Organisations are realising that Employee Experience is the key to lasting employee engagement
Do you offer an engaging human experience, or just a job?
Employee experience goes beyond having a slide between floors, coffee bar or pool table in your workplace. It requires a fundamental change in thinking. The cost of replacing talent is becoming more expensive. The average cost to replace talent is now estimated at 1,5x annual salary. When it comes to scarce skills (if you can find them) is now estimated at more than 3x annual salary. Beyond that is the cost of having employees at work who are disengaged or just marking time until their next job. This is why so many organisations are investing crating employee experience to help attract, retain and engage their valuable talent.
This experience can be a combination of many things including custom work spaces, well-being programs, maternity/paternity leave, sponsored healthy foods and flexible work programmes. Many elements can form part of your employee experience strategy but there are ultimately only 4 key elements: your culture, your technology, your physical environment, and how you communicate.
Underlying everything is consistent communication and actively soliciting feedback to craft a dynamic Employee Experience
1. Culture
Culture is what we do every day. Particularly the behaviours we encourage both consciously and unconsciously in our environments. It is embedded though our performance management, rewards, recognition and demonstrated behaviours. Culture is about the feeling, the vibe we get when we walk in the building, the tone that the organisations sets in what it does … and does not do. Culture can be a result of what happens when the manager leaves the room or from our values, attitudes and the mission of the organisation. It has nothing to do with stated or written values. Our corporate culture can energise us, or drains us.
2. Technology
Employee Experience technologies are the tools we use to get our jobs done. Anything from your internal social network, mobile phones, software, learning solutions, to the video conferencing solutions that you can use to get things done. Technology is an integral part the employee experience. Outdated and poorly designed technology makes it harder to communicate and collaborate within your workplace. A lack of relevant technology increases frustration, wastes time and reduces productivity. Does your technology help or hinder user experience (for both employee and customer)?
3. Physical Environment
Our physical environment can directly impact our culture. Environment is everything we see, touch, taste and smell. The space we inhabit, the colours, the layout of furniture, the art on the walls, the demographic mix of people we work with. Programmes may also include tangible perks such as sponsored meals in a beautiful canteen, a gym, or a relaxation space to recharge and unwind. Does the environment encourage collaboration, networking and relationship building or does it separate and disconnect us?
4. Communication
How we communicate forms the foundation of the Employee Experience. A large part of an effective Internal Communications strategy is reducing Expectation Alignment Disorder (EAD) and helping translate Strategy/Values/Change into relatable day-to-day behaviours. A great onboarding programme will help align the expectations of the organisation and the employee. Additionally this communication needs to be two-way (feedback) to be really effective.
Richard Riche
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