Employee Experience Management (EEM) is a rapidly evolving field that’s capturing the attention of forward-thinking HR teams. At its core, EEM is about understanding and optimizing every interaction an employee has with their organization. One powerful tool in this process is the HIGH5 strengths assessment, which helps individuals and teams identify their unique talents. By incorporating strengths-based approaches into EEM strategies, companies can create more engaging, productive, and satisfying work environments. If you’re new to EEM or strengths-based management, you’re about to discover how these concepts can transform your workplace.
First, let me start by explaining what employee experience (ex) is. Basically, it’s the way each employee feels while interacting with different parts of the organization: from IT to HR to even the way the office is structured.
What is Employee Experience Management (EEM)?
Employee experience management is a practice dedicated to influencing each one of those touchpoints from the recruitment phase to the offboarding from the company.
Most huge corporations have started paying attention to the employee development experience as they’ve worked on developing a business environment that can lead to exceptional success for the organization.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Instead of implementing generic engagement initiatives, use the insights from HIGH5 strengths assessments to tailor your EEM strategies. For example, create ‘Strength Spotlight’ sessions where employees can showcase how they use their top strengths to excel in their roles. This personalized approach can lead to more meaningful and lasting engagement.
Why is Employee Experience Management Important?
Many large organizations invest over $700 million annually to enhance employee engagement, often focusing on surface-level perks like wellness programs, flexible hours, and office amenities. However, truly effective Employee Experience Management goes deeper, addressing the fundamental aspects of an employee’s work life. This is where the HIGH5 strengths assessment becomes invaluable. By helping employees identify and leverage their unique strengths, companies can create more meaningful engagement. When individuals understand and apply their natural talents, they’re more likely to find fulfillment in their roles, leading to sustained engagement that goes beyond temporary perks. This strengths-based approach to EEM not only improves individual performance but also contributes to a more positive and productive organizational culture.
However, most of these initiatives only drive active employee engagement for a short period of time. This means that after a few months, the company has to inject another few million and come up with new ways to make the exceptional employee experience better.
Now, this might seem like a lot of money getting thrown out the window, but research shows that’s not the case at all.
In fact, statistics state that companies who invest in effective employee experience management solutions or have an employee engagement strategy have earned four times the average profit and more than two times the average revenue of companies, that don’t have that kind of practice.
3 Key Elements of an EEM Model
In order for any business to continue being competitive, it has to adapt to the current changes in the world. Studies suggest that employee expectations have massively evolved in the last few decades.
And if the organization fails to meet those requirements it will be unable to retain talent. That’s why it’s important to have a proper employee experience management system in place.
It will enable the business to reach its future goals while creating a comprehensive employee experience.
Let’s now discuss the three key elements of any employee experience management system.
1. Learning and Development of Employee Experience
As traditional education models evolve, innovative learning methods are gaining prominence in the workplace. One such approach is strengths-based development, exemplified by tools like the HIGH5 assessment. This method focuses on identifying and honing an individual’s innate talents, rather than solely addressing weaknesses. By incorporating strengths assessments into learning and development programs, organizations can create more personalized, engaging, and effective growth opportunities for their employees. This tailored approach not only enhances skill acquisition but also boosts confidence and job satisfaction, as employees are encouraged to leverage their natural abilities in their daily work.
That’s why 87% of people rank learning and development opportunities as critically important in a new workplace. Research shows that having a proper L&D system in place raises employee engagement levels as it shows that the company is investing in its people.
Furthermore, it leads to higher motivation, trust, and commitment, thus helping nurture a better connection with employees.
Regulatory training also falls into this category, as obtaining job-specific skills and filling in knowledge gaps help boost employee morale.
There are three key steps you can apply in your organization:
- having pre-determined training sessions as part of the employee onboarding
- offering workshops or training modules that help the employee on their way to reaching career growth
- coaching should be a part of the mandatory meeting list
2. Collaboration and Empower of Employee Experience
When people truly work together as a team, they can achieve a lot more than as individuals. However, creating this kind of atmosphere is extremely difficult in a situation of isolation, like the one we’re currently living in.
That’s why numerous businesses have invested in employee experience platforms that could help facilitate a feeling of togetherness, by making online communication easier.
