What HR Needs to Know About Employee Experience

Guest blog by Josh Fechter

Employee experience is an important factor in running a successful business. Because of this, human resources (HR) departments should focus on the employee’s experience from the first day the employee works at the company to the last day. Unfortunately, many HR departments wrongly believe that the employee experience is great when, in reality, employees are actually unsatisfied and disgruntled. Smart, savvy HR professionals pay attention to the overall experience of employees in their organization and play a positive role in shaping it.

Understanding the Difference Between Experience and Engagement

In tight labor markets, talented employees have plenty of employment options. While pay is always important, it’s not the only factor in determining whether someone wants to work at your company or not. Employees are also looking for a place that allows them to grow and fits in with their lifestyle. Employee experience is about more than just the employee’s experience at the office each day. It involves everything that happens from before they are hired to their post-exit interactions with the business. For your employees to have a good experience, you have to focus on everything from your interviews to wellness programs.

Meanwhile, employee engagement is about meeting the employee’s emotional needs so that they can do their work well. Engagement often stems from relationships. Employees are engaged when they feel like they are connecting with other people and doing fulfilling, interesting work. They want to do jobs that they are good at and that connect to their larger goals in life. The employee experience and engagement are both important for HR departments. Your employee experience determines if people want to stay with the company. In extreme, negative cases, bad experiences can even end up going viral online and deter people from applying to your company. Meanwhile, employee engagement is a factor that makes people want to work each day. It drives the passion and enthusiasm behind their normal, day-to-day tasks. 

What Makes up the Employee Experience

Many different things go into your company’s employee experience. HR departments can make the employee experience better through different programs. The company’s culture, technology, and physical workspace all have an impact on employee experience. For example, shared workspaces encourage teamwork and collaboration. Meanwhile, standing desks may be ideal for a company that is committed to physical fitness. Technological tools like collaboration platforms make working as a team easier. Ideally, all of these programs should make sense for the company’s culture. When an experience is contrary to the company’s culture, it can end up making the company seem inauthentic. HR professionals should integrate each aspect of the employee experience and culture into one holistic, comprehensive approach to making decisions.

The Role of HR in Employee Experience

By figuring out how to engage employees, you can improve worker productivity, enhance your retention rates and decrease your training costs. HR departments play an integral role in creating the company’s employee experience. The HR department is in charge of creating and implementing wellness programs. They handle compensation, career advancement, and educational development. In addition, HR departments are in charge of handling disputes, complaints, and corrective actions. HR departments focus on the employee side of running a business, so it is only natural that they would also be responsible for a large portion of the employee’s experience. This employee-centric approach to HR management involves empathizing with the employee to solve problems and build better ways of doing things.

With this technique, HR departments optimize their systems so that employees can focus completely on their work. The overall experiences of the employee must be carefully planned out just like the customer experience. Technology helps businesses automate mundane tasks so that workers can focus on what they do best. When companies create an innovative culture and a great experience for the employee, the employees are empowered to innovate. They are also more likely to stay with the business for longer. Because of HR’s role in hiring and firing, it is only natural that HR would play a humongous part in creating the employee experience. HR handles things like onboarding, performance management, employee recruitment, and career path development. If HR handles these tasks well, they can improve an employee’s overall experience. 

How Experience Affects Retention

If you want to create an employee retention strategy, you should start by tailoring your company’s employee experience. While employee experience is a fairly new concept, it is an important one for modern workplaces. A good manager knows how important it is to remove obstacles that keep employees from doing their job. With a positive employee experience, managers help workers enjoy their jobs and encourage them to stay with the company. Both of these factors help to boost the company’s retention rates. When people enjoy their job, they are less likely to leave. Even if another workplace pays slightly more, changing jobs is often not worth it if the employee likes their current position.

They are excited to come into work each day and are able to innovate without any obstacles getting in the way. As a result of good employee experience, the employee is more committed and enthusiastic about their work. This means that the organization is able to create new products faster and serve its customers better. Meanwhile, HR departments are able to reduce hiring and training costs because the company has better retention rates. Improved morale also means that workers are more productive, which also benefits the company financially.

Don’t Neglect Employee Experience

Employee experience is a new, innovative way of managing an organization’s workforce. In a tight labor market, this kind of program helps HR departments attract and retain workers better. By having long-term employees, businesses can also lower their recruitment and training costs.