What is employee experience and why does it matter?

Employee experience (EX) is the sum of all the experiences an employee collects during the period of employment with a particular company. Unfortunately, only a little more than half of employees (58%) feel valued by their current employer and say they are satisfied with their employer’s practices in this area, while as much as 20% of employees declare that they do not trust their organization. Why is it so important to ensure a positive employee experience?

Employee experience – table of contents:

1. What is employee experience?
2. What are the factors that impact the employee experience?
3. Why does employee experience matter?
4. Summary

What is employee experience?

Employees gather their experiences throughout the entire period of employment – and they can be both positive and negative. They are collected from the very beginning, that is from the moment of accepting the job offer. Candidate experience is essential for employee experience. During the recruitment process, a recruiter describes a position and a workplace. If it later turns out that the description and reality don’t overlap, such a situation spoils the initial excitement.

The moment of leaving the company is equally important. Accepting the employee’s notice while adopting a sincere, understanding and open attitude will certainly build a better final experience than taking offense or reproaching the employee.

What are the factors that influence employee experience?

There are several factors that can influence employee experience. The first one relates to the organizational culture. It consists of such elements as the mission and vision, communication style, hierarchy and professed values. The second one includes working conditions (e.g. flexible working arrangements), co-workers and their attitude towards each other, benefits, procedures and the office design. The last factor refers to the solutions an employee can use.

Why does employee experience matter?

If you don’t meet an employee’s expectations with regard to any of the above areas, the employee’s experience will be negative and they will not want to stay in that environment any longer. For this reason, it is important to take care of the employee’s well-being in the company – after all, HR departments and hiring managers strive to attract permanent employees (due to high recruitment costs). Good employees are the best investment you can make, but sometimes it is very hard to acquire them and even more difficult to retain them.

However, reducing employee turnover is only one of the expected results of a positive employee experience. Taking care of a great employee experience also has a strategic purpose – a person who is satisfied with the working conditions or work environment is more efficient and committed to their work, which translates into the company’s bottom line. A good employee experience builds the organization’s competitive advantage in the eyes of potential job candidates – as a company simply worth working for.

What’s more, nowadays, it’s quite easy to find out what current and former employees, as well as candidates rejected in the recruitment process, think about the company – all you have to do is to go to employer review websites. Keep in mind that dissatisfied people are more likely to share their opinions than satisfied people.

Employee experience – summary

Benefits policies, training programs, incentive systems and transparent organizational culture – the list of factors affecting the employee experience can be endless. HR departments need to approach the subject comprehensively and look for ways to provide employees with exactly what they need.

It is a good practice to conduct regular feedback sessions and surveys, where employees are able to express their opinion on their past experience with the company. This will provide you with basic material that you can work on to improve the current situation.

Read also: AI in recruitment.

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