What is the connection between Employee Experience & Customer Experience?

Like employee experience, customer experience is the full impression customers have of your brand during their customer journey.

1. Are they happy with the quality of your products or services?
2. Do they feel any brand loyalty?
3. Does the digital customer experience differ from the in-person experience?

 

These are all questions that can just as easily be applied to your employees.

We’ve all heard the adage “the customer is always right,” but businesses are realising that a positive employee experience has a direct impact on the customer experience.

 

The 2021 LinkedIn “Employee Well-Being Report” found that employees who were satisfied with their organisation’s flexibility in hours or location were:

• 3.4x more likely to successfully balance work and personal obligations.
• 2.6x more likely to be happy working for their employer.
• 2.1x more likely to recommend working for their employer.

 

Similarly, a recent Gartner® survey found that organisations with high levels of flexibility were almost 3x more likely to see high employee performance. LinkedIn further reports that 20% of employees don’t have location flexibility, and 25% of employees aren’t satisfied with their current ability to dictate that flexibility.

According to research undertaken by McKinsey8 in 2021, the top three factors employees cited as reasons for quitting were that:

1. They didn’t feel valued by their organisations (54%) or their managers (52%), or
2. They didn’t feel a sense of belonging at work (51%).
3. Employees’ frustrations stem directly from not feeling heard or seen by their company.

 

The businesses that will continue to succeed are those that listen to their people and act on what they say.

 

Developing your Employee Experience Strategy

Employee experience has moved beyond being just a CHRO initiative. CFOs, CIOs, and other key business leaders are increasingly focused on providing employees with a personalised, omni-channel experience.

 

1.     Guaranteeing Your Employees the Essentials

Without the essentials, there’s no basis for a wider employee experience strategy. These are the base-level necessities that all people should expect from their work, regardless of their geographical location, identity, background, or even their job performance. At a minimum, an employer is expected to provide an employee with a salary and the tools necessary to do their work, and in turn, an employee carries out their work as dictated in the contract.

However, the model has long since evolved beyond that:

• Now employers need to consider how each person functions best, including what the process looks like for digital onboarding versus in person, what the optimal working environment is for each individual, and how the needs of disabled employees are being met.
• In each instance, the opportunity for self-reporting is important to make sure everyone can voice their own needs. What’s considered “essential” can differ from person to person, as well as within different cultures and industries.
• Even when considering the fundamentals, personalization is key. But guaranteeing the essentials doesn’t just refer to providing tools and educational resources—it’s also about ensuring that support is in place for employee burnout, stress, and well-being.

 

2.     Bridging the Global Workforce

Recognising the shift in workforce dynamics represented by such a high percentage of employees working remotely—and wanting to do so permanently—requires a focus on digital solutions:

• If we want to bridge the global workforce, we need to meet each employee where they work and on their own terms, and in a way that works for them.
• An employee who onboards remotely should be as satisfied as someone who onboards in person, even if that experience is different.
• The solution is for IT and HR to partner to provide employees with personalised experiences that increase productivity, align to business strategies, and ignite engagement—all to create an organisation that’s highly adaptable at its core. By building that flexibility into their infrastructure, companies will be able to adapt to changes in the world of work far more readily.

 

3.     Providing Consumer-Grade Technology and Tools

The “2021 CFO Indicator Study” of 267 global CFOs found that nearly all respondents (97%) said technology was critical to attracting and retaining talent, and nearly half (48%) were actively looking to invest in such technology over the next five years. Employees expect the solutions they use at work to have the same qualities as the apps they use outside of work.

• That means user-friendly interfaces, strong integrations between solutions, and smooth user experiences on company websites, mirroring online consumer experiences. The expectation is that the data and resources an employee needs to do their job should be easy to find.
• With workforces becoming increasingly tech-savvy, attracting and retaining talent means matching the current pace of technological development with to-the-minute insights.

 

4.     Enabling Skills Development and Talent Performance

While career growth conversations have traditionally been fixed to salary increases and promotions, contemporary workers expect more regular opportunities to develop—from learning new skills to using their expertise in short-term sprint projects. Those small moments that matter are often essential to increasing employee retention.

Skills development isn’t just a major point of contention among employees; it’s also a significant hurdle for people leaders.

• In recent research for “Closing the Acceleration Gap,”4 in 10 business leaders (38%) said a lack of relevant workforce skills is their biggest barrier to transformation.
• A further 34% of leaders (particularly in finance and IT roles) said advanced analytics and data visualisation skills would help teams meet continuously evolving business demands.
• Recognizing the rapid pace of the digital landscape involves reinvesting in your existing employees rather than looking to new hires.

 

5.     Cultivating True Belonging and Diversity

Businesses that pay lip service to belonging and diversity without committing to sustained change are beginning to see the negative effect on employee loyalty.

The “Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey”17 found:

• Those millennials who were “very satisfied” with their employer’s progress in creating a diverse and inclusive environment, 52% said they expected to stay beyond five years, with only 17% saying they’d leave within two.
• For those who were “not satisfied at all,” the inverse was true, with 52% saying they’d want to change companies within two years, and only 11% saying they’d stay past five.

With millennials set to make up 75% of the workforce by 2030, businesses will need to be increasingly conscious of creating a diverse work environment.

 

By partnering across the organisation, HR can use the data acquired by IT to examine and begin remedying bias in hiring practices, creating dedicated belonging and diversity roles, and cultivating a company culture where everyone belongs.

 

Every person is unique, and an inclusive work environment enables those unique attributes and worldviews to flourish together. If one person doesn’t feel that they can bring their best self to work, then a new approach to belonging and diversity is needed—one that’s built on providing space to share insights on company diversity initiatives and for employees to share confidential feedback.

Nobody’s well-being and performance should suffer because of active discrimination or feeling ostracised.

 

6.     Empowering the Employee Voice

But what does empowering the employee voice actually entail?

• The first step is committing to a system of regular surveying. By asking employees the right question at the right time, you reduce survey fatigue as well as give them the opportunity to speak to issues when they matter, rather than months after the fact.
• Use one-to-one meetings with their managers and wider company meetings—but the confidentiality of a survey enables people to voice thoughts they otherwise wouldn’t.
• Have a platform that gives people leaders access to real-time employee sentiment data, enabling them to tackle the most pertinent issues their teams are facing in a manner that’s timely and efficient.
• With a robust engagement platform, not only can managers break down team scores by topic, industry, country, and other factors, they can also benchmark scores against the market standard.
• Taking action on any highlighted problem areas, employees don’t only feel listened to, they also feel heard.

 

Engaging with your employees at every stage of their employment lifecycle is vital. Provide them with the space to voice their thoughts, prove that you’re invested in their professional and personal development, and when you commit to a course of action, keep your employees informed of progress—positive or otherwise.

 

Exerts from 2023 Workday, Inc