Category: Employee Experience

As both the workforce and the workplace continue to change, many organizations find themselves wondering whether they need an employee experience manager.

The employee experience is more complex than ever before, with people working remotely, based in the office, or taking a hybrid approach. You can have employees located anywhere in the world. Plus, you can also have freelancers or consultants filling out your workforce when you need it. 

All of this is a lot for HR teams to juggle and consider. Each situation has different needs and requires different management approaches. 

You also have to factor in employees’ individual needs based on their personal situation. This could include their health, location, neurodiversity, disability, household type, and even their personal preferences. 

The more of these things you factor in, the more likely you are to retain employees. 

However, it all adds up to a lot to manage on top of someone’s existing responsibilities. That’s why it helps to have a dedicated employee experience manager whose sole responsibility is to focus on these things.

77% of job seekers say that employee experience is a deciding factor when considering where to apply. So not investing in yours means you might miss out on the best candidate for a role. This then risks harming your business’s long-term growth.

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits of having an employee experience manager in the new world of work:

Better customer experience

When it comes to existing employees, 85% of people agree that an improved employee experience, and higher employee engagement, means a better customer experience and higher customer satisfaction. 

When employees are happier and more engaged at work, they’re much more likely to provide a great customer experience. This is true for both new and old customers. It reflects well on your brand, meaning you’re more likely to get high reviews and repeat customers who spread the word about you and your business.

As a result, you get to earn more money, attract more customers, charge more, and grow faster.

Greater sense of belonging

25% of American employees feel they lack a sense of belonging in the workplace. And 40% of employees now feel isolated at work. 

When employees feel this way, their performance suffers and they’re more likely to leave. 

A lot more likely to leave: the turnover risk for someone who feels unhappy at work or like they don’t belong is 50%. How many of your employees can you risk feeling that way?

An employee experience manager prevents this high turnover risk. It’s their job to help employees feel like they do belong. 

They can organize things like employee groups, networking events, individual accomodations, whatever someone needs to feel appreciated.

And they can manage your feedback surveys to spot any problems before they evolve into bigger issues.

Reduced churn rate

As mentioned above, the risk of someone leaving if they’re unhappy at work is 50%.

Every time an employee who doesn’t feel like they belong leaves, it costs you money. You have to hire and train someone new to fill the gap they left behind. 

And if you haven’t fixed the issues the original employee faced, their replacement may not stay all that long either. This same cycle could end up repeating itself just a few months later.

More tailored approach to employees’ individual needs

HR teams are busier than ever before. That means they simply don’t have the time or the head space to take an individualized approach to someone’s needs. 

Having an employee experience manager whose job it is to focus on ensuring everyone can build a work-life they love means it doesn’t add to the stress of other HR team members. It complements the efforts of the larger people team and boosts employee satisfaction.

The more we learn about people and their different ways of working, the more important it is for us to tailor our approaches and our office environment to employees’ individual needs.

Some employees might work better in a busy, open-plan office environment, while others will thrive in silence. 

Not all employees are comfortable asking for what they need. Or, HR managers dealing with certain situations may not know what help is available. Having an employee experience manager who’s knowledgeable about these things is vital to helping workers achieve—and exceed—their potential.

There are so many different needs out there that understanding them all is a full-time job. An employee experience manager can monitor and manage employees’ needs without it distracting from other HR tasks.

Stay competitive

Innovation is moving faster than ever before. You need a highly engaged workforce and a low turnover rate to remain competitive. 

Otherwise, you risk spending too much money on the hiring process and on trying to retain your employees. These are resources you could be spending on growing and staying competitive.

Exceed employees’ expectations

As the world of work continues to change, employees’ expectations of their employers are growing. 

Many employees aren’t just going to accept the status quo anymore. They’re demanding better because they know they deserve it. 

An employee experience manager shows the outside world, and your employees, that you’re dedicated to helping your team achieve their potential and ensuring they’re happy and fulfilled in their roles. 

It also shows you’re a part of the modern world of work and not stuck in the Dark Ages like some businesses still are. 

And it differentiates you from your competitors—particularly if they don’t prioritize their employee experience. 

It could even be the difference between someone choosing to work for your business or going to your competitor.

Conclusion

An employee experience manager helps both you and your employees feel happy, fulfilled, and successful. 

They take the burden off of HR teams who may already be feeling overwhelmed with everything they have to juggle in the ever-changing world of work. 

And they ensure that employees are more productive by providing a better employee experience. This then allows your business to grow and stay competitive. 

Whether you’re considering hiring an employee experience manager or trying to succeed without one, having the right tools is key. With a one-stop shop for all your employee programs, events, announcements, files, calendars, and more, everyone can tap into the best your company has to offer from day one.

Plus, with automated surveys, data tracking, and analytics, you’ll have the power to optimize your employee experience in real-time. Don’t fall behind the pack and lose out on top talent. Visit us online today to learn more, or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com.

HR software tools can be a huge asset to overworked people teams. Or, they can take up more time than they save you.

The HR software market was valued at more than $15 billion in 2020 and is expected to exceed $33 billion by 2028. There’s a tool for virtually every use case, from tracking employees’ details to payroll to perks.

And it’s no longer just about everyday employee management tools. For every $1 you spend on employee wellness, you get $1.50 in return. The bigger your workforce, the more this adds up.

So, let’s check out some of the HR software tools that can help you drive more value in 2023:

Core HR (personnel tracking)

Life is so much easier when all the information you need is in one place. 

Personnel tracking software enables you to store employees’ names, contact details, and other vital information together. 

Employees can update it when they need to, such as if they change addresses. 

If there’s something you need to change for a group of employees, such as when you move offices, it can be done with a few clicks instead of manually typing everything into a spreadsheet.

