Employee Experience

What is Employee Experience?

Employee Experience is a worker's observations and perceptions about his or her employment at a particular company. Employees who enjoy the company experience are the ones who will take additional and more careful initiatives at work. Customer support and retention won’t really be a problem because your employees will ensure that they take care of it all. What you have to do is design a clear employee experience from hiring, through training, to exit (yes, exit too) and the results will reflect in the overall company performance. Creating a positive employee experience (or EX) is the key to building greater levels of engagement, enthusiasm, involvement, and employer brand commitment within your organization.

Employee Experience Lifecycle

Employee experience is the sum total of a number of things.

The 6 Stages of Every Extraordinary Employee Lifecycle

An extraordinary life cycle for employees ensures that the best talent is working for your organization. How your employees experience at your organization will define your brand image and influence your recruitment efforts. There are 6 stages in every employee lifecycle journey-

1. Attracting the right talent
2. Recruiting the most compatible candidates
3. Onboarding employees with care
4. Developing and enhancing employee skills
5. Retention of employees
6. Exit interview

Often, the 6th stage is only about collecting employee feedback. Keeping in touch and maintaining a good-faith relationship with ex-employees is considered as another step and is not followed through in many cases. So, let’s briefly dive into each of these stages now. 

Stage 1: Attracting the right talent

This is the very beginning of employee lifecycle. The employee lifecycle journey begins with attracting the right talent. For being able to attract the best talent, you need to have a great employee experience. People now value experiences more than material things.

If your employees have good experiences in the workplace, they are more likely to recommend your organization as a good place to work. Happy employees make an organization look attractive to candidates and other interested parties. You may also want to read about employee engagement which is crucial to keep your employees and workplace healthy. You can read it here.

Good financial benefits along with great company culture will attract the best candidates to your company. For many professionals, salary and bonuses are key factors that drive their choice of company. When more candidates apply, there is a greater chance of finding a candidate who is aligned to your long term goals.

Stage 2: Recruiting the most compatible candidates

Recruitment plays an important role in ensuring the employee lifecycle is successful. You have to employ the right candidate for the job. When you make the mistake of hiring the wrong candidate, all the other employee benefits and employee experience planning become pointless.

If there are already employees on a team that qualify to step-up and fill an open position, they must always be given preference. As a result, apart from saving on training and onboarding costs, the employee also feels more valued and retention rates will drop.

Many companies even ask for feedback from candidates about the recruitment process. It is one way to ensure that this part of the employee lifecycle is cared for.

Stage 3: Onboarding employees with care

Once you have recruited the right candidate for the position, you need to address onboarding with its social purpose in mind. Onboarding is a crucial step. A seamless onboarding experience will make the employees stay for longer.

When you onboard a new employee, you will introduce the employee to their team. It is integral that an employee absorbs the mission, vision, and values of your company. Integrating a new employee into a team serves two purposes, you will gather valuable feedback and the employee will learn more about your business. 

Onboarding is a delicate process. If done correctly, it will ensure that the employee feels comfortable and retaining new talent becomes easier. But, if it goes wrong you will stand to lose the time and effort of hiring and onboarding the employee.

Stage 4: Developing and enhancing employee skills

Developing and enhancing an employee’s skill has a clear and direct impact on the company’s growth. Employees are continuously challenged by evolving technology. It’s in the company’s interest to develop a continuous learning program for the employees. Employee training is important to ensure stability and growth.

The management has to make sure that the employees can take up training based on their skill and position. Providing an opportunity for learning new skills keeps the workforce future-ready. Most importantly, it will also help to tackle future challenges innovatively.

Clear planning is necessary before scheduling training. Meaning, developing the collective skills of the organization is something that the management is more interested in. In other words, concentrating on individual skill growth will help the company in the long run.

Stage 5: Retention of employees

When employees leave a company, it affects the morale of other employees too. However, this is fairly common and it is crucial for the organization to have a decent retention rate.

Losing employees to the competition is a hard thing to bear for any organization. Especially, after investing so much time and capital into their training. This happens in two cases.

• When the employee is ambitious and sees no advancement opportunity at the organization.
• When too much is expected from an employee.

Organizations should provide opportunities for career growth. Ensuring appropriate pay raise helps when employees choose to grow their career and take up more responsibility. Also, a timely morale boost will help employees see growth opportunities. Consequently, this can help increase employee engagement and reduce retention rates.

Stage 6: Exit Interview (End of an extraordinary employee lifecycle)

We have to accept the fact that not all employees will stay with the organization for their entire careers. Sometimes, employees leave to pursue better career options. Nothing can change this.

The exit interview helps you understand why an employee wants to separate from your organization. It also helps to decide how you can retain other employees. Also, an exit interview helps in deciding what new practices to enforce in order to keep employees engaged.