How to Define, Evaluate, Improve, and Invest in The Employee Experience

According to Gallup, 63% of American employees believe that they could find a job as good as the one they have. Another 51% are actively looking for a new job. Today, employees are the consumers of the workplace. Employers can’t just focus on attracting candidates and potential employees-- they have to address how to retain them. This is why SHRM called the employee experience “the newest HR mandate.” Here’s how to define, evaluate, invest, and improve the employee experience in your own organization.

Defining the Employee Experience

In a SHRM article, industry-leading influencer, Josh Bersin, explained how the heart of the employee experience boils down to one thing: treating your employees like your customers. In other words, how can your organization meet your employees’ needs, and what can you do to keep your employees happy within your organization? 

The employee experience is not something you create for an employee’s first day on the job-- seriously! It should actually be an ongoing focus for your organization-- starting with recruiting and ending with an employee exit interview. The employee experience also includes helping your employees advance their own careers, addressing their concerns, and providing benefits that make them feel valued at the company.

How to Evaluate the Employee Experience

The definition of the employee experience can change, depending on your organization. That’s why the first thing you should do is evaluate the current state of your employee experience.

Start with a company-wide survey that addresses seven areas of employee experience:

• Engagement: Do your employees feel involved in and motivated by their work?
• Culture: Does your company have a cohesive culture?
• Safety: Do your employees feel safe, both in a physical and mental capacity?
• Fun: Do you celebrate your employees’ accomplishments?
• Career advancement: Can your employees learn new skills on the job, and are there advancement opportunities?
• Diversity: Does your company reflect the world around it?
• Workflow: Are your company systems intuitive and easy for employees to use?

Tip: If you don’t want to create your own assessment, Gallup has a great set of surveys that can help you answer these questions. Send out this survey regularly, so you can track changes.

How to Improve the Employee Experience

Once you have data from your employee experience assessment, you can start to improve the culture and systems of your company. Keep in mind that the best way to improve the employee experience is by listening to your employees. Encourage feedback, host workshops, and be open about the fact that you’re working to improve their experience. If you find that your company is in particular need of improvement in one of the seven areas of the assessment, make sure that your executives are aware, onboard, and invested in making the necessary changes. 

Tip: When meeting with other leaders, remind them that the employee experience is more than just being ‘fun.’ The employee experience is about being authentically interested and devoted to your employees and their success. It can not only affect your company culture and morale, but an unsuccessful one can hurt your bottom line.

Investing in Employee Experience Technology

There are hundreds of HR technology solutions out there for every area of the job, and the employee experience is no exception. Companies like Deloitte, SAP SuccessFactors and IBM all have platforms that focus on the employee experience, and with this being an emerging market, more solutions are sure to quickly evolve. 

In a Human Resource Executive article, Josh Bersin said, “We need a set of software to deliver a single user interface; something that lets us build employee journeys, develop apps, create and monitor workflows, and add chatbots and other forms of conversational interfaces to the mix.”

What these solutions ultimately do is communicate with employees. The bigger your company, the more important (and difficult) it is to communicate with all of your employees. Software solutions can (and should!) help bridge that gap. Right now, software solutions can communicate with employees about a merger, teach them new skills, answer questions about benefits, provide positive reinforcement throughout the day, and much more. Look for a solution that can help you communicate first, and then identify your other technological needs based on your employee experience assessment. 

Verified First is a solution that can help improve your employee experience from the get-go with our fast and convenient background screening solutions that focus on you and your candidates’ experience.