Time and attendance

If you need to track how long projects take for billable hours, or how long employees spend working for you, time tracking software can make things a lot easier.

Employees click a button to start and stop, then it works out how long projects take or how long they’re clocked in for. This helps you make more informed decisions about time frames and pricing for future projects.

Payroll

Payroll can be hugely complicated and time-consuming to manage. 

You can use payroll software to automate payments, benefits, taxes, and more. This enables you to focus on other areas of your business, safe in the knowledge your finances are handled efficiently.

Employee self-service/knowledge hub 

A new employee can have lots of questions. Even long-term employees can have questions if you’ve got a complicated product or have implemented something new. 

Having a one-stop shop where they can find everything they need to know about your products or services, how to do stuff, and why things happen a certain way, can ensure they get the answers they need when they need them. 

It’s much quicker than asking in a group chat thread or reaching out to a colleague directly. And it avoids anyone feeling awkward for asking basic questions.

Benefits administration

From healthcare to discounts, benefits can play a huge part in your employee experience, as well as in talent attraction and retention. 

Using HR software tools to manage employee benefits automates the process, making it easier to enroll people in programs and allowing them to see what they have access to.

Recognition and rewards

A little recognition goes a long way. It could be anything from a virtual high-five to more substantial rewards like brand discounts or goodies. Keeping them all in one place using HR software tools means employees won’t miss out because they didn’t know you offered certain perks.

Performance review

Using HR software tools to track performance reviews gives you somewhere to store what everyone has said in the past, and holds people accountable to their performance goals. It also gives them a place to track how well they’re doing in relation to their goals.

This makes future reviews easier because everything from previous reviews is documented in one place.

Applicant tracking

Some jobs can get hundreds, or even thousands, of applicants. Using applicant tracking software keeps everyone’s details in one place. 

Certain systems can also vet applicants’ resumes for you before a hiring manager looks at them. This reduces the admin burden, although keep in mind it can introduce another layer of bias.

Learning management

94% of the 3 to 4.5 million Americans who leave their jobs every month would stay if their employer offered them more long-term learning opportunities. 

Learning management software is a low-cost way to help employees grow skills that are relevant to their role and industry, allowing them to learn what they need at their own pace.

Coaching

As mentioned above, the ability to learn and grow is a huge part of why someone stays or leaves a company. 

Coaching software allows your coaches to track what they’ve worked on with their students, schedule appointments, share resources, and more.

Employee experience management

Only 16% of businesses use technology to track the progress and engagement of their employees. But knowing how your employees really feel is key to retention. Engaged employees are happier employees, after all.

Employee experience management software enables you to send out pulse surveys, gauging how employees feel in the moment. You can then act on the results to improve situations or fix any problems before they interfere with your business or cause you to lose employees.

No-code customized tool builders

Not everyone knows—or wants to know—how to write code. 

No-code customized tool builders enable employees to design what they want without needing to learn how to write code first. They can simply drag and drop elements where they want them to go. This saves countless hours and can reduce development costs, too.

Onboarding

Research by the Brandon Hall Group found that a great employee onboarding process might increase retention by as much as 82%. 

And a more organized onboarding process results in a 60% increase in yearly revenue.

HR software tools focused on onboarding help you lay out everything an employee needs to know when they join your company. You can then pace it so that they don’t feel bored or overwhelmed.

AI assistants to answer employee questions

AI is particularly useful for onboarding employees and can save other team members a lot of time when it comes to FAQs. 

To keep it personal, you can offer people the option to discuss things further with a colleague if the answers they get need more explanation.

Productivity

Effective task management can play a huge role in how productive employees are, whatever size your team is.

You can create Kanban boards, calendars, Gantt charts, or another form of tracking in most productivity tools. 

They’re often fully customizable to you and your needs. That means you can break down the tasks involved in a project, assign them to different people, and check whether they’re done or need to be worked on.

Internal talent/skills marketplace

Being able to connect people with relevant skills to another person or team within your business that needs them means you can solve problems sooner. It also streamlines the process of finding out who can help with something.

Conclusion 

There are so many forms of HR software tools out there that can help you manage your business better. This list should give you a solid place to start, but you’ll need to identify what your organization truly needs.

For instance, you may need a better way of keeping everyone connected and ensuring your employee programs and events are delivering results. In that case, a central hub with all your offerings, complete with real-time analytics, can help.

If you’d like to learn more about these types of HR software tools, we here at Workrowd would be happy to chat. Our platform makes it easy for every employee to tap into the things that can drive real value for them. Drop us a note at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.

The employee experience survey has become a pretty standard tool for people teams in recent years. Many companies now send a giant, all-encompassing engagement survey once or twice per year. 

However, this strategy isn’t effective anymore, and for a lot of organizations, it never was. To stay competitive, you need to switch up your approach.

If you’re not convinced, just consider the facts. There’s a huge disparity between how employees view these surveys and what managers think.

48% of senior managers find surveys highly valuable, yet 45% of employees feel they have little to no value. 

52% of senior managers think surveys provide a very accurate assessment, while 48% of employees say they don’t. 

Which explains why 29% of employees think they’re pointless and only 1/5 of them believe their manager would act on concerns raised in an employee experience survey. They’re probably right; managers estimate they only spend 2-5 days per year on activities relating to their annual engagement survey.

Which kind of makes you wonder: what’s the point?

And is there a better alternative?

Here are some ways to get more value out of your employee experience survey.

Minimize admin work 

A quarter of managers see employee experience surveys as a box-checking exercise. 

This is why minimizing how much admin work they have to do is key. If they don’t view your employee experience survey as useful, they’re never going to take the responses seriously.

