companies.
He is often invited to deliver keynote speeches at conferences and leadership meetings, and is known for delivering valuable, actionable insights in a way that is memorable and deeply inspiring.
