In today’s competitive recruitment landscape, organizations need to level up their employee experience strategy in order to keep the team members they have and attract new candidates. Employees want more. More engagement, more opportunities to learn and grow, increased transparency, and killer benefits. If your employees are your best asset, then you need to prioritize an improved employee experience.
You might be surprised to hear that the employee experience applies to nearly every aspect of your business – from your culture and physical work environment to the benefits and tools you offer. It’s also linked to your revenue. Companies with high employee engagement pull in 2.5 times more revenue than companies with low engagement levels.
If you’re looking to improve talent acquisition and employee retention while increasing revenue, the following tips will certainly get you much closer to providing an awesome employee experience for your team.
Be transparent
In order to fully trust in leadership, your employees need to know your organization’s mission and purpose. But transparency doesn’t end there. Your team wants to be let in on what’s happening strategically too. They want to share in company success, better understand failures and see the opportunities for growth.
Communication from senior leadership should always be as honest as possible. When transparency is effective it creates an open and honest culture that benefits everyone. Employee productivity goes up and communication breakdowns are avoided.
By sharing important information with your employees you show you trust them, it makes them feel included and motivates teams to do great work.
Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion
There are countless reasons why a dedicated DEI program is integral to your organization. DEI enhances employee belonging and engagement and fosters creativity and innovation. These factors ultimately drive improved business outcomes, including revenue growth and improved profitability.
As an employer, it’s on you to provide a workplace culture that demonstrates you value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). That means creating core values at the top and incorporating them into the fabric of your business. Diversity and inclusion should be reflected in your brand and all your recruiting materials.
To ensure your workforce experiences the many benefits that come with diversity, develop and implement a DEI strategy that focuses on talent attraction, unbiased hiring practices, development, and retention.
Prioritize communication
The key to improving your relationship with your employees is the same as in most relationships – good communication matters.
To improve communication with your teams, make sure you’re offering an easy-to-use communication platform, like Microsoft Teams or Slack. These platforms help to organize conversations into channels, where everyone can come together to share ideas, make decisions and move work forward. It helps teams operate faster and stay in sync. It’s also a great way to celebrate wins and highlight achievements.
Another effective way to align and engage your employees is through town halls. Also known as all-hands meetings, town halls bring together an entire company to discuss important topics and align everyone to a common north star. The more frequent the better.
Invest in employee wellness
Your benefits package and perks can be the difference between keeping great talent or losing out to your competitors. The needs and wants of today’s workforce have changed. People want flexibility and programs that support their physical, financial, mental, and emotional wellness.
And you should want these benefits for your team too. Employees who feel their best are more productive at work. If you’re looking to improve the total package, you’ll want to review your health and wellness programs, paid sick time, paid time off, flex days, working hours, parental leave programs, RRSP matching, and more.
Collect feedback
The best way to know what your employees need from you is to ask them, and then to listen when they respond. There are many tools to help you capture continuous employee feedback like surveys and performance management programs. Frequent check-ins will help you to understand what employees like about your organization, while also highlighting areas that need improvement from an employee perspective.
To receive honest feedback, it’s important to ensure a culture of open communication exists within your organization. If your employees are feeling guarded, they’re not likely to communicate honestly with you.
It’s also important to focus on employee experience every step of the way. From hiring to departures, each interaction should be viewed as an opportunity for feedback and conversation.
A few questions to ask throughout the employee life cycle include: Does our hiring process feel fair? Is the onboarding experience valuable? Do you feel there are opportunities for you to grow? How would you describe your experience with the company? The answers you receive will give you a clearer picture of your overall employee experience and can help to identify where there’s room for improvement.
Make work more meaningful
It’s not uncommon for employees to feel like the work they do doesn’t have much meaning. It’s up to leadership to help them find a sense of purpose.
One way to add meaning is to encourage autonomy. When you empower your employees, you give them the opportunity to shape their work and working style into methods that work best for them. Doing away with micromanaging and fast-paced deadlines gives individuals an opportunity to perform thoroughly and thoughtfully, leading to a true sense of ownership over their contributions.
Another way to inspire your team is through the creation of smaller teams. Working in smaller, more independent teams allows your employees to set realistic, achievable goals and a chance to seek help from peers as needed – all while fostering a culture of camaraderie.
Create a flexible work environment
The where and the how we work have evolved over the past few years. That’s why it makes sense for organizations to make the full transition to a flexible work environment mindset.
A flexible work environment allows employees to work in their preferred environment during their preferred hours. This kind of job flexibility has been proven to increase productivity, health, and job satisfaction while decreasing stress, costs, and absenteeism.
Offer supportive leadership
Great managers make employees feel supported. Part of their role is setting clear and achievable goals for their team and for the organization. This transparency ensures all team members feel like they have a role to play and that no one is left in the dark when big-picture decisions are made.
A supportive manager is also a good coach. Through frequent conversations and feedback, managers can help employees build their confidence and help guide them closer to their goals.
If improving the employee experience is a goal your organization is working towards, it’s important to invest in the right development tools and programs for your management team.
Offer growth opportunities
Growth and development opportunities keep employees happier, healthier, and committed to their work. When it comes to providing opportunities for growth and development within your organization ask for input from your employee and provide them with ideas and opportunities to create personalized plans for growth.
Examples of growth opportunities include:
- Salary increases
- Continuing education courses
- Tuition reimbursement
- Opportunities for promotion and internal career advancement
- Coaching, mentoring, and leadership development programs
- Job-specific training
Share client feedback with your team
Many employees feel joy when they help their customers. Sharing customer feedback with your employees can boost employee confidence and give them a greater sense of purpose in their job. Great client feedback should also be shared internally throughout the entire organization. It’s a motivating message that shows the company and its employees are succeeding.
Design a great onboarding experience
A great employee onboarding experience is critical to employee success and retention. According to research by Brandon Hall Group, a strong employee onboarding experience can improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent.
Research shows that employees who have gone through a thorough and thoughtful onboarding process are more engaged, more knowledgeable, and much less likely to leave.
Introduce stay interviews
While exit interviews can serve a purpose, they don’t help you keep an employee that’s about to leave. In today’s heated employment environment, many organizations are starting to conduct stay interviews. These conversations between managers and valued employees help companies understand how employees view their job and the company – before they start looking for other roles.
Stay interviews should be an open dialogue used to build trust and to gather insight into the employee’s current experience. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can identify their motivation for staying with the organization and work towards goals that keep them interested. This technique also enhances internal talent pipelines and provides great insight into global areas for improvement as a company.
Additional reading:
Empower your entire team with easy-to-use tools
From employee self-serve tools to our People Management module, Avanti empowers teams to get work done easily and efficiently. Our integrated platform makes everything from onboarding to schedule changes a snap.
Empower your entire team with easy-to-use tools
From employee self-serve tools to our People Management module, Avanti empowers teams to get work done easily and efficiently. Our integrated platform makes everything from onboarding to schedule changes a snap.