This means nothing will change, which brings us back to the question above. What’s the point if there’s no difference between before and after your employee experience survey?

Embrace automated data collection and analysis

When you have an automated process to distribute your employee experience survey and analyze the data coming in, everything becomes easier. Being able to ‘set it and forget it’ frees up more time to review the results. 

Not only that, but it becomes easier to make changes in response to the data. Team members can see everything they need to know at a glance, so there’s no question about where to focus.

And doesn’t everyone want to spend more of their time making a difference rather than staring at spreadsheets?

Track the impact of your employee groups, programs, and events

Investing time and money into employee initiatives is a waste if you can’t measure the impact they have. That’s why it’s so important to monitor their results. Unfortunately, many organizations gloss over or completely skip this topic in their employee experience survey.

When you have up-to-date data measuring how your groups, programs, and events are performing, you can make the most of your energy and budget. What’s more, using this data to optimize your employee experience can help you make big strides on retention and engagement.

Shorten the time between surveying and changes happening

When managers have lots of answers to read, then analyze, it can take a really long time. It’s no wonder 27% of managers never go through them at all – it takes too long!

By automating the analysis piece, managers can skip right to acting on the results. This then becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. Because changes were made in response to their input, employees will be more likely to complete future surveys.

No one wants to wait a year to see whether their voice was heard. Shortening the timeline reduces frustrations, and helps everyone feel more valued and engaged.

Make it easier and quicker to fill in

Think about the last time a brand you love sent you a customer feedback survey. Wanting to help out, you clicked it, only to find it was really long. By the end, you’d stopped typing the in-depth answers they were looking for, if you finished it at all.

The abandonment rate for surveys that take more than 7-8 minutes to fill in is 20%. And only 30% of employees actually fill in surveys. Which isn’t great if you want to get a complete picture of what’s happening in your workforce.

It makes sense, though. Our attention spans are short, and we don’t have that much time. Our working days are filled with, well, work. It’s much easier to find time to complete a short, well-designed survey, than a long, hard to follow one.

For example, Workrowd’s automated feedback questionnaires typically take 2-3 minutes to complete and ask just 5-10 questions.

Sending them out automatically after events and program sessions means data gets collected regularly, while brief pulse surveys help complete the picture. Speaking of which…

Spread out your opportunities to collect data

Things can change quickly when you’re in business, especially in the digital age. 

So, if you’re only collecting data once in a blue moon (which is about every 2-3 years), you’re not going to get accurate insight into how your employees feel. Especially when some employees won’t stick around that long, partially because their input isn’t valued.

Employees want to feel respected. Regularly collecting information on their experience at work is one way you can show them that you really are listening, not treating surveys as a box-checking exercise.

You don’t want to be bothering people every week, obviously, but the shorter the surveys, and the easier they are to fill in, the more often you can send them without employees feeling annoyed or interrupted. 

And you’ll get more relevant, timely data as a result. This also prevents problems from lingering, as you’re more likely to notice them as they appear.

Combining data from a short employee experience survey with feedback from recent events and activities can give you the insight you need to succeed in today’s tight talent market.

Use it to inspire new ideas

It’s all very well and good sending an employee experience survey, but if you’re not doing anything with the feedback, it can easily backfire. As mentioned above, you’ll see low participation, and people may even leave if their input is repeatedly ignored.

Even if what people come back with is uncomfortable to hear, it’s important to listen. You can use the feedback to improve systems that aren’t working, look for ways you can embrace and encourage deeper inclusion, and highlight good things happening within your business.

Conclusion 

Revamping your employee experience survey strategy can help you identify ways to improve. It can also show you where you should be celebrating how great your staff and business are.

If reimagining your relationship with your employee experience survey is of interest to you this year, send us a note at hello@workrowd.com. Our lightweight tools automate the process of collecting employee experience data, then lay the results out for you in readable, real-time dashboards.

Don’t waste your time creating and promoting another long survey this year, only to have to slog through overwhelming piles of data. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of Workrowd’s tool suite to make your life easier and delight employees across your organization.

Whether your organization is office-based, remote, or hybrid, the employee journey is everything. 

A positive employee journey will drive retention, boost productivity, and mean you make more money. Your workplace will also attract better quality candidates and be a more uplifting place to work. Who doesn’t want that?

However, when it comes to building a world-class employee journey, some businesses feel stuck. Can you really build an employee journey that delivers for all team members, no matter where or when they work?

Yes you can. The cornerstone of any effective employee journey is communication. With or without technology, that can happen in a range of ways, it doesn’t just have to be face-to-face.

In fact, let’s not forget that for some people, face-to-face communication is challenging. Digital may be more comfortable, or even aid in how they process the information.

With that in mind, let’s explore some tips to build a great employee journey both in-person and digitally:

Encourage connection

Regardless of how big your company is, or where it’s based, connection is pivotal to people feeling like they belong. Of course, it’s also pivotal to the business running smoothly. There’s nothing worse than one department saying one thing, and another department saying another to a client or contractor.

Connection is key to successful communication. When teams value what other departments do, they’re more likely to discuss things with them and value their input.

If it’s a competitive environment, this is much less likely to happen. That’s also where you end up with situations where the left side doesn’t know what the right side is doing. This leads to poor collaboration among teams and potentially even with customers.

In a situation where an employee already feels isolated, like remote working, a competitive or unhealthy environment can worsen it. People need to feel like they can talk to and connect with someone. Even if it’s just about what they watched on TV last night. Never underestimate the impact of those types of connections when it comes to someone’s mental and physical health.

Check-in regularly

Regular check-ins, whether they’re individual, in a group, written, or on a call, show employees that you really care about their wellbeing. 

