Employee Experience.

Creating Productive and Healthy Work Environments with the Best Employee Experience Agency in South Africa

Employees are the most valuable asset of any company, despite its size, location, or industry. As the largest investment that companies will ever make, there must be a concerted effort in ensuring that employees have a meaningful and efficient work experience.

To achieve this, it is imperative for a business to understand their employees and their perceived daily experience. It is not just about creating an efficient work environment. It is about your employees’ belief in your brand.

Working with an employee experience agency in South Africa is one of the most effective ways to analyse and optimise the work experience.

A clearly defined and well executed corporate culture will help you deliver on your promises to your employees. This in turn will guide the service that your employees deliver to your customers. Employee experience is therefore about the heart of your company.

Your employees should become your greatest ambassadors. If you deliver a positive employee experience, you will have employee buy-in of your brand and who you are. This will equip your employees to deliver that same positive experience to your customers. If they don’t buy in to your product, service, or brand, they will never become advocates of your business.

What is Employee Experience

Employee experience is something that is difficult to perfect but remarkably simple to define. It refers to the totality of how employees experience a company from the first second that they interact with it, to the last.

This includes the process involved with application submission, onboarding, attending coaching and career development, and even the exit interview that an employee has when they choose to leave the employment of the company.

Employee experience, quite simply, starts and ends with the values of an organisation. To many it may seem like “corporate fluff”, but they truly are a key ingredient in building a lasting and positive experience for all employees.

Even if an organisation has great values in theory, it is not enough. Organisations must live by their values, and they should be a set of principles that determine the behaviour of the organisation and those who are employed by it. 

Why Employee Experience Matters

Every business has a purpose – a goal. This is the passion behind the business. This passion and love for why the business exists is a critical factor in EX.  There should be a common goal in achieving the intention of the business that aligns the company and its employees through a deep and strong culture, which in turn creates a sense of purpose for your employees. Your employees should understand your organizations purpose. Its “why”. And they should be equipped to transmit this understanding to your customers to ensure a superlative customer experience.

To understand why employee experience is crucial, it is important to note that employee experience is influenced by four factors, namely:

• The physical environment in which employees work
• The tools and technologies provided by the employer or organisation
• How an employer demonstrates the commitment that it has to the health and success of employees
• The overall company culture

The “employee” part found in employee experience is crucial as their input is required. Organisations cannot make assumptions on what customers want and therefore, they cannot assume what their employees want or need.

It is important to consult with employees on the type of resources, technologies, and space they believe are critical for success, and ensuring that employees are provided with this. There is no other person in the organisation who knows how to upgrade and improve the employee experience other than the employees themselves.

Employee experience is also about instilling a passion to deliver the intended outcome which makes the role within the company more meaningful for the employee. Your employees gain an understanding that they form an integral part of the bigger picture of the company achieving its goals or purpose, which can only be attained if everyone plays their part. Thus, your employees feel motivated through a sense of meaning rather than mere incentives.

The importance of employee experience is evident in various considerations:

• Reduction in staff turnover
• Retention of high performing employees
• Improved performance of the organisation
• motivated happy employees who feel they have a meaningful purpose
• Shortage of talented and skilled employees
• “Millennials” as the younger employees
• Financial Rewards

Reduction in Staff Turnover

When there is high turnover of staff, it results in higher costs for organisations, especially early attrition. Early turnover is when an employees decide to leave their employment after investments were made into recruitment, selection, and training but before the organisation can realize returns on these investment in the form of productivity as well as performance.

Retention of high Performing Employees

Staff turnover is not always a bad thing, however, what organisations must focus on is voluntary dysfunctional turnover. This is harmful to any organisation, and it includes any of the following:

• The exiting of high performers as well as employees who have special skills that are hard to find
• Departures of women or any other minority group members which will erode the diversity of the organisation’s workforce
• Turnover rates which create excessive costs for the organisation

When organisations are faced with employees who are voluntarily leaving the organisation, resulting in dysfunctional turnover, organisations must consider how to address the problem.

Improved Performance of the Organisation

By ensuring that there is effective employee experience, it can lead to improved performance outcomes. Performance can consist of sales, productivity, improved customer experience, high quality work, and several other metrics according to which the organisation is defined.

By tailoring employee experiences, organisations can ensure that the appropriate performance outcomes are achieved.

It creates motivated, happier employees

Many businesses over the last decade have experienced many issues that relate to productivity, wellbeing, overwork, and burnout as stressful situations during workhours have increased.

Organisations who create happier employees results in a happier work environment, and vice versa. The happier employees are, the more they engage and subsequently, they perform better and not because they must, but because they want to.

Shortage of Talent and Skill

More companies are realising that employees are their best asset and that the business is only as good as the talent and skill that they retain. By ensuring a positive employee experience, it makes it easy for organisations to attract skilled employees, especially in a competitive marketplace.

Apart from employer branding and recruitment marketing, employee experience provides candidates with a comprehensive and authentic snapshot of what it would be like to work for a certain organisation.

Millennials

There are many studies that have shown that millennials are more interested in experiences than they are in “stuff”. This is no different where employment is concerned. More than 80% of millennials would consider a salary cut if they can work for a company who has missions and visions that align with their own.

The future of employment is moving towards a work-life blend rather than a work-life balance, which means that younger employees want their career to form part of their “holistic self”, which means that they are more likely to be loyal to organisations who provide this.

