Employee experience has become critical to organization outcomes both in the short and long-run. It’s always been easy to mention employee experience and engagement but implementing it and turning it to uncompromised organizational culture seems to have become a puzzle for several organizations. The right people in an organization are the driver of the business, not the business itself.
The starting point is, organization should not focus on many things in turning around situations, just focus on building a robust people-centered and personalized programs that treat each employee like a supermarket where employee can be comfortable to get, grow and become what they want to become and remain loyal to the organization without looking elsewhere.
Employee Needs
Employees want to see the connection between their work, boss, teams of networks, and the company values. There is a need for managers to support employees to understand how their role contributes to the company’s efforts to become more environmentally and socially responsible.
The reality is that all employees craved for more human experiences, whether that’s working for an organization that shares the same values as they do, being fairly compensated for work and above-and-beyond behaviors, assistance in supporting and building their skills, or receiving the necessary support in form of coaching and mentoring from their leaders whilst empowering them to flourish and win for themselves and the organization without burning out are critical to employee happiness.
Organizations now need to think of growth and development as an integral part of employee needs and values. Organizations need to get much more intentional than just providing access to training, development, and learning opportunities to employees and instead give employees the time, attention and support they needed to move from good to great and from performing employee to high performing employee and become new generational leaders.
Feedback
Ultimately, employees want to know how their contributions, efforts, and performance impact their life and company wins. When employees can see their impact and understand the value of what they do, organizations can accentuate the values conversation and build a culture around driving positive, substantial change. Give employee objective feedback that shows direction for better improvement and performance in a coaching and mentoring method and not subjective feedback that focuses on employee weaknesses or gaps rather than the employee key areas of strengths.
Engaged Communication
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Organizations must ensure that they connect actions and initiatives back to employee feedback.
Maintaining contact with employees is vital, but it’s also important to connect employee and customer feedback to truly understand how employee experiences and behaviors affect customer experience and performance outcomes.
Use the opportunities presented through existing listening programs e.g., engagement and pulse surveys, exit surveys to understand gaps in experience of growth and development opportunities and understand where to deploy resources for targeted action.
The Way FORWARD
- Manage teams and achieve goals based on organizational mission statements.
- Give employees the opportunity to be creative, to do things differently and show their talent.
- Focus on employee values, evaluate, and assess how processes currently align with them.
- Build and cultivate supportive work environments with equal opportunities.
- Ensure everyone is up to date on the organization’s wins, progress, and learning.
- Push forward with a purpose that unites and inspires people.
- Drive promotion and compensation policies based on employee performance and contributions rather than tenure with employee behavioral qualities consideration.
- Drive policies that promote minorities or lower cadre potential employees into the leadership ladder of the organization and leadership in them through coaching and role-modeling.
- Design personalized career paths for people to progress into roles required for the future.
- Create opportunities for new starters to develop, become more, build, and acquire the right skills.
As we see the need to engage employees in work that is purposeful and connects with their values, learn from employees what matters most to them, and seek to connect them with stretch assignments.
Provide meaningful development opportunities. For employees, it’s not necessarily about upward progression (though important), but also about learning and utilizing new, relevant, and transferable skills.