You could also encourage employees to check in with each other, especially if someone has been quiet or acting out of character. 

The extent to which a simple “how are you?” can lead to someone opening up and feeling better may surprise you. It’s one of the simplest ways to improve the employee journey.

Keep chats engaged

Tools like Slack, Teams, and Workrowd are really important for a top-notch employee journey. They make people feel like a part of the team. So long as they’re not a ghost town. 

When these spaces are quiet, people may feel uncomfortable asking questions or getting involved in them. Try to post something regularly, even if it’s just a business update or asking a question in the general section.

Ask for feedback

You don’t know if what you’re doing is working until you ask someone. Your employees can give you crucial insights into what you’re doing and whether it’s the right thing for them and their colleagues. 

They may also have suggestions for how you can improve the employee journey.

Make space for both digital and in-person interactions

Some people are uncomfortable on camera, writing feedback, or discussing something over Slack. They’d prefer to do these things in an office, sitting next to someone. 

It’s time to get over that self-consciousness and treat digital interactions like you would when you’re talking to someone in the office. This will make you, and the person you’re talking to, feel more comfortable.

Many of these things get easier over time and with practice. 

You can improve giving written feedback by researching editing techniques. This is something that many people don’t realize they can and should do anyway. Giving feedback is an art and a science, just like many other things in life. Doing it well is also a key part of a great employee journey.

Support different departments and ranks

Even if someone is further down the career ladder, their messages shouldn’t be ignored or treated differently. 

In previous roles, I’ve had my messages ignored, even when they were urgent. I’m not sure if that was because of my rank or department, but it made it a lot harder to do my job. 

It also makes the person on the receiving end feel pretty terrible. If their colleagues are ignoring them, does that mean people don’t value them within the business? Are they bad at their job? Do their coworkers dislike them?

You really don’t want to be running a company where people feel that way. Not only does it come with wellbeing risks for the employee, but it will also lead to a higher churn rate for your business.

Have time to disconnect

Disconnection from work is just as important as building connections between colleagues. 

Not having to respond to emails or messages immediately can help employees get into a state of deep work. This can then make them more productive and mean what they produce is of a higher quality.

You could have a set time for everyone to disconnect, or allow people to choose their own time. What matters is that you know the importance of taking time away from the constant barrage of work notifications.

Conclusion 

A world-class employee journey is really about one thing: connection. The more connected someone feels to the rest of their team and others within the business, the happier they’re likely to be and the more work they’ll get done.

Technology now makes it easier for us to connect than ever. This means you have a wider pool of talent to choose from, can hire a more diverse workforce, and can reap all the benefits that those things provide.

The more you embrace taking steps to improve the employee journey, the more employees will follow your lead and do the same. They may even introduce you to new strategies, tools, and techniques you hadn’t considered before, but that would be the perfect fit for your business.

One tool that can support you in improving the employee journey is Workrowd. By connecting staff to the full array of your employee groups, programs, and events from day one, our user-friendly platform makes it easy for everyone to build a personalized employee journey they love.

Plus, with automated analytics, you always know where you stand and how you can make the employee journey even better. Drop us a line at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.

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.

Starting a new job can be scary and overwhelming. There are so many people to meet and get to know. Hopefully, as employees grow with your company, they’ll meet people they like and enjoy spending time with. Having friends at work can significantly impact your team, so we’re here to help you support your employees in building these key connections.

Gallup’s Q12 Survey and Having Friends at Work

When you think about connecting your employees, you have to understand how important it is. For example, Gallup, a leading company in employee engagement, talks a lot about the importance of friends at work. As a result, having friends at work made it into their Q12 employee engagement survey.

Question 10 of their survey reads, “I have a best friend at work.”

Gallup shares:

Globally, three in 10 employees strongly agree that they have a best friend at work. By moving that ratio to six in 10, organizations could realize 28% fewer safety incidents, 5% higher customer engagement scores and 10% higher profit.

Gallup

How to Encourage Friendships at Work

So, now that you understand why you should encourage friendships, let’s talk about how to make it happen for your staff members. Being a friendship matchmaker can feel awkward, but so is trying to make friends with colleagues on one’s own. Your employees would love some direction from management to help them build these relationships.

1. Introduce Potential Hires to Employees Early

First, you want to introduce candidates to their potential colleagues as early as you can. There are a couple of ways to make this happen for your employees:

• Highlight your team on your company’s career page.
• Bring in employees throughout the interview process.
• Invite employees to join you at career fairs or recruitment events.

You want potential employees to be able to feel your company’s culture before they sign on with your organization. Potential workers may even make a friend before they start orientation.

2. Use a Cohort Model During Onboarding

Onboarding can be a lonely process, especially if you are doing it alone. The best companies use a cohort model to onboard new hires. Cohorts are groups of new hires who go through the process at the same time. With this form of onboarding, your employees can make friends instantly because they are all working together to get to know the organization.

3. Encourage Employees to Get To Know Colleagues Throughout Their Tenure

After onboarding is complete, you have to continue to nudge employees in the right direction. Encourage employees to take time to get to know their colleagues.

You could even create a monthly calendar reminder to nudge employees you manage to get to know their team members.

On top of that, create some interesting optional events that help employees make friends, like coworking hours or monthly meet and greets.

4. Create Communal Spaces at Your Office

If you’re trying to create office friendships, what does your office look like? Is it closed off and dark? Are there spaces for employees to gather without getting in the way of their teammates? Your office space needs to be conducive to friendships if you want them to form.

• Create larger spaces where groups of employees can gather.
• Add light in by painting the walls a bright color and keeping windows uncovered so the communal spaces are pleasant to be in.
• Soundproof the offices or areas where people gather, so workers don’t feel bad about the noise they might make.

