2019 The Year Of Employee Experience

If you haven’t focused corporate efforts on employee experience (EX), the time is now. “Employee experience” has been buzzing for a couple years, and it’s become a critical piece of the puzzle for a business’ success. Learn why EX is important in 2019 and how you can boost yours.

What?

Employee experience (EX) goes beyond free lunches and ping pong tables in the breakroom. It is the totality of what employees experience while they’re at work. It encompasses the physical environment, cultural environment and technological environment. In fact, employee engagement tactics and company perks are usually a short-term “fix” to what EX design is attempting to accomplish. It’s akin to the customer experience in that every interaction builds a relationship with the brand. In terms of employment, it starts during the candidate journey and extends until you become an alum.

Why?

There is a myriad of reasons why we should pay attention to employee experience (EX). Most importantly, research by Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience Advantage, shows that organizations he classified as “experiential” has four times higher average profits, two times higher average revenues, 40% lower turnover and their stock prices outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices.

EX is rising to fame just like customer experience (CX) has in recent months. One reason is the talent shortage. There is a deficit of qualified personnel in several industries, including technology, financial services and manufacturing, therefore focusing on the employee experience will give employers an advantage in recruiting top candidates.

Another reason is that candidates do their research. They have so much access to information prior to becoming an employee, through review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed and social media posts by current or previous employees. It’s in a company’s best interest to provide a genuinely positive employee experience. If not, they’ll not only lose current employees but have trouble recruiting replacements.

How?

Employee experience (EX) design sets out to apply design principles to employee experience by following these stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Shifting employee experience won’t happen overnight though. A slow rollout of changes that will point employee experience in a more positive direction is the only approach that will take hold in the long term. This will get you started:

• Begin with research. Survey current employees to determine what the employee experience looks like right now and how they envision the future of work.
• Focus your goals by crafting a cohesive employee experience vision. Make sure this aligns with the company mission.
• Determine how the EX vision can be demonstrated within the physical, cultural and technological environments. Think beyond quick fixes and how to shift attitudes over time so they become permanent.
• Create an implementation plan that rolls out new initiatives slowly and take the time to survey employees in between.
• Continually innovate your new employee offerings to keep up with the employee experience vision. Being in touch with how employees feel about work will guide you to your next project.