Many organizations are paying attention to how each worker feels about their day-to-day culture
As companies emerge from the pandemic, there are a number of areas that could help them burnish their images and not only attract new talent but retain important workers already in-house.
And nothing seems more valuable today for HR departments to focus on than providing workers with a great employee experience.
An overwhelming 92 per cent of respondents to a survey done by Willis Towers Watson (WTW) plan to prioritize improvements in their employee experience offerings during the next three years — nearly double that found before coronavirus, at 52 per cent.
These numbers proved to be a real eye opener for France Dufresne, Canadian leader of talent rewards at WTW in Montreal.
“A new set of expectations has emerged on the employee’s part and it could be, for example, the flexibility of work; it could be the experience they lived virtually or not with their colleagues; it could be whether they considered staying with the organization; it could be the fact that they are very marketable given the disparity of very good talent and that they suddenly have options.”
The survey heard from 1,550 employers representing 9.45 million employees around the globe between March 29 and April 23.
The essence of experience
But what exactly is employee experience?
“Employee experience is the emotional connection of employees to the culture of the company. People will often remember how they felt about a certain thing and so when you when you ask people, ‘Why have you stuck around Zurich for X amount of years?’ — people always talk about the connections. They never say, ‘Oh, it was that system I used that really blew my mind,’” says Ray Chaaya, associate vice president of employee experience and culture at Zurich Canada in Toronto.
“It’s mostly the connections that people have built between colleagues, with their managers, with their mentors — that is really what employee experience is.”
HR professionals have talked about the importance of engagement and total rewards as being critical in that retention plan, but employee experience is an outcome that stems from those efforts, says Dufresne.
“If you are engaged, if you feel well-remunerated, if you feel the attachment to the organization and its purpose, if you feel that you can grow in your organization — if all those things happen, then the outcome is the employee experience.”
And while “rewards are important, you need to be careful because it’s not only cash compensation — which is one important element — it’s also about ‘How do I grow and develop and am I able to fulfill my full potential in this organization?’”” that makes the experience that Huch more vital, she says.
Retention considerations
All of these aspects must be continually managed by HR departments, says Chaaya, in the ongoing quest to provide the best moments at the workplace.
“It’s constantly evolving and so we are constantly trying to figure out what employee experience is. Similar to the uncertainty of what the future of work really looks like for employers in the post-COVID world, the same questions and uncertainty are applied to the employee experience — but there have been some very important lessons learned, especially during the pandemic, that employers should take careful note of and not lose sight of as we move towards the employee experience post-COVID.”
While plenty of attention has been paid to the concept, a paltry amount of organizations have actually put strong effort into boosting employee experience, found the WTW survey: nine per cent reported they have a “transformative” employee experience strategy that is aligned with the business and involves using technology to make those changes.
This approach is key as all the data points to the fact that employees in North America are making changes, says Jennifer Elia, vice president of the future of work at Excellence Canada in Toronto.
“They’re evaluating what’s important to them and how work fits in their lives and they’re seeing opportunities to pursue maybe different paths,” she says. “[It’s about] making sure that there’s a good employee experience, and then even a reference point for those talented individuals who might be looking at your organization. [Doing so] is going to position an employer very well to be competitive in that global war for good talent.”
With many workers considering changing employers, according to other surveys conducted during the pandemic, retention is even more important and the employee experience factor plays a big role in this as well, according to Melanie Scheepers, associate vice president of human resources at Geotab in Oakville, Ont.
“Employees have a lot of choice these days. They have choice on where they work, the job that they do — so from an HR perspective, ensuring that your people have a positive employee experience while being part of your organization plays a really big part in retaining your top talent.
It’s no longer just about money or cool perks: it’s about the values, the culture, and the way the employee actually feels when they come to work.
That’s the difference between employees staying or looking for that next opportunity.”
HR ‘opportunity’
This scarcity of innovative ideas presents an excellent prospect for HR professionals to move things forward, according to Elia.
“The opportunity I see in 2021 and beyond is more to work across functions so the employee experience is consistent and positive and this can be done by bringing HR activities to a shared objective that ties to the desired employee experience.”
Not only do HR departments have to foster this new era, it’s incumbent upon leaders to undertake internal changes to their own behaviours, according to Elia.
“Perhaps the knowledge or the expertise or the experience that got them to this point in their career needs to be further augmented by emotional intelligence, relatability, connectedness, communication, that will help advance them to be an inspiring leader during this time of great change. Examples would be a series of questions that leaders can be asking themselves: ‘Do the people you lead know who you are?’ ‘Do they know what you care about?’ ‘Do they know what’s important to you, and why they ought to be following you?’”
“These are really good philosophical questions that can [help] start a leader to define their objectives as they grow... to lead in a time when fostering a caring and connected culture is important,” she says.
Positive outcomes
While the importance of good employee experience cannot be overstated, its positive outcomes are tangible, according to the WTW research, as “transformative” organizations reported 2.7 times more productivity in workers who were 90 per cent less likely to leave the employer relative to peers.
“It’s about being a team that truly cares about its people; whether you’re a line manager, whether you’re an executive of the organization or whether you’re part of the HR team, it’s extremely important to listen to your people and to value their voice,” says Scheepers. “Many companies talk a lot about being customer obsessed and at Geotab, we’re not only customer obsessed but we also consider ourselves to be employee obsessed.”
“One of our big focuses during the pandemic, was actually on our employees’ mental health and personal wellbeing that’s suffered quite a bit during the course of the past 18 months. We ended up giving all of our employees three wellness days off on top of their regular vacation that they could just take any time they needed that break,” she says.
While planning to create the great experience is important, it’s best “to not overthink it,” says Elia, and think strategically. “HR has the knowledge, certainly the perspective and insights to be able to create an experience. There are some practices that can act as a guidepost and they’re fairly straightforward. Number one would be to develop a strong employee value proposition, or EVP, that maps all aspects of an employee’s experience to the organization’s purpose.”