5. Create Employee Resource Groups for Cross-Departmental Connections

Employee resource groups are a great cross-departmental experience for workers. People who participate in ERGs get to meet new and exciting people they may never have heard of due to departmental silos.

If you want to expand the friendship possibilities at work, creating an ERG is the perfect project for your business. Are you unsure of how to market, manage, and measure these programs? Check out Workrowd to see if we can help you host your company’s employee resource groups.

6. Include ‘Get To Know You’ Time During Meetings

Meetings are an essential part of internal communications for companies. Unfortunately, many organizations have established meeting agendas that get straight to the point. Ultimately, this misses a huge opportunity: get to know you time.

Meetings are more effective when everyone around the table trusts each other. Some organizations are missing this core component, but they don’t have to stay that way.

Start each meeting with a 5- to 10-minute ‘get to know you’ game. These quick games can help employees get to know different organization members and find employees they might have something in common with.

7. Introduce Employees You Think Would Like Each Other

Are you finding you need to be a bit more hands-on with employee friendships? Sometimes the best thing you can do is to make an introduction.

As a company leader, you know a lot of people in the organization. You probably have a couple of people in mind who should meet each other. Don’t be afraid to broker the connection.

Create a group chat with the employees who need to meet each other. Write a simple message like:

“Hi {Employee A},

I was talking with {Employee B} about {whatever you were talking about}. It reminded me of a conversation we had not too long ago about this exact topic. I thought you might like one more person in the company to talk to about this. I think you two will get along well!“

A simple introduction should do the trick, and it will open up some incredible workplace friendships based on a shared experience, trait, or like/dislike.

8. Showcase the Friendships You’ve Made at Work

Last but not least, model what great workplace relationships look like. Share the details of your favorite workplace friendships and encourage employees to find friendships that matter to them.

Encourage other workplace leaders to share their friendship stories with their direct reports and colleagues as well.

As more leaders begin talking about workplace friendships, having friends at work will become even easier for your organization.

Conclusion: Help Your Team Members Develop Workplace Friendships

Your team members deserve to have fantastic workplace friendships. One of the hardest parts about being an adult is making friends. Work gives people a chance to meet and bond with others. As a company leader, it’s your job to help facilitate these connections so that employees can genuinely say they have a best friend at work.

Are you interested in seeing if Workrowd can help you create workplace friendships? Send us an email at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.

As your team grows, it’s important to think about how workers perceive your organization. Setting employee experience goals helps you improve retention, which is essential for the true growth of your organization.

Today, we want to go over the basics of employee experience and how to set up goals to measure it at your company.

Looking for some actionable ways to improve the employee experience? Check out our article that shares five easy strategies your organization can use.

What Is Employee Experience?

First, let’s cover the basics. What is employee experience exactly? Employee experience is the way that your team members perceive your organization and their role in it.

In an ideal world, your team members would have a positive employee experience, meaning they are happy at work, feel included, and can do great things while working with your organization.

Unfortunately, many team members don’t get a positive experience. According to HR Daily Advisor, “only 17% of respondents say their employer offers an “exceptional” experience.”

Organizations have a long way to go before more employees rate their experience highly.

7 Employee Experience Goal Setting Tips

So, now that you know what employee experience is and where most organizations stand, how do you ensure your organization does well? First, you’ll want to create some employee experience goals.

1. Get Clear on Why Employee Experience Matters to Your Organization

Before you start setting goals, you need to get clear on why employee experience matters. There are many initiatives that you might choose to focus on as an HR leader. Why are you choosing to improve the employee experience?

Getting clear on your ‘why’ will help you justify the costs of these initiatives to other leaders on your team. Understanding what goals you need to set and going after those initiatives takes money and time. The positive effect of those goals might not be seen for a quarter or two. You need a great plan in place to justify the costs of this endeavor.

So, why should organizations care about employee experience? Simple: it improves retention.

2. Take Stock of the Current Employee Experience

Before you can set any goals, you need to know what’s currently happening in your company. Therefore, we encourage you to set aside some time to work on the following activities:

• Send out an employee experience or engagement survey like Gallup’s Q12 survey.
• Perform exit interviews for any employee leaving your organization.
• Chat with new hires about how they perceive the employee experience.
• Connect with other leaders to uncover any gaps they’ve noticed in your company’s employee experience.

After you’ve done some analysis, you should better understand where your team currently stands. With this information, you have a baseline, and you can work to improve things from there.

3. Work With Employees to Define Their Ideal Experience

Next, you’ll want to move into working with current employees to understand their ideal experience.

If they could work at a perfect organization, what would their relationship with the company look like?

Do you want to make this even more helpful? Consider surveying your organization by department and as one unit. Different departments might have unique ways of working. When understanding an ideal employee experience, it might be worth it to understand each department’s unique challenges and triumphs.

4. Connect With Company Leaders to Define Their Ideal Experience

After you chat with employees, you should do the same with company leaders. Leaders must have an ideal experience as the head of a department or team.

Company leaders have a big picture understanding of the organization’s weaknesses and strengths. The best part about company leaders is they can give you a better understanding of the current state of your organization and help you set more realistic goals.

5. Combine the Two and Make It All Actionable

After you speak with employees and leaders, it’s time to combine both ideal experiences to create something actionable for your company.

You can work using the SMART goals method, which encourages you to create goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

The aspects of this method you’ll need to pay close attention to are attainable and time-bound. Employee experience change doesn’t happen overnight. So you need to break down your larger experience goals into smaller, attainable chunks that have set deadlines.

For example, instead of saying, “I want to be the best employer in my geographic area,” you could say, “I want to be recognized in my area with a Best Places To Work award by the end of 2024.”

