Nowadays, more and more marketers are coming to terms with the fact that employee experience is the new customer experience. After all, happy employees automatically create a better number of experiences overall, which leads to more loyal and satisfied customers in the long run. Hence, keeping the priority of employee management just as high as customer experience and satisfaction will lead to the overall growth and betterment of not only your workforce but your company as well.
Having made all of that clear, the workforce of today is extremely dynamic as compared to a few years ago. Using Ektron or any CMS, it’s easy to create landing pages and set your business in motion, but there is a certain structure, methodology and process that is needed to take care of the employees’ needs and wants in every way. Lengthy annual surveys are a thing of the past since the employees of today want their problems and need to be heard and addressed in real-time. There are no two ways about that, really.
However, it is quite hard to actually get started with employee experience on the right foot since it is based upon human interactions which are extremely difficult to actually measure. Plus, rather than focusing on the entire organisation, this process takes a close look at individuals. In the recent past, the process of employee experience was surrounded by a great deal of confusion since marketers were afraid of making the wrong decision and losing out on two of the most important factors that hold a company together – employees and customers.
However, recent research seems to suggest that things are not as murky as we thought before and most of all, it has revealed significant links between employee and customer experience. To improve employee experience, research has revealed the top four aspects that one needs to keep in mind:-
- A clear philosophy: This is pretty much a no-brainer if your goal is ultimately to become a sophisticated and forward-thinking organisation that all peers alike look up to with great envy. Certain questions like how the experience differs from employee management, what it is and who is it for are essential in every sense of the word. Once you have solidified the philosophy, all subsequent decisions about the company will happen a lot smoother in the long run.
- The creation of a supportive culture: This is one of the most common and important themes about employee experience in general. It is a lot more than just about the shared assumptions between people, but also the values and behaviours that play a pivotal role in decision making that help people thrive at work in the best way. Some of the most essential behaviours that play a part in creating said culture are transparency, collaboration, alignment and sharing feedback.
- The aspect of accountability: The question of who is responsible for employee experience does tend to differ from service to service, but there is little doubt of the fact that HR has a great deal of responsibility to carry on its shoulders. This is because it handles many aspects of talent management practice and employee feedback. In spite of that, the above statement is only partly true. The responsibility certainly cannot fall squarely on the shoulders of the HR department and accountability must be equally delegated throughout the departments in order to make sure that employee experience is being implemented all across the organisation.
- The measurement approach: The measurement approach of your service definitely needs to be taken into consideration with regard to employee experience. It is as simple and straightforward as that. Plus, the specific level of sophistication with play a significant role in the level of success when it comes down to the implementation of employee experience in its entirety.
Finally, it will take a lot more than sophisticated and up-to-date analytics to see the twin aspects of employee and customer experience. After all, both of them are certainly linked in every way, so having a blended focus plan is the ideal way to go about things.
A mentality that mirrors the thought of “A happy employee makes a happy customer” must be encouraged and nurtured at every single step of the way so that all of your employees realise the value and truth of this statement in particular. Taking a big-picture approach to the idea of employee experience is bound to benefit you in every possible way as your company moves towards the future.