New buzz words are emerging in HR-scape as new trends evolve. In previous years, the trends perceived were leadership, work culture, engagement, retention, reskilling, learning and development, and technology. HR leaders came up with brilliant suggestions and customized solutions to implement these trends. There seems to be only marginal improvement in these areas and little or no impact on business growth.
HR leaders now realized the biggest hole in their approach. These are all isolated parts of a bigger phenomenon in the employee work life. The siloed approach targeting one isolated part is not sufficient to bring a sea change in the employee work life. They need a holistic approach where employee’s feelings in all perceived matters regarding his/her work life are positive in the worst case and jubilant in the best case. This approach is christened as Employee Experience, the new buzz word that rocks the HR world. Employee experience includes all of the previous trends like work culture, engagement, learning, development, collaboration and also includes the more humane sentiments and personal feelings.
Simply put, if an employee is happy and excited to come to the office in a Monday morning then we can say he/she have a positive employee experience and feels belonged and connected. It may seem a little far-fetched, but you can get the drift about what employee experience means. It is the sum total of his/her perceptions of everyday happenings and interactions in the work life. It can be about the interaction with his colleague/manager, physical location, about the perks or about career development.
Organizations are trying to design comprehensive HR practices that improve the employee experience. Check out the few ways through which you can enhance your employee experience.
Onboarding Workshops: This is the best way to impart organization culture to the newbies. Make this workshop a fun interaction or activities for new employees across the organization. It gives a chance for them to explore different facets of the organization and get to know people from different departments.
Exclusive Team Time: Gone are the days, when the teams sit in one place, interact regularly and get the job done. Now with the rapid increase in changing team dynamics like gig workforce, mobile and remote team and work from home employees, we tend to lose the human touch. Bring the entire team together for a half-a-day session of informal interaction followed or preceded by team luncheon. Avoid formal or informal meetings just let your employees roam around and have a chit-chat about work related topics.
Fun Groups: Provide an environment to form like-minded, fun groups like jamming bands, trekking club, sports groups and others. Enable a digital forum where like-minded people get to know and cultivate a deep bond with colleagues.
Choose Your Environment: Most office spaces are designed to accommodate extroverts says Susan Cain in her TED talk. In fact, most innovative ideas do not spring from brainstorming but from individual contemplation. Sometimes one may feel like working alone or other times prefer a group atmosphere. Give them a choice of an individual den or social cubicle on any day.
Flexibility: Flexible timings, access to multiple workspaces, no dress codes and other cool perks are major factors for attracting millennials.
Wellness Perks: Generalized perks are good, but a little personalization does wonders. It shows that you truly care for your employees and they, in turn, feel proud to be a part of the organization. Innovate – for instance, give them the choice of perks like the gym memberships, diet plan memberships, or art-house cinema memberships.
Learning & Development: Provide a great learning environment for your employees through e-learning or customized learning program through tech institutions. Reskilling your employees and creating future talent pools is beneficial for both business growth and employee engagement.
Collaborative Technology: The Internet and social media giants like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn has forayed into HR technology, which emphasizes the HR technology boom. Empower your employees with consumer grade collaborative tools for seamless interaction and coordination. Besides Employee Self Service Portals and Chabot to answer regular HR related queries help improve the employee experience.
Performance Management: The main factor that seriously dents any positive employee experience may be employee appraisal process. Holistic employee performance management and engagement software like Synergita provides complete transparency through goals management, check-ins, and continuous feedback that has a positive influence on employees.
Happy employees stay forever and drive your business growth. Just keep looking for innovative ways to make a positive experience. It need not be an expensive idea but just a thoughtful one. A gentle human touch is what it needs to create a positive employee experience. Good Luck! Share your thoughts on how your ideas or actions strike a chord on employee experience.
Nice article, You described 9 amazing ways to enhance employee experience at every organization.
Your link will help HR to fix the issues and track the employees but to enhance the experience it’s necessary to understand the employee’s workflow and manage that.