We are working three hours more each day by working from home, as we juggle increasing demands from our employer, spouse/partner, and children. If you are feeling the ‘Zoom fatigue’, you are not alone! While employers and workers are reporting increased productivity from working from home, the productivity gains are coming at a cost to our mental health. Therefore, there is a need to shift focus from ‘work-life balance’ to ‘work-life integration.
Jacob Morgan, the author of “The Employee Experience Advantage”, writes that “as we shift to the future of work, where organisations are focusing on the reasons why employees want to work versus need to work, it is important to understand the employee experience.” As work from home becomes the new normal for many, if not most, employee experience will be a strategic business focus.
Employee experience is a critical consideration for business leaders moving forward. It is not to be confused with employee engagement. Employee experience is the sum of every interaction an employee has with their company – every conversation, every tool, every day. It constitutes the entire journey an employee takes with your organisation. This includes everything from pre-hire to post-exit interactions and everything in between. Employee engagement is an ongoing part of the employee experience. Employee engagement includes emotional and social needs, like doing work that you are good at and connecting your work with a higher purpose.
The employee experience and employee engagement are two connected elements of a business’s ability to keep its employees happy. Understanding the nuances between the two can be tricky, especially since there are different interpretations of both. But ultimately, it is about enhancing the overall employee experience while keeping employees feeling engaged and purposeful in their work.
In the key findings on “The Financial Impact of a Positive Employee Experience, undertaken by IBM Smarter Workforce research in June 2018, organisations that score in the top 25 percent on employee experience report nearly 3 times the return on assets and double the return on sales compared to organisations in the bottom quartile. This study also reveals there is room for organisations to improve their practices, drive a more positive employee experience, and ultimately, maximise their business performance.
Employee experience is an investment in longer-term success. If you are in business for the long haul, focusing on improving employee experience is essential.
Employee experience is influenced by three basic environmental factors: cultural, technological, and physical. The cultural element in employee experience is about creating an environment where people are motivated and inspired to give their best, and it is best reflected in the leadership practices of the company. The technological environment is all about the productive and collaborative tools that facilitate communication that collect and share feedback. While the physical environment is everything you can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, e.g., temperature, air quality, office lightings, desk and chair, communal tables, and the lunches you eat from them, etc.
Of the three factors, the cultural factor is the most challenging for an organisation. To build a consistent and sustainable workplace, leaders need a create an environment where people want to show up.
Leaders have to think about everything from culture to well-being to purpose and meaning — and make it all come to life in a personalised way for employees, both in person and through digital channels. New challenges demand a new way of seeing things. It’s time for transformational leadership, one that can transform the environment and the people in it. The transformational leader has the key to unlock “what is” to discover “what can be”!
Leaders will need to foster an environment that empowers their people. Studies have shown that nearly three-quarters of employees believe being empowered is important to their engagement with their job. During the enforced period of working from home, staff have become accustomed to higher levels of control over their workdays than they previously enjoyed in the office. While the outputs required of them may have remained the same, they have enjoyed considerably more freedom in managing their time. Relinquishing this control will be challenging for many. So, leaders need to permit employees’ greater levels of self-management within the work environment. Check-in with them regularly to gauge how effective this is and offer support or direction but impress upon them how they should feel a strong sense of ownership towards their work.
Employees need to trust their employers to feel connected with the company and invested in its success. In the new normal, there will be changes to business operations, but the culture of transparency and honesty will help build understanding and trust. When 77% of employees feel corporate culture is extremely important, leaders need to demonstrate empathy with how staff are feeling and how their home life has influenced this. The organisation must establish a standard of behavior for line managers to ensure consistency across all interactions. Meaningful interactions mean encouraging staff to share their passions, achievements, and milestones. It means open conversations between employees and managers where employees can speak truthfully about what’s on their minds. Allowing staff to be more authentic helps foster collaboration and innovation.
Jobs will have changed, merged, split, or reduced along with roles and responsibilities, thanks to automation and the disruptive technologies that are readily available in the market today. Businesses will therefore have to pivot to adapt themselves to the digital economy. As such, businesses need to ensure employees feel that the work that they are doing is meaningful. Staff who don’t feel their efforts are worthwhile will take less pride in the results. Leaders are expected to motivate their employees on an ongoing basis to expedite change. This requires ongoing communications of the company’s vision and allowing the employees to see where their role fits into the bigger picture and contribute to shared success.
Another point that leaders need to appreciate is that employee experience and customer experience are inextricably linked. Better employee experience equates to better customer experience. Positive experiences for employees embed high standards of behavior and attitude, which result in greater customer satisfaction. The lessons learned from a focus on employee experience can also be applied to understanding and delivering to the needs of customers.
“Employee experience will be a crucial factor in business success after COVID-19. Its importance is too great to be left to just HR leaders or any one department to manage. It’s something that must be woven throughout the organisation if the benefits are to be earned – and sustained throughout the employee lifecycle.
Dato’ Munirah Looi, a renowned woman entrepreneur, is the founder of Brandt International – a Malaysian business offering CX consulting leveraging on digital workforce solutions and digitalized platforms to its host of customers today. Her main life principles – high quality, integrity, determination – define the company. She models the values of best leaders: creating the vision, setting standards and leading the way. She is also a Research Fellow of the National Human Resource Centre (NHRC) of HRD Corp.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
