Did you say Employee Experience ?
In order to meet the challenges of recruitment and retention, the concept of employee experience is gaining ground within companies. Companies are now recognising the many benefits of a successful employee experience.
In 2023, 66% of companies surveyed said they had deployed an employee experience strategy. This compares with just 25% in 2019.
Today's questions are as follows:
What does employee experience really mean?
How can you make it a vector for the long-term commitment and loyalty of your employees ?
#1 – Definition of the employee experience
The employee experience represents the employee's life cycle within the company.
It begins at the recruitment stage and ends when the employee leaves the company.
This is also known as the employee life cycle.
#2 – What are the steps of the employee experience ?
➡️ 1st step of the employee experience : recruitment
To attract talents, you need a well-executed recruitment strategy.
It must provide a differentiating character for :
- Setting yourself apart from other companies
- Being seen as a real force.
This requires a strong employer brand that reflects :
- Your values
- Your corporate culture
- Your career development policy
- Your remuneration policy.
The way you communicate about your employer brand is of course important. It must be your trademark. These aspects, as well as the attractiveness of the job, will lead employees to :
- Either submit an unsolicited application
- Or to respond to your job offer (by sending a curriculum vitae and covering letter).
➡️ 2nd stage : preboarding
It can take up to three months from the moment an employee confirms their intention to join the company until their first day.
It is essential to create and maintain a bond with them so that :
- They feel wanted in the company
- In the end, they don't decide to go back on their decision to join your company.
This can be done in a number of ways :
- Invite them to lunch to meet their future team beforehand
- Give them access to the company's tools so that they can familiarize with them
- Send them a detailed program for their first few days at the company: where to go, their schedule for the first few days.
➡️ 3rd stage : onboarding
We know that around 1/4 of new arrivals want to leave the company after their first day on the job. First impressions are therefore fundamental. The arrival of a new talent must be prepared in advance.
The equipment must be ready when the new employee arrives, the staff must be informed of his arrival and the schedule for his first few days must be fixed. It's important to prepare for the arrival and working conditions of your new employee.
The little extra that adds value: set up a sponsor or buddy system so that new arrivals have someone to turn to if they need help.
➡️ 4th stage: building employee loyalty
Once the induction period is over, the efforts made to date must not be relaxed. Employee loyalty is a key factor in the success of a company's Human Resources policy. The elements put in place so far must be more than just fine promises to attract the best talent.
➡️ 5th stage in the employee experience : offboarding
Employee departures are an integral part of corporate life. It should not be seen as a failure for either the company or the employee. It's important to leave on good terms.
Offboarding needs to be as well mastered as the other stages of the employee experience.
#3 – What are the challenges of the employee experience ?
Staff turnover, the bane of human resources
The main challenge for Human Resources departments is to succeed in reducing staff turnover.
This is because they are finding it difficult to engage and retain their employees, for whom staying with the same company for many years is no longer necessarily an option.
The reasons that increase the turnover rate are various :
- The main source of this problem lies in their difficulty in getting employees on board the company project and involving them more broadly in the life of the company.
- HR departments are also facing a real change in the working world. Employees are asking for greater visibility of their career prospects and their desire to occupy a meaningful position.
- Employees want to be able to change jobs easily, whether through internal promotion or a change in their core business.
Human Resources departments therefore have every interest in establishing the stages in the employee life cycle in order to renew and strengthen employee commitment.
Managing the employee experience to reduce staff turnover
In order to reduce staff turnover, it is necessary to implement concrete actions with the aim of :
- Engaging your employees so that they give their all to the company's development and meet the objectives set.
- Building employee loyalty and reducing staff turnover to ensure the long-term viability of your teams and retain the know-how of the talented people who are firmly rooted in your company.
- Involving your employees in the company project to develop their sense of belonging to the company
- Improving working life: so that everyday life in the office is not a burden but a pleasure
All these aspects will play a key role in improving :
- Employee advocacy
- Future internal and external recruitment
- Company results and performance
Employees are your best ambassadors for attracting future talent. If they are fully satisfied with the company, they will recommend it to their network.
If, on the other hand, the company fails to deliver on its promises, employees will only spread negative reviews by word of mouth or, worse still, on online recruitment platforms.
#4 – What are the benefits of the employee experience ?
Strengthening employee commitment
Offering your talents a tailored employee experience will have real benefits for the company.
First of all, offering an employee experience will boost employee commitment.
Indeed, to be stimulated, talented employees need to feel that they are joining a company where there are prospects for development. By feeling that they can benefit from a career plan, employees will find a source of motivation in their day-to-day professional lives.
The desire to develop their knowledge and to know that they are eligible for internal mobility will engage them on a daily basis.
As part of this drive to re-engage employees, a stimulating day-to-day environment will involve them more closely in the company's projects. Having prospects for career development, a strong corporate culture and transparent internal communications will also play a role.
The employee experience to retain talent
In the loyalty phase, the employee naturally wants to develop within the company. If not through internal mobility, perhaps by continuing to develop in their own position through training.
The Human Resources department therefore has an important role to play in offering varied, high-quality training courses to employees. They will also develop the skills of teams that will reinforce the company's know-how.
A successful employee experience is therefore an excellent response to the problem of staff turnover.
#5 – How do you create an effective employee experience ?
The contribution of corporate culture
To create an effective employee experience, it is important to respect a number of criteria relating to employees' professional lives.
The employee experience must be based on a strong corporate culture. This must be written down and made available to all employees, and even to future candidates, to inform and attract them. It helps to lay the foundations. This can be done by means of a culture book.
It is essential to use technology to support the employee experience. There is no longer any doubt that internal communication must involve the use of digital tools.
