Employee Experience Management (EEM)

What is the Business Value of Employee Experience Management?

Attracting top talent can be a challenge, so organizations do what they can to protect this investment. Retaining employees can be as challenging as recruiting them—at times, even more so. As a result, companies try to provide the best possible employee experience as soon as candidates are hired.

Employee perception, however, begins before an employee is hired, and the general employee impression is often made available by current and past employees of the company.

The majority of job sites provide company reviews, and a single negative review by a former employee can be a red flag for potential new hires. This underscores the long-term benefits of EEM because the employee experience, whether good or bad, remains with employees long after they exit the company.

With each organization defining its own goals and finding solutions that fit its business needs, EEM must be personalized. In general, active employee engagement initiatives, which are part of EEM, help keep employees engaged and satisfied, providing business value through the following aspects:

• Enhanced productivity
  Keeping employees engaged within their own teams or business units and within the organization as a whole helps them understand their role in achieving bigger business goals. This, in turn, helps increase customer service indicators by improving employee performance.
• Reduced attrition
  Employees who are engaged with their company experience higher levels of satisfaction and are, therefore, less likely to leave. When considering the cost of attrition, other investments like recruitment, onboarding, and training expenses should also be included.
• Enhanced customer experiences
  Engaged employees are more involved with their company and more invested in its success. They don’t work only for themselves but also for the customers, ensuring that the customers with whom they engage receive the best experience possible. This leads to increased productivity and better service overall.
• Increased revenue
  Engaged employees are also more likely to be productive and customer-oriented. Improved response times, efficiency, and customer relations can lead to more loyal audiences that will invest in your products and services.

What is an Employee Experience Strategy?

An employee experience strategy is an organization’s plan of action for enhancing the employee experience, while also helping them develop their skills in the organization’s cultural, technological, and physical environment.

To ensure the success of an employee experience strategy, organizations should focus on the following:

• Understanding what employees value the most
  Qualitative and quantitative interviews can help provide management teams an accurate view of how employees feel about the organization. Employing a third party to conduct these interviews is sometimes recommended to avoid bias and help employees feel more comfortable expressing themselves.
• Creating a journey map
  A journey map will help illustrate the employee experience across all touchpoints within the organization. The view “from the top” is often different from what employees see or experience “on the ground,” so creating a journey map, including the emotional aspect, will show how employees navigate through the employee lifecycle. This journey map will highlight what is done correctly and what needs improvement.
• Instilling, tracking, and following a consistent strategy
  With constant organizational improvements and adapting to new technologies, it can be easy to overlook EEM. Integrating the success of EEM to key business metrics will allow an organization to fully realize its business value. 

What are the Elements of Employee Experience?

There are key elements that shape the employee experience within an organization. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, these key elements will be part of the employee journey.

Culture

This can be difficult to define because it can mean different things to different people; it can be how management describes it to be, how employees understand the organization’s mission and vision, or the camaraderie between employees during and outside work hours.

It is best defined by the combination of leadership styles, organizational structure, and how different personalities come to work together. Corporate culture is the overall atmosphere of the workplace that can either motivate and empower or stifle and discourage employees.

Technology

The technological ecosystem in the workplace is vital to employee productivity because this involves the tools they use for their job. Ensure that you equip employees with the solutions they need to excel at their job and make room to accommodate future developments.

Providing the means to maximize their productivity will encourage employees to do their best and maximize their efficiency—whether that be via a digital adoption platform, more advanced software, or even something as simple as better hardware.

Physical Workspace

Employees who are comfortable and happy in their work environment are more productive because they can better concentrate and have an improved state of well-being. This element also extends to working arrangements; more than providing a conducive work setting, giving employees the autonomy to work in different workspaces and even from home will foster a culture of trust and create a positive employee experience.

Who is Responsible for Managing the Employee Experience?

Although the brunt of EEM responsibilities falls mostly on HR and IT departments, managing the employee experience requires a combination of skills that involve the use of business analytics and communication tools designed to increase engagement and productivity.