This generation forms a significant portion of the workforce, and it is therefore imperative that organisations appeal to millennials and a workplace with is experiential will help to attract and engage them.

Financial Rewards

Many studies have also found that organisations who have positive employee experiences were reaping significant financial rewards. Those who ensure that employee experience is sound have three times the return in assets in addition to double the return on sales, especially when compared to companies in the bottom quartile.

Small increases in the employee experience scores have also shown to have a large impact on operating income, all because of increased productivity which results from happy employees.

How Working with an Employee Experience Agency can Affect Business

We now know why employee experience matters and why it is important on an interpersonal level. Employee experience can also impact the overall success of a business. The following are three of the most influential ways in which employee experience affects lucrative business outcomes:

• It helps to attract and retain top talent
• It dictates the quality of a customer experience
• It impacts overall revenue

Attracting and keeping top talent

The employees who are the most sought-after often compare offers that they receive from potential future employers. Talented and skilled candidates choose between offers and when they find that a prospective employer has great employee experience, they are more likely to accept offers from them.

Dictates the quality of customer experience

Businesses exist for the purpose of serving their customers and the businesses who are successful, are known to serve their customers better than any others offering similar products and services.

Therefore, without customers, a business will lose its reason for existing, or raison d’être and this begins a snowball effect down a steep decline towards non-existence.

There is a direct correlation between creating great experiences for employees and customer experiences which are positive. If customers are the highest priority of a business in terms of service, surely the employees must be the highest priority in ensuring that customer experience is on par, if not above this.

Impacts on revenue

This is a direct benefit which makes employee experience crucial. Companies who invest in ensuring efficient and effective positive employee experience are known to have improved profits, more revenue, and overall increased success rates above competitors who do not.

How to Improve Employee Experience

In having explored what employee experience is, what benefits it holds, and how it can impact businesses, we can now look at the different ways through which an organisation can improve their employee experience.

While there are different industries and organisations who may explore solutions unique to their own nature of business, there are some ways that form part of a fundamental approach towards ensuring a positive employee experience.

Get it right from the start

Employee experience starts even before a new employee steps into their new workplace. Therefore, first impressions are vital to provide an exceptional onboarding experience for new employees, paving the way to building a lasting professional relationship.

Make sure than an accurate picture is painted of the company culture in the job description, that values are highlighted, and the way in which the organisation works is indicated.

Provide enough opportunity for learning and growth

One of the main reasons why employees look for other work relates to a lack in career development opportunities. Organisations must ensure that they provide opportunities for both learning and growth, ensuring that there is enough support for employees to achieve career progression.

Recognise and reward employees

Employee recognition is a crucial factor in creating a positive employee experience. Organisations must ensure that they acknowledge and reward the hard work and dedication of their employees through:

• Public recognition via an award, certificate, or commendation
• Private recognition from a boss, peer, or customer
• Promotions or increases
• Non-cash incentives such as vouchers, trips, or prizes

Offer flexible working arrangements

This involves, where possible, considering flexible working hours and opportunities to work from home, especially considering the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. There must be some consideration given to continuing this level of flexibility even after the pandemic has ended.

Ask for feedback and act on it

The only way to know what employees need, is to ask them. Organisations cannot improve what they do not measure. Organisations must make use of employee surveys, stay interviews, performance reviews, and exit interviews to improve their employee experience.

Make use of journey mapping for employees

It allows for organisations to pinpoint pain points and critical moments where feedback from employees is needed to close gaps from current to desired states.

Igniting passion

If it’s done correctly, employee experience creates a sense of belonging for your employees. Give your employees something to be passionate about and you bring meaning to their world of work.

Improve internal communication

This helps to foster a sense of community and it encourages employees to work together towards a common goal. It also helps to create a cohesive company culture.

Share customer feedback with employees

There is a link between employee experience and customer experience which cannot be ignored, and many employees feel joy when they help customers. By sharing feedback from customers with employees, they can boost employee confidence and provide them with a sense of purpose in their job.

Incorporate stay interviews

Exit interviews are valuable but they do not help keep an employee who is leaving. Stay interviews are individual conversations between an employee and their superior to help the organisation understand, and prevent, retention issues.

Audit compensation and offer the right perks

It is important that organisations frequently review and audit the compensation that they give employees. Comparing what the organisation offers with market rates, and ensuring that the organisation offers the right perks, can boost employee experience significantly.

How Interact RDT Creates Effective EX Strategies

Interact RDT follows an effective consultative procedure which consists of 6 steps to gather insights from the business. This ensures that the recommendations made by Interact RDT is a suitable fit for the organisation at any given point in the journey associated with employee experience.

The Interact RDT process involves the following key steps:

• Step 1 – Interact RDT defines employee experience by using research and potential benefits. Once this step is complete, the organisation is presented with an employee experience framework and process which is unique and customised.
• Step 2 – Interact RDT consults with you to adjust various employee experience elements as well as metrics that are suitable to the business. This step also involves the identification of key employee groups to inform Interact RDT’s strategies.
• Step 3 – Interact RDT designs and signs off assessment tools which will measure your current employee experience.
• Step 4 – Surveys are deployed, focussing groups as well as other resource methods, with this data analysed and collated once this step concludes.
• Step 5 – Interact RDT will report on conclusions and suggest improvements for low-scoring employee experience elements.
• Step 6 – Lastly, Interact RDT will measure return on investment (ROI) against the agreed metrics.