The rising global competition has led to the evolution of employee experience. Organizations, today, are realizing that a positive employee experience can go a long way in retaining their most valuable employees. The first step towards enhancing employee experience is a proactive focus on employee engagement.
In this day and age, organizations need a novel approach that focuses on enhancing employee experience holistically, while first ticking all the boxes of employee engagement – cultural and leadership alignment, work satisfaction, effective communication, tools and resources, and health and wellness.
An employee who is engaged and has a positive employee experience is likely to return the favor by committing themselves to their work and furthering the organization’s interests and brand value. A disengaged employee, however good the employee experience might be, is unlikely to give 100% to their work and the organization. Each facet of employee experience is responsible for engagement and vice-versa. If an employee is not given the right tools and technologies to be effective at their jobs, they will get frustrated, eventually leading to disengagement.
Employee engagement, like everything else, has evolved with time. It is necessary at all touchpoints throughout the employee life. Today, the journey from employee engagement to employee experience is becoming an important focus for organizations worldwide. From onboarding to offboarding, the entire employee lifecycle should focus on holistically enhancing employee experience.
Our recent research report, Employee Engagement & The Hybrid Workplace 2022: Trends, Challenges, & Best Practices, states that almost 30% of organizations are looking at enhancing employee experience through employee engagement initiatives.
Employee engagement is a state of mind that employees enter when they know they’re working for a company that values them, supports them, and cares about their success. Employee experience, on the other hand, is the overall impression that an employee has while they’re working there. It’s what they feel as they go through their daily tasks and interactions with coworkers, supervisors, and managers.
There’s no denying the fact that employee engagement is vital to effective business operations because it helps companies retain their most important asset: their employees. Employee experience, on the other hand, is just as important because it helps companies attract top talent—and keep them there once they’ve hired them.
In order for both of these things to happen successfully for any organization, it’s crucial that both employee engagement and employee experience are at their highest levels possible. This can only happen if there’s a clear path from employee engagement to employee experience — a path that enables every employee at every level across your organization to feel like he or she belongs in whatever position he or she currently occupies or wants to occupy in the future.
The evolution and history of employee engagement?
The digital age gave birth to the currency of instant feedback (think Facebook and Glassdoor). It accompanied a considerable shift in organizational priorities. Employee engagement became a means to focus on employees, their sentiments, moods, and priorities.
The COVID 19 pandemic further changed the outlook of the work culture. With employees now working remotely, the work culture had to seep in through closed doors of employees’ houses and make them feel a sense of belonging and duty towards their organization. Thus, company policies to ensure work-life balance, fair pay, manageable goals, and professional growth came into existence.
However, the pandemic also brought with itself the era of Great Resignation which served as an eye opener for organizations to not just focus on employee engagement but broaden their horizon and look at the entire employee experience in order to attract the best talent and retain the existing ones.
Organizations realized that shifts in the workplace called for transitioning from employee engagement to employee experience. If they put more effort into improving employee engagement, it would also result in enhancing employee experience.
Employers are now investing more resources to give their employees a comfortable, fun, safe, and technologically driven experience in the workplace. The evolution of employee experience is now at a point where it is crucial that organizations really know their employees – their goals, their capabilities, and their preferences.
From physical to digital workplaces: The evolution of employee experience
Culture
A good workplace culture instills a sense of purpose, belongingness, and growth in employees.
Technology
Technology allows organizations to work productively and collaboratively, with better communication channels.
Work environment
Work environment should always be designed keeping employees’ needs in mind, offering them flexibility and autonomy.
How to shift from employee engagement to employee experience?
At the core of this transition lies employee feedback. How organizations handle employee feedback will determine their approach towards enhancing employee experience.
The following can serve as a foundation for an effective employee experience strategy. Small but meaningful changes can have a considerable impact on employee engagement. The journey from employee engagement to employee experience is not an overnight one, but it is a journey that organizations need to embark today to retain their employees.