Taking a few moments to dig deeper and research your goals will make them better for HR and company leaders.

6. Present Your Latest Employee Experience Goals and How You Plan to Achieve Them

Once you have a set of goals, it’s time to share them. Let your team know what they are and what your plans are for achieving them.

If you need some help explaining your goals, you could bring in some of the bigger picture items you were brainstorming.

To follow the example we gave above, “We want to be the best employer in town, so we want to win the city’s Best Places To Work award by the end of 2024, and we’ll do this by…”

Your team needs to know your game plan so they can follow your lead and accomplish the goals you set. The more detailed your goals are, the easier they are to follow.

7. Follow Up to Ensure That Employee Experience Goals Are Being Met

It’s easy to let goals collect dust after you’ve shared them. A famous quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry states, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Your team needs to make a plan and follow through on it.

You can do this by setting up milestones for your goals and adding designated goal check-in dates on your calendar. Be sure to keep your team up to date on progress and encourage them to check in with you and keep you honest.

Conclusion: Set Your Company’s Employee Experience Today

Employee experience takes time to turn around, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start today. Use this article as a jumping-off point to discuss how you will improve your organization’s experience at work.

Are you ready to use Workrowd when planning your organization’s employee experience? Reach out to us at hello@workrowd.com to see if we’re right for your team.

As it becomes increasingly clear that we simply won’t be returning to the ‘normal’ of old, many companies are beginning to search for new ways to improve their employee experience. The pandemic has tested employers on many fronts, and the impending ‘turnover tsunami’ is painful proof that not every organization rose to the occasion. For those looking to make up lost ground, or simply stay ahead of the many upcoming curves, we wanted to pull together a list of low-lift solutions that can make a big impact for your employees. Plus, since we’ve got a flexible software platform designed to help companies of all sizes improve their employee experience, it only made sense to orient those solutions around Workrowd’s functionality.

That said, we know that not everyone has Workrowd at their disposal (yet!), so these ideas can all be implemented without the help of the platform, albeit with a bit more prep on the frontend and ongoing legwork. Don’t let that dissuade you, though; investing in ways to improve your employee experience is one of the best things you can do as team members start to return to the office, or settle into non-pandemic remote working for the long haul. Many of these ideas came up in conversations with Workrowd users or prospective users, so trust that there are a lot of brilliant minds behind the ideas on this page. Read on to learn why it’s so crucial to improve your employee experience, and check out our top strategies for doing so.

Why it’s more important than ever to improve your employee experience this year

Delivering a quality employee experience is crucial to ensuring your organization can recruit and retain top talent, the biggest factor in contributing to your company’s success. According to Deloitte, 80% of HR and business leaders say that employee experience is “important” or “very important” to them. Of these respondents however, only 22% feel that their organization is “excellent” at creating a differentiated employee experience. This is especially critical at a time when employees have an array of options available to them.

More than 80% of employers are already hiring or plan to hire during 2021. What’s more, 76% of companies believe that the demand for talent in 2021 will near or exceed pre-pandemic levels, which is good news given that more than 60% of full-time U.S. workers plan to look for a new job this year. What’s more, 3 million women have left the workforce since the pandemic began, and it’s unclear how many will return in 2021, or at all. As if these compounding elements weren’t enough to stress how important it is to improve your employee experience, the gig economy grew by 33% during the pandemic, providing yet another bucket of opportunities you could lose your top talent to as part of the ‘turnover tsunami’.

Beyond the recruitment and retention piece though, you also need the talent you have to be productive and engaged while they’re at work in order for your organization to be successful. Unfortunately, in addition to the aforementioned ‘turnover tsunami’, experts are also predicting a ‘mental health tsunami’ as we begin to emerge from the clutches of pandemic lockdowns. According to the American Psychiatric Association, employees living with untreated depression experience a 35% reduction in productivity, at a cost to the U.S. economy of $210.5 billion. Ensuring that support for your team members’ mental health is a part of your efforts to improve your employee experience will go a long way towards helping both your people and your bottom line thrive as the economy bounces back from the prolonged, pandemic-induced downturn.

Our top 5 ways to improve the employee experience in 2021

Now you know why you should invest in improving your employee experience, so how do you do it? There are many strategies you can pursue, but the most important thing you can do is to start talking to your employees. As with any effort to develop a product or experience consumers love, you have to begin by listening to the intended buyers themselves. Your current and prospective employees are the customers of your employee experience. If it’s not one they find attractive, you’re going to struggle in the impending war for talent. Additionally, this post doesn’t address compensation and benefits, but this is another make or break element of a world-class employee experience, so make sure your packages make the cut.

Once you’ve collected employee input via both surveys and conversations, here are some programs you might want to consider launching or increasing your investment in as part of your employee experience revamp:

