Back to top

5 Best Practices for a Positive Employee Experience.

Like customer experience, employee experience isn’t just nice to have. It significantly affects business success. Employees with positive work experience…

5 Best Practices for a Positive Employee Experience

5th January 2023

Like customer experience, employee experience isn’t just nice to have. It significantly affects business success. Employees with positive work experience are inspired and motivated to do their best. Business leaders should create a favourable environment for employees to thrive and succeed. A study by Deloitte found that while more than 80% of company executives think employee experience is important, less than 22% make strategic efforts to create a positive employee experience.

A positive employee experience reduces turnover and absenteeism and improves employee productivity. Below are the best practices businesses should adopt to create a positive employee experience.

 

1.   Focus on employees

While this may seem a no-brainer, company executives need to focus on their employees at every step of the employee life cycle. Business leaders should view every interaction with employees as a perfect opportunity to improve the employee experience. This includes:

  • Ensure the hiring process is fair
  • Creative employee onboarding ideas
  • Ensure the new hires feel company values right from onboarding
  • Evaluate how employees feel about the company when departing

Scrutinising these points provides insight into the entire work environment from an employee’s perspective. Through this, managers and business owners can identify areas that need improvement.

 

2.   Provide a space for excellent communication

Effective communication is also important and helps improve the employee experience. Unfortunately, while most business leaders and HR managers agree on the importance of effective communication, most focus on communication with their target customers, media, and stakeholders rather than with their employees.

On the surface, good communication ensures that all team members understand what’s expected of them. This not only ensures that everyone in the department works towards achieving company goals, but also builds trust and creates an enjoyable work environment. Lack of effective communication causes confusion, lack of trust between departments, and extensively affects customer satisfaction. Company executives can improve communication through:

  • Creating time for regular one-on-one with their employees – Besides implementing an open-door policy, employees can communicate easily and openly in private settings. As such, business leaders should introduce weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings with employees. This can also be done through various communication methods.
  • Schedule weekly team meetings – One-on-one meetings help understand individual concerns and ensure employees are aligned with business goals. On the other hand, weekly team meetings provide a perfect opportunity for employees to share their weekly goals, challenges, and other important information. This results in better transparency, increases opportunities for collaboration, and improves communication.
  • Create a safe space for workplace communication – Most employees don’t voice their insights and concerns because they fear negative consequences. Communication lacks value if employees feel unsafe. Creating a safe space improves employee communication.

3.   Promote diversity and inclusion

A Russel and Reynolds Associates study found that a diverse workforce directly improves human capital outcomes. The benefits include less intent to leave, increased creativity and employee engagement, and improved employee belonging. The same study found there are greater improvements in companies that embrace specific diversity and inclusion strategies.

However, to create a diverse workforce, you should design and adapt a D&I strategy focusing on talent attraction, retention, and development. Business leaders also promote diversity by supporting their employees in many ways, such as providing tools that support different languages.

4.   Offer job growth opportunities

Research by DecisionWise found that 43% of business employees think their employers provide good growth and development opportunities. This is alarming because high-performing employees only remain in jobs they find challenging. Interestingly, business leaders can offer their employees several growth opportunities, including:

  • Increasing their income
  • Assigning significant duties and job titles
  • Sending employees to job-specific training programs
  • Organizing social gatherings outside the work environment

5.   Creating a positive work environment

Creating a positive work environment also helps build a positive work experience. However, a positive work environment is a result of inclusivity, diversity, and flexibility. To begin, a flexible work environment gives employees the freedom to work in their preferred time and environment. Job flexibility has proved effective in increasing productivity and job satisfaction, while reducing stress and employee absenteeism.

Employers should also promote inclusivity and diversity. This can be achieved in many ways, including rewarding inclusive behaviors, providing unbiased employee training, and adopting measures to eliminate hostile workplace interactions. Establishing a culture of recognition helps employees feel valued.

Endnote

Employees are important assets of any business. They run business operations, interact with customers, and do many other activities that determine business success. How business leaders treat their employees directly affects customer experience and success. If employee experience is stellar, they will likely be enthusiastic about driving business success. A poor employee experience often leads to disengagement, which affects performance and customer satisfaction.

Categories: Franchise

Discover Our Awards.

See Awards

You Might Also Like