Employee Experience - The Importance


Nimisha Kunnath Chatterjee

(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 :    

  • Creating a memorable Interview experience by getting introduced to leaders
  • Appoint a buddy
  • Accessible Digital learning process to make the employee part of organisation structure / organisation updates.

2. Onboarding :

  • Administrative - Arrangements on welcome kit - (especially laptop, uniforms, access to necessary documents), communication email on employee introduction org wide and departments.
  • Assimilation - Orientation about culture, Mandatory trainings like GDPR, POSH, IT security, compliance training.
  • Acceleration - Define success parameters for role, learning resources, 30-60-90 days plan. (The sooner we move from Administrative stage to Assimilation and gear up for Acceleration stage, EX does wonders)

3. Talent Development :

  • Important to have career conversation as part of 1:1 with manager, equip managers with coaching skills for employee growth.
  • Training sessions for management roles on mentoring.
  • Manager’s recognizing through SPOT awards.
  • Aligning individual goals to organization goals to let them know their impact.

4. Offboarding :

  • Giving an employee a respectful break - exit interview, organising farewell lunch, recommendation on social sites ex: Linkedin.
  • Creating Alumni Ambassadors.
  • Clear communication for exit by organizing systematic KT, communication to respective stakeholders.

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).

  1. Career:
    • Providing opportunities for self-direction and autonomy at work. We need to hire diverse leaders who we can trust to inspire, motivate, and grow our people regardless of where they are.
  2. Community:
    • Our human need for connection: to be seen, heard, respected, supported, cared for, and recognised. Not every interaction needs to be online, but you do need a communications strategy and a people engagement plan that is inclusive and creative enough to build loyalty and belonging.
  3. Cause:
    • The desire to be involved in work that has purpose.
    • To believe in the mission and make a meaningful difference.
    • Your employees want to understand the contribution they’re making today and the opportunities they have to impact even more.

So. what experience do you want employees to have on the first & last day, week, month? Think about it.