(2021-04-19)
Why is Employee Experience (EX) all around these days?
The start to focus on the EX begins when we recognize that employees have the same wants, needs, and desires as customers. What does this mean?
To start treating employees like customers.
And it begins from company's own Customer Experience playbook. Having said that, EX is the "user experience" of the company. Example: The way you get treated when you check-in at any hotel, your hassle free booking process, check-out, dining etc.
On the other hand, no one knows best about how to improve the employee experience better than employees themselves.
As Elizabeth Dukes, co-founder of iOffice, wrote: “The “employee” part of “employee experience” is important. You need their input. You don’t make assumptions about what your customers want in your product or service, right? Then don’t make assumptions about what your workforce wants or needs. Ask them what types of resources, technologies and spaces they believe are critical for success and then make sure they have them.”
The key factor to drive employee engagement, and to create exceptional employee experiences, can be summed up in one word: Impact.
Here's an example of creating an Impact with a beautiful story:
Once upon a time, a boy was walking on the beach and throwing starfish back to the water. An old man approached the boy and asked him what he was doing.
“I am returning the starfish to the water” the boy replied
“There are so many starfish out there on the beach,” the man said. “Your work will not matter.”
“But for this starfish,” the boy replied, “It will matter.”
Similar to the story, in our corporate life too, the ability to connect an employee’s work to an impact is the ultimate way to create employee experiences that matter.
Here’s some of the Best practices for creating an impact through Employee experience strategy in your organization:
1. Pre - Onboarding :
2. Onboarding :
3. Talent Development :
4. Offboarding :
Though with these best practices is not an overnight matter, we can to an extent conclude that what people want from work can be summed up as Career, Community and Cause( 3C approach).
So. what experience do you want employees to have on the first & last day, week, month? Think about it.