1. Professional development. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay with a company longer if it invested in helping them learn. Professional development can come in a number of different forms, and focus on a number of different topics. While self-study environments can be great for some, others learn better in groups. Plus, by enabling employees to learn together, you can double your potential benefits as you’ll be strengthening relationships between colleagues at the same time that you’re upskilling your workforce. One easy and inexpensive way to get started is to support employees to launch professional development groups such as Toastmasters at your company. Fear of public speaking can restrict wages by 10%, and inhibit promotion to management by 15%, so there’s really no downside to helping your employees improve their presentation skills.
2. Employee resource groups. In case we haven’t said it enough yet on this blog, we’ll do it again: employee resource groups are a massively underutilized tool. Every organization that has grown to the point where everyone doesn’t personally know each other should offer employee resource groups. These associations are not just crucial for driving diversity, equity, and inclusion, but they can do a lot to surface and solve unreported employee needs before they start hurting your business. Employee resource groups don’t have to be difficult to start, either. In fact, the Global ERG Network makes it extraordinarily easy to get them up and running with best practice templates and toolkits, monthly virtual events, and 24/7 networking and knowledge sharing with peers. There’s no reason to not start or ramp up your employee resource groups this year.
3. Social impact programming. Approximately three-quarters of the working population believes that companies must advocate and work on social issues. This represents a dramatic rise in recent years, and it does not appear to be slowing. Helping your employees to feel that they’re part of something larger than themselves and be proud to represent a company doing good work in the world is a key way to improve your employee experience. Rather than running one of those monolithic days of service that no one really likes though, empower employees to champion the causes that are important to them. Colleagues will learn about each other, they’ll appreciate that your company is supporting important efforts, they’ll build new skills as part of their charity work, and the positive branding opportunities for your organization won’t hurt either.
4. Wellness initiatives. As mentioned above, we’re standing on the precipice of a widespread mental health crisis. If you don’t take steps to get out ahead of it, your employees and your bottom line will suffer the consequences. Wellness initiatives can include things like yoga and meditation courses, but they can also encompass things like childcare to help working parents manage their many responsibilities, inclusive access to therapy and mental health services, and an environment that encourages people to ask for help when they need it. Making it clear that it’s okay to not be okay will help ensure your employee experience fosters an environment where team members can move beyond just surviving, to truly thrive within your organization.
5. Intrapreneurship. Last but certainly not least, give your employees the ability to change the game at your company. Many employees want the opportunity to use their whole skillset, beyond just the elements they utilize in their day-to-day jobs. Making time and space for intrapreneurship, where employees get to innovate on new ways of doing things, new products or services, and new approaches to the industry, can do wonders for both your employee experience and your company’s prospects in the market. Consider organizing a hackathon to start off with, start an employee innovation group, or you could even go so far as launching an internal incubator. Intrapreneurship has done wonders for companies like Google and 3M, so what’s stopping you?

Improving your employee experience should be a key focus for your company during the second half of 2021, no matter where you’re starting off from today. Not only will it help you succeed in recruiting and retaining top talent, but the impact on your employees will drive increased productivity, engagement, and more. If you’re interested in pursuing any of the ideas listed above, drop us a line at hello@workrowd.com. We’d love to chat about ways to support you in your efforts, whether it’s sending over some free resources or discussing how Workrowd’s platform can help you launch, manage, and measure the impact of your programming. You can learn more on our website, but whether you decide to chat with us or not, we encourage you to reimagine how you’re approaching your employee experience in order to provide the most benefit to employees as we begin to process the full extent of the pandemic’s effects. Your colleagues and your bottom line will thank you for it.

Now that we’ve been in the clutches of the pandemic for more than a year, it’s clear that the need to develop and deliver a world-class digital employee experience is here to stay. The employee experience extends from pre-hiring all the way through off-boarding, so there’s a lot to consider. If you want to ensure your company’s reputation as an employer of choice, you’ll need to do your best to reduce friction at every point in the employee journey. While that may sound like an overwhelming mandate, there are many tools out there to assist you.

For better or worse though, tools can only take you so far. Building a top-notch digital employee experience requires the right balance of automated processes, self-service options, and human elements. For instance, it’s important to provide ample information to help employees easily answer their own questions about benefits, but it’s also key to have someone available to support them in selecting the right plan for their circumstances. The ultimate goal is to streamline processes and make employees’ lives as easy as possible, while at the same time keeping costs down and freeing up People team members to focus on the tricky parts of work life that really require human support/intervention. Read on for our top tips to build a digital employee experience that delights and drives impact.

Why the digital employee experience is more important now than ever

We’ve all been through a lot over the past year. Many have lost loved ones, lost jobs, and almost all of us have lost our way of life. Mental health issues have skyrocketed; between 2019 and 2020, reported symptoms of anxiety have more than tripled, and depression symptoms have almost quadrupled. Questions about the vaccine, new strains, and what a safe return to the office could even look like abound. In order to remain engaged and productive amidst ongoing homeschooling and other household challenges. employees need to be able to easily access the information they need, communicate with colleagues, and clearly understand their objectives.

Moreover, as the economy rebounds, employers looking to attract and retain the best talent will need to offer something better than what employees can get by going to work for the competitor. Without exciting office perks, free food, and the other usual hallmarks of ‘great’ employee experiences to fall back on, companies will need to identify new ways of outshining similar job offers. Additionally, many employees have learned a lot more about what is important to them in their work lives over the course of the pandemic, so employers have new expectations to contend with as well. All of this makes optimizing the digital employee experience one of, if not the most important thing companies can do in 2021.

Five areas to focus on to upgrade your digital employee experience

There are innumerable different ways to approach building a great digital employee experience, so it can be difficult to know where to start. Accordingly, we’ve assembled some of our top recommendations to help you frame your thinking:

