Employee experience matters – but why? Blog by Karen Notaro
We are mid-way through 2022 and following on from the Jubilee Weekend in the UK, we are continuing with our series of the top 10 HR trends for the year and focussing on employee experience.
At People Lab we work with clients to look inwards on themselves, to understand what employee experience is without making assumptions about what work is like for people, in order to create actions to make it better.
The MAGIC-CA model was created from years of research into what elements are needed to create a great employee experience. But why is it so important? Is it different from engagement? And how can you enable a great EX?
Why is it so important?
Probably the best place to start to answer this question is to take a look at what EX is…
Jacob Morgan in 2017 published a book “The Employee Experience Advantage” which looks at the environments needed to create a good EX.
Morgan looks at focusing on the reasons why people want to work versus the reasons they need to work.
His model for EX is an equation of three environments:
- The technological environment is the tools that people need to do their jobs well
- The physical environments is everything that can be seen, touched, heard
- The cultural environment looks at how people feel inside of an organization, the structure, the leadership, the benefits
CIPD define EX as a way of creating a great work environment for people, and helping them to be their best.
Employee experience is everything that someone sees, learns, hears, and does whilst part of your organization – it goes beyond just looking at HR systems and tools. Sometimes referred to as the employee lifecycle; it is about looking at what an employee experiences at key moments, to learn from, and then improve for the future. For example:
- Recruitment – are your ads attracting the best talent? How long does it take and cost to hire? What is the acceptance rate? How engaging is the interview process?
- Onboarding – this goes beyond showing someone where the tea point is on their first day. How quickly do people get access to the IT they need? Get connected with their team? How can you translate the initial enthusiasm for a job into not only productivity but a long-term sense of belonging to the job and the organization?
- Development – Although this is not just a stage but something that is present and ongoing throughout the whole employee journey. From initial training as part of onboarding through to developing an individual to enable them to grow not only for promotion but a career pathway
- Retention – it is important to have a retention strategy in place i.e. talent management and succession planning, as this will ensure that the organization will continue to grow and succeed
- Exit – People will leave (whether through retirement, life changes or to work somewhere else), but you need to find out why people leave, so that you can develop the EX for current and future people.
By making sure you have mechanisms in place to amplify employee voice at every stage of the lifecycle, you are on your way to understanding EX in your organization in order to make it better.
Is it different from engagement?
The simple answer to this question is yes!
But employee experience and engagement are linked.
By creating a great employee experience, you will get good engagement; simply put the latter is the output of your investing in people’s experience.
Employee engagement tends to be linked with initiatives to make people more inclined to work hard, problem solve, grow, and be connected with their organization. Engage for success show the evidence that all these things have a measurable business impact:
- Increased productivity
- Higher retention
- Higher job satisfaction
- Better customer experience
The same report sets out the four key enablers of engagement:
Strategic narrative – the organizations story, where it has come from, where it is now and where it is going to
Engaging managers – these are people that coach and stretch individuals to enable them to be the best that they can be
Employee voice – the voice of the people; this is an informed voice
Organizational integrity – the values of the organization are reflected in day-to-day behaviours across the organization
At People Lab we think that there is a 5th enabler, employee involvement. Whilst included in employee voice for people to feel like they belong and valued, they need to be involved in decisions that affect them and so we think it should be an enabler in its own right.
We think, that by only measuring engagement, you may only get a snapshot of how someone is feeling at a particular time, even if using regular pulse surveying. So, to get the full picture of experience, you need to measure more than just engagement.
How can you enable a great EX?
Employee experience, as we have seen, is all the interactions that someone has with their organization, the people, the systems, the policies and the workspace. This ranges from the day-to-day activities, to the moments that matter. EX shows the holistic impact that a role and the organization have on every individual.
Better up, in their 2022 EX insights, found three key components of what makes a good EX:
- Inclusive leadership – individuals with inclusive managers report better business outcomes, higher commitment, higher engagement, and higher perception of support.
- Well-being – the pandemic redefined EX so it is of no surprise that wellbeing is a top priority for creating a good EX
- Support for hybrid workers – working from home is no longer seen as a perk but a necessity. Organizations need to ensure they have increased communication in place to include all types of workers.
If you are looking at employee experience and don’t know where to start here are our top 5 tips:
1 – Understand it – work with people in your organization to understand the EX. Look at the moments that matter in the employee lifecycle but don’t make assumptions. Get curious and ask questions to match the expectation to the experience.
2 – Define it – just like with employee engagement, there are lots of definitions for employee experience. But what does it mean to you and your organization? By defining it you can align it to your employee value proposition and purpose.
3 – Build it – Once you know what the experience is like then you can see how far away that is from what your ideal EX looks like and work towards that vision.
4 – Measure it – Like engagement you need to measure your EX. This should be part of a continuous listening strategy; pulling in all forms of HR and MI that will give you the full picture of EX.
5 – Improve it – continually looking at and redefining your EX-strategy will enable your competitive advantage.
If you would like more help with this, get in touch and we can share our latest course dates, or set up a no obligation discovery call.
