This article will explain how to improve employee experience.
But first – why is the employee experience important?
According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report:
- 84% of their respondents said that they need to rethink the workforce experience to improve productivity. That makes this the second-most important human capital trend this year.
- 80% feel they need to develop leaders differently, given the diversifying workforce and the pressure to move faster.
- 86% said they needed to reinvent their ability to learn, due to the advent of new technologies such as AI and automation.
These statistics highlight a clear need to reinvent the workplace experience, from learning to leadership.
Revitalizing the employee experience will bring about benefits such as:
- Improved employee engagement
- Higher employee productivity and output
- Better worker retention rates
Below, we’ll explore 10 ways to improve the employee experience – and, as a result, business outcomes.
How to Improve the Employee Experience
In no particular order…
1. Implement corporate wellness programs.
One relatively straightforward solution is to develop and implement well-being programs.
Corporate wellness programs can be outsourced or created in-house, if you have the right expertise.
These programs are typically holistic, including everything from on-site exercise classes to workplace menu curation.
Benefits include: healthier, happier, more productive employees.
2. Reorient, refresh, and rediscover meaning.
It is commonly accepted that people derive meaning from work.
However, many workers feel disconnected from meaning in their jobs.
This lack of meaning can cause significant issues – including burnout and turnover.
One way to add meaning to the workplace is by showing workers how their work helps other people.
Another is to help workers discover and achieve their individual career goals.
3. Improve management.
Gallup has claimed that poor management is another cause of employee disengagement.
In the report linked above, only 1 in 5 say that they’re managed in a way that motivates them to do great work.
And only 15% feel that their leadership makes them enthusiastic about the future.
Leadership skills and managerial skills, therefore, clearly play a role in the employee experience.
4. Equip workers with modern tools and technology.
Workers who are ill-equipped to do their jobs will suffer productivity problems.
Morale can also become an issue. After all, to employees, the quality of their work environment reflects how the company feels about them.
Poor equipment, low-quality tools, or outdated software will “cheapen” the work experience and decrease perceived self-worth.
5. Enable autonomy.
Everyone enjoys working as part of a team.
However, people also feel a need to operate independently and make decisions autonomously.
Micromanagement, poor teamwork, and top-down managerial styles can all strip autonomy from workers.
6. Provide growth opportunities.
Everyone puts their own self-interests first.
The more an organization supports their long-term growth, the more they will support the organization.
A few ways to offer growth opportunities to employees include: career development, mentoring programs, career consulting, and promotion opportunities.
7. Improve top-down communication.
Trust in leadership is at an all-time low, according to the aforementioned Deloitte report.
Around 53% of respondents felt their organization was effective at building trust in leadership.
To earn back workers’ trust, ensure that business leaders stay connected with their employees.
Stay communicative about the organization’s vision, employee needs, and the alignment of everyone’s goals.
8. Train effectively.
Effective training is a must.
Especially today, when organizations are undergoing continual transformation.
Digital skills training helps on a number of fronts:
- Improving employee engagement and productivity
- Boosting their job skills
- Future-proofing the workplace
Employee training is one of the most fundamental ways to keep employees from becoming bored, distracted, or unproductive at work.
9. Focus on the individual human experience.
When designing employee experiences, it can be easy to fall back on organization-centric frameworks.
And it can be easy to forget that meaning drives engagement.
And, unfortunately, it can be all to easy to treat employees as groups, rather than as individuals.
Take steps to ensure your workplace improvements focus on humans: connect with individuals directly, ask open-ended questions in your surveys, learn what is meaningful to workers.
10. Ask.
Communicate with employees.
Collect feedback.
Ask questions to discover:
- What their personal goals are
- What tools they would like to use
- How they would like to see the workplace improved
Naturally, the answers they give will not hold all the solutions to success.
But asking is a first step towards effective communication that puts humans at the center of your workplace experience.
Final Thoughts
The employee experience, the workplace experience, and the human experience – these are all one and the same.
Deloitte advises replacing the “employee experience” with the “human experience.”
They say that this framework helps add meaning to experience designs.
However, what is most important is not the words you use – it is the actions and results.
When redesigning and transforming your employee experiences, consider your coworkers’ needs, the organization’s mission, and look for solutions that support both.
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WalkMe Team
WalkMe spearheaded the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for associations to use the maximum capacity of their advanced resources. Utilizing man-made consciousness, AI, and context-oriented direction, WalkMe adds a powerful UI layer to raise the computerized proficiency, everything being equal.