Aside from the use of modern tools, employee experience managers also need to possess empathy and emotional intelligence, which are needed in understanding the ever-changing workforce in a rapidly evolving digital business landscape. For most companies, EEM falls under the purview of the following people:

• HR personnel
  By default, the HR department handles matters that involve employee relations, including recruitment, onboarding, journey management, and job optimization. They work hand-in-hand with management across the different business units in creating a positive and productive working environment.
• IT teams
  Most businesses today rely on digital tools and systems to manage business processes, and this includes EEM. To easily store, manage, and analyze data, companies use digital tools to gather relevant information and transform it into actionable insights.
• Direct managers
  A number of companies make it the responsibility of the immediate superiors to ensure that their employees are happy and productive. Familiarity is an advantage with this approach, in that direct managers are more familiar with their team members, both professionally and on a more personal level.
• Employee experience managers
  Some organizations employ dedicated employee experience managers to ensure that organizational policies are effective and implemented properly. Employee experience managers work together with company stakeholders to align employee and employer expectations. Some of their responsibilities include overseeing employee performance appraisals, assisting with employee development and training, and monitoring employee leaves of absence.

What is the Digital Employee Experience?

The digital employee experience is closely linked to an organization’s overall digital strategy and approach to digital transformation. Digital transformation inspires enthusiasm and improves loyalty because it shows that the company is invested in not only meeting business goals but also providing its employees the necessary tools for their growth and development.

The digital age has also made it easier for employees to connect with each other and share experiences on a global scale, fostering an atmosphere of fellowship and cooperation. It’s important to focus on the digital employee experience because it affects an organization’s growth and overall competitive standing.

Employees should be involved in the decision-making process when it comes to the digital employee experience, especially in aspects like what software is necessary, remote work arrangements, and onboarding tools to help improve efficiency. 

What is Digital EEM?

Ensuring a positive digital experience for employees means making the overall employee experience a priority, and this can help an organization in several ways.

• It improves communication within the organization through the use of relevant software.
• It helps bridge the gap between management and frontline employees through collaborative software that allows sharing updates, goal alignment, and big and small business successes.
• It provides a personalized experience for each employee based on a number of aspects, including the field of work, the work environment, and the geographical location.
• It provides a single, unified source for employee needs, including software, training courses, updated company documents, and more.
• It helps make tedious, repetitive tasks easier and minimizes friction to help provide a positive experience for employees.

How Can You Improve Your EEM?

Improving the overall employee experience requires having a big-picture view of the organization because EEM is dependent on many factors.

To succeed in enhancing your EEM, you must:

Be Aware of the Full Employee Journey

The employee journey starts with the interview process, even before a candidate is hired. It involves every step along the way, including onboarding, the duration of their employment, up until their exit interview. 

Your company’s first impression on potential employees and new hires is also a major factor in improving employee experience. Take a closer look at the “moments’” that really matter to employees and take an active role in shaping these into a cohesive and enjoyable experience.

Empower Employees

A continuous effort to empower employees will lead to building teams that are confident and motivated to do more for the company while maximizing employee loyalty and retention. 

Empowering employees does not solely refer to equipping them with the necessary tools, it also means providing opportunities for development, recognizing when they go above and beyond their responsibilities, and making their working experience meaningful.

The following are some of the ways employees can be empowered:

• Ongoing constructive feedback
• Access to helpful information
• Skills training
• Frequent learning and development opportunities

Nurture Relationships

Employees are happy when they get along with their colleagues, but the employee-employer relationship makes the most impact on both parties. Although complex, mastering the nuances of this relationship will provide the most value in terms of productivity, morale, and total employee satisfaction.

Proactive employers and managers can do the following to ensure that they nurture their relationships with employees:

• Be clear with responsibilities and align expectations
• Provide frequent and constructive feedback to help with employee development
• Help employees learn from their mistakes by being open about them and focusing on the lessons learned
• Offer training and development programs to increase employee engagement
• Be open and conduct discussions about mental wellness

Gather Objective Feedback

When discussing employee experience, it’s best to gather feedback regularly from the employees themselves rather than make assumptions based on a limited perspective.

Ask them what resources they need to maximize their productivity and efficiency and ensure that they are provided these or acceptable alternatives. It is also crucial to obtain feedback on current employee sentiment by asking employees how they feel about the workplace or a certain project or initiative.

Leverage Available Technology

Technology has made most jobs easier and quicker, providing tools that help gather and measure data regarding several aspects of the business. This extends to EEM, with software available today that helps improve the overall employee experience.

EEM software is designed to enhance employee engagement, reduce attrition rates, improve customer experiences, and monitor employee engagement and satisfaction.