Employee experience has dominated workplace conversation in recent years. From figuring out how to deliver on culture with a dispersed workforce to prioritizing employee retention during the great resignation, organizations are faced with the challenge in attracting and retaining top talent. What’s more, employees are more empowered than ever before, and the culture around what work means to the workforce is shifting. While there are many aspects we could speculate on, including the needs of the current multi-generational workforce, wages struggling to keep pace with inflation, working from home at unprecedented levels since 2020 – one thing is clear: employee experience either is or should be a top priority for any business.
There is no singular way to deliver on employee experience – after all, not everyone is working from home, not everyone wants the same thing from their workplace, and the list could go on. However, regardless of industry, work environment, or workforce demographic, the following best practices can help you elevate your employee experience.
Put culture first
Recent years have demonstrated that the workforce prioritizes culture – more and more, people want to work for places that align with their values. Whether your organization is fully remote, hybrid, or on-site, culture should be a top priority.
When employees feel connected to the place they work, they’re more likely to stay longer and perform better. One of the ways you can ensure culture is prioritized is through consistent messaging about what your organization expects and values. This is best done by making sure all employees have easy access to code of conduct, policies and other important messaging.
The beautiful thing about putting culture first is it will pay off with better financial performance. Employees who are satisfied with their work experience stay longer, are more productive, deliver better service – and the list goes on. While many organizations may still attempt to increase revenue by way of cutting costs, it’s worth considering if this negatively impacts culture, and what are the costs associated with a weakened culture? Though measuring the return on investment on prioritizing culture is not as straightforward as calculating the impact of reducing more tangible costs, the long-term benefits are widely documented.
Consistent communication
Whether discussing company values, strategic decisions, or the like, consistency is key. When organizations communicate disjointed messaging in any part of the business, the end result is often a diminished employee experience.
This is especially true during the employee onboarding experience and becomes increasingly complicated if that employee is remote. Employee onboarding is the first encounter they have with the culture and values of their employer – even before they learn how to do their job. Learning about a new company is tough enough for most people, but many times is made harder when they don’t know what the company stands for, what is expected of them, or where to find important information.
But the work doesn’t cease once the new employee is considered to be “fully onboarded”. For example, ongoing communication between Human Resources, IT, and Compliance is necessary to make sure employes have access to policies, adhere to IT security protocol, and complete annual training. In this example, if the coordination between these departments falls short, it leads to a confusing process any time an employee needs to ask a question, complete training, or generally get their tasks in order.
Consistent communication is one of the most critical ways organizations can foster an elevated employee experience.
Deploy easy-to-use solutions
When was the last time you were faced with a program or process that was so unnecessarily fussy that you had to walk away and come back to it with fresh eyes? Probably pretty recently, and it was likely a frustrating situation. This happens all too often for employees when they try to navigate the depths of their company’s intranet, shared drive, or any other internal system.
When disparate systems are used, or the user experience is not thought of during design, employees have a harder time finding the information they need and may even abandon the task. But think of this: an all-in-one portal that is designed to be customized to your organization, is simple to use and consolidates all important information into one place. Instead of navigating to multiple websites or searching through shared folders with inconsistent naming conventions, all necessary information could be in one place and easy to find. For most employees, this sounds like a dream come true – and it just may be.
Final words
NAVEX is committed to helping elevate your employee experience. We’re thrilled to announce the launch of People Hub – a solution built to ensure consistent communication with an easy-to-use interface which helps share your cultural values across the organization in one application.
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