Employee experience management affects your employees’ engagement and productivity levels, paving the way for better performances and reduced turnover. But what exactly is it? And how can you use it?
Table of contents
- What Is an Employee Experience Manager?
- What Does an Employee Experience Manager Do?
- What is Employee Experience Management?
- The Values of Employee Experience Management
- How to Improve Employee Experience Management in Your Organization
- How Technology Enhances Employee Experience Management
- The Bottom Line on Employee Experience Management
It’s not enough to simply give your employees tasks and goals and to monitor their progress. To get the most out of your workforce, you must also ensure that they feel heard.
Nowadays, providing your employees with a great experience at work is just as important as the experience you provide your customers. The key to this is to listen to your employees at every stage of their employment lifecycle.
Creating personalized experiences for your employees can make all the difference between them leaving their job after just a few months or staying at your business for the long run.
With all of this said, employee experience management isn’t an easy term to define or even measure. We will explain precisely what this means for your business and how you can implement it through valuable tips and tools.
What Is an Employee Experience Manager?
In short, an employee experience manager is someone in your company tasked with delivering positive experiences to employees that help raise their engagement levels, workplace productivity, and overall performance.
Employee experience managers are also responsible for developing and implementing an employee rewards program that acknowledges outstanding performance and work anniversaries.
Finally, another job role of an employee experience manager is creating and implementing employee feedback surveys that compile the results and recommendations to management on what to do based on the data.
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What Does an Employee Experience Manager Do?
While employee experience managers address employee-oriented matters such as employee benefits and compensation, they have many other pressing responsibilities. For a start, they are expected to create and maintain a positive culture and atmosphere in the workplace.
Employee experience managers are tasked with addressing employee feedback and developing ways to improve company operations. Onboarding new employees is a typical duty of an employee experience specialist, while they are also expected to develop relevant reward systems to recognize employees’ achievements.
An employee experience specialist’s responsibilities may include creating and maintaining files like performance appraisals, overseeing employee leaves of absence such as FMLA, and assisting with new employee training. Additionally, employee experience managers will collaborate with the company’s internal stakeholders so that organizational policies are effective and correctly carried out.
What is Employee Experience Management?
Employee experience management is a process that actively impacts every aspect of an employee’s experience within the company they work for. This applies to every stage of the employee life cycle, from recruitment and onboarding to career development and employee offboarding.
Those who work in HR and IT usually play a vital part in their company’s employee experience management. They will work to create a positive experience for their employees, similar to how businesses try to create positive customer experiences.
Multiple factors can contribute to whether an employee’s experience is positive or negative. Typical elements include how their performance reviews are conducted, how their managers interact with them daily, and how technology is integrated into their daily operations.
The Values of Employee Experience Management
“Employee experience is an emerging space, and many organizations have only recently started using tools like HR analytics,” Josh Blumenfeld, an Employee Experience Expert at Espresa, Inc., said.
“Another challenge—which I think most employee experience professionals face—is helping financial decision-makers understand the business benefits of investing in these types of programs and tools,” he continued.
So, what is the value of employee experience management for your company?
For a start, organizations are struggling more and more to attract and retain talented employees. But well-prepared employee experience management can have huge business outcomes in the long term.
Even before an employee joins your company, they are checking what previous employees have said about what it’s like to work for you on job search websites and company reviews. This signifies the potential beginning of that employee’s experience.
Proper employee experience management can positively impact your business in various ways. These include:
- A boost in performance: If an employee feels connected at their company, enjoys their day-to-day, and feels engaged, then they will be more productive and generate better results through their work.
- Reduced turnover: Employee experience management helps to increase employee engagement. According to studies, engaged employees are 87% less likely to quit their jobs, reducing training and recruiting costs.
- Aligns all employees: If done right, employee experience management can help put all employees on the same page and provide them with clarity on your business goals.
How to Improve Employee Experience Management in Your Organization
Employee experience isn’t about just one single thing. Instead, it is about looking at the bigger picture, the combination of various factors over time that results in the overall experience our employees are experiencing (and remembering for years to come).
Consider the Full Employee Journey
Employee experience management can be broken down into five key stages, depending on which part of the employee’s lifecycle they are at.
- Recruitment: There are many important questions when hiring the right employee. How long does it take to fill a specific position? How much does it cost? Are your job ads attractive enough? Was your interview process convincing enough for the strongest candidates?
- Onboarding: Once the employee is hired, you need to provide them with all of the processes, skills, and tools they need to get up to speed. Onboarding should take the hire’s initial interest and help them develop a big picture, long-term appreciation for the brand they are servicing.
- Development: In the employment stage with the longest timeframe, employers want to see their employees develop and contribute in new ways to the business as time goes on. Are they integrating well into the team? Are they developing new skills? Can they get jobs done independently? Could they get promoted into roles with greater responsibilities?