- Knowing your employees and aligning your organization with what employees want is the first step towards enhancing employee experience. Start by creating an achievable roadmap of the organizational goals and objectives. Assess what you are doing, what you’d like to do differently, what your employees want, and what kind of interventions are required to make this shift from employee engagement to employee experience. Partnering with a capable technology company, with an understanding of your vision can help you get started. Investing in expertise, and aligning your employee experience with your brand, purpose, and culture can help lead the way.
- Map the entire employee journey and focus on all important employee touchpoints. Right from the onboarding process to the offboarding experience, a holistic approach will help bridge the gap between the company’s vision and the employee’s expectations.
- Everything from employee engagement to employee experience often falls on the HR’s plate. But these strategic initiatives require all-encompassing cross-functional efforts. They require collaboration across the entire organization, from business leaders to managers to employees, for an employee-centric approach.
- The shift from continuous listening to continuous dialogue also marks the transition from employee engagement to employee experience. At the heart of a good employee experience lies honest and actionable employee feedback, and a continuous cycle of listening to employee feedback, acting on it and communicating what you did to address employee issues. Regular and proactive dialogue between the management and the employees will give a clear picture of the employees’ expectations and needs.
- While moving from employee engagement to employee experience, the definition of an employee also needs to undergo change. The new employees value work flexibility, are output driven, enjoy adaptive learning, rely on collaboration technologies, have a voice and an opinion, create their own path to success, and are not scared to experiment.
What are the 5Es of enhancing employee experience?
1. Enriching
Employees today are looking for jobs that enrich them as people and professionals. A meaningless workload with repetitive work that serves no visible purpose can bring down an employee’s motivation. An enriching work-life allows employees to learn, grow, and gain a feeling of fulfillment in their job. To achieve this, align their work with the larger organizational purpose, and help them see how their contributions and work can make an impact.
2. Efficient
The right tools and resources are crucial for better efficiency and productivity. Investing in premium tools will allow your employees to do their job better and faster. Employees who are forced to work with old rundown technology daily will quickly become frustrated and disengaged. Being an employee-friendly company, you must ensure that your employees have access to consumer-grade technology. Such policies empower them to do their jobs stress-free and avoid instances of friction and exhaustion.
3. Empathetic
The hustle culture has blurred the lines between work and home. Being constantly connected to their job even beyond the working hours often leads to exhaustion and poor work-life balance. In times of need, employees need to know that organizations are empathetic towards their cause. Flexibility is a two-street for creating an emphatic work environment and enhancing the employee experience.
4. Embracing
Employees want to feel a sense of belonging to their organization to feel more engaged in their work. If they feel like they are a part of the community and enjoy a culture that welcomes them without discrimination, they feel more inclined to go beyond their responsibilities. Proactive efforts to automate onboarding, conscious and personalized mentoring, and fun engagement activities can help employees feel welcomed, creating a fruitful bond with the team and the organization.
5. Encompassing
Enhancing employee experience starts with focusing on their journey and their user experience within the organization. The journey people take with your organization and the interactions they have at each stage of the employee life cycle impacts their experience. A positive and encompassing employee experience consistent from hiring to offboarding would determine how the employee thinks of you as an employer.
Enhancing employee experience with Leena AI
Curating an effective strategy to help you move from employee engagement to employee experience can be tricky. The right technology partner will understand your company’s vision and create just the proper roadmap. With Leena AI’s solutions, redefining and enhancing employee experience can be a cakewalk. Through our intelligent and automated technology solutions, we provide a new-age employee experience with only a single interface that spans all employee touchpoints.
Smooth onboarding, process automation, and seamless working experience with our HR service delivery modules make hearing employees’ voices & resolving their issues through our employee engagement platform super easy. It also saves time, unburdens your human resources team from repeatative tasks, and any chances of mishaps. Leading industry experts and analysts frequently feature Leena AI’s employee engagement solution and holistic employee experience modules in their reports.
