'Employee Experience' - A New Important Dimension to the service to the Human Capital

 [A] Introduction / Background:

When it comes to services in Business, the barometer of good vs not so good service is generally the 'experience'. Of course, the primary receivers of these services are customer or clients. How they 'feel' about a business' services matter a lot and will decide the level of customer engagement, loyalty and retention.

In the service intensive industry like hotels or hospitality organizations, the company does not sell 'goods'. It rather sells 'experience' to the customer - how a customer feels from the point of parking, ambience, food delivery, seating arrangement, interaction with service staff, cleanliness of the place, the setup of the menu, billing process, complaint management till the exit from the premises - all constitute major important points in the experience of the customer. 

The same is applicable or valid for the experience of the employees. The employees' experience of how 'HR services' are provided will decide their level of satisfaction, engagement, loyalty and retention. 

A lot of focus is now there on the employee experience. Let us explore the idea further.

[B] Employee Experience Defined:

In general, the employee experience is all about how an employee perceives the company in normative terms, based on the summations of all the interactions with the company across all the touch points, during his/her entire tenure with the company. Like, for example, at the recruitment level, onboarding level, training, performance appraisal, promotion, transfer etc. It includes the impact of the culture,  how the boss and colleagues behaved with him/her, physical infrastructure on the employee's overall experience as well. 

An employee, who has a positive perception of the experience, will likely to be more engaged employee. 

Employee experience is more holistic term compared to employee engagement. Employee engagement is all about how committed an employee is, with the organization and the job. It is also the level of involvement at physical, mental and emotional level with the work and employer.

On the other hand, employee experience covers how employee feels (emotions), thinks (cognition) about the organization, based on his/her each and every touch point with the organization. 

Employee engagement is the outcome of a well maintained employee experience. 

[C] How to Improve the Employee Experience:

1. Transparency in Communication: 

The work places, where the communication transparent, generally have the employees, who have positive impression of the work place. Transparent communication leads to better (positive) perceptions of the employer, in the minds of the employees. Authentic (transparent) communication is viewed as a hall mark of honesty on the part of employees as well as all the stakeholders.

2. Fast solution to the complaints etc.:

It is not necessary to always agree with the complaints of the employees. The idea is to make sure that employees 'feel' heard or paid attention to immediately, whenever he/she gives any feedback or inputs. If the management takes too much time or shows passiveness in responding to such inputs from the employees, the employee will feel dejected.

3. Provide a sense of purpose in the job: 

The old theory of motivation of two factors (Herzberg) clearly states that only satisfiers (extrinsic rewards like salary or perquisites) will not be sufficient to motivate the employees. Motivators (intrinsic rewards like challenging work or empowerment) are important to motivate the employees. When the job has a purpose attached to it, it brings a sense of meaning in the job. For example, a physician does not do his or her job only for money or knowledge. There is a purpose to cure a human being. And that gives meaning to his or her work. Create a purpose that leads to the meaning for every job. 

4. Offer career advancement opportunities:

Ultimately everyone is working for the progress and the growth. Contribute to the employees' career development by providing learning opportunities by giving them chances to undergo training programs or by sponsoring their further education. The supervisor, in addition to the above, should also discuss the career management and planning with his/her team players. That allows employees to feel connected to the organization and feel that the employer 'cares' for them.

5. Identify and cherish 'the moments of truth' or 'critical incidents': 

The performance of the employees cannot always be measured through quantified measures like ranking or rating scales. Some aspects of the job are too qualitative to be captured by such measures. For that, use critical incident method of the performance appraisal and highlight any extra ordinary efforts by the employees to other employees and recognize such efforts in a positive way. 

For example, one employee went out of way to buy a bottle of a Thumps-up for a child of the client, when it was not available in near by vicinity. That made the child happy and her parents too!

Identifying and celebrating such contributions will reinforce the employees' positive motivation to repeat the display of such extra ordinary behaviours.

6. Use technology to your advantage:

Using basic reminder tools like google calendar, you can remember the birthdays and anniversaries of the employees. The employer can arrange a small celebration for the employee within or outside office premises. 

7. Employee Data to your rescue:

Use HR analytics to find about the hidden patterns of employee behaviour. For example, generally 12 casual leaves are granted in a year in any organization. But one small organization in India realised that many employees were opting for 12 casual leaves + three leave without pays in entire year on an average because maximum only 12 casual leaves were allowed. So, the organization decided to offer 15 casual leaves to improve the employee experience.

8. Make the exit easy:

People will come and go. Those, who want to leave, should be offered smooth and professional exit, with full assistance. That leave a good impression in the minds of existing employees too.

9. Offer outplacement services:

Help those employees get a job, who had to be laid off or removed due to poor performance or non-availability of work. That should help boost morale of other existing employees as well

10. Use following HR Metrics to quantify the overall experience of the employees:

1. Job Satisfaction

2. Employee Engagement

3. Employee Absenteeism 

4. Retention Rates

5. Employee Productivity

6. No of Applications Received for an Open Post Over The Years and Its Trend

7. Data from Exit Interview

8. Employee Turnover

Please keep in mind that measuring experience is a difficult job. Following articles might help you know more about how to measure experience of employees.

1. How to measure employee experience? - AIHR

2. Building Your Employee Experience Strategy - Gallup (Paid Consultancy)

3. How do you measure employee experience? - Ciphr

Quantifying the experience should be done only with the help of HR and analytics' experts. And one should also not read too much into the numbers and also focus on collecting and analyzing a lot of qualitative data. 

Conclusion:

Thus, employee experience is the most supreme idea to work on for the HRs. If every process and SOP in HR is ok, it will surely increase the employee performance.