×
First-time login tip: If you're a REBA Member, you'll need to reset your password the first time you login.
24 Oct 2019

Is employee experience the new employee engagement?

Delivering a great customer experience has long been a priority for businesses because not only does it improve customer satisfaction and generate loyal customers, it helps businesses stand out from the crowd too. When it comes to employee experience, the same applies. From recruitment and onboarding, right through to the exit process, every aspect of the employee experience has an impact on how employees feel about a business.

C570-1571823385_IsemployeeexperiencethenewemployeeMAIN.jpg

Since the employee experience can influence productivity, motivation levels, job satisfaction and loyalty, it’s often confused with employee engagement. Although similar, they both work in different ways. Employee experience is the input, while employee engagement is the output. In other words, a positive employee experience will drive overall engagement, which is why it’s become a strategic priority for HR.

It’s now all about the bigger picture – keeping employees engaged at all touchpoints throughout their journey with an employer. That’s why employee benefits and reward programmes need to be developed with employee experience in mind.

Processes and communications

Every employee goes through a journey with their employer, and everything they go through becomes part of an integrated experience that can have a lasting impact on their engagement with a business. It’s therefore crucial to ensure that the processes and communications integrated into any benefits and reward programme are aligned to the full employee experience journey.

This journey or ‘lifecycle’ as it’s sometimes known, is often mapped out to show the different stages employees go through.

In general, it starts with the candidacy stage, moves to the on-boarding process and eventually ends with an employee’s departure.

For every stage in this cycle, you should have processes and communications in place to ensure your benefits and rewards programme has optimal engagement. For example, during the on-boarding process, employees should receive all the information they need to understand the platform and promptly log in so they can get the most value as soon as they start. You could even set up in-application pop-ups to provide employees with a virtual tour of the platform when they first log in.

This same principle applies for the final stage of the journey, because employees need to know when their access will expire and what they should do with any outstanding points or rewards.

Making sure these process and communications are set up is hugely important for the employee experience because it drives employees to use their benefits and rewards throughout their lifecycle.

Employee feedback

The employee experience, just like the customer experience, is all about feedback. Employee Net Promoter scores and regular employee experience surveys allow businesses to capture important information and find out key areas of improvement. So, why not use your benefits and rewards to host and deliver these?

A benefits and reward platform can be used as a hub for communicating a wide range of information and facilitating feedback. Pulse surveys and quick polls, for example, could be set up to consistently capture feedback from your employees while they’re logging in to access their benefits and rewards. Not only is this a really useful tool for your business, it’ll make your employees feel like their voices matter and are being listened to, which supports the employee experience further.

Fairness and inclusivity

A question often asked in employee experience surveys is: Do you feel fairly treated?

Fairness and inclusivity are vital in the workplace and should therefore be factored in when developing and delivering your benefits and rewards. Are they relevant to everyone? Are they easy to access? Asking yourself these questions will ensure that what your offering is relevant and accessible for every single employee in your business.

Think about remote workers, for example, will they get the same level of access as other employees? The on-boarding process for your benefits and reward programme might be different for these types of employees. Where you might usually schedule in-house induction workshops with most employees, online demos might be more feasible.

Considering the ease of access and relevance of your benefits and reward programme on a company-wide scale is therefore crucial to ensure that it contributes to a positive employee experience.

Help and support

When accessing their benefits and rewards, it’s very likely that your employees will have questions, queries and problems that will need addressing. From a forgotten password, to an issue with a specific feature, there should be help available to provide a seamless experience.

A dedicated customer services team or point of contact is therefore highly valuable because your employees will be able to get quality support and resolve their issues quickly. Some employee engagement providers have their very own in-house customer services team that will directly deal with queries over the phone or via email. Providing a reliable source of help and support for your benefits and reward is crucial for the employee experience, and will further contribute to your wider efforts to engage employees.

So, to take it back to basics, employee engagement is built through a good employee experience. Benefits and reward form part of this and should be developed and delivered with employee experience in mind. Tailoring communications to the different stages of the employee lifecycle is vital, as well as ensuring that your offering is fair, inclusive and monitors feedback so it can consistently evolve to deliver a positive, smooth employee experience. A support team is also essential so that your employees can easily resolve any queries they may have.

This article is provided by peoplevalue.

In partnership with peoplevalue – The Employee Engagement Company

We are a leading provider of employee reward&recognition, benefits delivery&wellbeing solutions.

Contact us today