A great example here is the umbrella brand, Mitchells and Butlers, who cultivated a collaborative environment with the help of such a solution.
With this investment, they immediately saw a rise in performance, engagement, and business outcomes.
Here are three things that can be done to implement such a culture in an organization:
- organizing get-togethers for co-workers
- using digital workplace tools that facilitate better collaboration between team members
- create a collaborative environment by encouraging free-flowing communication
3. Performance Management of Employee Experience
The performance management process is a key component of the employee lifecycle.
Whenever employees receive structured and constructive feedback, that’s aligned with the company culture, they’re much more likely to remain a part of the organization for a long time.
A study done by Slack showed that “aligned” workers are much more engaged with their job, compared to the “unaligned” ones.
As a result, those who are aligned were more motivated to achieve results and contribute to the organization. On the other hand, “unaligned” employees were often feeling detached from the company and its objectives and didn’t feel appreciated in their current position.
Here are three things you can do to make your workers more “aligned”:
- have a well though-out performance management system for the entire organization
- offer actionable insights to employees during appraisals
- use employee surveys to pinpoint holes in the performance management system and then work to annihilate them
How to Improve & Enhance Employee Experience in 3 Steps
If an organization has taken steps toward implementing an employee management system but seeks to make further improvements, here are three simple steps that will surely enhance it.
Step 1: Improve the Onboarding Process
First impressions are crucial in shaping an employee’s experience. To create a positive and lasting impact, organizations should consider integrating strengths-based approaches into their onboarding process. For instance, incorporating the HIGH5 strengths assessment early on can provide valuable insights into a new hire’s natural talents. This information can guide role assignments, team integration, and initial development plans. By focusing on an employee’s strengths from day one, companies can demonstrate their commitment to personal growth and create a more welcoming, supportive environment. This strengths-focused onboarding not only helps newcomers feel valued and understood but also sets the stage for more effective collaboration and job satisfaction throughout their tenure.
Organizations have to ensure good and timely communication from the beginning. The manager has to introduce the new hires to all the team members, the organizational values and also give them an idea of what the next few days will look like.
Step 2: Ensure Constant Communication
Make employees feel a part of something by communicating changes and company news in a timely manner. Also, encourage employee engagement by asking for feedback and then sharing noteworthy suggestions with the company executives.
In the end, the entire goal of employee engagement is to make people more invested in the workplace and this goes hand-in-hand with giving feedback, even if it’s negative at times.
Step 3: Do the Offboarding the Right Way
Even if people decide to quit, it’s still important to part with them in a civilized manner.
Give them the opportunity to express their opinions on the company in exit interviews and ensure they can quit their role while providing their successor with the needed knowledge to perform well in the position.
15 Benefits of Having a Employee Experience Management in Place
1. Building a good company image
When an organization embraces a strengths-based approach to Employee Experience Management, it naturally cultivates a positive company image. By using tools like the HIGH5 strengths assessment, companies demonstrate their commitment to understanding and valuing each employee’s unique talents. This approach not only leads to higher retention rates but also creates a workforce of engaged, long-term employees who progress within the company. As these employees share their positive experiences, it reinforces the image of a workplace that truly invests in its people. This reputation for nurturing individual strengths and fostering growth becomes a powerful attractor for top talent, further enhancing the company’s image as an employer of choice.
2. Attract top candidates
This ties in with the first benefit. By having a good public image, a company becomes more attractive to top-tier candidates so they can build highly effective teams.
3. Better environment
When employees are engaged in the work process and thus aware of everything going on in the company, they’re more likely to collaborate with other teams and departments. This in turn helps nurture a good organizational culture.
4. Improved employee/manager communication
All employee experience solutions tactics are usually performed by the manager. And most of them serve as a building block to better, more frequent communication between the manager and his subordinates.
5. More productive employees
It’s not hard to figure out that people who are happy and engaged in their work would be more productive than their counterparts.
6. Happy employees = happy customers
I don’t remember who said it, but a famous business owner once claimed that an organization should take care of its employees and that would translate into happy clients. Well, that’s been proven to be true as statistics show that 79% of companies with engaged and satisfied employees provide better customer service than those with disengaged ones.
