Why creating a positive employee experience should be part of your plans for 2019

What do we mean by employee experience?

The employee experience refers to the day-to-day interactions and activities that define an employee’s working life. It encompasses everything that an employee experiences from their first interaction with an organisation to their daily working life to their attitude when they finally leave the company. Employee experience involves how employees experience their work; how they’re managed, developed and involved with interactions across the business and with their interaction with peers. This will have a significant influence on how they generally feel about working at the company, and hopefully improve engagement and commitment to the company.

The employee experience, and creating the right employee experience is an increasingly popular topic of discussion within businesses, and not just in larger corporations.  Increasingly, small to medium sized businesses are looking at a range of employee aspects with the view to better their work experience and attract and retain the skills they need to thrive.

Employee experience can help create future company growth

Understanding and improving the employee experience can have a huge impact on a company’s performance, particularly for those competing for skills. Providing a supportive and positive experience will help companies succeed in attracting and retaining skilled employees who have the right attributes.

A great employee experience will lead to a great customer experience, leading to an increase in revenue and business growth. Unhappy employees are unproductive, which isn’t good for anyone.

Your employee experience should be linked to your business plans for future growth. This will help define the skills and experience you need in the business.

What does the employee experience include?

Organisations are doing more to create an employee experience tailored to the differing needs of their employees. Accommodating people’s needs for work/life balance, flexible working and career development are just a few examples of how a business can mould an employee experience.

There are a host of modern day aspects for employers to consider which don’t have to come to a significant cost. From providing secondments to different departments, leading stretch projects or getting involved (and making an impact) through employee culture groups are just a few activities that develop skills, build engagement and create a varied employee experience.

The approach

To ensure that the employee experience remains relevant and valuable, it’s important to evaluate key processes, procedures and plans in your business for aspects such as:

Recruitment and selection – Finding the right people to join your team doesn’t start with a recruitment campaign. Making sure you have assessed the role, mapped the competencies and identified the employee experience are the first successful steps you need to take before advertising.

Diversity and Inclusion – an effective strategy for diversity and inclusion will add organisational value through providing a supportive and inclusive work environment.

Change and growth – how to involve employees through the change process.

Leadership & Management Development – managers play a huge role in an employee’s success. Effective leadership skills are vital for this to work, so everyone is working towards achieving goals.

Team Development – take a closer look at team personalities, communication styles and diversity to increase performance and output.

Employer Branding – create a sense of belonging through your employee journey. From the external perception through to an internal holistic approach of aligned values for a positive employee experience.

Development tools and solutions

An employee-centric approach that promotes agility, commitment and  sustained high performance will often require a set of tools, supported by expert evaluation, in order to ensure the right solutions are put in place to suit business goals.

A psychometric set of tools such as Lumina Learning can provide value by delivering a bespoke approach to evaluating individuals and teams for organisational change.

As a customisable set of tools, Lumina Learning provides individualised experience with measurable results. The suite of tools work at both a wider business level and at an individual level, giving a truly holistic approach to your employee experience.

At Think Forward our approach is to combine these advanced tools with our organisational experience and business psychology expertise. This means, regardless of the requirement, a business will receive a results orientated solution.

Think Forward owner, Penny Strutton, comments, “Making the commitment to investing in people in a business is sometimes seen as just looking at the pay and reward structure. But this is a short-term focus and won’t give you the strong employee productivity and commitment for the future. Investing in people is about understanding them and their skills at a more personal level and aligning these with your business goals. The ‘how’ to do this is where tools such as Lumina Learning and our business organisational expertise can help you implement and create solutions specific to generating attributable measurements for your business goals.

“The employee experience can have a direct impact on revenue, productivity, employee retention, the customer experience and the company brand, and a positive outcome for all of these are measures of success.”

Why investing in your people is your best strategy for 2019

Offering an outstanding employee experience can give you a competitive advantage that can attract the best in terms of new recruits (regardless of the size of the company), whilst then creating an environment in which they wish to stay. Good people with the right skills and approach will create a positive working environment which will create a strong business, both internally and reflective in the external brand.

At Think Forward Consulting the team help you discover what elements of your employee experience need developing to support your business objectives, and help provide the tools and expertise to create your specific employee experience. We are experts in team and Organisational Development.

Contact Penny by email on penny@pennystrutton.co.uk or call 0115 880 0098.