What is Employee Experience?

Why is Employee Experience Important?

The benefits of employee experience are vast and are centered around creating job satisfaction. This leads to a highly productive and motivated workforce that organically increases profits and marketplace positioning. 

These benefits include: 

1. Highly Engaged and Productive Employees
Employees that are disengaged or burned out cost businesses billions each year in lost revenue. It’s mainly due to low rates of productivity and increased absences that have long-term negative effects on profitability.

2. Lower Turnover Rates
High employee turnover rates are a sign that businesses aren’t creating a productive, efficient, and creative workforce. Employee experience fosters an avenue for growth and measurable prosperity that benefits both the business and the individual.

3. Increased Quality of Work Through Stronger Ties to Social & Cultural Issues According to Gartner, employees whose employer has taken a strong stance on current societal and cultural issues are twice as likely to report high job satisfaction. Workplace satisfaction reduces long-term HR costs, increases employee retention, and boosts quality outputs.

4. Increased Employee Retention and Relations
The employee experience impacts multiple facets of businesses, especially customer experience (CX). Employees that are happy and satisfied are more likely to drive a positive customer service experience and dedicate more of their time and effort to fulfilling strategic goals and objectives.

What is the Employee Experience Model?

The employee experience model is a useful framework that businesses use to assess and evaluate employee productivity and development. A comprehensive employee experience model helps businesses to invest in the right areas and deliver measurable, value-driven results.

Understanding what makes people happy and productive is a useful asset to businesses that want to get the most out of their employees and drive growth. Employee experience models use organizational psychology to enable businesses to develop systems that enhance employee satisfaction. 

Once areas for improvement have been identified, businesses can strategically expand, innovate, and develop procedures that transform challenges into solutions.

What is an Employee Experience Strategy?

An employee experience strategy is a plan that businesses use to strengthen and improve the experience of employees. These strategies incorporate an organization’s cultural, physical, and technological environments by building a greater sense of belonging in the workplace, strengthening workforce optimization.  

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an opportunity for businesses to harness disruption and use it to build authentic, substantial employee experiences. The rise in remote work and the adoption of hybrid workforces mean that businesses have to implement strategies that enable them to adapt and respond quickly to change.

Top Employee Experience Trends in 2024

The top employee experience trends for 2024 are as follows: 

1. Leaders are expected to take on additional responsibilities – These include steering diversity and impartial outcomes for employees, promoting a sense of belonging, supporting social justice issues, and creating employee resource groups.

2. The demand for better physical and digital workspaces will dramatically rise – Implementing the right hybrid working models creates world-class collaboration and digital experiences that promote growth and productivity. Businesses are starting to consider investing in workspaces that keep employees productive and at their best.

Employee Experience Metrics

Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to measure the employee experience. Using a metric system helps managers and higher-ups to effectively quantify progress and construct the highest quality employee experience. 

The following metrics can be used to gauge employee experience: 

• Employee Satisfaction 
• Employee Productivity 
• Employee Wellness 
• Employee Retention 
• Employee Recruitment 
• Employee Engagement 
• Employee Absenteeism 

Employee experience is at the core of the employee lifecycle and helps to evaluate the following: 

• Development
• Training 
• Rewards
• The Recruitment Process
• The Quality of Onboarding

Employee Experience Platforms

An employee experience platform is a software platform that encourages organizations to administer and oversee the look, feel, and interactions a person has whilst using a specific system. 

Employee experience platforms update front-end application functionality without disrupting back-end systems. They allow businesses to build on the foundational security provided by existing software and establish a modern layer on top that is optimized for ease of use.

Examples of employee experience platforms include:

• Digital Adoption Platforms
• WalkMe Workstation
• Mobile Engagement Software
• Universal Communication Platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.)

Employee Experience Defined By Gartner

Gartner describes employee experience as the way that employees interpret the interactions they have with their organization, as well as the context that underlies those interactions. 

This means that employees are constantly monitoring experience in a way that directly affects productivity and strategic objectives being met. If employees aren’t satisfied at work, they’ll likely affect businesses’ long-term potential for growth and expansion. 

Why is Employee Experience Important for Digital Transformation?

The successful implementation of a digital transformation strategy affects various areas of the business. Employee experience is often overlooked and doesn’t get as much attention as other processes. It’s a crucial component that aids digital transformation through an employee-first approach. 

Focusing on employee experience has been proven to impact the bottom line across all important areas of business. MIT’s Centre for Information Systems Research found that when organizations get employee experience right, they achieve twice the customer satisfaction and innovation and generate 25% higher profits than those that don’t. 

As the ones who need to engage with and adopt the new technology, employees drive digital transformation and heavily influence the direction of digitalization strategies. With new ways of working being discovered, employees are altering their habits to seamlessly respond and react to new roles.

Conclusion

Developing and expanding employee experience leads to happier staff that are agile, reflexive, and motivated. The increase in productivity gained from highly-motivated and engaged staff is immeasurable. Energized teams that have direction, responsibilities, and vision are among the most productive and use their skills to promote a healthy lifestyle both at work and at home. 

Employee experience is the most important tool that a business can use to gauge employee satisfaction and plan for the future. As new technologies and systems are implemented, businesses need to invest in inclusive employee experience programs that train and add value to their people’s lives.