- Retention: Hiring and training the right employees is one thing – but are you doing everything you can to keep them long-term? With a well-organized retention strategy, employees can continue to stay engaged, hungry, and grow in performance. After all, it can cost between 50%-60% of an employee’s salary just to replace them.
- Departure: There are many reasons an employee might need to leave your company. Maybe they are ready to retire, relocate, or simply start a new challenge. Whatever the case, every employee departure should help you evaluate your employee experience management and help you improve it for future hires. It’s essential to take note of employees’ reasons for leaving in their exit interviews.
Nurture the Employee-Employer Relationship
While many factors affect employee experience management, the employee-employer relationship is the most comprehensive, complex, and connected factor regarding employee morale, happiness, and productivity.
There are many things that the manager can do to nurture the employee relationship and experience and many ways in which employee experience management can help their team to better nurture a relationship:
- Frequent feedback between the employee and employer is crucial in both directions.
- Give managers tools, guidelines, and aids on how and when to interact with their teams.
- Be clear on the job role and goals the employee must meet.
- Offer “psychological safety” – encourage your employees to be open and to discuss mistakes made so that lessons can be learned and actions can be taken.
- Offer training and development to drive employee engagement and strong workplace culture.
- Prioritize and discuss mental wellness.
- Work on helping employees and management overcome negativity in the workplace.
Empower and Recognize Your Employees
Empowered employees will do more for your company and will stick around longer. According to a study, 37% of employees said that they’d be more encouraged to produce better work if they were receiving an appropriate amount of recognition and empowerment.
Empowerment of employees is not about checking the box; it’s about continuous effort. Recognizing them and creating opportunities can be extremely meaningful for them. What kind of employee empowerment can you offer? And if you have deskless employees, focus on their engagement with these creative, simple tips.
Continuous Healthy Communications
Like any relationship, the organizational relationship with the employees relies heavily on employee communication. Management’s communication to frontline employees, communication among peers, communication from HQ to the field, etc. Make sure you have healthy practices to overcome communication problems and tools to facilitate healthy relationships with your teams and to give them a positive experience.
How Technology Enhances Employee Experience Management
Technology is a powerful tool. When it comes to shaping the employee experience, it can prove to be an essential part of the employee’s journey. From the moment we join the company and through our day-to-day, technology is always there by our side. And the better our technological experience is, the more positive the overall employee experience will be.
So, how can technology enhance employee experience management?
Improve Communication
Most of us use emails and phone calls daily, but this is just one form of communication. With the right communication tools, we can make it easy (and sometimes even fun) for our teams to stay aligned, deal with uncertainties, and just feel part of the organization by leveraging technology for efficient and engaging communication.
Make sure you can reach every single employee in your organization, the existing methods and tools support two-sided communication, and that you build your cultural communication practices in alignment with your technological tools.
Providing a Tailored Experience
One of the unique things that technology can contribute to the employee experience is personalizing the experience for the user. Managers, frontline employees, and sometimes even people in different locations may have different needs and work environments.
With the right employee experience management software, you can ensure each employee will have a personalized experience tailored for them, but without investing much effort.
A Single Source for All Team Needs
We can’t always be with our employees and whisper over their shoulders, but we can provide them with all the digital experiences they need. We all know how frustrating it can be when you need to search and chase resources during your onboarding phase, not sure yet what to do and when.
With an employee experience management platform, putting everything our teams need under one roof is easy. From ensuring they have everything they need for onboarding to making their training courses available and sharing the most up-to-date company protocols, it’s always available with the right technology.
Remove Friction for a Positive Experience
What in your organization requires a lot of effort from your team? If you answer this question, you can probably find the right technological tool that will make it easy to remove friction and effort for your team and improve the employee experience.
For example, in manufacturing companies, reporting from the floor is often tricky and requires finding the closest computer station. By allowing teams to report from their mobile devices, you are saving them much effort and increasing the likelihood of accurate, detailed reports while at the same time improving digital employee experience management.
Bridging the Gap from Senior Leadership to Frontline Employees
The bigger the organization, the more significant the gap is between the senior management and frontline employees. However, with the right technological tools, this gap can be bridged. Give your senior management the tools they need to keep your team up to date, share success, align on company goals, and get closer to the frontline employee.
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The Bottom Line on Employee Experience Management
Employee experience management came into the radar of human resource management for a reason. Why? Because it became clear to managers that their employees were the cornerstone of the organization and that their experience and well-being couldn’t be ignored in favor of the customer.
Even though there are apparent benefits behind using technology to enhance digital employee experience management, some organizations are hesitant to dive into any innovation in the digital workplace. However, the recent trend doesn’t guarantee employee satisfaction, which only leads to more positives for your organization.
Don’t overlook technology – most job roles today, across all industries – require technology to ensure a smooth and efficient day-to-day process. Just like your employees need a time tracker, they need a tool to help enhance their engagement and experience (and don’t forget that this generation of workers is younger and more used to technology).
When your employees feel fulfilled, happy, and satisfied – their positive energy and vibes will rub off on the customer.