The employee experience plays a huge role in talent attraction and retention. As a result, many organizations are now looking to improve employee experience outcomes for their teams.
Unfortunately, many aspects of the employee experience are often forgotten or neglected. Even worse, in some companies, it looks one way from the outside when it’s actually something totally different on the inside.
Luckily, there are things you can do to improve employee experience outcomes for your team. Let’s take a look at them:
Be consistent
We all hate it when a person is nice to someone’s face, then horrible behind their back.
If you have a culture that looks positive to the outside world, but doesn’t look after its employees on the inside, you’re doing the business equivalent of that.
Your employee experience—and how you present it—should be consistent. And transparent.
If you have a fast-paced environment, that’s fine. But don’t lie to people and say that it’s all about playing foosball and drinking beers.
Many candidates are now savvy to this and will avoid businesses that hype up all their benefits. In reality, they know they’re just using them to hide their negative culture and attitudes. So not only will you lose current employees, but it’ll also cause you to lose future ones, too.
Saying one thing while you do another will quickly sink any efforts to improve employee experience outcomes.
Have a strong culture
Know what you stand for and build your culture around that.
Are you all about failing fast? Do you like to keep things agile? Are you inclusive—actually inclusive, not “inclusive” to check a box?
All these things will reflect your culture internally and externally.
Make employees feel listened to
Sometimes people know that they don’t have the solution, or that their opinion won’t change anything. Ultimately, they just want to feel heard.
It’s really important to allow employees to air their grievances even if you disagree with them.
Don’t interrupt. Wait patiently. Let them get it out of their system, particularly if they’re annoyed or angry. Allow there to be silences.
The employee in question may end up realizing their perspective is wrong. Or, more than likely, they’ll just vent and will end up feeling much calmer for doing so.
They’ll also think more highly of you for allowing them to be honest about how your company’s situation makes them feel without ignoring or interrupting them. This can greatly improve employee experience outcomes across the organization.
Value your team’s opinions
Too many executives make huge decisions without considering how it’ll affect people further down the hierarchy. These are the people who are dealing with your customers and handling much of the day-to-day running of your business. It’s important to recognize that they may well know more than you.
And even if they don’t, they’re going to have a different—equally valuable—perspective.
The more opinions and perspectives you consider, the more likely you are to come up with new solutions to problems. These crowd-sourced solutions will also help more people and be much more inclusive.
Communicate clearly
Employees are much more likely to respect you if you’re clear with them. Tell them what you expect and when. Don’t tiptoe around it. Just be upfront. There’s nothing worse than lying or deceiving someone, especially in the workplace.
If you don’t know what’s happening yet, or things are up in the air, be honest about that, too.
Despite what many of us may think, it’s okay not to have all the answers. It doesn’t make you a bad leader or a bad person; it makes you human, which makes you more relatable.
Let go of the need for shiny objects
This one is harder if you’re remote anyway, but too many companies, for too long, used shiny objects like ping pong tables and expensive laptops to attract new hires like bees to a flower.
You don’t need the shiniest objects or the latest tech to get people in. You need a strong culture and decent pay.
If you can’t afford the best MacBook Pro for someone to do their job, look for a cheaper equivalent. There are plenty of alternatives that won’t upset your accountant but still have the power a developer or a designer needs.
Many employees won’t even need something that fancy, particularly if most of what they do is email and text-based. That will then free up more budget to spend on the departments that do need extra processing power.
Gadgets are fun, but they can’t compete with more authentic efforts to improve employee experience outcomes.
Have a strong onboarding process
An onboarding process can make or break your new hire’s opinion of your business. If it’s weak or nonexistent, they’re going to grow frustrated. Some may even leave.
In fact, 30% of employees leave during their first six months in a role. One of the main reasons they do so is a poor or non-existent onboarding process.
If your onboarding is clear and structured, taking into account their role and respecting their time, they’re much more likely to stick around and speak highly of you to their network.
And you never know how many new hires that could lead to. Referrals are one of the best ways to find high-quality talent, after all.
Be careful how you treat people
Have you heard the saying that you can tell a lot about a person based on how they treat a server at a restaurant?
The same is true for how they treat the cleaning staff, the interns, and anyone else at the bottom of the business hierarchy.
If you treat people differently because they’re in a “less important” role, you have the foundations for a negative employee experience that’s going to drive people away.
It doesn’t matter what someone does, where they grew up, where they live now, or anything else. They’re providing their time and energy in exchange for money, and that’s a privilege that should be treated as such. Your business couldn’t run without them. That’s why you grew, outsourced, and delegated, right?
Treat everyone with compassion and kindness, and they’ll return the favor to you and everyone else within your business. Cultivating respect at every level of the business is an incredibly effective way to improve employee experience results.
Conclusion
Building a world-class employee experience isn’t about having the shiniest, most expensive toys. It’s about how you make your employees feel.
Do they feel valued? Are they listened to? Are they made to feel less than because they’re on the cleaning staff, and not a manager?
It’s a combination of small things that will create your employee experience. Never underestimate something as simple as a “hello” on someone’s first day, or a “thank you” on their last.
Culture starts at the top. Employees mimic what their team leaders do, and team leaders copy what they see executives do. How you approach everything from a sensitive conversation to a fun one will reflect you as a person and influence the culture of your business.
The more positively you approach your employees and the experience you want to create, the greater the advantage you’ll have over your competition.
Another great way to improve employee experience outcomes is to get all of the events, groups, and programs you offer team members under one roof. With everything in one place, it’s easy for everyone to take advantage of the full array of your employee experience efforts.
Plus, you’ll get automated, real-time analytics so you can be strategic about your work to improve employee experience results. Sound interesting? Visit us at workrowd.com or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.