7. Bring more success to the company
If employees are more engaged with their job and company, they will want to work harder to achieve its objectives. Whether that’s through new ideas or extra work hours.
8. Companies look better to young people
We’ve all read all about Gen-Z and Millenials and how demanding they’re towards employers. And as they’re becoming a larger portion of the workforce, it’s important for companies to be attractive to them. That can definitely happen through employee engagement strategies that ensure a better work environment.
9. Return on investment increases
A Gallup poll suggests that actively disengaged workers cost companies anywhere from $450 to $500 billion per year. And no company wants to pay this “disengaged fee”.
So if an organization takes preventative measures and invests in employee experience technology early on, it can enjoy increased profitability by 22%, lower shrinkage levels, and a better share price.
10. Reduce turnover
By creating a lively, engaging workplace people will “stop” leaving the company. That in return will help it save money by reducing turnover costs.
11. Retain talent
The hardest thing to do is keep talented and hard-working people in the company for long. It’s also the most important thing an organization can achieve. It can happen when a company invests in all aspects of employee experience management – great onboarding, learning, and development programs, and employee wellness initiatives as well as preventing employee burnout.
12. Inspire creativity
Having talented employees who are also happy and inspired is a recipe for more creativity and better ideas.
13. Decreased absences
When people love their job, manager, and team, they want to come to work and help their collective. So in a way, employee experience management can help decrease absences.
14. Creating a sense of belonging
Employee experience management helps create a sense of belonging in workers. They feel the investment of the company and in return, start to care about its well-being.
15. Achievements begin to matter more
When an individual works in a competitive, driven, and also friendly environment, company awards for employee of the month or year begin to matter more. That’s because people feel they’ve actually won something, but also because others congratulate them on their achievements as well.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Leverage the HIGH5 strengths assessment to create a ‘Strengths-Based Success Stories’ initiative. Regularly highlight employees who have achieved significant results by applying their unique strengths. Share these stories company-wide to inspire others and reinforce the value of a strengths-based culture. This not only boosts morale but also demonstrates to potential candidates the growth opportunities within your organization.
What Does an Employee Experience Manager Do?
The employee experience manager is the person who manages, runs, and tracks all the initiatives surrounding the improvement of the employee experience.
His job is to conduct employee surveys, check feedback on exit interviews, and offer innovative ways to enhance the quality of the workplace. These managers have to be able to understand the perspective of the employees and thus stay connected to them.
In huge corporations, usually, this role is either a part of the HR team or it’s not a stand-alone position. In such circumstances, these responsibilities fall to the HRBP manager.
What is Talent Experience Management?
Employee experience management is a whole system that usually involves several key processes.
One of them is Talent Experience Management, which consists of three steps:
- training the employees
- making sure they’re engaged with their work and the organization
- evaluating their performance and providing regular feedback
Difference Between Employee Experience and Employee Talent Management
Talent management is the entire process that an organization has to apply in order to recruit, retain, develop, reward and encourage its employees.
The employee experience, however the way each employee feels throughout their stay in the company, along all the different touchpoints.
Employee Experience Management FAQ
What is meant by employee experience?
Employee experience is the worker’s outlook on your work community, the company values, company goals, communication between team members, and so on. It is how your employees experience working for you.
The employee experience starts from the interview (how they feel, which questions are asked, which values are mentioned) and ends with resignation or firing.
What is the employee experience strategy?
Your employee experience strategy helps you control and evaluate your employee’s experience of working for you. The strategy helps you realize how employees feel throughout different parts of their careers.
You can recognize which moments inspire employees and which degrade them by analyzing their employee experience. Once you know your employee’s experiences, you can create a strategy for incorporating these experiences with more positivity.
Who coined employee experience?
The term employee experience was the first part of employee experience management, which was coined by Kaveh Abhari. Kaveh Abhari is a Ph.D. innovator at San Diego State University.
He understood that ensuring your employees have positive workplace experiences will make the quality of your product increase, and thus improves customer experience.
What is an employee experience platform?
When you are trying to understand employee experience, try using an employee experience platform. These platforms help you look at your company through the lens of your employees. You will understand how they feel and interact with your core machinery.
The added benefit of using an employee management platform, such as Powell employee management, is that you do not have to replace any of your current applications.
