Amazing employee experiences will deliver engagement. It’s as simple as that. But despite a couple of decades focusing on employee engagement (and a more recent focus on employee experience), we still have a way to go. We are now seeing more companies looking to purposefully design great experiences, which we welcome. But often a crucial step has been missed out. The development of an effective strategy.
I know it’s tempting to rush to solutions when you first view your engagement survey results, exit data, or monthly pulse scores. The data might be telling you that your people are not happy with their onboarding, or that they don’t feel recognised. So of course you want to fix this. But just take a step back, and invest your time in developing your employee experience and engagement strategy, so you can ensure you spend your time working on the right things, rather than putting out fires.
I believe that one of the reasons we have not seen improvements in global engagement is because many organisations still don’t have an employee experience and engagement strategy. First up your strategy should include both of these practice areas, they shouldn’t be siloed – a great experience will deliver engagement. But where do you start when developing your strategy?
Here are some tips to help you get started…
- Get clear about where you are today.
Gather every bit of data and insight you can get your hands on and complete a SWOT analysis or similar. We use our ‘EX Canvas’ to do this – if you’re interested in getting a copy of this, drop me a line. - Develop your vision and narrative.
This is your north star, and ensures everyone is heading in the same direction. And your narrative ensures you are all speaking the same language and have a shared understanding of employee engagement and experience in your organisation - Agree your goals and outcomes.
They should align with your business strategy and of course be SMART. A good litmus test is how easy it is to come up with measures from your goals and outcomes. If you’re struggling with this, they are not the right goals and outcomes or not SMART enough. - Design your roadmap and plan.
Think about timelines and priorities. And how the deliverables support your overall vision, goals and outcomes. - Spend time on mapping your stakeholders.
Implementing your strategy will require more than what HR can do alone. You’re going to need buy-in, and support from across the business. - Agree your team roles and responsibilities.
What is within your circle of control and where do you need to influence. Are you planners, facilitators, designers, coaches or do-ers? - Understand and map your company ‘eco-system’ to help you with points 5 and 6.
What else could support or sabotage the successful implementation of your strategy? And incorporate any learnings into your roadmap and plan. For example is your culture conducive to a great experience, or is it toxic? If it’s the latter this needs to be a priority area of focus. - Put metrics in place to monitor your progress and ensure you can demonstrate the value your work is adding to the organisation.
Don’t just rely on the obvious engagement survey. Get curious about how people are feeling and how your work is landing.
We know that developing your strategy isn’t always easy, so we’ve created this simple guide to get you started. And we are also running a workshop in December which will give you everything you need to develop your strategy and measure your success – we’d love you to join us!