1. Focus on flexibility. In a recent Deloitte study of 1,000 white-collar professionals, virtually all respondents noted that workplace flexibility was a priority for them. Two significant shifts have made building flexibility into your policies one of the most crucial things you can do to elevate your employee experience, digital or otherwise: shifting household responsibilities including child and elderly caregiving, and the forced transition to remote work which gave employees a taste of what flexibility has to offer them. Translate this to your digital employee experience by ensuring that employees have all of the tools they need to work from a variety of locations and at a variety of times.
2. Prioritize accessibility. In order to build an enviable digital employee experience, it’s crucial to prioritize accessibility over gatekeeping. Employees shouldn’t have to constantly ask around in order to collect the documents and information they need to do their job well. Ensure that every team has a clear information management system so that employees know where to go to access relevant files, and be as transparent as possible with broader company and benefits information. According to a McKinsey report pre-pandemic, employees spend nearly two hours every day searching for information. Do your digital employee experience a favor by making sure employees can access the systems and information they need, when they need them.
3. Set expectations. While remote working certainly came with benefits for many employees, including eliminating their commutes, it also contributed to pressure to be working all the time. This is unhealthy and unproductive for any employee experience, so clarify to your employees when they should be available digitally, and when it’s good to be ‘off the clock’. Similarly, clear is kind; without as much contact with colleagues and superiors, employees can wind up in the dark about their objectives and deliverables. Identify digital tools to guard against this, whether they’re check-in-related or designed for project management. Eliminate as much ambiguity from people’s workdays as possible, both for their mental wellbeing, and to protect the company from paying for needless or inaccurate work.
4. Connect colleagues. Seamless social connectivity is crucial to differentiating your digital employee experience from those of your competitors. Nearly 40% of workers report a worsening sense of isolation in 2021, which impacts everything from productivity to retention. Offering a digital space for employees to connect more casually, particularly around issues not related to their core job responsibilities is a key element to keeping your team engaged and collaborating successfully. Planning digital events is great, but it’s also important to empower your team to make those informal connections themselves via a dedicated “virtual water cooler” setting.
5. Stay consistent. Don’t give employees more to worry about than they already have. Inconsistence breeds anxiety, so do everything possible to encourage consistency across your digital channels at all times. Ensure employees know what systems are to be used for which functions, what use cases apply for each communication channel, and promptly share any changes with employees at all levels of the organization.

Designing and delivering a top-notch digital employee experience in today’s day and age is both difficult and easier than ever. There are myriad tools at your disposal to help you meet and exceed the recommendations above on behalf of your team. Of course we’re biased, but if you’re looking for a great way to satisfy item four in particular, Workrowd can help. Our digital employee experience platform serves both people and profit and is designed to empower every employee to build a work life they love. Come visit us at workrowd.com to learn more, or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com. We’d love to see how we can help you help your people, especially as we continue to weather the waves of the pandemic.

Historically, employers have considered paid time off to be a necessary evil; hours for which they have to pay employees without reaping any of the benefits of their time. They strictly monitor and track employees’ days off, and dangle additional paid time off as a reward for loyalty as employees’ tenure with the company lengthens. If team members live far away from friends or family, want to take time for a big life event such as a wedding, or if they enjoy traveling, they’re stuck nickel-and-diming their days to minimize the amount of unpaid time they have to take.

Increasingly, startups and other small and mid-sized businesses have been moving towards an unlimited or flexible paid time off policy in which there is no set amount of PTO per year. Under this model, employees are trusted to manage their own time and are allowed to take as many days off as they would like as long as they meet their responsibilities and their manager signs off on it. Few companies however, have mandatory minimums regarding the amount of time off that employees have to take. While it may initially seem counterintuitive, in reality, requiring employees to take a set number of days off per year is one of the best things you can do for your team’s wellbeing.

Why our current approaches to PTO no longer cut it

With the pandemic shutting down travel and forcing many to work from home, paid time off has become a bit of a fiction during 2020. With nowhere to go, and many managers modeling an always-on culture, studies have shown that the workday has elongated by three entire hours. Even once travel and office working resumes, the majority of employees still won’t see a break for some time as everyone will not be able to take time off at once. Vacation days are accruing, but the ability to use them continues to recede further and further into the distance.

Employees feeling that they couldn’t take vacation was already a problem at organizations with ‘unlimited’ paid time off policies. While many business owners may initially view this policy as ripe for abuse by enterprising employees, a study by Namely found that employees at companies with ‘unlimited’ vacation policies actually took an average of just 13 days off per year, compared with those at companies with more standard paid time off policies, who took 15. Additionally, these policies have the benefit to the company of not having to pay out unused days at the end of an employee’s tenure. Perhaps most troubling though, is the fact that culture can make all the difference between employees taking time off when they need, or feeling that they’re unable to take any time off and running headlong towards burnout.

How & why mandating time off can help

Taking time off is crucial to employee engagement and wellbeing. Among employees who take a week or more of vacation per year, 70% say they’re driven to contribute to their organization’s success, compared to 55% who don’t regularly take a week of vacation. Similarly, 63% of employees who take at least a week off say they feel a sense of belonging at their company, as opposed to 43% of those who don’t take time off. Unfortunately, 40% of workers reported feeling that they wouldn’t be able to advance in their careers if they requested time off from their managers, and more than half of employees felt uneasy about asking for time off during the holiday season.

Beyond these stats, or perhaps behind them, there’s the issue of burnout. We’ve written repeatedly about the adverse effects of stress in the workplace, so we won’t go into them here, but suffice it to say that burned out employees are not productive employees. Your team isn’t at their best when they’re exhausted and disengaged. The pandemic has made many feel even more strongly that they can’t justify a break, even though they may need it now more than ever, which is why employers need to step in and begin mandating a minimum amount of vacation time per year. If you want your employees to be at their best, you need to make it clear that taking time off to recharge isn’t just encouraged, but required. You don’t have to reach for the stars here; just mandating that employees take a week off per year will yield significant benefits, as demonstrated by the statistics we mentioned above.

While this effort starts with putting a revised paid time off policy in place, adjusting your company culture and ensuring that managers are modeling taking vacation is what will make or break it. With a minimum required vacation policy, employees won’t have to worry as much about asking for time off, and they’ll feel happier to work for your company knowing that you prioritize their wellbeing enough to write it into policy. If you’re looking for other ways to show your employees that you care and boost your company culture, check out Workrowd, the all-in-one solution for managing employee engagement and company culture across both on-site and remote workers. You can reach us directly at hello@workrowd.com.