What is employee experience?

Employee experience is a strategy that aims to positively transform the relationship between company and employees in order to maximize results. For this, it is implemented based on data analysis.

It is very common to see several companies that focus on the customer experience, but today we have a new concern emerging on the horizon: the employee experience .

In direct translation, it is the “employee experience” and has been a management practice with increasing space within organizations.

What are the actions that your company takes to ensure the well-being of the team? This is the kind of questioning that the employee experience brings, and with the restlessness comes countless benefits.

And that’s what we want to talk about today: how to improve your employees’ experience in order to gain truly engaged and motivated employees .

Employee experience is the set of experiences that the employee has in the work environment since the first job interview.

These experiences can be negative or positive, and the sum of them all — together with the employee’s individual perception — is what tells how the individual’s relationship with the company is.

Everyone has worked in an environment that has marked them in some way, whether as a result of a long-awaited promotion or traumatizing feedback .

These small and unforgettable moments influence how each one will become attached to the work environment and to their colleagues.

Thus, among the functions of the HR team that are dedicated to shaping the experience of employees, there is also the development of actions so that the sum of these experiences is positive.

This is a strategic process that aims to improve employee perception in search of better performance. In this way, both parties benefit from a healthier relationship.

How did the employee experience come about?

In 2017, in the United States, we saw the term employee experience being used for the first time.

It grew out of the understanding that in order to provide good customer service, it is first necessary to have a work environment that encourages these characteristics.

After all, how could dissatisfied professionals provide attentive service?

This form of management follows the pattern we talked about earlier on the blog, which is people first . This model puts people at the center of the process.

Many people think that providing a good employee experience is having ping pong tables and video games. While this “Google office” model contributes to this, it is not essential.

Here, the HR department’s mission is to integrate each individual in a personalized way into the business .

However, this is not a simple task. Therefore, we will also talk about some examples of this practice ahead.

Difference between employee experience and employee journey

Now that you understand what employee experience means , we can differentiate it from an analogous concept to avoid future confusion.

The employee journey is the events that an individual goes through from the moment of hiring to the last day in the company.

The main steps of this process are:

• recruitment and selection;
• employee onboarding ;
• performance evaluation;
• employee offboarding .

Other steps can also be included, such as requests made by the employee to the HR team.

Thus, we can infer that the employee journey has the main function of mapping the employee’s points of contact with the company’s processes.

Therefore, it is a very important concept in order to generate insights for the improvement of the employee experience .

Top 5 benefits of employee experience

As you can imagine, a policy focused on the employee experience brings numerous benefits to the company. We’ll show you a little bit about them next.

1. Greater engagement and productivity

It is common sense to say that the environment is responsible for making individuals feel valued. This positively influences their engagement with the company.

Greater involvement with the company, in turn, makes all employees more aligned about the importance of their role and, therefore, more productive.

The impact of a positive organizational climate on team performance cannot be underestimated.

2. Talent retention and turnover reduction

Turnover is one of the main problems in many companies, because talent is increasingly aware of its importance and looking for better opportunities.

What many companies fail to observe is that a positive organizational climate, in many cases, outweighs the financial side.

When an employee values ​​his work environment, he thinks twice before trying his luck at other companies.

3. Reduction of expenses with selections

By decreasing turnover, costs with the HR department also fall, after all, fewer selection processes and contract terminations are needed .

Thus, it is possible to understand the investment in employee experience as a way to cut costs.

4. Promotion of the employer brand

The development of a good employer brand , or employer brand, is crucial for attracting new talent.

That’s because a company that takes care of its employees builds a reputation for being a good place to work.

Who doesn’t want to work at Google, right? That’s the kind of impression a good reputation makes for your business.

5. Improvement in interpersonal relationships

By implementing actions to build a cohesive organizational climate through employee experience, a pattern of behavior is encouraged among employees.

As something positive, this behavior usually takes the form of collaboration, teamwork, dialogue and transparency .

