How Companies Can Create Their Own Employee Experience Solution

It’s no secret that work takes up a big chunk of our lives. 

In fact, the average American is expected to work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for about 40 years. That means the average American will work about 80,000 hours throughout their lifetime. 

Because such a large percentage of an employee’s life is spent working, companies must create an environment where others want to work each day. By designing and enhancing an employee experience, you can expect to see greater levels of engagement, satisfaction, retention and company commitment.

Leading by Example

In his 2017 research, employee experience expert Jacob Morgan found that employees care the most about these three work environments:

1.     Cultural
2.     Technological
3.     Physical

Morgan also found that there are a handful of companies that have focused on culture, technology and physical spaces to yield real business results. For example:

• Airbnb, an online marketplace for home rentals, focuses on employee experience by allowing their employees to design and build their own conference rooms.
• Adobe, a computer software company, has made it their mission to increase diversity and inclusion, provide their employees with feedback programs and top-notch technology and is constantly experimenting with different workspace plans.
• LinkedIn, a business and employment-oriented online platform, is known for hosting HR hackathons to help gather new ideas and different ways to engage employees.

Out of nearly 250 organizations Morgan analyzed, only 6% have been as ‘experiential’ in their innovation of culture, technology and physical workspaces as Airbnb, Adobe and LinkedIn.

And, according to Morgan’s book, this small percentage of organizations are reaping these big rewards:

• 4X higher average profits
• 2X higher average revenues
• 40 percent lower turnover
• 24 percent smaller headcount

Sounds appealing? Even organizations with small budgets can achieve these results as long as they have a plan for designing their employee experience.

Designing Your Company’s Employee Experience

The first step innovative companies take to improve their employee experience is reevaluating how they look at change through the process of design thinking.

Design thinking, a solution-based approach to resolving problems, can be useful for solving complex employee experience issues that can sometimes plague organizations. 

Many companies use employee experience platforms to enhance company culture and give employees a better work experience.

The five stages in design thinking related to employee experience are:

• Empathize: Employers must be able to empathize with their employees in order to gain a greater understanding of their ideal work environment. By doing so, organizations are more likely to be able to develop a well-rounded plan of action.
• Define: Organizations must define and develop their ideal employee experience. You can do so by mapping out the necessary steps to get there and be sure to use employees’ insights to drive those steps.
• Ideate: Organizations must start coming up with concrete ideas and identify work environment solutions.
• Prototype: Create a scalable solution and run it past your employees, who will either accept, reject or provide feedback for re-examination.
• Test: Make sure the solution not only works but is accepted among your employees. There may still be some rough edges to smooth out, but this final stage should be viewed as an iterative process.

Ultimately, using design thinking to improve the employee experience will provide organizations with an in-depth understanding of their employees’ needs, wants and desires and allow an organization to make changes based on employee insights.

Involve Your Employees

For many organizations who feel overwhelmed by the idea of improving their employee experience, hiring a dedicated employee experience manager is an option. Common titles range from the likes of global chief employee experience officer and head of employee experience.

The role of an employee experience manager is most closely related to a human resources management position. By including a similar role within your organization, you’ll have a dedicated professional whose sole purpose is to create and maintain a positive and rewarding work environment.

The individual in this role will:

• Listen to employees’ feedback and propose scalable suggestions and solutions for improvement to senior leadership.
• Ensure employees feel valued and invested in their work.
• Create and implement employee programs and benefits such as financial wellness programs or ergonomic updates in the office.

With a dedicated employee experience manager role, your organization will be able to recruit and retain talented employees who feel happy, valued and invested in their day-to-day work.

Take Action to Improve the Employee Experience

Regardless of whether you have a big or small budget, or if you handle employee experience with your existing team, or bring someone else on board, a new perspective can yield favorable business results for your organization.

All it takes is simply thinking outside the box, and taking action.