Experience journeys are usually associated with the customer side of things. But what if we told you there was a strong business case for improving your employee experience journey?
Salesforce and Forbes Insights recently did a survey of 300 executives in employee experience (EX) and customer experience (EX) roles. And what did they find? Companies that refined EX in order to provide a superior CX achieved revenue growth 1.8 times faster.
If that’s not convincing enough, consider this – the same survey also found that prioritizing only CX did not lead to higher revenue growth.
Simply put, your employee experience journey is not just a responsibility. It is one of the most efficient ways of growing revenue.
How to improve your employee experience journey
- Employee onboarding
- Internal communications
- Employee wellness
- Employee surveys
- Post-feedback action
- A culture of appreciation
- Stay interviews
#1. Enhance the employee onboarding experience
Start from Day 1 because first impressions last. This is true of dating, interviews, and the employee experience journey too.
According to Harvard Business Review, 33% of new hires look for a new job within 6 months of signing up – and one of the biggest reasons is a poor initial experience. That’s a seriously worrying statistic.
But as the paper rightly states, technology can save employee onboarding. Ironically, a field that has the word “human” in it is ripe for technology like HR chatbots to streamline these processes.
Does this spell the end for HR teams? Nope! Great onboarding experiences were, and are still defined by constant communication, contact and feedback from actual humans.
The work-buddy model is great for this transition. In the work-buddy system, seasoned employees are paired with new hires to help them adapt to the social and performance aspects of their jobs.
The work-buddy system also helps to customize the onboarding experiences for each job role, whether that’s sales or customer support. This helps them quickly become contributing members of the team. Great onboarding = fresh talent, fresh ideas and more revenue.
#2. Improve internal communications
Imagine your employee experience journey as a highway. Then, your company’s internal communications would be like the road signs that tell you stuff like where you are, which way you need to go, possible hazards, road regulations, nearby services etc..
Internal communications is:
- How a company instils purpose. Promoting their work culture, goals, and showing employees the good impact of their work.
- It’s how leaders create alignment: Making sure that everyone is on the same page, telling employees where they are going wrong, and what they are doing right.
- How employees build a community: Bringing issues to their team’s notice, getting support, and forming vital connections.
Simply put, internal communications are the key to teamwork and employee happiness. And employee happiness = more revenue.
Are your employees and managers able to communicate effectively with each other? Consider doing an internal communications survey. You can use the Employee Communication Survey template by SurveySparrow to spot and fix the gaps in your communication practices. This is easily done with a free account.
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#3. Make employee wellness a priority
It is fairly obvious that to improve your employee experience journey, you need to prioritize employee wellness. This might require a broader approach than most companies take.
That is to say, companies in the past focused on physical wellness with health insurance benefits and sick leaves. But as the stats show, an employee’s emotional wellness is equally important.
Prioritizing emotional wellness means offering employees the support needed to seek psychological help. It also means focusing on team-building activities, check-ins and healthy work practices. But that’s not all.
One of the most important things companies can do for employee wellness is to make work environments less stressful. This might mean, on some occasions, not pressuring employees to work more or faster. In the long run, though, it will pay off.
Employee satisfaction is not just about meditating together, although that can be effective. It’s about communicating to your employees that their wellness is your priority. Any company that follows this with action will immediately improve their employee experience journey.
#4. Conduct regular employee surveys
One of the most important reasons employees feel disengaged is that they don’t feel heard. for remote employees especially, it can be easy to feel isolated and like nobody cares about your thoughts.
The most effective solution is to listen. So, make employee surveys a routine part of your company culture with online survey tools like SurveySparrow.
Employee surveys can help you diagnose critical problems in your employee journeys, and course correct at the right time. Visualizing these problems is simple through SurveySparrow’s auto-generated reports and data dashboards.
These are the seven key aspects to measure on your employee experience journey map:
- Employee engagement
- Employee satisfaction
- Workplace hygiene
- Professional development
- Employee incentives
- Workplace accessibility
- Workplace diversity
All of these factors = more revenue.
#5. Take employee feedback seriously
Actions speak louder than words. For a customer experience or an employee experience journey, this holds equally true.
To be fair, there are certain challenges in implementing employee feedback – the size and background of the organization is one of them. Well-entrenched processes are hard to change overnight.
The best solution is to discuss the changes with your management team. Then, create an action plan to roll out the changes in phases so that everyone has time to adjust. Naturally, this won’t be an issue for startups or small teams.
More efficient process = more revenue. However, regardless of company size, it’s important to act immediately if an employee raises a serious concern or allegation.
Related:Employee feedback examples: 7 actionable tips
#6. Encourage a culture of appreciation
One of the most important factors for a good employee experience journey is employee morale. Nobody likes to have a manager who only points out flaws.
Our sense of self-worth is, for better or for worse, very closely related to the quality of our work. That is why it’s important to enable a culture of appreciation at your organization.
When employees are routinely appreciated for their work, it boosts their morale. They are more likely to be engaged and do good work to earn that appreciation again.
A culture of appreciation and acknowledgment creates a positive work atmosphere and leads to a boost in employee well being. It also costs nothing literally.
However, employee appreciation need not be just a supervisor’s privilege. Peer-to-peer recognition, which is part of our organizational culture here at SurveySparrow, is one of the most powerful ways to boost retention along the experience journey. Greater employee retention = lower cost of hiring and more revenue.
#7. Conduct stay interviews
Exit surveys are useful for finding out what didn’t work for employees who are leaving. However, stay interviews can boost retention by fixing problems beforehand.
A stay interview is where you proactively ask your employees what they need to stay at your organization. It is a space for employees to discuss their future at the company, and the problems that make them want to leave.
When managers take the time to conduct stay interviews, it deepens trust and motivates your top-performing talent to stick on. That itself will enhance your employee experience journey map by leaps and bounds. Greater employee loyalty = more revenue.
Wrapping Up
From attracting better talent to keeping customers happy, it all boils down to improving your employee experience journey.
The steps above are not a magic formula, but best practices for a superior EX. There are also plenty of employee experience software to help you upgrade your employee journey to be the best in the industry.
If you’re interested in a tour of our enterprise software or 360 feedback tool, you can request a demo here.
