How to Improve Employee Experience

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How to Improve Employee Experience

Not only do you need to know what employee experience is about, but importantly, as a business leader, you need to know how to improve employee experience in your organization.

Recap on Employee Experience

Employee experience equals everything an employee learns, does, sees and feels at each stage of the employee lifecycle.

According to author and futurist, Jacob Morgan, there are 3 things that shape employee experience in the new world of work:

Culture
Technology, and
Physical space.

Morgan also says, “Employee experience is the next battlefield for organizations”. Therefore, to attract and retain top talent and compete with industry leaders in the future of work, organizations need to prioritize all 3 of the above elements of employee experience. In addition, they should constantly update their experience to meet employees’ changing needs.

How to improve employee experience in your organization

Importantly, a useful employee experience strategy considers all three aspects, namely culture, technology and physical environment. In the new world of work, organizations cannot only focus on one or two of the above elements to achieve any kind of impact. Having a great corporate culture, while working with old systems and tools in a smelly office, just won’t work.

Improve employee experience by getting feedback

At the core of an effective employee experience strategy is employee feedback. You can’t create a great experience if you don’t know where you are starting, what employees think of the current experience, and what matters to them.

Jacob Morgan led a LinkedIn survey of more than 14,000 global employees. Interestingly, he found that what employees think about a company and its leaders, and what leaders think about a company and themselves are often vastly different.

He suggests the following steps to get feedback:

Firstly, create feedback loops

Undoubtedly, continuous feedback is key. Create strong feedback loops that provide opportunities to provide comments, questions, and suggestions that lead to real action. Examples include employee surveys, online forum or suggestion box, town hall meetings, and regular check-ins with leaders.

Secondly, analyse the feedback

This is when leaders take all of the structured and unstructured data from employees and turn it into actionable items. The insights can be big or small. However, the idea is to discover what you’ve learned from employee feedback and what you’re going to do next.

Thirdly, focus on design and take action based on the insights you’ve learned

Importantly, don’t design something FOR employees, design something WITH employees.

Once the program is designed, it’s time to launch, either through a beta or pilot group or as a whole-organization rollout.

Lastly, employees participate or actually experience the changes

Employees have to use the new program, work in the new environment, or try the new technology to provide feedback and continue the loop.

Improve employee experience by understanding that employees are changing

If you haven’t updated your employee experience since before COVID, your environment likely doesn’t match the new world of work and the challenges your employees face every day. Moreover, things are changing and what employees want and expect from an organization is changing too.

Without a doubt, employee experience requires regular updates as technology, employee demands, and the world at large change.

Think of your company as a lab instead of a factory. Factories are full of repetitive tasks and thrive on monotony and linear thinking. On the other hand, labs are for testing ideas, experimenting, and using data to make informed decisions. Companies that think of themselves as labs encourage their employees to try new ideas and embrace failure and create environments for coaching and mentoring instead of just churning out products. Modern employees want to work in companies that are labs, not factories.

Unquestionably, we’re moving away from traditional 9-5 work. The world is moving towards flexible schedules where employees can work at any time from anywhere. Moreover, modern employees prefer customized work to pre-defined work. In addition, they want to have opportunities to develop personally and professionally.

Improve employee experience by getting the quick win

Overhauling the entire employee experience can be overwhelming.

Firstly look for the low-hanging fruit. This could be a technology upgrade, a quick change in the office layout or new collaboration tools. Getting a quick win shows employees that you value their experiences and can create momentum as you move forward.

Finding quick success can also help get leaders on board and show the impact of investing in employee experience as productivity and engagement scores increase.

Improve employee experience by focusing on yourself

It can be tempting to see high-profile or highly rated companies offer amazing perks or programs and think you have to do the same. Don’t try to be Google!

Each organization is different and has different employees and motivations. Therefore, do what works best for your employees instead of focusing on what other companies are doing.

Importantly, there is no one-size-fits-all secret to employee experience. Not everything that Google does will work for your company, and not everything you are doing at your company will work at Google, nor should it!

Look at industry trends and what your competitors are doing. However, rely on your internal data and feedback systems to create an employee experience that resonates with your employees.

Your efforts might not be as flashy, but if they improve the three environments and create a better experience, they are effective in your organization.

Conclusion

Employee experience is the next battlefield for organizations, says Jacob Morgan. To attract and retain the best talent and compete in the future of work, organizations need to prioritize all three environments of employee experience and continually update their experience to meet employees’ changing needs.

As you create empowered and engaged employees, you’ll see business growth and success.

Therefore, business leaders need to know how to improve employee experience. Because, an exceptional employee experience leads to higher employee engagement. In turn, increased employee engagement leads to increased productivity. This has a direct positive effect on business profits.

CoLAB Talent contributes to your employee experience

CoLAB Talent is an execution capacity provider. We provide high-performing contract resources that will contribute to your culture, because character and chemistry are 2 of the most important traits we recruit for. In addition, they are highly competent resources that will add value to the technology in your company, as many of our resources specialize in IT projects.

Adding to that, our resources are off-payroll, giving you a flexible, contracted workforce to scale with your needs. Moreover, CoLAB lightens your recruitment burden, as we take the pile of CVs off your desk, onto ours. We also pride ourselves in accurate matching, therefore reducing mis-hires, and adding to your ability to pursue temp-to-perm journeys.

At CoLAB, our own employee experience is of utmost importance. We strive to make every stage of the employee lifecycle at CoLAB an unforgettable experience. Our culture is steered by our core values, being

Satisfied customers – Our customers feel heard, understood and served with excellence
People – Authentic care for all relationships
Ownership – We take accountability for the result, not just the activity
Transparency – Open motives [vulnerability] builds trusted relationships

Are you a business leader

In need of high performing resources, right now, but you can’t add them to your payroll;
Struggling to develop high potential resources in your organisation; or
In need of a flexible workforce, to scale as your demand increases?

Stop looking. Talk to us.

We’ll enable you to scale your execution capacity with high-performing contract resources, so that you can focus on driving strategic results and growing your business, without employing permanent resources.

This is the future of work.

Book a free 20-min call with Barend, to explore solutions for your needs, and to kickstart your journey towards the successful future of your business.

Book the call HERE.