According to author and futurist, Jacob Morgan, companies with a great employee experience boast better employee retention rates, superior employee engagement and higher profits.
You know you want some…
Crafting a cracking employee experience isn’t difficult, but it does take time and requires a fundamental change in mindset from managers and owners.
To make work a place where employees want versus need to show up, you have to put your employees first. Once you’ve created a physical and mental space where employees can thrive, all of your other business ambitions should follow organically.
Experiences shape who we are – they help us to connect with our colleagues and our organisation. Let’s look at some of the reasons having an epic experience inside organisations matter.
1. Define and communicate your organisation’s reason for being
If employees feel their company’s only reason for being is work without being recognised, chances are they won’t be jumping out of bed on a Monday morning, desperate to beat the rush hour traffic.
To allay this existential angst you need to settle on a purpose statement that;
1. Makes people want to reach for the stars
2. Doesn’t talk about money or profit
3. Positions the positive impact your organisation can have on the world
4. Promotes collaboration and makes employees excited to come to work
5. If employees know that they are making the world a better place, they align themselves to a shared sense of purpose and that makes work all the more meaningful.
2. Find the low points in your current organisational experience
Before you can fix your organisation, you need to know what’s wrong with it. One of the best ways to do this: Conduct a short survey. This means canvassing the opinions of every single employee in a manner that allows different personality types to be heard.
But, be sure to focus on these three areas:
1. Culture (nothing to do with painting your face pink and navigating an obstacle course)
2. Physical space (no one likes plastic ferns)
3. Technology (you can’t expect 2018 productivity if staff have 1980s hardware)
3. Involve employees in the redesign of the organisational experience
Remember, this entire exercise is about employees, so they need to be involved every step of the way.
If Thelma in HR said she’d like to spend some of her working hours helping out in the community why not get her to identify and establish a suitable project? And if Jacques in IT professed an interest in abstract art, perhaps he could help choose the decorations in the gents’ loo.
4. Keep the experience alive and ongoing
Building a great employee experience is an ongoing process.
Keep all the communications forums you established open, and use pulse surveys, staff events, internal communications and informal regroups to keep the employee experience front and centre.
If you pull this off, the world is your freshly shucked oyster. And, it’s no coincidence that the top 3 companies on the EX index are Facebook, Google and Apple.
Try Employee Experience for yourself
The first step to an improved employee experience is getting employees to engage in meaningful communication, from one holistic human being to another. This can be achieved by recognising your employees and connecting them to positive daily experiences to drive a culture of unity and cohesion.
Experiences start with recognition.
Sound off in the comments section below and let us know how you’re improving the employee experience in your workplace.