As a consequence of these practices, interpersonal relationships are strengthened.

How to implement employee experience in your business

Before we talk about taking the first steps towards building an employee experience strategy , it’s important to make it clear that it’s not about offering quality free snacks or relaxed environments .

Here, understanding the demands of employees is the key to creating a relationship based on respect and collaboration.

And that doesn’t mean to say that it’s necessary to buy an arcade because everyone would like to. It is often important to know how to say no to build this relationship.

Well, now let’s look at some examples of employee experience !

1-Embrace HR 3.0: The Age of Analytics

To truly understand the demands of employees, it is necessary to understand them.

And the only way to perform this task assertively is through data collection and analysis.

Through people analytics it is possible to collect and classify the data collected from the sectors and employees themselves.

In this way, it is much simpler to identify the needs of individuals, discarding “guessing” and betting on more effective actions .

The organizational climate survey is a great example of a tool that serves to generate data and insights.

2-Understand the employee journey

Remember we talked about the employee journey ? The concept of this practice will be paramount here.

Mapping the employee’s journey within your company is a great differentiator for identifying flaws and proposing changes to improve their experience.

In this case, it is worth noting that this map reveals the entire working life of employees and is an especially effective tool to combat high turnover .

3-Stimulate the exchange of feedback

The exchange of feedback, especially between individuals at different hierarchical levels, can be seen as an exercise in knowledge.

This is because, at that moment, specific needs are exposed on various subjects that can (and should) be taken into account to create specific actions.

Understanding what the personal and professional aspirations of these individuals are is also a way to gain interesting insights. The advice is: get to know your collaborators!

4-Put everyone on the same page

Along with the process of knowing employees, it is important to understand the professional goals of each one of them.

In this way, it is even possible to understand whether the company will have the ability to satisfy that individual’s desires.

Regardless of the possibility, there is a declared concern to align the company’s objectives with those of the employee .

Making all these issues clear helps you understand your role and take the lead for you. Which brings us to the next tip.

5-encourage autonomy

Imagine these two situations: in one of them, the boss only delegates tasks to be carried out according to his vision; in the second, the leader calls his team to determine the best course of action.

In which of these scenarios does the positive outcome generate a greater sense of reward?

Not only that, the employee feels that his vision has space in the company and tends to become more autonomous , making decisions according to the objectives of the organization.

6-Count on benefits that impact your quality of life

Numerous surveys and articles indicate that the generations entering the workforce are now looking beyond pay .

Flexibility is the keyword for the value proposition of these individuals and, not only, has a positive impact on their perception of the company.

Especially for generations Y and Z, this implies a workplace that respects their individuality and, therefore, generates quality of life .

Thus, thinking about managing benefits that directly affect this point is quite strategic for this portion of workers.

We’ve created a summary to facilitate the implementation of the employee experience in your company. Check it out below!

Where to improve the employee experience

There are several environments in which employee experience concepts can be put into practice.

Given that the homework of the team leading this project has been carried out, there is already data on how employees think, feel and the touchpoints of their journey through the company.

With these insights, improvements to the experience can be implemented in the aspects described below. Follow up!

1-physical environment

Offering a pleasant workspace — with all the necessary infrastructure for everyone’s physical organization — is a point of comfort that directly impacts the employee’s relationship with the company.

Therefore, a physical environment that is pleasant for everyone is a great starting point for shaping an excellent experience.

2-technological environment

Especially nowadays, business flows tend to be increasingly technological.

In this way, providing modern tools that optimize the routine makes all the difference here.

Especially in a home office environment , several platforms can help when working, including training and digital time control platforms .

3-cultural environment

The cultural environment is the most complex factor in the experience equation, in addition to being influenced by several other elements.

Some of them are leadership style , ie the posture of leaders; presence of constant feedback; technical training, organizational climate, etc.

There are several factors linked to the cultural environment that a trained eye can identify, measure and optimize to deliver an excellent employee experience .