Employee Experience

Employee experience is everything. It defines how happy we are at our job, how long we’ll stay and if we’ll move up — or across — an organization. The right communication can help improve employee experience by giving employees the support and confidence they need year-round.

What is employee experience?

Gallup offers a robust employee experience definition: “The employee experience is the journey an employee takes with your organization. It includes every interaction that happens along the employee life cycle, plus the experiences that involve an employees’ role, workspace, manager and wellbeing.”

Culture is another term that is highly compatible with employee experience. The culture of an organization has a strong effect on how an employee feels and acts every day in the work environment.

Why focus on employee experience?

It makes or breaks your turnover. What do employees do when they are unhappy with their experience? They leave. And losing employees is costly. That’s why making an investment in employee experience and culture is valuable.

Happy employees are also productive employees, according to Forbes. “One study found that happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees. When it comes to salespeople, happiness has an even greater impact, raising sales by 37%.” Increased employee engagement clearly has a positive effect on business performance.

Forbes points out that business leaders often get too focused on what they do and overlook the people doing the work. “While job security and financial stability are important to job satisfaction, so are opportunities to use one’s skills and abilities. The bottom line is that people need to continue to grow in order to remain engaged and productive.”

How to communicate the best employee experience

PartnerComm is an expert at creating and executing employee experience strategies for clients big and small. We follow best practices, communicating to employees throughout their entire journey with the company, from recruitment to onboarding to everyday needs.

Recruitment

Creating employee experience begins with the recruitment phase. This is when candidates get their first impression of your company culture and what their employee experience in the workplace might be like.

You must equip your recruiters with the tools they need to impress job candidates. As an employer, there are many ways you can do this. A recruitment toolkit is a great example, which could include things like:

• Talking points for conversations with candidates.
• Email template for digital communication with candidates.
• Brochures (print or digital) promoting the company’s benefits.
• T-shirts, pens and other swag to hand out during recruitment events.

Your employee experience platform should always keep the recruitment stage in mind. Then, build up from there, meeting employees where they are in their lives.

Onboarding

When the candidate says “yes” to the job, it’s time for him or her to start learning about life at your company. We like to refer to this as new hire communication. This is a crucial part to the future of employee experience at your company. New hires need to be supported from the get-go, as this will set their trajectory within your organization.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) makes a good case for how vital the onboarding process is to employee experience. “Rather than setting up new employees for success, organizations with poor onboarding processes are setting the stage for an early exit.” Research shows that nearly 1/3 of all new hires quit their jobs within the first 6 months, which is a staggering statistic.

You can enhance the employee experience by creating a robust, eye-catching new hire benefits guide. New hires must choose their benefits when they join an organization, so giving them step-by-step instructions on how to do this as well as details about the benefits you offer is key to setting them up for success.

Everyday needs

Once your employees have learned the ropes and settled into their role, the communication doesn’t stop. Gathering employee insights about their experiences is important because it will help you communicate effectively and keep your people happy and engaged.

An employee experience survey is a great tool to gather these insights. It allows you to evolve your communication over time to keep it meaningful, relevant and timely. We have Ph.D.’s and behavioral scientists on staff to help craft your survey to get the answers you’re looking for, such as:

• How employees want to be communicated to.
• Benefits employees find the most valuable.
• How employees see their career evolving at your company.
• How overall employee experience management can improve.
• And so much more.

Once you’ve analyzed the results from your pulse survey, it will help you create a more effective, year-round employee engagement communication strategy. PartnerComm strategies focus on audience, channels and cadence, as well as new, fresh ideas for employee experience programs you might consider for all stages of the employee’s journey.

An employee experience communication example

Our employee experience teams use their expertise and creativity to communicate a prime employee experience to employees at a global tech company. We crafted digital brochures for candidates that promoted the top 10 benefits offered by the company and what makes them unique. If someone is hired, they will receive a new hire benefits guide, also created by PartnerComm.

In addition to the benefits guide for new hires, we create PowerPoint presentations for benefits experts to walk new employees through the benefits enrollment process. And we continue to support this company with communication promoting other solutions and programs throughout the year.