When we talk about a caring work environment, we immediately think of the little everyday touches that can affect employees' moods. However, a good experience is not limited to breakfast on Monday morning or a table football table in the break room.
Trust and kindness : the winning combo
This requires a policy of trust and goodwill between the company and the employee. Employees must feel that their manager has full confidence in them and their ability to give their best to meet the objectives set. The idea is therefore to offer teams autonomy and let them develop fully in their mission.
To deliver an effective employee experience, it's important to understand the needs of your employees. Criteria that may be priorities for the company will not necessarily be priorities for employees. Quite often, companies even think they are meeting the expectations of their teams when they are not.
Employee’s day-to-day working lives should be punctuated by concrete actions linked to the employee experience. One example is internal mobility. Internal mobility is an excellent way of engaging employees, who feel motivated by the prospects for development and valued when they move.
Your employees will be more inclined to take part in your cooptation program: you can take advantage of their professional network and recommendations to attract new talent.
#6 – How can you improve the employee experience in your company ?
Internal communication, the cornerstone of the employee experience
The employee experience must not be static. It must adapt to the life of the company and its various phases of growth and organizational change.
This involves internal communication: it is the cornerstone of the employee experience. Before thinking about any other improvement, the first step is to improve it.
In fact, 83% of the French consider that internal communication is a project to be prioritized. Companies with engaged employees see their annual turnover increase by 26% (according to a study by the Aberdeen Group). So it's vital that you don't neglect your internal communications any longer.
To get employees involved, you need to share with them information that has a direct impact on the life of the company :
- What's new?
- Arrivals
- Departures
- The events
- Customer reviews
- And so on.
By communicating in a simple and transparent way, you create a bond with your employees and naturally involve them in the life of the company.
They are therefore more committed to achieving the company's objectives.
In addition to internal communication, there are other ways in which companies can offer their teams a stimulating and engaging day-to-day working environment.
Encourage internal mobility
In order to complete the employee's career path, it may be worth implementing an internal mobility policy. For an employee, internal mobility means changing jobs within the same company.
This can be vertical, horizontal, geographical or cross-sectional mobility. Internal mobility is a concrete response to employees' demand for opportunities to develop without necessarily changing company.
For internal mobility to be effective, it needs to be put in place in a serious manner and reflect the reality of the company. To facilitate the process, the ideal solution is to use an application dedicated to internal mobility.
A single application to manage the entire process, from posting the job offer to responding to the candidate's application.
Raise your employees' awareness of training
Training can be an excellent way of ensuring that employees feel that they are developing within the company, maintaining a dynamic of constant improvement in their knowledge and, as a result, bringing real added value to the company.
Developing the know-how of teams is a way for employers to ensure that their employees' skills are progressing and to benefit from this. This reinforces the image of a:
- Learning company
- Company with expertise in its field
Which is excellent for brand image and employee advocacy.
Generalize employee benefits
Another differentiating factor in the employee experience: benefits. Let your employees benefit from the social advantages you offer, in the form of:
- Days of working time reduction
- Restaurant voucher
- Supplementary health insurance
- Reimbursement of part of your travel costs
- Contributions to a supplementary pension scheme.
- And so on.
This is an essential parameter for improving the employee experience within your company.
Enforce work-life balance
Employees are increasingly seeking to reconcile their personal and professional lives. They are asking their employers to respect them as much as possible through teleworking or flexible working hours.
Accelerate your digital transformation
It now seems inconceivable that any company has not yet gone digital. This digitalisation also involves internal communication.
Maintain a pleasant working environment
To guarantee employees' well-being at work, it is important to offer them a quality of working life (QWL). In other words, a positive experience that meets their expectations and needs. The aim is to make them feel good, safe and comfortable, so that they are more productive and loyal to the company.
Listen to employees needs
The very purpose of a successful employee experience is to offer an employee journey that responds carefully to the needs of the teams. For this to be the case, it is essential to gather their requests. This can be done by means of a survey, a digital suggestion box or a poll, for example.
#7 – How do you measure the employee experience ?
Employee experience: the indicators you need to monitor
Measuring the results of your strategy is essential to ensure that the action plan and resources put in place meet your employees' expectations.
Measuring the employee experience involves recording various indicators (internal NPS) :
- Staff turnover
- The percentage of new recruits who terminate their probationary period
- The number of internal transfers
- The rate of engagement on your publications if you use a digital and interactive communication tool
- Internal NPS
- Absenteeism rate
- Employee productivity
- Company results, often a reliable source of employee commitment
- Customer satisfaction, proof that the teams feel invested in the company's quality approach
Pay particular attention to certain warning signs
There are other warning signs too :
- Internal events are increasingly shunned by employees
- Collaboration between departments is becoming increasingly complicated
- Tensions arise within the teams themselves
- A generally bad atmosphere prevails in the company
- Information is distorted by employees
➡️ Don't forget to ask your employees for their opinion
This is also a good time to give your employees a voice. Asking them for their opinion on a regular basis can tell you a lot about the areas for improvement that need to be taken into account.
This can be done in several ways :
- By setting up surveys that can be anonymous in order to free people to speak out and obtain honest opinions
- By choosing measurable KPIs, such as E-NPS, to monitor progress on a quarterly basis and track changes in employee satisfaction.
#8 – The employee experience in a nutshell
The employee experience must be a priority for companies if they are to meet the various challenges facing the Human Resources sector.
It must strike the right balance between the needs of employees and the expectations of the company.
The employee experience can easily be improved through various levers or even via specially dedicated digital tools.
[*Barometer UKG and Parlons RH]
