Make the Employee Experience Worth Talking About
Did you know only about one-third of employees today are actually highly engaged champions of their brand? We really shouldn’t be surprised as many businesses have had to freeze hiring, cut perks and bonuses, and/or reduce health care benefits or rework the employee portion. Who could be thinking about the employee experience during such times? Well, everyone should be.
I like to define the employee experience as how employees feel about working for a company and about their day-to-day functions and interactions. It doesn’t just begin when they park the car at the beginning of their work day or ends when they leave. It plays out in how it makes them feel at home and in the community. It determines what they say, or don’t say, about the company.
With a serious look at your own company’s employee experience, you may find that you can improve employee morale, retention efforts, recruitment results, and production. Do an audit to answer the following questions:
- What are the benefits of your employee experience? What in your culture causes pain or happiness for employees?
- What do your employees think about their employee experience? What processes do you have for gathering that information?
- What are your employees saying to others outside their work environment? How do you know?
- When was the last time you evaluated the employee experience in your company?
It is so easy to overlook what the communications might be between employees and vendors, customers, potential customers, and potential employees. After all, how much control do we really have?
Give your employees something worth talking about.
- Research to determine a new voluntary employee benefit which is of interest to your employees. Is it health and wellness? Something of interest to their families? A way to purchase large appliances with an employee discount and payroll deduction? Find out what other companies are doing in and beyond your industry..
- Encourage testing and social networking contests for acquiring company and product information. Let your younger generation employees put the program together. Make the prizes fun and you won’t have to spend a bundle.
- Increase management’s interaction with employees and those off site. Serve breakfast or an afternoon break. Invite different employees to lunch and gather input on what is going right and could be better.
- Find ways to reward individuals for performance…frequently. Try gift certificates, dinner for six of their best friends or family, show or concert tickets along with specifics about what work was accomplished, shared with everyone.