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Elevating and Energising Employee Experience
Elevating and Energising Employee Experience

January 22, 2022

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The success of a business significantly depends on its workforce. However, to tap into an employee’s potential, it is essential to keep them contented and motivated. Companies nowadays claim to be doing great at elevating the employee experience and investing a hefty amount in enhancing the employee experience; they still struggle to create an effective strategy at improving employee engagement company-wide. The truth is, some tactics work right, and others fail miserably.

There is increased transparency and a growing influence of millennials in today’s digital world, where employees expect an energetic, engaging, and delightful work experience. As a result, organisations need to widen their focus area, thus bringing employee engagement and culture, workplace, HR and management practices on the radar.

The Challenge

A positive and engaging employee experience has emerged as a new factor towards optimised business performance, and HR is refocusing on the efforts to develop employee-focused programs, strategies and teams that work towards improving the employee experience continuously.

There are several reasons behind the growing challenge of an enhanced employee experience which include:

  • Employee experience is still not a priority for HR leaders, which they often try dealing with yearly surveys.
  • While several businesses might have created a C-suite profile for employee experience, they have not considered making a separate team to design and deliver the programs.
  • There is a pushing need to update the digital tools for employee engagement regularly to assist the HR teams and line managers in thoroughly understanding the expectations of the employed talent.
  • Most companies miss an integrated framework to remain focused on multiple disciplines of performance management, health and wellness, leadership and diversity.
  • Siloed HR departments face challenges in acquiring the appropriate resources to address a range of priorities, including management practices and the company work culture.

In short, companies need a modernised approach built on the foundation of work culture and engagement and focuses on the employee experience comprehensively.

 

The Importance of a Holistic Solution

Primarily, HR has considered employee engagement, workplace culture, learning and development, as different programs in silos, with each one having a distinct leader, tools, and solutions to drive the program.

On the other hand, employees perceive everything differently as an integrated experience impacting their daily life- personal and professional, including their overall well-being. Based on how they interact with the employer during the hiring cycle, they start assessing the company and make quick judgments on their life upon joining the organisation. This integrated view leads to the need for a holistic solution, with end-to-end, from recruitment to retirement experience from the employer.

Developing an integrated employee experience requires a combined insight of the HR and business leaders. Interestingly, they might also leverage the expertise of marketing, product development, and sales teams who work along similar paths to design integrated customer experiences. Today, when everything is managed from a handful of smartphone applications, employees expect each element of their employee experience to be accessible and managed through their mobiles.

However, creating such a holistic solution demands sophisticated tools and programs to gather employee feedback consistently. As rightly said, “ you have to know what’s broken before you fix it”, it is essential to develop a process to collect honest feedback without fear of retribution. It is the best way to enhance employee engagement within the company.

Elements of a Successful Employee Experience Strategy and Program

 

  • Engagement and Feedback: Annual surveys need to be replaced with new pulse and trust surveys meant to gather 360-degree feedback embarking on a culture of accountability and transparency.
  • People Analytics: Today, HR professionals need to capture the metrics to understand the employees and how they engage with specific content and tools. The actual value of people analytics lies in empowering data-driven employee management and analysing the relationship between engagement and retention.
  •  Metrics Beyond Traditional Happiness Surveys: Each organisation needs to develop relevant metrics to measure employee happiness beyond regular satisfaction surveys. Undoubtedly, these metrics help optimise the efforts to improve a workplace and reinforce leadership’s focus on these efforts.
  • Employee Wellness: Amidst the ongoing pandemic, it is crucial to maintain a safe work environment, and companies are trying out every possible measure to boost employee well-being and health. Incorporating wellness apps into a company’s benefits program makes it convenient for employees to enroll in medical benefits and take control of their health.
  • Employee Service Platforms: These tools are designed to offer a unified employee experience for daily transactional and service needs such as content management, chatbots, and case management.

While all these elements are separate, an integrated solution brings together HR and technology managers to develop a complete employee experience strategy and program.

 

The Upshot

Today, employee experience is gradually becoming a significant dimension for workforce engagement. For businesses looking to elevate their employee experience, embracing the employee outlook with the help of data and analytics can be the starting point that can further refine insights into areas where actions can prove to be most effective.

Therefore, applying a holistic approach ensures improvement and creates more compelling experiences for employees.

 

Author: Mukesh Batra: Vice President HRIS (MIND)


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