Employee experience is all about what people observe and encounter during their time spent with a company. Every organization knows that happy customers are important, but what many don’t realize is that happy employees are just as crucial to success. When people are your most valuable assets, it’s important to create a work environment and company culture that they will want to be a part of.

Employee experience has become more important than ever before for businesses to be able to handle changes in society, the economy, and within the business itself. Many organizations are starting to see the value in dedicating entire roles and departments to employee experience. We believe that the employee experience is critical to understand and prioritize because of its relationship with engagement and performance.

Why is employee experience important?

Designing a powerful employee experience can have a positive domino effect on many aspects of an organization – not just for the HR team. Company leaders recognize this influence, which is why nearly 80 percent of executives rate employee experience as very important or important. See below for an overview of areas that are directly impacted by employee experience.

Engagement

Employee engagement is the measure of the relationship between employees and an organization. It’s one of the constellations of feelings that can result from the employee experience. Most companies measure and aim to improve their employee engagement since it’s highly correlated with turnover and with how much effort their people are likely to put into their work. It’s one of many possible results that stem from a good employee experience. Since it directly informs whether people are willing to invest in the organization, this is what most employers are looking to understand and predict.

Employees research

In today’s job market, potential employees research companies on job search websites like Glassdoor before applying for a position. The rise in company review sites like Glassdoor indicates the desire of employees to understand what their experience will be like at an organization. This is why having a strong employee experience is critical. Without one, your negative reviews may chase away potential talent for your organization.

Introduction

We’re seeing more and more people make decisions to leave companies within the first few months of starting their new jobs. In fact, our research found that around 10% of employees were leaving within six months of starting their new job. A proper introduction into the company, through processes like onboarding, can make a big difference when it comes to an employee’s desire to stay, their productivity, and their perception of the company culture.

Bottom line

The bottom line is that a strong employee experience can make a huge difference in your organization’s bottom line. An analysis of over 250 global organizations found that companies that scored highest on employee experience benchmarks had four times higher average profits, two times higher average revenues, and 40 percent lower turnover compared to those that didn’t. This demonstrates that an investment in employee experience does pay off.

How to design a strong employee experience?

Attracting and retaining great employees is vital for the success of any business, so it’s important to have a plan in place for how you’re going to manage the employee experience. Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to improve your existing employee experience plan, here are a few tips to get you started:

Determine your top priority

First, you need to identify what aspect of the employee experience your organization should focus on. If you’re about to significantly increase hiring volumes, you may want to focus on the attraction/recruitment stage first and consider using a candidate survey to get feedback. Or if you’re seeing high turnover rates, putting your resources into understanding and improving an employee’s exit experience may be your first step.

Start capturing data

Once you’ve determined your top priority, it’s time to start collecting feedback. It can take some time to gather enough data to start seeing patterns and trends in the employee experience. That’s why we recommend not trying to do too much at once. Instead, focus on one aspect of the employee experience (such as onboarding), iterate, and then expand your employee experience data capture program from there.

Build linkage

If you want to build a comprehensive understanding of the entire employee lifecycle, it’s important to incorporate data from other sources. For example, if you have already run an engagement survey, that data can help you identify which factors to focus on in your exit survey. Also, make sure your surveys are customized to your specific programs instead of using generic questions that don’t address the root of the problem.

Empower action

Employee experience surveys give you access to a lot of valuable information that can help you improve your company as a whole and the individual experiences of your employees. We recommend reviewing both the aggregate results to modify your organization-wide programs and the detailed results to identify any particular hiring managers, departments, or teams that need extra support. This will give everyone the opportunity to independently make small tweaks to improve employees’ experiences.