Designing a great employee experience
Employee experience is about making the employee feel appreciated and trusted so they can perform at their best ability. It is important to think about this when designing a great employee experience, and that it shows in all of the touchpoints that the employee has with your company. This means you need to consider everything from recruitment to the exit of the employee.
Great employee experience can be simplified in the following five thoughts: personalization, transparency, simplicity, authenticity, and responsiveness. In this article, we will talk about how you can start thinking about them so that you can start designing a great employee experience in your company.
Create an authentic company culture
Company culture plays a great part in creating a great experience for your employees. Putting your employee first in the higher-level discussions about your company culture and company values ensures that they are not left out at any point during their interaction with your company.
Developing company-wide methods and policies helps you guide your employees openly on what your company culture is about, creating trust from the very first touchpoint. Combine this with an employee experience-focused coalition in the company, involving personnel from all the departments, to force your way out of traditional ways of leading and siloed work.
Promotion of work-life balance should be the top priority in the leadership of your company, making sure that none of your employees feels overwhelmed or over-run in their work. It is the company’s top leaders’ task to create a culture where healthy working life habits are a focal point.
Recruit and onboard to fit the company culture
Once your company culture has been updated to respond to this day’s working life and the wants of the workforce, you need to shift your hiring process to fit the company culture.
Shifting towards hiring persons by their fit to your culture and their connection to your company’s purpose and mission is more important than their initial skill set. Job-specific tasks can be educated during the onboarding process and further on but hiring personnel who are disconnected from your purpose and mission is way harder to convert into believing in these statements.
Listen more and coach your employees
While shifting your company culture and recruiting to fit the new culture you have already laid the foundation for designing a great employee experience. When shifting into more day-to-day actions, one excellent thought change is shifting from a traditional leadership style of command-and-control towards a coaching approach in your leadership. This enables more open discussion with your workforce.
Listening is a big part of the coaching approach in leadership. It brings a personalization element to your relationships with your employees. Having low-threshold personal 1-to-1s and other open discussions and debates about the work done creates a sense of appreciation and trust between the parties, resulting in a thriving company as feedback and recognition are widely available.
Openness and honesty go a long way
Openness and authenticity are great enablers in your company. Focusing on these creates a culture of trust in your company, resulting in a great employee experience as the transparency within the company is increased.
Making information widely and easily available, especially during these times, is an easy way of creating a great employee experience. Also, creating open feedback methods and ways of debating with others other than your direct superior promotes openness and honesty. These also should be acted upon, promoting your ability to be responsive when issues are found in your working environment.
Conclusion
Putting your employees first, all the way from the high-level company mission level to the daily discussions is the main factor in designing a great employee experience. Listening and being open about the good and the bad in your company helps you develop your company culture, which eventually leads to a greater experience for all.
In designing a great employee experience, you should focus on what you think would have the largest impact on your business. This usually is the area where currently there are most issues, and yes, you can find them out by listening to your peers.
Read how to create an employee journey map to support your efforts in improving employee experience: